Photo by antifa123Check out how these enterprising Chicagoans responded to the “but I don’t have room for a garden” argument via antifa173’s informative rooftop gardening Flickr set. Not only do you get to see their beautifully designed self-watering container system, but they tell you how to do it with detailed instructions!
Mr. Homegrown Evolution had a dream earlier this week in which we sold our crumbling Silver Lake bungalow (to an entertainment industry schmuck? see ad above) and moved into an apartment. The owners of the apartment building had torn up the parking lot and had converted every spare bit of space into a mini-farm. There were impressive rows of cabbage and other greens all planted in plowed rows. The crops took up so much room that there was, in fact, very little space left to even walk. It seemed, at first, a pleasant dream of a utopian future of efficient urban land use with an emphasis on growing tasty and healthy food. But when I awoke I realized that this idyllic vision was actually a nightmare. Those rows of crops were there because they had to be there. The proverbial shit had come down and desperation had set in.
The dream capped a week of gloomy news both personal and national. My 83 year old mom broke her sternum in an automobile accident, making her yet another victim of a city designed for cars that forces everyone to drive, even for distances of less than a mile. After the accident, many hours were spent dealing with doctors, auto body shops, insurance companies and the vile Automobile Club whose lobbyists, by the way, are busy in the state capital pushing for the auto-centric planning that ruins our cities and victimizes our children and parents.
While I dealt with the phone calls and paperwork, record breaking hot temperatures challenged our vegetables and chickens. A symptom of global warming perhaps? Yet another reason to suggest that the car-centric planning might not be a good idea?
To continue ranting, this played out against the background of rice rationing at Costco and Wal-Mart stores due to poor harvests and food price inflation in Asia. How about the continuing unraveling of Wall Street’s depraved casino, not to mention food riots and energy shortages?
Solutions? I’ve got some ideas, but after seeing this reprehensible ad from Farmer’s Insurance it’s obvious that there’s a hell of a lot of work to do. It will be hard to counter the status quo without, as James Howard Kunstler puts it, “appearing ridiculous, like an old granny telling you to fetch your raincoat and rubbers because a force five hurricane is organizing itself offshore, beyond the horizon.”
And yet I don’t want to fall into the gloomy, apocalyptic trap of some of the other folks in the urban homesteading movement. After a enjoyable evening last night at a fundraiser for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, my dark mood lifted as I was reminded that good things are happening out there. Change comes slowly, one step at a time, requiring great patience. Like gardening, bread baking and home brewing there will be mistakes and setbacks. But there will also be a slow accumulation of knowledge, a gradual revolution. Someday, perhaps, that apartment mini-farm seen in my dream will become reality for all the right reasons.
“out of this nettle, danger, we grasp this flower, safety”
Stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) are a common weed with a bad reputation–the plant has tiny spines that inject, as Wikipedia puts it, a “cocktail of poisons.” Miraculously when you boil the plant the spines lose their punch and you’re left with a tasty green consumed plain or incorporated in a number of dishes, from soups to ravioli, to the German cheese pictured above (thanks to Berlin corespondent Steve Rowell for the photo). When dried, the leaves make a damn good tea, with a rich, indescribable flavor. If that ain’t enough, nettles pack a powerhouse of vitamins, minerals, and are perhaps the vegetable with the highest protein content (10%).
At the risk of contradicting yesterday’s anti-media screed (After all, Marshall McLuhan once said, “If you don’t like that idea I’ve got others.”), we’ll end with some links to an obscure sub-genre of youtube videos, nettle torture stunts. Mrs. Homegrown could drone on about the psycho-sexual implications of these clips, but that would be fodder for another blog. In the meantime, thanks again to Steve Rowell, here’s some nettling to fill your evening hours: here, here and here (just three of what may be hundreds).
We don’t come from the sackcloth and ashes wing of the urban homestead movement. There’s no forced austerity around the Homegrown Evolution compound, no sufferfests, no “more-meek-than-thou” contests. It’s about pleasure not denial, after all. But, to use the “d” word, one thing we denied ourselves for many years was television. And during this TV Turnoff week, we thought we’d share our struggles with the tube.
Ten years ago, when we moved into our humble dump, we discovered that the cable tv company could not get past our neighbor’s bougainvillea, which fully ensnared the utility pole. The result–free cable. Unfortunately, that’s like leaving bowls of blow around Keith Richard’s party pad. Free cable meant many hours of channel surfing and, when Mr. Homegrown commandeered the remote, poor Mrs. Homegrown would be subjected to hours down in the video gutter viewing L.A.’s notorious public access (such as this – view at your own risk!).
At some point we decided to give up the TV cold turkey. For a week it seemed like a close friend had died, but soon all those evenings quickly filled with activities. We learned fencing, print making, bread baking and countless other skills. We never regretted exiling the TV to the garage.
Recently the tube’s come back into our lives with a certain DVD mail service, but we feel like we’ve tamed the beast and can heartily recommend living without TV (definitely without cable and broadcast). It’s become a shock to see cable or broadcast television when we visit relatives. It seems stupid, crass and violent, with the quick cutting particularly annoying, befitting a culture with no patience for the pleasures of the slow life. A friend of ours, who teaches at a Waldorf school, tells us that she can easily tell which kids live by the school’s no TV rule. In short, the TVless kids own their own imagination, rather than the entertainment industry. They’re better behaved, faster learners and more patient.
But with the explosion of the internets and gaming, TV Turnoff week has become a quaint reminder of the past, almost like opposing Selectric typewriters. The excesses of television, and the resulting consumer culture, seem fairly benign compared to a medium like the internet which allows governments and corporations to easily track our very move and target advertising on a deeply personal level. We’ve found that many of the hours we used to spend in front of the TV are now spent in front of the computer. While we heartily endorse TV turnoff week, it’s well past time for internet turnoff week.
How about we all turn the damn computer off for awhile, bake bread, make some beer, ride our bikes, or just go get into trouble?
It’s amazing how insidious is the real religion of our age, brand allegiance. In the PC vs. Mac argument I often find myself, unconscious and zombie-like, coming to the defense of a company run by a turtle neck wearing multi-billionaire.
Sweater wear aside, Apple’s got a lot to answer for on the environmental front. In a provocative earth day post, bike-riding comrade and Apple store employee Mikey Wally calls out Apple for their green bullshit. Read it here.
