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From: emily
Date: Wed Jan 18 13:56:47 MST 2006 Subject: generosity idea

Responses
rodhugen: I like it! (1/19/06)
ryan: Me too! (1/20/06)
emily: harnessed dreamed (1/20/06)
Krysti: yard space (1/20/06)
Patricia: see Krysti's blog (1/21/06)
ryan: No Subject (1/24/06)
russ: beware (1/24/06)
emily: bouncing bars (1/25/06)
ryan: kumquats and footings (1/25/06)
Karen: Children, play with earth... (1/27/06)
Karen: R.E.M. free association (1/27/06)
ryan: get there another way (1/31/06)
emily: Peace of Dirt (1/31/06)
Karen: Too dark, even for us? (1/31/06)
Karen: Peter Gabriel (1/31/06)
Responses (sorted by date)
Karen: Peter Gabriel (1/31/06)
Karen: Too dark, even for us? (1/31/06)
emily: Peace of Dirt (1/31/06)
ryan: get there another way (1/31/06)
Karen: R.E.M. free association (1/27/06)
Karen: Children, play with earth... (1/27/06)
ryan: kumquats and footings (1/25/06)
emily: bouncing bars (1/25/06)
russ: beware (1/24/06)
ryan: No Subject (1/24/06)
Patricia: see Krysti's blog (1/21/06)
Krysti: yard space (1/20/06)
emily: harnessed dreamed (1/20/06)
ryan: Me too! (1/20/06)
rodhugen: I like it! (1/19/06)
At the drumming circle a group I was in discussed ideas for being generous. There was a lot of discussion about whether Americans are suspicious of food cooked in an unknown kitchen or not.....but there seemed to be a general agreement that fresh produce from a real living plant is almost always appreciated. An idea was floated that if we get our own space we could think about having a community garden. Lots of neighborhoods and other groups do it so its not just an idealistic dream.

We did come up with some other ideas but I'd be interested to hear more from anyone who has enough extra mental energy and time to read the blogs on the website and maybe even respond! Otherwise, never mind. Sometimes I feel like time is a field and I'm not sure how to leave the corners for others to glean.

EmilyMc.

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From: rodhugen
Date: Thu Jan 19 07:38:40 MST 2006 Subject: I like it!

When we lived in the apartment, Kathy and I often talked about renting a space somewhere where we could plant a garden. I know there are community spaces available for that sort of thing, but they were all too far away from where we were to make it practical to plant, weed, water, and pick the fruit of our labor. I would love to be part of a 'gardening team' and there would certainly be opportunity to glean the garden patch just like in the ancient times. Cooking with fresh herbs and vegetables is always great fun and things almost always taste better when you grow what you eat.

Another thing to do is to go to farmer's markets and buy extra produce and give that to your neighbors. For a long time, Kathy and I went to the farmer's market at Swan and Fort Lowell every Saturday and loaded up on veggies and fruit. Getting a little extra to share with neighbors would be easy and fun. I remember when we went to the Peach Festival at Apple Annie's Farms (near Wilcox) we picked gobs of peaches and then distributed some of them to neighbors. No one turned us down and occasionally the one neighbor still talks about how great they were. Kathy and I always go to the Peach Festival as a great 'get out of town' date day, but it would be fun to go with others. Most times we are too lazy to pick our own, but they also have boxes of ones already picked for sale. The fresh homemade peach ice cream is worth the trip.

I agree that people have difficulty eating food others have cooked, but I suspect that as the relationship deepens those fears vanish. I'm sure if I give tamales to several of our neighbors that would enjoy them, but it is only because they have been in my house and we have had lengthy conversations. One of Kathy's friends is very picky about food proferred by strangers, but gladly gobbles up anything Kathy brings to share because she knows our kitchen is clean and our cooking is done with some knowledge of sanitation and health. Okay, our kitchen isn't always clean, but it does have its good days. :-)

Anyway, I like your idea muchly. What else are you thinking about re: gleaning.

Rod

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From: ryan
Date: Thu Jan 19 17:52:12 MST 2006 Subject: Me too!

I love the idea of a community garden, and just gardening in general. We have a marginally successful attempt at a garden in our back yard. We've done well with peppers, lettuce, radishes, and have enjoyed the occasional pea and tomato. And lots of herbs. Gardening is fun and community is fun so why shouldn't they go together? I'd love to learn from other people who like food and growing it.

I have a sort of half-baked idealistic notion of turning our back yard into a permaculture garden, with pretty much every corner growing something edible sometime. I get huge ideas involving rainwater catchment, vine-covered pergolas, a lean-to greenhouse, patios, citrus trees... visions of our house as a cool, shady urban oasis dance through my head. Then I get overwhelmed and all the ideas trigger my propensity for depression, so I move on to other things.

(Incidentally we are building a pergola to shade the west side of our house. We'll try growing grapes and kiwis on it. If we actually get any, we'll share! I'm going lumber shopping tomorrow!)

The idea of our back yard as a micro-community garden is an intriguing one... so, does anybody have any ideas what that might look like?

