Working in the DMZPeople often judge a garden’s success by the production of a garden, be it vegetables, flowers, herbs or shrubs. This is one standard of judging a garden, but another one is to be found in working the garden, especially in a home garden. Working a small home garden is not hard but needs consistent care and exposes one to the workings of nature. We work and nature works. When these two forces are aligned the garden grows. Some would say that working a home garden is not real work since it is more enjoyable than work we might do for a job. This is true in the sense many work hard to live and survive, not always enjoying the work they do. However, make no mistake about it, working the garden is real work, even though we enjoy it. I guess in home gardening if we did not we would not do it. There is no such option in working for a living. But work is work be it hard, easy, boring or enjoyable. When we talk, as politicians often do these days, about the ‘working class’ we often do not include, cooking meals, doing the laundry or home gardening. The ‘working class’ often sounds like a sad group making the best of work. But as Dorothy Day, of the Catholic Worker reminds us when talking about St. Therese, the Little Flower, it is not what you do but how you do it that counts. St. Therese went to the convent when she was very young and died there when she was a young adult. Yet she is the patron saint of missionaries. How she did her daily task made her great. Dorothy called it the ‘little way’ and encouraged Catholic Workers to give their all to whatever they do, washing dishes or taking a nonviolent action against violence. This is the essence of work, how we do it, which makes work great or not. In this light, even working the garden can be work.
All life is work and work is what we make it. After this philosophical posting, I need to take a few days off from posting and come back more grounded in postings with more earthy words. It is time to go fishing again. The Diary of Worm will resume next Wednesday. Have a good Labor Day every day.
I spent some time outside today, moving the sprinkler around and working on the gardens, and made a key observation. The front yard, rain garden and front lawn faces north but is in the sun most of the day. The backyard with the garden faces south but due to the garages on both sides and large tree in the yard, behind my yard, is in the shade most of the day. Yet my vegetable garden, with plants that need sun are in the back and my grassy lawn that burns with too much sun is in front. The front lawn and the back garden should be reversed. Actually I see little need for a lawn and have managed over the years to have none in back and less, with rain garden, in front. However, I still have a lawn with grass in front. Sun is important for plants like tomatoes and basil. They thrive in hot sun as long as they are watered.
So why not plant vegetables and herbs in the front? There are two big obstacles, tradition and my wife. Tradition is the biggest one, for although more and more persons grow shrubs and flowers in the front yard, few grow food plants. My friend Godsil, who calls his gardens front and back God’s Hill City Farm is one who has food plants in the front and back yard of his house. Now he is single but still has tradition to deal with. The neighbors called the city inspectors on him, but the only thing they could do about his front yard was to have him make it look nicer with more wood chips. There are no legal reasons not to Grow Renewable Affordable Food (G.R.A.F.) in the front yard. Now my wife is another issue. She likes the rain garden in the front yard but still wants grass on the rest. I need to quietly work with her. Now I have ‘till next spring to win her over and have a raised garden, at least in part, of the sunny front lawn. Since she is Italian, the promise of tomatoes, green peppers and basil growing in abundance, might win her over. Maybe next spring I will have a backyard garden in the front yard where the sun reigns.
Tonight in his acceptance speech as the Democratic candidate for president of the USA, Barack Obama was very specific in what he is promising to do. However, no matter what he said the other party will still paint him as wanting higher taxes for the middle class and as not fit as Commander In Chief. Words, no matter how eloquent, seem to mean little today in our present society. This was not true 45 years ago today when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I have a dream speech”. For those who had ears to hear there was a real message of hope and change. Perhaps this is true for Americans tonight with the words of Barack Obama. We will need to wait and see. However, I had to admit even a person hardened by politics to believe that no President will mean much change, there was some excitement and hope tonight.
