Garbage Day

July 30th

Fennel going to seed; tomatoes coming in gangbusters; daylillies fading; magnolia still flowering; lion's tail needs cutting back; grass still going crazy in all those areas I haven't been able to get to.

I'm not saying that every person who works in their garden ends up thinking about garbage, but surely the ones who compost do.

We have a little composter under our sink. Called the MaxAir, it's from Norway (wildly) and is outfitted with compostable "plastic" bags made of corn. When Wendy or I cut vegetables, as we are wont to do, we just throw the scraps into the little composter. On Saturdays, gardening day, I take the bucket out back and dump it in the big composter, bag and all.

In theory, what is supposed to happen is this is all supposed to happen smoothly. Like everything outside of a catalog, it doesn't.

For one, the MaxAir composter needs to be emptied twice a week. And it leaks, even though the ads say it doesn't. So we have to put it in a little Tupperware container. And it has to be outside in the summer. We get fruit flies in Southern California, and I'll be damned if they don't convince you of Spontaneous Generation. There are hundreds of them just a day after you put your first banana peel in there.

The rest, however, works pretty well. I take care of the composting, which I think is the part most people are grossed out by. I don't blame them. The composter is not the pretty one you see in the catalog, it's out in the corner of the back yard collecting spiderwebs over the week. Plus, mind you, it's full of rotting vegetables. OMG! "Rotting vegetables....? Grosssssss." Yes, you can hear the Vals screaming now. (I hadn't even started in on the worms that had moved in.)

Here's the weird thing: we ran out of the compostable bags (we have to order them online. Wait I have to. I just did. But it took me awhile) and in the meantime we've been throwing away scraps into the trash, just like we used to. But get this, we feel guilty about it now. Why? Because somewhere deep in the recesses of our minds, we became bonded to the idea of greencycling. Yes, we can buy organic vegetables (sometimes we do, sometimes we don't), but if we throw them out with the regular old garbage, they're going to be trapped under the miles of rubbish and compacted for the next millennia. " From Packaging Digest, an industry publication on packaging: "studies of landfills have revealed that on the whole, they tend to be tombs rather then composting reactors". I'm not saying the banana peel is as bad as the plastic bag, but still, if I'm here, and I've got space in my yard?

And do I rove the neighborhood endlessly spouting off about my "Black Gold", the compost of kings? No. I don't. Actually I rarely even use the compost out there in my bin. Why? I don't know why, exactly. Maybe because I've never been taught how to use it properly. But I really think that's a step that will come. For now I've got this little thing going. We buy the apple. We feed the apple to our kids. We toss the core and stem into the composter. Organisms that are already living out in my backyard break it down to usable compost for plants (or just a little ever growing pile of compost in my backyard).

I think about those people who lived here only 150 years ago, only a few generations ago, actually, and how they had to make things last forever. And how closely they had to live near their garbage. Our garbage is whisked away once a week and taken to a far off place. We don't see it. We don't smell it. And yet, it's there.

I'm not sure if it's a result of this, but we've started to look at all packaging and garbage in a different since starting this a few years ago. Most everything is broken down, even if it is a colossal pain. Toilet paper rolls go in the Paper Cycling. Plastics go in the Recycling Bin.

It's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy. I am saying, though, that's it's right and it's good.

There's a Zen Buddhist saying, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

Some things, raising good (or relatively good) children, work, gardening, relationships, are not easy. That's what makes them incredibly valuable to us. The world should be of inherent value to all of us, but we've been fooled, lulled to sleep actually, about its value. As hard as it seems, it's going to take work to get back to a proper perspective.

And that's not a bad thing.

(Picture by nanaandbump)

Cows for Freedom

About 5 years ago, I'm not sure where, I heard about an interesting non-profit organization named Heifer. It was founded right after WWII, it's a "humanitarian assistance organization that works to end world hunger and protect the earth."

Essentially, at the beginning, cattle, goats, ducks, and such were flown by B-52s into wartorn Europe. After those many years of bombing, farmers, ranchers, and everyday people were left without fresh milk, meat, or a way of making money.

This organization has grown immensely, even in the time we've been giving to them. But the important first point remains, whoever receives the gift (the cow, duck, chicken, etc.) must "pass on the gift" to someone who is needy when the animal has offspring.

Through reading their material I learned a lot I didn't really want to know and information I think they've found to be vital, such as, in many countries women wouldn't be entrusted with running a business like selling eggs. But often the men are in such dire straits and caught up in, um, activities not conducive to raising a family and rescuing a people out of poverty.

My wife being a vegetarian, when we send gifts to families, they are often not meat products: trees, bees, llamas, etc. The kids aren't so crazy about sending bunnies to a place where they're going to eat them, either. Even after I made my, "Well, what the heck are they supposed to eat?" speech. In the land of Chicken Nuggets, it's hard to get back to a place where people butcher their own food.

