Killing the Field

A puddle in the middle of the lawn?

I looked at landscapes at Utah public schools last year, and I am frustrated by what I saw. Many schools were clearly over watered, but this school took the cake. It had water sitting in puddles of fetid water in front of the school.

While it seems that poor management like this is in bad character, especially during a drought year, it is even worse when you know that this level of over watering can require mowing up to three times a week. All this time and money from the mowing could easily be shifted elsewhere.

While it seem easy to blame the custodian, the problem is systemic through the school systems and American society in general. I encourage you to become educated about good gardening and plant care and to respectfully and appropriately approach responsible leaders in the community when you see such horrible miss use of public resources.

Manana!

Vote Local!

I get stares for wearing election day stickers,
but any little nudge to get people working for
their communities is well worth it.

The most ignored part of gardening is voting in your local election. So often I hear about some poor soul being halled away in chains because her (it always seems to be female) zucchini plants offended the neighbors. But I rarely hear about those who support gardening taking things into their own hands by taking it to the ballet box.

While many of us are tired of the national, and even state, political messes. Local politics, however, can be refreshing. I have never had a city politician who was too busy to make time for me. I have never had one who could hide his flaws well enough that concerned folks couldn't run a successful campane against him.

The real truth of it is we forget how local politics can improve our real, everyday lives. Go ahead, talk to the candidates and tell them what is important to you.

Then, go vote in November!

Permaculture Values

A proper front yard.

The following is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to a young man trying to decide how his love of permaculture should effect his formal schooling:

My degree is in Urban and Landscape Horticulture. I ran into permaculture about the same time I decided to go back to school and change my degree.

I found my classes invigorating and a lot of fun. They also backed up many permacultural technics quite well. When I graduated is when the trouble started. Things are not done in the best way in many fields.
We have a tendency to want things now and buy our way out of problems. Ego usually wins out over common sense. Controlling everything and everyone around us is how we get ahead.

For a few years I tried to make things happen the way people said I should, get ahead and all that. But I found myself becoming less happy with myself and less happy with work. The more I tried to apply the principals and practices of pemaculture to my work, the less my bosses thought of me and my value.

I finally dropped out and am now trying to find a way through the world that does not create conflict with those I work with and will still pay the bills and allow me to follow my values. 

Now, if you will allow me to return to the question of my experience with permaculture. It has followed me by my side since I found it some ten years ago. I have often used it as a bag of tricks to help me in my landscape work and my own garden.

The truth is that permaculture is really a philosophy of living. Whether it be in the farm, or in the board room, it shouldn't matter. I was originally attracted to it because those philosophies closely match principals that I already believed. Even though I didn't know it at the time.

Those principals are more in need in the circles of business and economics than in the farms and gardens of today. Take what you know of permaculture, boil it down to principles, and then apply it wherever you decide to go.

It may cause you some conflict, you may not be able to work the jobs you thought you would, but you will be able to hold your head up and sit down at the end of the day and know your work is good.

Please, sit down and think about it. 

Occupy My Own Life

The Occupy Salt Lake City encampment, before they
were cleared out by the city.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the Occupy Movement, but I could never be involved.  The reason is I have things that are more important for me. I have a daughter that will gain an entire life by me being home and teaching her how to live so that she cares about others in a personal way. 


In addition, my wife was being treated for cancer at the height of the Occupy Movement. My greater responsibility was to support her and give her the help she needed to get through alive.


But even without the worries of my family, I couldn't be involved because I have something better to give than days and weeks at a time demanding change from people who don't care. I have a skill that I can teach that can change people's lives.


Each time I work with a new client on a design, I teach them how to make life better for themselves by giving them the choice to be involved in growing their own food. I give them a chance to see how they effect their neighbors by how they care for their lawn. And, how they can change that by taking out the lawn altogether.


I also work with several non-profit agencies giving low cost classes and seminars. I can't say I've truly helped more than a handful of people, but I know I am moving in the right direction. 


Now, I have begun to wonder, what if just a few of those protesters with specialized skills were to join me to teach others. I am sure there must have been a few folks with legal and financial skills that could have stepped out of the protest ranks, for a least a little while, to teach classes on how to improve local financial situations.


I can't give you details on these systems because I don't understand them well. I've read about them, but they seem to be ignored by the larger world of big government and big capitalism. 


