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Diary of a Worm’s Life in a Home “Growing Power” Box and Garden

PLEASE NOTE: The articles archived here were originally posted to the online community resource MilwaukeeRenaissance.com; many internal textual and hyper-textual references to that site remain as written.

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Worm Condo

Herb Side 6/1

Garden 6/3/06

Garden 6/10/06



Garden 6/22/06

June 30, 2006 Three Way Basil Growing

As June comes to an end, I will end, for the time being, this series on some of the ingredients of the Growing Power Garden. I end where we began with the plants, vegetables that after they produce food for us are used as leftover waste for the compost pile where we started.

In a Growing Power Garden there are three ways to grow, each way is the same old, same old system, but in another form. The most effective way is the Growing Power mound. This method works on any type of ground covering, clay, rock or good ground does not matter. The bottom layer of the mound is rough compost, waste that has been broken down into compost. Then come the worms - they will eat the compost and produce enhanced soil. The top layer is castings. Seeds can broadcast in the mounds rather than planted so many inches apart, since the mound if done right will be full of life for all the seeds to become plants. Also this method lends itself well to farms, which can build mounds with tractors, and the mounds can be reused year after year with just a little refresher compost. On the side you can see basil seeds that were planted directly in the mound sprouting and growing in a mound.

Another method of growing is the traditional way of growing in rows in fertilized soil. In this case the fertilizer is castings and casting tea. Here is some basil started in the sunroom by seed that is planted in the garden this way.

A third way is planting in planters. The growing power method here uses part castings, part compost and part coyer, coconut shavings. The proportion used to be 1/3 of each but at the last tour I took at Growing Power Will was talking about a 50/50 mix of castings and coyer. The castings/compost are the enriched soil and the coyer retains water for the plants. Here is the same basil started inside as the traditional method but put in planters. This method seems to work best for basil, since we have already picked the basic once or twice and it is still flourishing. Different plants prefer different methods.

Why so much basil? As I said before my wife is a full-blooded Italian and says, “You can never have too much basil.” Besides drying it out for seasoning, my wife makes some excellent pesto with it.

This ends our mini series of Growing Power Home Garden basic ingredients for now. We will talk more about various plants and flowers in days to come and about life, but for now you get a glimpse of how waste cooks into compost which is feed for worms to produce castings which are used to make tea and provide a healthy organic live soil for seeds to grow. Seeds grow, produce affordable organic food, and the leftover waste is used to make compost and the process of nature starts over again.

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June 29, 2006 Casting Tea

Teas, especially herbal teas, are noted for all kind of medicinal uses. Casting tea is noted for its healthy live organs that make plants grow. It is simply made by soaking worm castings in water. Worms, as you may know, eat their weight each day and the compost that goes in one end goes out the other end as super-enhanced, rich compost soil, full of healthy living organisms. So when you put worm castings in large tea bag, like a painter’s strainer, and let it sit and mix in water for 24–48 hours, you have casting tea, better than Miracle Grow for flowers, grass and plants.


Tea Maker

Casting tea is best made from rainwater or tap water that has been sitting for 24 hours as to let the chemicals like chorine disappear. The picture you see on the left is of my tea-making system. The rain water from the garage gutter goes into the garbage can, mixes with casting tea bag you see hanging on the edge and produces the brown looking water that is full of healthy living organisms, at least for 24–48 hours unless you pump air, like in a fish tank into the water. In my rough system, I then take the watering can you see on the right, dip it in the garbage can and pour the brown water over my plants. If it does rain one day I just run the hose in the container and let it sit and mix till the next day. I have a few other containers underneath other run off gutters on the garage and house.

My neighbors nearby have a nice looking system to collect and drain away the rainwater from their house. They just drain the water away and not use it for compost tea. However, I need to ask them where they purchased the barrels with spigots. My original thought was to have a spigot on the bottom to turn on and let the water run downhill into my garden, an irrigating system for the casting tea. But for now this system is simple, cheap and serves me well.

This whole idea is environmentally sound since running your water off your house or garage into the sewer system is no longer allowed and running it into the ground by your basement is asking for trouble. In this system wastewater mixed with waste filtered through worms makes for living waters for plants and flowers.

My son Peter, the artist, has gotten into using the paint software on the computer to create art. He now has about 25 pictures but has only allowed me for the time being to use one called “A particular hope” for his web site on the Graf Family mini web site. He claims it is not a representative piece and he has modified it, but I like it since it fits with my Guatemalan diary theme, Buried in Guatemala?, which now has 7 ½ of the 10 days completed. You can check it out for yourself at Peter’s Gallery or on day 2 of the Guatemalan diary.

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June 28, 2006 Worm Condo

I am not sure how the worm box that is used to have worms make castings became called a “worm condo.” I think it was sometime when a group of volunteers built the sophisticated system of connecting worm boxes, which are in one of the greenhouses at Growing Power, that have a central storage tank for the drained tea.

Our worm condo is outside, a single unit, and was built by Loren this spring. It is more like Will Allen’s original ones. We took the compost from last year, and the worms from the Growing Power Box inside, and put them together. The box is on the side of the deck that gets the least sun. We have burlap on top of the compost, and we water it daily. Hopefully we’ll have lots of castings and worms by the time summer ends. These worms we do not feed, since we want them to eat the compost in the box and turn it into castings.
Castings are the rich by-product of worms that contain all kinds of living organisms that are health for plants and flowers.

Our box has deliberate openings on the bottom so the water can flow through and be caught in the drain-pan below. This dark water, strained through the compost and castings, is what is called “tea.” It is living, healthy, water for plants and flowers. Tomorrow I will show you some of the tea-makers we have around the garden to catch the rainwater mixed with bags of castings to make tea.

As a child I do not remember using the word “condo”. We had very nice apartment buildings but no condos to my memory. I guess the Americans’ drive to own your own home, combined with a lack of desire to do home maintenance got mixed together to create condos.