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From: emily
Date: Thu Jan 19 19:54:04 MST 2006 Subject: harnessed dreamed

Our neighborhood has talked a lot about having a community garden. Everyone seems to LOVE the idea. We have just never found a property and gotten it together. But we have discovered that there are neighborhood grants for that kind of thing. Its considered a really healthy thing for communities. There are neighborhood community gardens that you can get in touch with and tour. The Community Food Bank has a garden that is an example of one done by an organization rather than a neighborhood.

Ryan, your garden is great! I love the multi-level raised beds. Very practical, yet pleasing to look at. You may be seeing "a lot more to be done" but I am just seeing a fabulous and uplifting work of growing edible art. Even if you never do more than what you have now it is a good way to spend some of your spare time on the planet. When you're speding time in eternity doing whatever we'll be doing - you'll think back to your little patch of veggies with the raised beds and the groovy chicken wire cages and think "That was a cool little patch of earth".

EmilyMc.

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From: Krysti
Date: Fri Jan 20 11:28:36 MST 2006 Subject: yard space

My back yard is a dismal place and has been since before I bought the place. It's likely to be years before I can do the improvements I'd like. So, if there's a group that would like to use any of it for a community garden, I'd pay for the water and provide the space. I won't volunteer for the digging,weeding etc. because I know that I wouldn't be able to keep up. But, there's the offer.
Krysti

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From: Patricia
Date: Sat Jan 21 11:01:22 MST 2006 Subject: see Krysti's blog

ditto

by the way: have grapefruit, will share :)

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From: ryan
Date: Mon Jan 23 17:23:02 MST 2006 Subject:

All right, budding Village gardeners! (Pun marginally intended.)

Well, maybe the Village community garden is, until we have our own community space for it, an amalgam of all our little disparate plots, connected by ideas and shared fruits. And vegetables. And herbs...

At the McCulley garden, we are hoping to plant kiwi and grape vines. They probably won't be producing for a couple of years, but the varieties we are looking at are prolific. The kiwis are actually not like the fuzzy guys you buy at the store. They are "hardy kiwis": grape-sized, sweeter, and though not fuzzy, every bit as cute and lovable and edible as the originals.

Currently, however, our dreams of a hardy-kiwi production facility (our pergola) are beset by the evil forces of caliche lurking in our soil. I have dug 6 of 10 footings, but the remaining four have caliche about 3-6" below grade. Anyone got any ideas on how to get rid of this highly unjoyful, unimpactable substance? (It is so unimpactable that I'm sure there's a great sermon illustration somewhere.)

I have my hammer drill and I'm not afraid to use it. But I wonder if there is a better way... I've heard suggestions of soaking the hole with water or vinegar (something acidic - maybe Starbucks Extra Stout?). One friend even told me that there is some kind of non-toxic chemical which, diluted with water, will dissolve it overnight. The Desert Museum's Web site denies the existence of any such magic chemical, however... hmmmm, perhaps to prevent some of the more environmentally challenged among us from dumping CLR or Lime-Away down a hole?

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From: russ
Date: Mon Jan 23 19:01:15 MST 2006 Subject: beware

Speaking as somebody whose job it was (a number of years back) to dig holes in people's backyard caliche: be very careful of buried utilities. It's very tempting to use power tools, but will you know the difference between caliche, rock, buried concrete clumps, and your gas line?

I hate to say it, but I never heard of a better way of digging than by hand. One tool you can use is a "digging bar," which is a 6-foot pointed steel bar. Weighs about 20 pounds or so. Sometimes it is better at penetrating caliche than a shovel. But I never had much luck with it...I've seen one of those bounce off the ground, humming like a tuning fork.

Sorry! :(

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From: emily
Date: Tue Jan 24 21:31:31 MST 2006 Subject: bouncing bars

I LOVE gardening! And what better place to garden for someone who wants a challenge?! Caliche bars bouncing off the ground? Pouring toxic chemicals into to your future food source? Bring it on baby! Of course, I'm speaking as someone who has never found any caliche in my yard. And I dug some monster holes looking for my sewer line. But I can tell you the difference between a rock and your electrical lines. While they both make a sickening chonking sound on impact - the rock is pretty cheap to replace.

My suggestion for the caliche problem. For the grape vine - persevere with the fight to make a hole through it to the real soil underneath. You probably just need a place for the roots to tunnel through. For the smaller plants, build more raised beds and buy a truck load of soil. Or just cover your whole back yard with garden soil. I guess that would make it one big raised bed....

I contemplating kumquat bushes myself.

EmilyMc.

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From: ryan
Date: Wed Jan 25 14:14:15 MST 2006 Subject: kumquats and footings

Kumquats! That sounds exciting. I don't think I've ever had the occasion to try one. Do they grow well here? I am willing to try any kind of food- or resource-producing plant.

The caliche-ridden holes are actually for post footings, not plants. There isn't any caliche where I want to put the vines, thank goodness, coz I gotta dig mighty big holes for them. Kiwis don't like alkaline clay soil.