But I did feel more hope today when I was working in the gardens, rain garden in front and vegetable and herb gardens in back. This hope in growing new life was not so much in words as it in the ground. I felt the salad green seeds I planted in enriched soil would grow and saw with hope all the many worms scrambling to go through the screen into the fresh compost. This is change I can see, feel and touch. My hope is that this is true with the promise of change I heard tonight.
Center of the GardenWhen I was planning my garden in our small backyard some years ago, a landscape friend suggested that I put a circle in the middle of the garden with pathways like an upside down peace symbol going from it. The pathways are no longer very clear but the circle remains. In the circle we put a statue of Mary, the Mother of God, and a birdbath. Over the years I have put perennial flowers in the circle. Recently we weeded the inside circle in the center of the garden. We, my wife and I, are not too good at figuring out what is a weed and what is a flower but after they grow we can tell. Pulling out the weeds allows the colors of the flowers to glow. Having a flower garden in the middle insures that the garden will always look good even when some of the vegetable and herb plants do not do so well.
Just like in the center of the garden we all need beauty in the center of our lives. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So if you can see beauty in all things you can live a more peaceful and joyful life. We all find it hard to find beauty in persons who are ill, poor, depressed, annoying to us, or our enemies. But all creation is beautiful if we can see deep enough. So keeping beauty in the center of our lives, like a flower garden in the center of the garden, will insure that at all times, in successes and failures, in suffering and joy, we will find beauty.
Daily Pole BeansIn every garden, in every year, there are successes and failures. I choose to look on failures as learning experiences and to celebrate successes. This year the pole beans growing on the tall fence of chicken wire along the garage are a major success. Every day there are new large pole beans to pick. Like grape leaves, the more you pick them the more they grow. We have grown pole beans before in the garden but they have never produced like they have this year. The idea for growing them on a fence came from some friends in Gays Mills, WI who have a good garden when they do not have floods. The chicken wire was something I saw in a home improvement store at a low closeout price. Originally I purchased it for fencing around Dawn’s of DMZ compost pile. It did not work there very well but pole beans seem to love it.
It is good to celebrate successes like I am doing tonight with this posting. Last night some of us sat around the dining room table at Casa Maria, the Catholic Worker House of Hospitality in Milwaukee, and decided to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Milwaukee 14, a nonviolent action in September 1968 to stop the draft and end the Vietnam war, and the 40 year history of the resistance to military training at Marquette University, a Catholic Jesuit University. Borrowing some ideas from the Dalai Lama and Thomas Merton we decided “not to fight for peace” but to celebrate in word, food, music and nonviolent action the peace in us and thus to spread it. Maybe peace is like pole beans, the more you grow and pick them the more they grow and spread. Our Father and Mother, Give us Our Daily Beans and Peace.
Cool Or Warm - Monday, August 25, 2008
Cool Sunset on Warm NightThe cool weather today reminded us that summer is coming to a close. I do not know if my late blooming tomatoes will make it in time but do know it is time to plant again. The late summer is a good time to plant salad greens again outside and soon inside. Since cool weather is okay for most garden salad greens I need to plant these seeds outside soon. At the same time I need to move compost in the GP Box in the sunroom soon and get worms and castings out of the worm condo with some going inside for winter planting in the sunroom. So if we have more hot heat and humidity the tomatoes will grow in time. But if it stays cool and comfortable the salad greens will grow. Either way, warm or cool, the salad bowl contributions will grow. GP Home Model Garden is making do with what you got. If you have a small space you can grow up. If the temperature is cool grow greens. If it is hot grow peppers and tomatoes. If you soil lacks nitrogen add more enriched compost. If the soil is too heavy or dense add some carbon like wood chips or coir. Change is the only consistent in the garden and learning by doing is the only way to learn. So if it is cool or warm you can grow.