Unfortunately, real solutions are rarely found by just protesting. They are found by people who take the next step and actively find new solutions which can be implemented from the bottom up. That is my job. Now that things are less active in the protest arena, I hope a few others will join me. Maybe with a lot of hard work and time we will make some real changes together.

A Late Season Bee Treat

Lacy buckwheat at a local water-wise garden

I am not a bee keeper, but I do like to keep garden helpers that come to my yard happy. Part of that task is to provide food for the bees all season.

While most gardeners keep plenty of good foraging flowers from spring to late summer, we have a tendency to start wrapping things up as the days get shorter.

Here is a list of some flowers for the late summer and fall:

Chives Allium schoenoprasum May-September Garlic chives Allium tuberosa August-September Aster Aster spp. September-frost Borage Borage officinalis June-frost Bluebeard-blue mist spirea Caryopteris clandonensis August-September Star thistle Centaurea ssp. July-September Sweet autumn clematis Clematis terifolia Late September Melons Cucumis melo June-frost Pumpkin-squash Cucurbita spp. June-frost Lacy buckwheat Eriogonum corymbosum Late Do not over water James buckwheat Eriogonum jamesii June-November Do not over water Pink smoke buckwheat Eriogonum racemosum August-September Do not over water Joe Pye weed Eupatorium esculentum August-September Sunflower Helianthus annuus June-September Alyssum Lobularia maritima June-September Mallow Malva alcea June-September Mountain beebalm Monardella odoratissima July-September Phaccella Phacella tanacetifolia June-September Goldenrod Solidago ssp. September-October Lacebark Elm Ulmus parvifolia August-September

I encourage you to add flowers that are native to your area!

Sustainable Work Ethic

Before

After

Despite being committed to sustainability and better home food production, the financial core of my business is mowing lawns. While it is disappointing because it is so far from my goals, I do find it satisfying to to take tough projects and make them look better.

Most of my mow jobs are on foreclosed houses. The lawns are often all dead and I have to hack through hip high weeds on a regular basis. 

The results are an ugly, unevenly short lawn after the first mowing, but after the third mowing I'm bringing it in to where it could compete with the neighbors for quality. If I had living turf with some water on it instead of weeds.

The quality of what I do was brought home as I visited a former job that the property management company reassigned to another contractor. The fences had tall weeds lining them, as did the house and shed. There were lines in the center of the yard where the mower skipped parts. Really, there was just an air of laziness around the place.

Honestly, I don't mind the height and weeds that much. What I do mind is taking a job and not giving it the best you can. I will never make a prize winning lawn out of these tough jobs. But I will always do my best to walk away with my head held up high.

This all has taught me some important lessons about sustainability:

1. It is sustainable to feed your family and provide a place for them to live.
2. Sustainability requires hard work, just like anything else.
3. It doesn't matter how hard you work if you don't understand the job and what you need to do to get it done.
4. It is not sustainable if you cannot make something you can be proud of at the end of the day.

Sounds like a great way to live, doesn't it!

Gardeners and Santa

A friend of mine told the truth about Santa to his kids a couple of days ago. This admission received a wide chorus of 'how could yous' with a few, quiet 'at-a-boys'. The 'how could you' crowd seemed to focus on how this friend was robbing his children of some 'vital experience' for growing up healthy.


My wife and I have never taught our child that Santa is a real guy flying around the world with reindeer and a red suit. She knows the stories, but she knows them in context of reality. And honestly, I think she knows them deeper than many of her friends.


Many of those friends spend horrific amounts of time putting together long lists of what they want Santa to bring them. The larger the family tradition of Santa is, the longer the lists seem and the more time the kids spend making them.


My daughter, on the other hand is much more likely to ask what work she can do to earn money to give a well thought out gift. Yes, she has a wish list. But it never makes it to paper unless she is asked. And while she has fun opening her presents, she is more excited to see the reaction to the ones she is giving.


Somehow I don't think she has missed that 'vital experience'. She has, however, gained several key traits for a gardener. Humility, a realization that one must give, and deep caring about others.


After all, where would our gardens be if we didn't put so much into them? If we didn't realize that we are subject to the greater power of the elements? And that our vegetable and fruit gardening always leads to helping someone else?


And aren't all these traits the same ones that make all civilizations work?


No, I am sure that teaching the truth about Santa will lead to much more magic in the lives of my friend's children.