Also today I took my friend Ella, the patch quilt artist I told you about a few days ago, to a store in Port Washington, a nice area near Milwaukee. She runs her business out of her home on the North side of Milwaukee but is always looking for new opportunities to display her work. The money she makes from Patch quilts she uses for medicine for her husband and her herself, since insurance covers very little of the cost. When we got to this home craft store we were surprised to learn that it cost $35 a month to rent a small space in the store, plus a 6% commission on what is sold. Ella had been lead to believe it was $30 a year for space rental, plus commission. It was too much risk to rent the space, since the store was full of so many other crafts, most for a lower price. So we headed back home with all her beautiful quilts. On the way back we started talking about marketing strategy and target-marketing for the quilts. It seems like ages since I had a direct mail advertising business and taught “Principals of Advertising” at the local technical school. But maybe my life education will be helpful. Life experience education seems to be the best kind. Although I taught advertising and have hundreds of college credit hours in all kinds of subjects and two master degrees, I never took any courses in marketing or advertising. What I learned I learned by doing and life experience.

The same goes for Home Growing Power systems. My friend Godsil wrote me today to ask if I would be willing to help him spark an urban farming movement using some of Will Allen’s ideas at Growing Power. I told him to come for a visit. Like Will, I am learning from doing and experience.

I published my monthly newsletter today. I am still having technical problems, but it is looking better each month. You will find a link to the “Hope to Healing” site and the newsletter on the Graf Family Home mini-site’s SideBar, or you can go directly to this web site at: http://www.hopetohealing.com/media/newsletters/newsletters.htm

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June 27, 2006 Worm Depository

The key ingredients in the Growing Power home garden are worms. Once you grasp the power of worms, and appreciate these lowly creatures, you find yourself talking about them in all types of situations. Today at my yearly check-up, I found myself talking about worms with my doctor. Since worms are the key to Growing Power, it is only natural that we have a spot in the garden where they can live, breed and grow.

In my small garden I have a small “worm depository,” where worms are fed fresh compost and provided with an environment in which to multiply. Worms are unisex, multipling by linking together and by a worm laying a cocoon from which many tiny worms emerge. Worms do not like it too hot, so the compost we feed them is broken down, already cooked, or with just a tiny bit of fresh stuff, like a little coffee grounds, banana peels, leavesl, etc. We check the pile regularly to see how the worms are doing and we keep it watered. Our small worm depository is in a cool spot against the fence under a tree in the corner of the garden. The worms in the depository are not there to make castings, (although they do), but to multiply so that we have worms to share - for us that would be at my son’s family future Growing Power site on his land up North.

My worm depository may become larger in time as the worms multiply. Also it is a year-round home for worms. In the winter you just need to put some leaves on top of the depository, and with the snow it makes for a warm covering. Worms just go deeper into the warm compost to survive.

I am not a worm expert so I am not sure how well my worms in the depository are doing. But all seems well. Worms are fairly easy livestock to care for (and are the only livestock allowed in the city under zoning ordinances). As I did with a worm in the Growing Power Box last winter, I will need to interview one of the worms soon in the worm depository.

So we have gone from garbage first to the power source behind a Growing Power Garden, worms. Tomorrow we will check on the worm condo and see what is going on there.

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June 26, 2006 Garbage First

Today as promised, I start by getting into detail about parts of the Growing Power Home Garden system that I am developing by trial and error. For some of you, some of these details are known, and some of you may know more than I, but here it goes anyway:

The whole system starts with garbage or waste. Instead of sending it to the dump we take it from the dump, garbage cans, and nature, and cook it into a compost to feed worms and nourish plants. My home compost pile is about 3’ feet wide, 6’ long and 3’ feet high at the moment. It consists of

  • all kinds of nitrogen (fresh grass, coffee grounds, non-meat and non-dairy food waste, fruit waste like banana peels), and
  • carbon (leaves, wood chips, cardboard and paper), in about equal volume.

The majority of material is wood chips from the dump and coffee grounds from coffee shops.

I was using the layer method - one layer of nitrogen material followed by an equal volume layer of carbon material - but recently have been stirring it up to speed up the cooking process to compost. Yes the material cooks. The first time Loren started to stir up the compost it was not only smoking hot but also almost burning hot. We keep it watered but it is still hot, which is good. This pile is too hot for worms but is rapidly cooking up some good compost to feed worms and plants. There is more room in the back of my garage to expand the pile, which I will eventually do when it gets higher.

This whole description has, to me, a biblical tone. “From the wasteland, a savior will rise.” “From garbage you will find new life and energy.” “The first shall be last and the last first.” “The least of the materials, the waste, shall be the greatest.” (A very loose translation.)

With the assistance of my wikignome Tegan we are revising the Graf Family Web site a little. If you have any suggestions send them our way. We will still stay grounded in the Garden, with bits of political and spiritual ideas thrown in the mix. Tomorrow: Worms, the great Equalizers.

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June 25, 2006 Where is the Rain?

Where is the rain? Yesterday I was going to water the garden when Loren told me that according to Doppler radar a major rainstorm was coming our way. The rain never came when I was up, but I did notice a little rain this morning in the tea buckets at my rain gutter spout on the garage. Today Loren and I were going fishing in the afternoon when again he told me, and this time showed me, that Doppler radar was predicting rain. Well it is now again night and there has been no significant rain. Tomorrow, outside of the watering with the casting tea, I will need to do some major watering of the garden and front lawn. I find all the emphasis on news about the weather a waste of time and boring. I liked watching TV news in Hawaii when I visited my brother some years ago. Since the weather was just about the same every day, they only had weather reports when there was a major storm or other conditions predicted. With all our technology we can change the weather by accident, by things like “global warming”, but we cannot control it.

Tonight an old friend and his wife came to visit from Madison. My friend Dave is one of these unique persons who by creative, lateral, non-linear thinking can really understand and explain technology, and make things more effective, and explain them simply. For years his talent went unused and I used to count him as my one friend who was truely poor. But a manufacturing company in Madison discovered his talent to make everything more effective, and now has employed him to quality control their operation all over the world. He just returned from six months in California and was interested in seeing my Growing Power Garden. I give him the tour and he gave me some advice on how to make things more effective.

He and his wife came right at supper time and enjoyed a simple stir fry with rice made in the rice cooker that Dave gave me many years ago when he was simplifying his life. He also gave us our first wok and showed us how to use it. However, the wok I used tonight was the second generation one in our household.

