Last Saturday I coordinated a planning session for locating trees in the Phoenix Community Garden. I had been frustrated at previous meetings, because they had been completely verbal with people pointing off into vague directions to indicate where they thought a tree might work. I think that trees create the environmental backbone of a garden, so I’m keenly committed to making sure we make thoughtful, well-informed decisions. So I made three sets of models of the garden. It was very simple. I just drew an outline of the garden on taped-together sheets of poster board, then bought a bag of model trees from Pearl Paint. I forgot to buy modeling clay, so we just stuck the bottom of the trees into little bits of orange peel. The teams of two worked together for about half-an-hour placing trees, then each presented their ideas. Here’s Cleo Debique, presenting her teams ideas:
This was the first video I ever made, and I’m quite proud of it. You can see the other presentations at my YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/markdaguy
The next step is to synthesize these ideas. I think there are a lot of commonalities, as well as some differences. Of course, the place to begin is from the shared agreement, I think.
I’m finally able to turn my attention to the backyard. Last weekend I spent several hours tidying up, especially the compost pile. Today I started work on planting a big bag of daffodils on the side strip. This no-man’s land is a five foot wide strip between our property and the next door neighbor that is owned by some corporation in Florida. It has the junkiest soil I’ve ever gardened in. Today I dug up rubble, lots of liquor bottles, piles of ashes, clothing, toothpaste tubes. It was nauseating. For me, one of the pleasures of gardening is working with soil. But this felt like gardening on a landfill. This spring, I think I’ll plant periwinkle among the daffodils and then euonymous along the chainlink fence. A very uninspired selection, but I need things that are tough and don’t take a lot of work.
Last Wednesday, November 12, I went to a demonstration against Proposition 8, the recent California ballot initiative that banned gay marriage. I was never that fired up about the issue before, and I’m even more lukewarm about it now. The pro-marriage proponents have a limited vision, limited by tradition and, by and large, willful ignorance of broader issues of social justice. There’s been a wild blaming on the net, blaming its passage on conservative African American churchgoers turning out to vote for Obama. Nate Silver does a handy job of dispatching this divisive notion. I think the real target should be yes, the Mormon Church, but also the arch-diocese of San Francisco, who recruited them into the effort in the first place.
But really, the queer movement needs to have a vision beyond just marriage and really talk about embracing and giving institutional support to all kinds of relationships. The Alternatives to Marriage folks have done some good thinking on the subject. Juniper’s perspective is that the state has no business getting involved in contracts between adults, period, unless there’s children involved. He’s from Canada, where gay marriage is legal. The rub is, nobody is getting married. That’s because the institutional bolsters–healthcare, property rights, tax policy–are largely taken care of outside of marriage. So yeah, if all the trappings of marriage mean something to ya, by all means. But if they don’t, you shouldn’t miss out on the benefits and social support just because you march to a different drummer.
Claudia, the permaculturalist with Hannah from the Green Guerillas and Cleo, a Phoenix garden member
My friend Claudia Joseph came over to the Phoenix Garden to day to give a workshop on basic permaculture design approaches. She was very generous with her time – she went an hour past the 10-11:30 schedule. Of course, permaculture is an enormous topic, impossible to cover in two weeks much less two hours. So we focussed the discussion by just tossing out questions and getting Claudia to share some preliminary insights. The big challenge facing the garden right now is tree placement, because that’s such an important and long-lasting decision. Claudia shared about Masanobu Fukuoka, the Japanese orchardist who I have never heard of. Claudia also talks about the concept of ‘guilds’, the community of fungus, understory plants, roots, shrubs, big trees, bigger trees, etc. Great ideas, but it’s hard to pull it all in a hopper when making decisions with a big group of people. The design committee is meeting next week, and I’m going to make a scale model of the garden on which people can play with the placement of large elements, such as trees and built structures.
For election day, I helped pull together a poll watching party at the senior housing center around the corner, Duncan Genns. The residents are almost completely Black elders, so it felt like a great group to celebrate the historic occasion with. The party took place in the community room, which was also the neighborhood polling place. I had to push aside one of those enormous New York city polling machines to reveal the television. You know, the voting machines on casters that are about the size of a walk-in restaurant freezer. I made a tray of tuna casserole (how much more all-American can you get), mustard greens with onions and smoked paprika, and double batch of oatmeal cookies. Others brought a pumpkin chiffon cake and pound cake. A feast.
After all that cooking, I was pretty tuckered out and it was hard to be too animated. Which is one of the great things about partying with 80 year olds — nobody expects you to be. However, when the networks announced for Obama, everyone in the room stood up and cheered. I wish I had my camera ready.