Their magazine is no shrinking violet, either. Their book reviews, while not LA Times caliber, do review and point out fluff when they see it. Even if it's a book you would think would be near and dear to their heart. They include articles written by people such as environmental analyst Lester R. Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and author of, most recently, Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.

As I said earlier, some of the things you read in their magazine are a little difficult to listen to, especially when we have it so easy. On the positive side, it makes me know my money is being used for something productive that I believe in and, here is the odd, personal part, I feel a more a part of the whole world. Which is a feeling I really don't get that often.

Often when I'm gardening, even though I am working for a semi-invisible world, a complicated web of insects, animals, and teeny, tiny organisms in my yard so they may survive. And I can get some peace and educate my children. But I miss that many times. I don't see what I'm doing. I'm caught, as many of us, in my daydreams, worries, etc. so that I've been blinded.

Hell, I don't know where I'm going with this.

Give to Heifer, you'll do something good.

Whether you actually "feel" it or not.

(Photo by squacco)

Water, Water Everywhere... Wait, Nowhere

Matilijas going strong, Catalina Island Bush Poppy flowering, roses finished, daylilies in full effect.

But the corn, oh the corn. Ryan's corn is stunted. It got "knee high by the Fourth of July", but that's essentially where it stayed. Now it's producing corn which will be too small to eat and if it weren't for Ryan, I'd pull them all out. He believes these corn plants are terrific, which, in his mind's eye, I guess they are. He'll learn later that these can't be eaten, but I'm sure he won't be disappointed the way and adult would. (Which in itself is kind of interesting. I can understand an adult who is trying to grow food for his family being crushed when they don't turn out, but it's a bit silly to think of adults crying because the forsythia isn't performing the way they'd like.)

After talking to Jimmy, the plant guy at the Hollywood Farmer's Market, my suspicions were confirmed: not enough water. I kept telling Ryan to water it more frequently, his fault, but didn't listen to him when he indicated we should plant it in front of the house (my fault and faltering memory, it'd done well there a few years back).

We've bought new corn seedlings, Jimmy telling us that you can plant them well into September in Los Angeles. September! It makes you wonder why everyone isn't growing their own vegetables in this city. I guess it's a time/money conundrum. Hell, corn is 10 for $1 during high season. Really hard to beat that deal.

Sadly, the water issue being played out in our garden is being magnified a millionfold over Southern California. While Kansas is being drenched, we just completed the driest year in recorded history (measured July to July, year to year since the late 1800's). And yet, no word of it yet from the politicians.

When I asked someone who works in the DA's office why that was (knowing full well it's not the most politically connected office, but heck, he was available to me at a children's party we were at), his answer was no that one wanted to be the unpopular politician who told everyone to cut back. It makes sense. Pathetic as it is.

I think of JFK's speech about going to the moon:
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not only because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too"

What caught my eye was the expression, "not only because they are easy, but because they are hard". It echoes, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

Where is this sort of speech in the light of the current global warming events facing us? It's no secret that many politicians dumbed down the scientific report on climate warming, and that the current administration loves to turn things around to suit their own needs (as every administration does, but in this case, it's not something that you really want to put your spin on. The earth is warming, now what do we do about it?)

Happily this is going to come from the grass roots up (no pun intended), which is probably for the best. The government has never had much to say about organic vegetables and the fact that we're poisoning our soil, it was the public who has made it a multi-billion dollar industry. Once the farmers come on board, they're going to find (my guess) they get a lot more money for their crops when they're grown organically.

Okay, enough gardener soap box. But when you're weeding you have a lot of time to think and I'm not always vocal when talking to people personally (like to the guy I met at a party who told me busing and desegregation was political posturing. Wow).

Water is something I'm always thinking about and I do believe I err a lot on the underwatering side. I think often of the advice a naturalist, my friend Alan, gave me when I told him about my garden: "Don't bother watering it and plant more of whatever does well." Sound advice to a city that gets so much of its water from rivers diverted into a tremendous aqueduct system.

Though we often think we have no control over problems, it's eye opening to see the facts and figures of the average American household "footprint" on the planet these days. Households, not farmers, use more pesticides:

Suburban lawns and gardens receive more pesticide applications per acre (3.2-9.8 lbs) than agriculture (2.7 lbs per acre on average). Source, National Research Council. 1980.

The amount of water used for our home gardens is also staggering:

One third of all residential water use in the nation - about 7.8 billion gallons of water annually - goes to outdoor landscaping.

Can we start with ourselves, with our own front lawns? It's hard to believe this answer is a hearty "yes", but there it is.

It's not every day you can find yourself saving something precious, but here it is right in front of our faces.

You just need to get down close enough to the roses to hear them whisper, "Thank you".

* dewdrops courtesy of listentoreason via creative commons