Since we did not go fishing, thanks to Doppler radar, I was able to finish Day seven in my pictorial diary of my Guatemalan pilgrimage called Buried in Guatemala? Just 3 more days to go.

Being the end of the month it is time for my monthly newsletter. I have for this month some down-to-earth ways for Milwaukee to prevent the growing urban violence we are experiencing, plus some pictures and words about my trip to New Orleans. To subscribe to this free newsletter Living Stones, send me an email - or you can always check it out online at the Hope To Healing Site: http://www.hopetohealing.com/media/newsletters/newsletters.htm.

The other day I had an overview picture of my growing garden power that is now at the beginning of this page. Starting tomorrow I will offer you pictures of parts of the garden, like the worm condo and tea maker, and give you explanations of how they work. My goal on this site is not only to share with you some reflections of daily life, but also to encourage others to experiment on urban home Growing Power gardens. Some of you may be doing this and know more than I about this form of gardening using worm power. If you do, you can share your knowledge and wisdom with all of us on the Growing Power forum? on this site, which has gone unused.

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June 24, 2006 Patch Quilts and Vengeance

This morning I went to the home of my friend Ella Brooks, to pull out some weeds from her back yard. Her husband is fragile and on oxygen and cannot do much around the house any longer. Ella is a member of my Church in Milwaukee, Blessed Trinity and also, like my wife and me, a member of the St. Vincent De Paul Society. Ella’s mother taught her the African American art of making patch quilts. African slaves made them for bedding from old clothes, designing them in a random but artistic manner. Ella was not interested in making patch quilts until her mother died. Now she makes them as a source of income for herself. However, rather than using old clothes she uses new material as fabric. They still have no predefined pattern, but they are beautiful. Below find a copy of an ad that I originally made for Ella to sell her artwork. It seems my groups of friends are not the types for patch quilts. Maybe some of you are. You can call Ella directly, or write me . I have more pictures of her creations. [added Dec, 2006: now see Ella’s Patch Quilts? here on the Milwaukee Renaissance website]

Ella Brooks: History Through Art

Ella Brooks believes that quilting is an African American vernacular art form through which the artist is able to share herself and express life experiences and feelings.
Makes a Great Gift - Baby Showers - Mother’s Day - Birthdays - Holidays
For more information call Ella at 414–461–0588

I would have taken the weeds from her yard for my compost pile, but they were too old and had too many seeds. So I took them to the dump, and while there picked up some more wood chips. While there I saw two big dumpsters full of soil.

What a waste!

Tonight ended with my wife and me watching Steven Spielberg’s movie “Munich.” It is the story of how violence begets violence, and vengeance breeds more vengeance. Although the movie was full of violence it was really an anti-violent movie. I can see why Spielberg made the movie in complete secrecy, not talking to anyone about it until it was done and going to be released. This way he slowed down the backlash that would result from information about the movie ahead of time. However, lack of hype and the anti violent spirit of the movie made it an academy award nominee but not popular in the box office. I recommend it to everyone.

In between working for Ella, the creator of patch quilts, and watching the video “Munich” we got in some work in the garden. Mostly we planted in pots the Calla Lilies that Loren was given yesterday. His benefactor also gave us a description of these flowers from a web site.

So, once more the Growing Power garden stands in the way between artistic expression, patch quilts, and the violence of vengeance as portrayed in the movie “Munich.”

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June 23, 2006 Attitude of Gratitude

Today was an easy day to feel gratitude. The weather was perfect for working in the garden; we in Faith In Recovery found out that we received a grant from the Gesu endowment we were seeking; Sacred Heart, the nearby Church, had their fish fry tonight instead of the normal date next Friday, in order to celebrate their feast day; Loren brought home some flower-bulbs from the Dominican Republic that a lady he was painting for had given him; Pat and I saw a good movie tonight, Inside Man, at the local Budget theater; the compost pile grew bigger with free wood chips from the dump and free coffee grounds from the coffee shop; I even took a little nap (actually I was trying to take some quiet time to pray). Not a perfect day, but if you are looking for good things to happen today was a day for gratitude. I also noticed that Tegan, my web editor, made yesterday’s picture of the garden bigger. It does look all right, even though it has some work to go.

I noticed that yesterday when we were picking herbs we forgot to pick the sage. Sage has been my most reliable herb. It grows in the winter and in the summer; sort of like the Kale and types of onions that Harvey was telling me about the other day. So thank God for sage, although it is not yet one of the herbs I know how to use in cooking.

Also today Sister Ann Catherine told me about a man and his wife from a Faith In Recovery group at Christ United Methodist church that offered to help us build a porch at a group home for the very poor with a mental illness on July 8th. The husband is a skilled person and his wife can join the rest of us worker bees or should I say “worker worms”.

Talking about Psalm 22 last night, I forgot to mention that I noticed it in the Bible when I was looking for mention of worms. The psalmist starts off with an expression of despair, saying how he is like a worm and not a man. Well today he would have been a happy worm in my worm depository in the back, getting fed some leaves, wood chips and coffee grounds to top off the fruit, banana peels and watermelon rinds they got yesterday. I’d better check with Growing Power that I do not overfeed my worms. I feed the worms in the depository, but not in the condo, since I use the depository to grow more worms while in the condo I want the worms to eat all the compost and make castings.

So now I lay myself down to sleep with a deep sense of gratitude that reminds me of a lady I met in New Orleans last week, who had lost her home, her father and all her possessions in the hurricane yet was still able to pray with us, singing a song of gratitude. An attitude of gratitude can go a long way toward internal peace.

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June 22, 2006 Two or Three

Today we had three persons working in the Home Model Growing Power Garden, our two-year-old granddaughter, my wife, and I. As they say, when two or three are gathered in the same name, things happened. We were able to finish planting all the flowers and to harvest grape leaves, mint, savory, oregano and basil. The grape leaves were frozen for another day, the mint, savory and oregano are drying in the sunroom, and the basil was used to make pesto. Some of the pesto made by my wife was used for a delicious pesto pasta and chicken dinner tonight, also made by her.