Obama-Biden SaladThe big buzz yesterday, and somewhat today, was about Senator Obama choosing Senator Biden as his running mate for the elections. The Obama campaign got me on their email list a long time ago and I have been receiving daily emails from his campaign. I do not always read them, but feel good that I am kept informed. Senator Biden and I are the same age and our lives crossed back in the 70’s when he was a newly elected Senator from Delaware and I was a community organizer in Wilmington, DE. Since food evolves from growing, I decided to create a garden salad last night, freshly picked, in honor of these two men, whom I feel I know from the net or past experience. There was lots of freshly picked arugula in the salad since Obama’s like of this salad green was used against him to call him an ‘elitist’. Actually arugula is one of the easiest, most affordable salad greens that grow in my garden and in the GP Box in the sunroom in the winter. It might be kept from our dinner tables by big agri-businesses but that does not make it elitist. Senator Biden has been accused of talking too much and being rough and tough in his words. So for him there was some roughage from the garden and lawn, like violet greens. My wife, as she was picking at her salad, made comments on its “rough” nature. She likes to know exactly what she is eating and I had so many herbs and greens in the salad that it made it tough to tell. All the ingredients were from the garden and even some of the herb spices were home grown. Only the olive, lemon and balsamic vinegar and a few spices were not created here. Now for my encounter with Senator Biden.
Rolling Grape LeavesFinally Grape Leaf day came. It was just in time. Yesterday had been a bad high tech day with my wife’s laptop breaking down, and messing up of the stenciling on a number of T-Shirts amidst other things. Yesterday we were in a hurry and everything seemed to go wrong. So we needed the slow food day of stuffing Grape Leaves. My wife and I rolled about 215 of the 600 or so grape leaves we had picked from the vines on the fence in the backyard or in the park and on the bike path nearby. If you look at the recipe, you can see that mint is a key ingredient. The mint is Uncle Bob’s Mint, from the mint we grow in the garden, dry, crush and bottle. The salad to go with the grape leaves was completely from the garden. The pita bread and Laba (Middle East Yogurt) were from “my friend” Middle Eastern store in Milwaukee. Only the rice, meat, lemons and one of the spices were from the regular grocery store. Authentic Grape Leaves use hand-ground lamb meat originally, but now, with the price of lamb so high, we make them with ground chuck.
When I went to purchase the bread and yogurt “my friend” at the store asked me how many people we were inviting over. Usually we do invite friends and neighbors but today decided to have some ourselves tonight and to bring the rest to our son and his family up north next weekend. My grandchildren helped picked some of the Grape Leaves and are official members of the “Graf Grape Leaf” club. Last year we had the Graf family gathering of all Grafs at my brother’s house in Denver to share the Grape Leaves. I am not sure when we will all get together again next but we still have a good bounty of Grape Leaves in the freezer. As eldest in the family I feel it is important to keep the sharing of grape leaves tradition alive. I am not sure we can, but at least we were rolling Grape Leaves today.
Volunteer Sunflower PlantsWhen plants, vegetable or flowers, grow unexpectedly, in a garden they are often called “volunteers.” You did not plant them but often welcome them. Last year in the flower circle in the center of my backyard garden I had a large sunflower volunteer plant. It looked good and I let it grow. The birds sure did enjoy the sunflower seeds when it was dying. This year there are no volunteers in the middle of the garden, not counting weeds as volunteer plants, but there are three sunflower plants growing in the garden. One is right in the corner at the beginning of the garden as a welcome sign and two (pictured on the side) are in the row next to the pole beans. Sunflower plants are welcome volunteers in my garden. However, I do not like the word volunteer to describe these plants. It is misleading since the seeds are doing what they do naturally and are not making any extra effort.