So I am going to try the hammer drill in the footing holes and hopefully chip out at least 6-9 inches. I figure caliche isn't going anywhere so a deep footing probably isn't necessary. Maybe I could try some kind of concrete bonding agent to get the concrete to stick to the caliche. They are both pretty darn hard, they ought to like each other.

Gee, I haven't had this much fun playing with dirt since I was about 6.

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From: Karen
Date: Fri Jan 27 15:36:44 MST 2006 Subject: Children, play with earth...

It's a refrain from an Arrested Development song. Anyone remember that hiphop group from the 90s? Hmm, maybe just me.

I love the smell of dirt. One of my favorite memories from my teen years is of "beanwalking" on a summer vacation back to our former home in Northwest Iowa. My childhood friend's grandparents' soybean fields needed weeding and there'd been too much rain to take out the machines to do it. After a saturated-fat-filled breakfast, I got really good exercise, a pleasantly sore back and arms and legs, and...maybe $30 or $40 for a morning's work... Sweat without sunstroke. Sun without sunburn.

I enjoyed walking barefoot in the summer mud back in Iowa. The mud here doesn't feel half as good. You need good, loamy soil... since Em used that phrase in her blog last week, the words have been rolling around my head. I love the smell and the feel of loamy soil. And the sound of the very words. And the sweet corn that springs up from it.

But I love the cresote-resin smell of the desert after the monsoon rains, too.

Let's get that community garden (those gardens) going this spring. Soon it will be time to dig!

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From: Karen
Date: Fri Jan 27 15:53:41 MST 2006 Subject: R.E.M. free association

Your frustration with caliche made me think of their song, "Can't Get There From Here," with its theme of obstacles vs. the determination to overcome them. Some lines:

"Hands down, caliche bound
Landlocked, kiss the ground
The dirt of seven continents going
Round and round....
When the world is a monster
Bad to swallow you whole
Kick the clay that holds the teeth in
Throw your troubles out the door."

The chorus has Michael Stipe calling, "Can't get there from here," and Mike Mills responding, "I'll get there another way." (Or maybe it's, "I've been there, I know the way." Well, same idea.)

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From: ryan
Date: Mon Jan 30 18:16:05 MST 2006 Subject: get there another way

Groovy. Makes me want to rock out to REM next time I do yard work.

Turns out the `caliche' was actually concrete from the house foundation. Picture sticking your house into a giant marshmallow and seeing all the goo squirt out from underneath, bury it, wait a thousand years for it to get rock hard, and dig it up again. I swear it looked like caliche... or at least to a guy who's never actually seen the stuff. :-P

So I moved the footings out another foot away from the house and no problem. Got four of 'em dug in about an hour.

So Karen you might appreciate a reference to Peter Gabriel's `Digging in the Dirt' which kinda has a double meaning, given the weekend goings-on at the McCulley house.

And with weather like this, who needs to wait to plant peppers or tomatoes? Ours are actually fruiting in winter! And all our bok choy bolted already. :-( Yikes. I fear the summer...

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From: emily
Date: Tue Jan 31 13:19:41 MST 2006 Subject: Peace of Dirt

OK - its really "piece of dirt" that your blogs remind me of today. As dirt songs go wafting through my head - this one makes me smile. Its from They Might be Giants and the only part I can remember is:

Piece of dirt (cool drum stuff)
That is all I'm standing on today...

But I do recall the idea of the earth as being a big piece of dirt rolling around the universe. I'm not sure if the song was about that or if I just extrapolated. If so, the lyrics are all gone from my memory and all that's left is my extrapolation.

Do you think this could turn in to a worship song? Perhaps our world is God beloved dirt pile where he experiments with mud pies, digging tunnels, dirt clog fights and other time tested dirt fun? OK, nevermind. I'll go back to house chores and leave well enough alone.

EmilyMc.

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From: Karen
Date: Tue Jan 31 15:36:11 MST 2006 Subject: Too dark, even for us?

Piece of dirt, that is all I'm standing on today
Piece of dirt, the whole world has slipped away
I would climb the highest mountain just to jump into a fountain
Or to fly, I'd fly away

A woman's voice on the radio can convince you you're in love
A woman's voice on the telephone can convince you you're alone
But I set my sails so long ago they've revoked my sailor's badge
Said I should be content and happy on this ink spot where I stand

Piece of dirt, that is all I'm standing on today
Piece of dirt, the whole world has slipped away
I find myself haunted by a spooky man named me
I wish that I could jump out of my skin

--They Might Be Giants (John Linnell & John Flansburgh)

Hey Em, I think this is even darker than the crowd-pleaser, "I trust you with my shovel, knee deep in manure"! (Although that one could apply to gardening, too.)

Love,
Your dark humored "sistah" in Christ

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From: Karen
Date: Tue Jan 31 15:39:50 MST 2006 Subject: Peter Gabriel

Yeah, it's a good allusion there, too. I found out that he has the same birthdate as me (which is upcoming), albeit not quite the same year ;-)

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