As you can see from the picture the garden is populated with plants and flowers. The big compost pile is cooking; the worms are multiplying in their depository and working in their condo to make castings; the plants and flowers are growing with the help from the casting tea we made from rainwater. All is well except in the strawberry patch where the chipmunks reign and have deprived us of any strawberries. I am thinking of transplanting the strawberries into containers to put in the now empty Growing Power box in the sunroom. If there are strawberries to come, then in the sun and heat of the sunroom without the constant eating of chipmunks, they will come.

Also today I finished Day 6 of my Guatemalan pictorial diary Buried in Guatemala?. The 11 pictures still need a little formatting but it is there for all to read.

Last night at our Faith In Recovery meeting (http://faithinrecovery.com/index.htm) we had a good sharing session among those of us with a mental illness or who have a family member with one. The theme seem to be represented in Psalm 22 which starts with asking God why God has forsaken us and ends with praise of God. For a number of persons suffering from depression this psalm meant a lot. In fact one person coincidentally had been asked by a friend to pray it when she was suffering from a particularly bad day yesterday. The psalm reminds me of the old Eastern saying of how much suffering is self-imposed, and how a change in attitude can mean a change in health. “Before I was enlightened I was depressed, now that I am enlightened, I am still depressed.”

The kind of awareness and living in the present that one needs to enjoy life comes only from reflection and silence. This explains one of the great draws of gardening. There are always simple task that it frees up the mind to do. Planting, and having worms as livestock, can be healthy not only for the body but also for the mind and soul. When is the last time you every saw a hard-working worm in a hurry?

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June 21, 2006 Flowers and Bombs

My two-year-old granddaughter, Carolee, proved to be quite skilled in planting flowers. She would pull them out of the plastic cups with roots and gently place them in the holes I dug in the ground. Due to some rain in the morning we were not able to finish planting flowers. Tomorrow we will finish and pick some grape leaves, basil and mint that needs picking.

However, I think Carolee would be quite inept in the big news of the day, continual bombing and killing in Iraq, leading to more violence and killing. Two years are good for planting flowers but not for war.

I am reminded of the two CD set that local poet/musician Harvey Taylor gave me yesterday and of two songs from the sixties. Harvey’s CD is called “A Planet Where Flowers Bloom, and Bomb Fall”. The word/songs on this album contrast the wonders of nature with the horrors of war on all on the same planet earth. The songs of the sixties that come to mind are “Where have All the Flowers gone?” and “Blowing in the Wind”. You could call both of them folk songs protesting war. They both ask many questions but offer few answers except the refrain: “The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.”

For some reason my adult son who lives here asked me today what I thought this refrain from “Blowing in the Wind” by Bob Dylan means. I gave him my understanding by telling him the Gospel story in John where Nicodemus, a Pharisee, came to Jesus at night to seek some answers of who Jesus was and about his message. When Jesus told him how “God’s spirit can change you into a child of God” Nicodemus asked, “How can this be?” Jesus replied by telling him the “Spirit is like the wind that blows wherever it wants to. You can hear the wind, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going.” When Nicodemus pressed him further he responded that we need faith and trust in God’s love.

What I gather from all this is that in life we have two choices: to be like a child and plant flowers or to be a warrior and try to bring peace by violence. In my mind the first one, which also can be called the “Power of Growing Power” works while the second one, which can be called “the Powers to be of Force” ultimately, fails.

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June 20, 2006 Music Man

Today I had my first lunch/tour of my home model Growing Garden Power garden. My guest was poet/musician/longshoreman and fellow worm admirer Harvey Taylor. With the greens he brought from his garden and some of the grape leaves from our garden and some fresh fruit we had a good lunch. Harvey has an excellent song about Growing Power that you can find on his web site at: http://www.harveytaylor.net/spotlight.php. We traded gardening tips, food, and talked about mutual friends.
He also left me with a 2 CD albun of his poetry and music called: “A Planet Where Flowers Bloom, and Bomb Fall.” The title says it all.

I planted some of the flowers I purchased yesterday and will hopefully plant the rest tomorrow with my two-year-old granddaughter, Carolee. I thought I was going up North to drive my two grandsons around to chess practice, summer school, basketball camp and soccer games Wednesday and Thursday, but Carolee and I were spared this busy driving around schedule when a friend of my daughter-in-law, who had children in the same programs, offered to drive the boys around for two days. This gives Carolee and me an opportunity to play for two days here while her Mom takes a summer school course in Milwaukee. Also this gives my wife a chance to be with Carolee, something she deeply desires. In the beginning of July the boys will be free for a few days from all their activities to come here, help with Garden and explore Milwaukee. Kids these days seem free to play and be imaginative until about age 3 or 4, when education and organized play steps in. Now I know why one of my goals in life is to be three years old in spirit.

The pictures of the ‘beautiful garden’ will have to wait a day or two until the flowers get planted. If you want to see pictures of our mission trip to New Orleans, check out these photos in my New Orleans picture album. I hope someday soon, perhaps with the youth’s help, to make a pictorial diary of this trip. But first I need to finish the second half of my Guatemala Diary: Buried in Guatemala?

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June 19, 2006 Beauty Day

Returning yesterday from the disorder of New Orleans, the forgotten city, today I worked on my orderly Growing Power Garden, a garden not forgotten. There are a few problems spots in the system but with Loran’s help we got all in order. The large compost pile we are growing behind the garage is doing well. When Loran went to turn it over today it was smoking hot. That is good because this means things are really cooking in the pile. Just to be on the safe side, after turning over the pile, we watered it down thoroughly. We do not want to burn the garage down. I checked the worm depository and all was well. Loran and I cleaned out the rest of the worms from the Growing Power Box in the sun-room, and placed them in the Worm Condo for the summer. The good enriched soil from the box we used to fertilize the garden.

However, one thing was missing from the garden — beauty. The flowers I have planted just were not growing. So I went out to the garden center this afternoon (a dangerous place for me to be), and purchased a number of flowers for the garden and front yard. When I finish planting the flowers tomorrow or Wednesday I will display a picture on this site of the now beautiful organic home Growing Power garden.

Yesterday I mentioned the Government neglect of the city of New Orleans in asking the question of where the dump trucks are? Here are a few pictures of the beauty and present ugliness of New Orleans.


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June 18, 2006 Where are the Dump Trucks?

