Wherein I interview gardeners of all sorts, visit gardens created by gardening people, and write about the gardener’s world in general. Please also see my gardeners portrait project in progress: The Green Minds Project.
Continuing in the theme of old, medium format film photos that I recently had developed is this roll I took at Brian Bixley’s Lilactree Farm in June 2010. Here is a post that I made way back when of some of the many digital photos I took that day.
(Lots more photos below the fold.)
Leave a commentTonight, while perusing my Twitter feed, I came across a story on TreeHugger about a woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma who is suing the city’s code enforcement officers for cutting down and destroying her edible/medicinal garden.
The story as reported by KOTV in a nutshell: Last August, Denise Morrison received a letter from the city citing a complaint about her yard. She took pictures of the garden when she went to meet with the inspectors and invited them to her home to point out the problem areas. She states their response was that everything had to go. She then went to the police who issued her a citation and a court date. At the court appearance the judge told them to come back in October but City workers showed up at her home the next day and cut down all of her plants and some of her fruit and nut trees.
“I came back three days later, sat in my driveway, cried and left,” Morrison said.
Sound familiar? That’s because we’ve heard versions of this story several times over the past few years. And every time I hear about another garden destroyed based on the complaint of one backwards-thinking neighbour or another gardener sued by the city for deigning to grow food in their front yard I am horrified, saddened, angered, and incensed. But worst of all I am paralyzed. I feel helpless, useless, powerless, hopeless about the state of the world, and consequently I do nothing. I self protect. I put it out of my mind and move on.
This time, rather than doing nothing or assuming there is nothing that can be done, I thought I’d at least get a discussion going about what can be done. Employ the power of many rather than remaining passive and powerless as one.
Firstly, I’d like to know how we can help this woman and others like her. Could we organize a drive for plants, seeds, and materials to replace what was lost, locals to show up at the site of the destroyed garden to help replant?
Do we need a public body of support? Citizens against the destruction of edible gardens? Gardeners for Gardeners?
And as Gina of My Skinny Garden asked on Twitter, I also wonder what we can do to circumvent this kind of thing from happening rather than reacting with shock and horror when it does happen.
On the one hand I feel like some of the work is already being done: writing about edible gardening as a positive, showing gardens that are not like the chemically dependant lawns and gardens popularized over the last 50 years, and gardening ourselves. Showing our neighbours what is possible, talking to them about what we are doing and shifting attitudes one person at a time. But it’s not enough. Clearly it is not enough.
What else can be done? I’d like to know what you think.
UPDATE: There is a petition at Change.org
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If memory serves (the older I get, the less accurately it does), I met Margaret Roach online three years back, when she emailed me to introduce herself and her (then) new blog, A Way to Garden. Of course, I recognized her at once as the garden editor of Martha Stewart Living magazines (and later editorial director of several departments). Like many gardeners, I rarely took a second glance at the magazine, but was often compelled to pick up the spring special gardening editions through Margaret’s years as its editor.
I have to admit that I was initially surprised to hear from her and even more surprised by how charming, warm, funny, intelligent, sincere, corny, and down to earth she is. Why I was surprised at all is the result of poor judgement and a ridiculous class-based bias on my part. If you have ever read Margaret’s first book, “A Way to Garden” then you will already know these things about her. She won me over utterly and completely from the very start. So much about our lives (and gardening lives) is vastly different, and yet we have an awful lot in common.
Probably the most surprising thing I learned about Margaret and the detail that still tickles me most is that she is a 100%, all-around badass. Oh yes, perhaps not the best word — and I hope she doesn’t stop speaking to me over this– but even now, a few years and several meandering emails later, when I think of Margaret, “rebellious” is the first word that comes to mind. It takes a lot of guts to leave a high paying, uber “successful” career, and move out to the country alone to pursue a personal passion. Margaret doesn’t pander, follow the rules, or march to anyone else’s beat. Not anymore. She made a radical life change, is continuing to live it, and has chronicled the very personal details of the first year of this experience in her recently published “drop-out memoir”, “And I Shall Have Some Peace There: Trading in the Fast Lane for My Own Dirt Road.” I won’t give anything away, but the story is a compelling and revealing one. Margaret doesn’t hold back on the difficult parts or steep it in an unrealistically saccharine glaze. She tells it with her whole heart including a cast of unexpected characters (Jack the demon cat and the frog boys to name a few), beautiful prose, and a lot of that corny humour that makes her so especially charming.
Margaret and I recently decided to interview each other and offer our respective books up as a giveaway on our sites. The following is my interview with Margaret. You can read her interview with me on her website. Below that are instructions for entering to win one of four sets of books.
Thanks Margaret!
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Homage to Thalassa Cruso from Michael Weishan on Vimeo.
Lately I’ve been thinking about my gardening past: how I got into gardening and the first books, magazines, writers, and television hosts that inspired me. Coincidentally, just yesterday I learned about Thalassa Cruso, the” Julia Child of Horticulture.”
I’ve decided that she just might be my new gardening hero.
Through the late 1960′s Ms. Cruso wrote and starred in a PBS television show called “Making Things Grow.” She is described in the New York Times as a “… witty and acerbic Englishwoman…” and an, “Everygardener, a true amateur who drew her advice from personal experience rather than formal horticultural training.”
Sounds like a plantswoman after my own heart. Now, how do I get my hands on a copy of this series?
Leave a commentHello Friends,
Just a reminder that the House of Hope Drive is on until Saturday when I’ll be drawing a name for the prize. We’re currently up to $1, 130, which is crazy INCREDIBLE! Thanks so much for contributing!
My friend Celia, who lives in Dominica, is going to be visiting the House of Hope on December 21st. She is going to bring the total donation number to them and take a few pictures to send back to us.
I don’t know what the weather is like where you are, but I could use a little colour right now. I took this photo last year while visiting the gardens of two of the women responsible for the House of Hope.
A few more pictures after the jump….
Read more…
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