Weed Fest and Non-Violent Protests

I couldn't resist making this post sound like we're hippies. Well, we are hippies, it's true. Honestly, we're growing our own organic garden. And we have weed fests - you know, the kind where you pull stuff that you didn't plant out of the ground. The first weed fest was tonight, and we're going to have to have a lot more of them. A group of six of us weeded a grand total of three beds. Granted, some of us were planting tomato and sunflower seedlings. Ah yes, remember how I wanted sunflowers but we didn't get them (I forget why)? Well, our lovely garden-neighbour Donna gave us some for free! Yay! So we now have a row of sunflowers next to the corn in sprawl fest. You know how tall yellow things just go together? So that's exciting.

The learning in the garden continued as we decided what was or wasn't a weed. These are the general rules we've established for determining if a plant is supposed to be there: 1. There are a bunch of other plants that look kind of the same. 2. These similar-looking plants are in some semblance of a row. 3. It's not grass. The Golden Rule: If it looks like grass, it's grass. Sure a beet seedling, a few bean sprouts and maybe even a whole row of onions (!) may have been sacrificial victims for our learning experience, but now we know. (Onions and garlic are the exceptions to the rule about a plant being grass if it looks like grass.)

"Okay, so there's the weed, what about the non-violent protest?" you may be asking. Well. This is where this blog post gets dramatic. First a bit of geography: Our garden plots are located behind the Williamsburg Cemetary. The Cemetary has decided that it needs more land. Consequently, the plots are going to be destroyed after this year. (Okay, so I know that this story would be better with an evil corporation taking over the plots in order to build a factory to pump toxins into the air and groundwater so that all the wildlife dies and people start getting cancer. But bear with me.) So there's a petition going around the garden to ask the cemetary to reconsider their need to expand now (since they really still have a lot of empty land) and if it is necessary, ask the city to provide another site for community gardens. There's a city council meeting on June 29 where a bunch of gardeners are going to present their requests to the city. People love to see young people involved in politics, putting their opinions out there. So if some of us could show up at that meeting, it would just make the Kitchener city council members' days. And demonstrate our support for community gardening and the environment as well as getting to see how our community makes decisions.

Okay, so to try to balance out this very hippie post, here is proof that we may be more traditional than we sound.

Lukas with THE CLAW and Jess with the, well, let's face it, we might as well call a spade a spade.

- Mimi

Two garden visits in three days

I've become rather attached to our garden. It's to the point where I want to go visit it every day. Although this is not quite possible, it made me really happy to be able to spend Thursday and Saturday afternoon out there. (And I have a sunburn to prove it!) Thursday John and I went out to water, and then after watering we just laid on the grass and talked for an hour. That was lovely. Just hanging out at the garden is a lot of fun. As soon as we start getting some produce, I think we should have picnics out there in the evenings.

I went out by myself on Saturday, staked out the tomato plants in preparation for all the rain we're supposed to be getting, and did some weeding.

We need to do major weeding (I'll send around an email.)

There are some points where the little plants coming up are being choked out by the weeds, so much so that some rows aren't coming up at all. (This is the same bed apres wedding.)

I think we may have to reseed them. I also found some baby carrots, and the cutest little bean sprouts you've ever seen!

We have tons of stuff coming up, we just can't see it for all the weeds. A new friend I made on Saturday commented that it looked like we had abandoned our garden. That made me sad. I think we need to give it some love.

- Mimi