I have returned from the mission trip with youth to New Orleans. Tomorrow the diary will resume in full strength. Tonight I would like to mention that thanks to members of my community here in Milwaukee, the Growing Power home model garden looks well and the worms are healthy, alive and working hard.

I will make more available soon, including pictures from my journey to New Orleans. However, here is one story. Wednesday, the seven youth and I met this wonderful woman named Miss Lori. Her house in the ninth ward had been completely destroyed, and she was living in her father’s house, which she had inherited when her father drowned in the flood that came after hurricane Katrina. She was telling us about our job - to rake up the wood chips, dirt and shells that were in piles in her yard from the falling of a very large tree near her house. She told us to put the waste (which looked like very good compost) in plastic bags, and that she and her sons would haul it to the dump. She also asked us if we had seen any dump trucks in our time in New Orleans. We had not, although we had seen tons of trash piled on the streets. This was Wednesday afternoon and I started to look consciously for garbage or dump trucks from that time till today when we left. My companions and I saw none. Where are the dump trucks? After 9/11 I remembered that persons all over the country rallied to send fire engines to the New York to replace the ones that were lost in that tragedy. Why not dump trucks for this tragedy?

More stories and pictures about the mission trip to New Orleans to come on the Graf Family mini web site, and more tomorrow about the home model Growing Power garden.

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June 10, 2006 Urban Sustainability

Today, I put the Growing Power Garden in a sustainable, low maintenance mode for a week.

Tomorrow I will be going to New Orleans with a group of youth to do some work, and to immerse ourselves in the culture for a week. From what I can understand from the preparations for our journey, everything is in a very fluid state right now in New Orleans. In fact, we do not know where we are staying after tomorrow night. So we will go with the flow, with the other adult chaperone and myself trying to provide some structure for the eighth-grade graduates in this fluid situation.

Earlier in this diary and last night I mentioned about picking grape leaves to make a Middle Eastern dish our family calls “Grape Leaves.” Grape leaves are a very good example of sustainable, renewable food. They grow everywhere and the more you pick them the more there are. Today I picked a couple hundred that my wife cleaned and froze. When I return, the same vines will have hundreds more leaves ready to be picked. Picking grape leaves is easy early in the season. Later they are larger and more inclined to be tough and bug infested. We cook them for special occasions, and my wife is considering cooking them for Father’s Day, the day I return from New Orleans.

The other sustainable plants ready to be picked are some of the basil, mint, and savory. My wife said she would pick some of it next week. Loren is in charge of the livestock - the worms - who need little care but need to be fed and get water. Above is a picture of the garden today. When I return I hope to see more green.

Since I do not know of the accessibility to the Internet in New Orleans where everything seems to be in transition, this will be the last diary entry till Sunday June 18th.

Worms are all over the Bible and I will leave you with a suggestion for days when you might feel down. Read Psalm 22. It starts off with suffering: “But I am merely a worm, far less than human, and I am hated and rejected by people everywhere” and ends up with singing the praises of the Lord: “The Lord has saved us.” So Life goes like the Growing Power garden, from the castings of the lowly worm, seeds grow into abundant, sustainable food. Peace for the week to come.

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June 9, 2006 Planting and Picking

Today I almost finishing the planting in the garden by putting in mounds of cucumbers and zucchini and planting a row of onions. The rest, a few more herbs, vegetables and flowers, will need to wait till I return from New Orleans.

Tomorrow I will start harvesting. I will pick the grape leaves on the vines along the fence, some of the mint from last year and some of the basil that I started inside. My wife has agreed to clean and freeze the grape leaves. They are used in a Middle Eastern dish that goes by various names but in my family we just called Grape Leaves. The particular type of grape leaf is very common, from grape vines that do not produce grapes. You find them everywhere, parks, along trails and maybe, like I did when I moved here, in your backyard. I have found them from Appalachia to Guatemala. Here are some I found growing in the courtyard of a place I was staying in

Guatemala. Tomorrow I will give you a close up of an individual leaf from the backyard. I am also renewing my offer to send anyone who requests it the recipe for Grape Leaves that my wife wrote from what was passed on to her from my mother and one she found on the web.

The new pictures of the garden I was going to take today will need to wait till tomorrow. Today was a cool cloudy day, good to work in the garden but not good for picture taking.

However, I can share with you the picture of the compost pile that my three grandchildren and I are working on up North. Next time I go there I will bring some worms. However, as you can see, the compost pile needs to be a lot bigger. As I say, for every 2 feet it grows, it sinks one foot.

Reading about the glorification of killing of the al Qaida terrorist leader in Iraq, “delivering justice with two five hundred pound bombs” as President Bush called it, there was mention that a unknown child was killed in the bombing. All day I felt like writing a letter to this unknown child, asking for his understanding and his prayers that the violence on both sides cease. I will need to do that soon, maybe for my next newsletter, Living Stones. It was the American invasion and conquering of Iraq that led to al Qaida coming to Iraq and I hope, but do not expect, that this killing of a leader will lead to al Qaida leaving Iraq. However, as this war has demonstrated over and over again, violence only leads to more violence. A youth picked off by a bomb in Iraq.

Other sad news today was at a vigil for a 16 old youth that was killed on the North side of Milwaukee today. The youth’s father, brother and cousin came to vigil as we leaving, so we stayed to pray some more. The father has no idea of why his son was killed so senselessly. The 14-year-old brother said that when he tried to reach the dead body of his brother, the police wrestled him to the ground and beat him. Someone asked the father if he was going to file a complaint. He said they were thinking of it but were now too busy making funeral arrangements. A youth picked off by a bullet in Milwaukee.

However, it was also a good news day, planted with seeds of hope. I read in the newspaper today that the house for 92 persons with disabilities in our Westside neighborhood was given a city permit to exist for two more years. For years a few in the area have been trying to close down the place, first saying the persons with mental illness were dangerous to the neighborhood, and after that was declared discrimination, saying the neighborhood was too dangerous for these vulnerable persons. So the seeds of hope were planted, at least for 92 poor persons with disabilities.

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June 8, 2006 Withdraw to Engage

Back home it was not until 2:30 pm that I could get out in the garden and sunroom for some Growing Power work. The big delay was at the dentist’s office. I spend one hour waiting to get to see the dentist and than another ½ hour in the chair for a simple procedure to set up two more appointments. The nurse and dentist kept mentioning some code letters, like E 15 or something over and over again. I was not impressed, but did find the empty time useful to quiet my mind in day hours. When you are watching three young children, there is not much meditative time, and next week when I chaperone some recent 8th grade graduates on a mission trip, I know there will also not be enough time. In these situations you need to always be on alert.

This all leads to another advantage of vermiculture, fancy word for agriculture with worms. As you know from the Worm Alphabet a few days ago, worms are silent. Working with worms, plant, soil, air, water and soil is very conducive to quiet, meditative time. That is probably why St. Benedict, the founder of the modern monastic rule, had monks “work and pray”, two peaceful relaxing activities. Thomas Merton, my favorite monk, withdrew more and more from the world, as he was involved more and more in the world. A paradox, perhaps, but none-the-less true. Withdraw to engage.

Next week, from June 11th-18th I will not be able to keep up my daily diary. I will be a chaperone on a mission trip to New Orleans with eight grade graduates. I do not expect to find as much access to the Internet there as I did in Guatemala. In New Orleans I understand the recovery is going very slowly. In Guatemala I visited a small village devastated by the mudslides after Hurricane Stan a month after Katrina. The roads were restored and people were rebuilding homes and were proud of the fact that in this very poor country and very poor village they were recovery faster than in New Orleans. In New Orleans I do not know what to expect. One of the work experiences we will have down there is working in the Botanical Gardens. I think this is great for a worm-lover like myself.

Today I created two new growing mounds, one for cucumbers and one for zucchini, which I will plant tomorrow. I also got a lot more worms from the Growing Power Box inside into the Worm condo outside so they can spend the summer working. The mounds are built up on the soil with compost, castings and worms. Tomorrow I will put some nice topsoil on it and plants the seeds. These two mounds, along with the other two, basil and common mint, can be reused next year. Pictures will come tomorrow after I get some more planting in.

I found some of the pepper plants in Pepper Heaven had deceased when I got home. I think I moved them too fast from inside to outside. Fortunately Loren had some pepper plants, hot and green, that he was growing from seeds among other plants that were already outside. I just replaced them with these plants.

In the next 2 days I hope to get almost all the planting done, so that when I get back from New Orleans I can deal with seeds that might not have germinated, like maybe all the flowers in the middle circle, and start watching everything grow while I do my daily watering with casting tea.

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June 7, 2006 Child’s Play

My eight-year-old grandson was glad this morning that it was no longer 6/6/6. After a rainy gloomy day yesterday, today the weather was sunny, warm and bright. After sleeping late and having breakfast, the three children and I took a road trip to a nearby town to play on the playground, go fishing, have lunch and go swimming. The swimming place was a man-made pond/lake with a beach, in the town park, with fresh water springing up out of it. I did not realize till after I got home that my two-year-old granddaughter had never been to a beach, only in swimming pools. This explains why she put up a stink getting her swimming suit on, but once in the water had a great time just watching, splashing and sitting. In fact getting her out and changed was a major chore. Some lady in town who was playing with my two grandsons came to my aide. My younger grandson asked her why she was being so nice to us. Acts of kindness, I guess, are suspicious these days.

All this child’s play today gave me no time for work on Growing Power. However, now my daughter-in-law and gradsons know who to build the compost pile and next time I am here I will bring some worms.

This child-sitting, baby-sitting or whatever you may call it (We are trying to think of a better name) is great work, if you can get it, but very tiring. After filling myself up with caffeine, I will drive home tonight and use the time to reflect on the last few days. Being a grandparent is tougher than being a gardener. Both are rewarding and all about “Together we are Growing Power.”

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June 6, 2006 6/6/06

When I was catching up on TV ‘news’ today, my eight-year-old grandson heard a story about how today was 6/6/06. He was scared about the report, which mentioned this day as an unlucky one and about a ‘beast’. I explained to him what I knew (also from the news) about the number 666, and that this was just something people thought. I told him how my lucky number was 13, since I turned 13 on Friday the 13th, even though some people considered Friday the 13th unlucky. I was not too convincing since he continued to worry about it the rest of the day.

Around 3pm, when it finally stopped raining, we went out to work on the compost pile. My other grandson, six years old, mentioned something scary that he had seen on a cartoon today. My eight year old comforted him by telling it was just a TV show, not real like something on TV ‘news.’ I find myself saying under my breath something about how the news might not be any more true than the cartoon show.

Tonight before going to bed my eight-year still insisted he felt something bad in the air since it was 6/6/06. I tried to once again to assure him it was just a news story about something make-believe. His response was “I wish you didn’t tell me about it”. I agree. I often wish I didn’t know about a lot of things, about violence in the streets, war in Iraq and on and on. Once I ‘know’ something I feel compelled to do something about it.

We did not get much work done outside today because of the rain, but we did build up the compost pile, and dug up some worms for the fishing trip that we were to have taken today, and hopefully will take tomorrow.

It rained today in Milwaukee, too, so it saved people back home the trouble of watering the outside garden, compost piles, and worms’ living quarters. After I return tomorrow I need to simplify the system of watering since I will soon be gone for a week on a mission trip to New Orleans. There are three adults at home but they have their own lives to live. They are supportive of the Growing Power home model garden but not as enthusiastic as I am.

For the record I want to note that the worms we took for fishing were not worms from the compost pile here, or from my worm livestock back home in Milwaukee. In the “Diary of Worm” book that I mentioned yesterday, it said that the smart worms dig deeper tunnels in fishing season.

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June 5, 2006 Worm Alphabet

W is for Worms
O is for oxygen. Worms need oxygen
R is for rain. Rain is good for worms.
M is for manure. It makes good compost
S is for soils. Worm live in soils.

E is for Eat. Worms eat their weight each day.
A is for apples. Worms like apples
T is for temperature. Worms need the right temperature

C is for compost Worms eat compost.
O is for outside. Worms can live outside or inside.
M is for many. There are many kinds of worms.
P is for poop. Worm poop is castings.
O is for Olde. Godsil is now Olde.
S is for sugar. Worms like sugar.
T is for tea. Worms make casting for Growing Power tea

A is for ants. Worms and ants live in same ground.
N is for neck. Worms have no necks.
D is for dirt. Worms live in dirt.

M is for make.
A is for attack. Worms attack compost.
K is for kites. Worms do not fly kites.
E is for earthworms.

C is for castings
A is for around. Worms are around everywhere.
S is for skinny. Some worms are skinny.
T is for teeth. Worms have no teeth.
I is for icky. Some people think worms are icky.
N is for nowhere. There is almost nowhere without worms.
G is for Graf. The Graf Family has worms as livestock.
S is for silent. Worms are silent.

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June 5, 2006 Worm Alphabet

(By Carson, Dustin, Carolee and Papa Bob - Pictures to come.)

W is for Worms
O is for oxygen. Worms need oxygen
R is for rain. Rain is good for worms.
M is for manure. It makes good compost.
S is for soils. Worm live in soils.

E is for Eat. Worms eat their weight each day.
A is for apples. Worms like apples.
T is for temperature. Worms need the right temperature.

C is for compost Worms eat compost.
O is for outside. Worms can live outside or inside.
M is for many. There are many kinds of worms.
P is for poop. Worm poop is castings.
O is for Olde. Godsil is now Olde.
S is for sugar. Worms like sugar.
T is for tea. Worms make casting for Growing Power tea.

A is for ants. Worms and ants live in the same ground.
N is for neck. Worms have no necks.
D is for dirt. Worms live in dirt.

M is for make.
A is for attack. Worms attack compost.
K is for kites. Worms do not fly kites.
E is for earthworms.

C is for castings
A is for around. Worms are around everywhere.
S is for skinny. Some worms are skinny.
T is for teeth. Worms have no teeth.
I is for icky. Some people think worms are icky.
N is for nowhere. There is almost nowhere without worms.
G is for Graf. The Graf Family has worms as livestock.
S is for silent. Worms are silent.

Today besides working on the compost pile here we went to the local library and found a funny and insightful book on worms called “The Diary of a Worm” by Doreen Cronin and pictures by Harry Bliss. For example the March 20th diary entry is: “Mom says there are three things I should always remember: 1) The earth gives us everything we need. 2) When we dig tunnels, we help take care of the earth. 3) Never bother Daddy when he’s eating the newspaper.”

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June 4, 2006 Back to the Land

This evening finds me up North at my son’s home in the country. I left my not-quite-done Growing Power garden with instructions for my wife to do the watering of all the plants with worm casting tea, and Loren to water the worm condo, filling up the “tea makers” if it does not rain, and watering the worm condo. Hopefully when I return Wednesday night all the worms will be up through the screen in the Growing Power box in the Sun Room so I can use the rich soil in the box to finish planting the garden, and can place the worms in the condo to breed and make more castings.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out here that my daughter-in-law has staked out the garden area and that she and the boys have built up the compost pile. I am here to be with the three grandchildren the next few days while my son and daughter-in-law work during the day. With a little work on the compost pile we will be ready for worms when I next return.

I met this afternoon with the four Milwaukee youth that I am accompanying on a mission trip to New Orleans in a week. They are all graduating eight grade. With the new hurricane season beginning this week, New Orleans has a long way to go in rebuilding. We cannot do great things on the trip, but we can do small things with love and make some kind of difference. It is not clear yet if we will paint homes of the elderly, clean the botanical gardens, or sort books in the library, but there is plenty of work to do.

At our brief gathering today I told the youth how last night my wife and I were two of the three non-African-born persons at a graduation party for my African “nephew” Mathias. From the time it started, around 11pm (We were on Sierra Leone time), from the food served to the music played and how persons greeted each other, this event was so culturally different from the one that the Church where I used to work had for Mathias just a week ago. The event was the same, Mathias’s graduation, but the way of proceeding was completely different. I said that was how it was going to be in New Orleans. We will be doing the same old painting and cleaning that we can do here, but the weather (much hotter and humid), the music, the way of talking, the food and culture would be different.

The way we grow and learn from a new culture is by respecting it and honoring it while realizing that, like Growing Power, it is the same old, same old.

Being back here on the rural land with an urban family reminds me how, while we are bringing the city to the farm, we need to bring the farm to the city. The vision of Peter Maurin, co founder with Dorothy Day of Catholic Worker, of agricultural communities of scholars and workers together in sustainable communities, was a true vision of where we must go. However, the place where we need to start is not on the farm but in the city.

With some more work, my Growing Power home model garden in the city should be in place and bear fruit this year. Next year hopefully we can duplicate that effort, the same old, same old, here back on the land. Maybe we can even plant a few seeds in New Orleans.

Thank you for those who are checking out my Guatemalan Diary, “Buried In Guatemala”. I had hoped to have all 15 days of pictures and essays done by now but have just completed five. With the gardening, babysitting, and mission trip I do not think I will make my goal to finish it by June 11th. But keep checking; Guatemala is planted deep in my soul and the seeds will bear fruit someday soon.

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June 3, 2006 Integration

One of the great appeals of the Growing Power system is integration of the basic ingredients. For example, waste and garbage make compost, compost feeds worms, worms make castings, castings enrich the soil, the soil grows seeds, seeds grow vegetables, vegetables feed us, and waste from plant and vegetables becomes compost - and the circle of life goes on and on.

Living is so much easier when we can integrate our daily lives. It is so much more difficult, on the other hand, when people separate, categorize, label and divide. Today I worked on the garden, visited some people in need with my wife on St. Vincent De Paul calls, am going out soon with my Faith in Recovery group for dinner, and later tonight, on Sierra Leone time, going to a graduation party for my African “nephew” Mathias. There many other details of the day not mentioned but how do these four events integrate?

For me the integration is in my spirituality. Working with nature to grow affordable organic food at an urban house and writing about it is meaningful to me because of my spirituality. It drives me to take the good things of life given to us and to use them in such a way to create a sustainable, organic and healthy food system that takes small space, uses waste digested by worms as its internal growing power. Visiting persons on need at St. Vincent De Paul calls is easy to integrate. My spiritual nature tells me that I have no choice but to serve those in need. Socializing with others who are affected by mental illness is a spiritually uplifting experience. Small talk while sharing food is very healthy when you are with people who share the same concerns and values. My invitation to the graduation party of Mathias comes about from the fact that, when working in church as a youth minister, I met Mathias, a political exile from Sierra Leone who was struggling to go to school, work full time, support his family and establish a non profit foundation (www.friendsacross.org) to help his country, the poorest in the world. Before he knew I was his uncle I knew he was my nephew since we, my wife and I with friends, had sponsored two young women from Sierra Leone who automatically called me “uncle” as it is the custom in their country to call all elders “uncle” or “auntie”. When one of my “African nieces” was in Mathias’s MU classes he discovered that he could call me “Uncle Bob” instead of Mr. Graf since I knew what that meant. My friendship with Mathias and my two nieces from Sierra Leone have deeply enriched by spirituality.

This effort to integrate my daily life is skipping over one email that I received today as a response to an email I sent to 81 persons related to Marquette University about ROTC on campus, the war in Iraq and morality. In this person’s mind she can separate the war in Iraq as a political issue, and call things like abortion moral issues. She has different categories for everything and balances life by keeping the boxes in order. So she takes my expression of opinion, integrating the war, ROTC, my Catholic values as a “criticism” of her and others. It is not but I will not separate my life for her or anyone.


Garden 6/3/06

I do also categorize, separate and do not see the connections of all things in my life. I wish I did but my desire is to integrate all of life — a goal which I will not every reach in this life but one worth growing.

Back to the growing power garden. I finished ‘pepper heave’ today, spread worm casting ‘tea’ on all the plants, and got some more worms from the Growing Power box in the Sun Room into the summer worm condo in the yard. I wish my daily life were as easy to integrate as Growing Power.

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June 2, 2006 Red Hot

This afternoon, with all worm systems “go”, I got some more planting in. I planted some red radishes and staked out and tilled the ground for Pepper Heaven, an area where I will grow some hot cayenne peppers and regular green bell peppers. Hopefully by tomorrow a bunch of worms will have made it up through the screen on the growing power box in the sunroom to the delicious eating fields of compost on top, so that I can get some more castings soil out of the box for the garden. Naturally, the worms will go into their new home for the summer, the “worm condo”, so they can be busy working on more castings for the box next winter.

Cayenne peppers are small, red and very hot. The ones this year, like many of my other plants, are grown from seed. However, I still have some dried ones left from last year’s crop. If the patch this year is successful I can dry them out, crush them and put them in spice jars. Everyone here likes spicy hot food. Loren even brings his own brand of hot sauce to every meal. We use peppers in a lot of what we cook, and our friend from Sierra Leone who cooks for her family makes everything spicy hot. The package of seeds says that this herb is good for arthritis, muscle pain and all kinds of good things. All I know is that it adds taste to lots of what we cook. With all the tomato, hot peppers, green peppers and cilantro going in this year we should have the makings of some great homemade salsa and Italian tomato sauce.

Today at a prayer vigil for one of the persons killed over Memorial Day weekend, I saw my friend who lost her only son a few years ago when he was shot, unarmed, by a now disgraced police officer. When the county DA for the shooting did not hold him accountable, she pursued the case as a civil rights case in the federal courts. She lost despite the fact that all three of the other persons in the car said he was only a passenger and posed no threat to the police officer. I was afraid that she would be discouraged and down after spending so much time, money, and effort in her pursuit of justice for her son and having lost. However, I was wrong. She was enthusiastic as ever and saying how she wants to talk to me about some other cases she is now tracking in the courts. She read my letter to the editor that was published in the local newspaper about her case and now wants to pursue some other efforts with me. I was glad to see her enthusiasm for life back. She is again red hot for justice.

Violence in Milwaukee, after 28 shootings last week, is the hot topic. Actually I have been thinking for many years about violence in the city and its causes. People may not want to hear or act on my concert suggestions but I need to say them again, in season and out of season.

You can get a hint of what I need to say if you connect the dots between war in Iraq, senseless violence on the streets, terrorism, many movies and TV, lack of effective handgun control and so much more. The one common denominator of these actions is Violence. What is the opposite of violence? Nonviolence, love, loving your enemies, accepting insults or whatever you may call this creative force in all of us that can absorb and cleanse violence. More to come on this subject from my ‘worm’ perspective.

Anyone remember the group “Red Hot Chili Peppers”. Where did they go? [They have a new album that’s “hot” on the charts right now! — Tegan]

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June 1, 2006 Worm Full Garden

Starting today, June 1, 2006 the garden will take over the pictures on this site. Above is a picture of the new worm condo the growing power box worms will soon be moved to, in order to work in comfort making castings out of compost. Also above there is a picture of one side, the herb side, of the garden. The mound in the foreground is the basil mound, which already, after just a few days, is sprouting. Behind that is the peppermint from last year, and behind that is garlic and some newly planted spearmint seeds. You can see some grape leaves on vines above along the fence and new tomato plants in the middle. I planted some pole bean seeds along the fence and garage today and of course, watered everything with homemade castings tea. But there is much more to go.


Worm Depository

Compost Pile

These are pictures of the worm depository in the back of the yard, were I breed worms, and a picture of the new and growing compost pile that is now quite large, about 3–4 feet in height and 6 feet long and 3 feet wide. I just keep feeding in coffee grinds, wood chips and other forms of waste. All the prep work on the new system should soon pay off now as I do the planting. However, I have a lot more to plant before June 11th and many worms to move out of the growing power box to their new home.

Also today I finally finished Day 5 of my Guatemalan pictorial Diary “Buried in Guatemala”? Just 10 more days of words and pictures to go before New Orleans on the 11th. I spoke to the other adult chaperone in Omaha for the youth mission trip we are taking to New Orleans. All should be well.

I keep inviting friends over to a lunch on the deck with food from the garden as we watch the garden grow. The secret to Growing Power is worm power. That is the paradox of this method, that such a slow creature as the worm is the source of such fast and healthy growth in the garden. Keep on working, worms. Your work makes the garden wormderful.


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PR MINISTRY bobsyouruncle@sbcglobal.net 414 379 4162, Publisher of Living Stones email newsletter and facilitator for Retreat in Daily Life.

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