Dalai LamaThe past two weeks watching the Olympics on TV has taken up much of my time. Although I enjoy Olympic competition, I think I am spending too much time watching it. Tonight, perhaps feeling guilty, I was using the remote to go back and forth from the Olympics to a documentary on the Dalai Lama that I had recorded last night. The documentary was called “10 Questions for the Dalai Lama” and gave a nice overview of Buddhism, the situation in Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s role as a world leader of peace. So while the Dalai Lama was talking about the need for detachment and for self-disciple, I was flipping back and forth to the Olympic games. Certainly self-discipline is something an Olympic athlete must have to get to the games. But the desire to win is so strong it must be hard to practice detachment. I was impressed how most American Olympic athletes, when they lost, made no excuses but, although deeply upset, accepted the loss graciously. The athletes who won did not have to face that difficult challenge. The contrast between the life and words of the Dalai Lama and the Olympics was made more fascinating since the Olympics are being held in China. The Chinese invaded Tibet in the ‘50’s and destroyed Tibetan culture, forcing the Dalai Lama to live in exile in India ever since. However, despite the suffering of his people, the Dalai Lama remains very forgiving and loving to the Chinese. If only the Chinese, who are making a great show in the Olympics as a world power, would be so forgiving, loving, open-minded. I also heard today on the news that although the Chinese government set up four or so official protest zones, all permits for protests or demonstrations have been turned down. In fact some of those who applied for permits to protest have been arrested and are in jail.
Dehydrating MintYesterday while at the Farmer’s Market in West Allis I noticed how inexpensive vegetables in season where. I got two baskets of zucchini, 8–10, for $2, less than a packet of the seed would cost me. Herbs were the only item that I could easily grow that I could not purchase for less than I could grow them. In fact the only herbs I saw were small plants of mint, basil etc. for $1.50 or more. Now I realize that most herbs are purchased in the grocery store as dried spices. However, they are not cheap. So today I picked another crop of mint, which is a perennial and grows so much that it needs to be contained from taking over the whole garden. I am drying it now in the dehydrator and then will crush it up and bottle it in my “Uncle Bob’s Mint” jars. I will use some for the rest of year and bottled some for Christmas gifts. In my Middle Eastern family, mint is a common and valuable ingredient in cooking. Also tonight my wife took some of the large supply of basil our small garden produces and makes pesto, an Italian pasta sauce ingredient. She is Italian and basil is an important herb for Italians. Besides basil and mint we grow parsley, a mystery herb, chives and a few other herbs. Herbs grow well, take up little space and are usable as fresh additions to salads or dried as spices. More and more my garden is moving toward greens for salad or eating or herbs. Things like green beans and tomatoes will continue but the more I think about what is most useful, affordable and easy to grow the more herbs and greens come out on top. If I could grow salad greens successfully in a small space as my friend Godsil does in his Godsil Hill City Farm and herbs as great as I did, my small home model garden will be a success. The rest can come from farmers who have the land to grow the rest. Herbs are the spice of the garden and when added to the green of the garden or food from the market make for healthy and delicious with a touch of spice.
Jim Harney
Dawn PowellToday, shopping and weeding the gardening, I crossed paths with two of my living heroes. One is Dawn Powell whom I saw today at the DMZ Garden, where she was working. Dawn first appeared in this web site with the story of Dawn’s Porch, the story of woman whose heroic works to serve persons with disabilities was misrepresented in the media, causing her and her work great harm. However, she did not let it get her down but came back stronger. Dawn runs three, soon to be four, houses for persons with disabilities, especially mental illnesses. She takes in many ill persons other agencies and landlords do not want to deal with. To keep her work going she has had to take some part time jobs just to meet expenses. Today at the garden that she and Marna of Mothers Against Gun Violence maintain, she was telling me of recent struggles she has had with residents at her houses and how she wishes someday to be able to take a vacation, something not possible now. Besides bringing her some brochures on her houses, called Foundation Dwellings, I gave her some coffee grounds for the DMZ compost piles, and got in return from the DMZ some wood chips for my own compost pile. She, like many of us, finds solace working the garden.
Lake Cottage FriendsLife emerged from the sea and is powered by the sun. In nature, as in growing, sun and water are essential to life and food. Without sun and water, plants in the garden would not grow. We are all dependent on these two great sources of life, sun and water. We all live above the water and under the sun. It is no wonder early humans worshiped the sun and the water. These two young girls standing on the pier at sunset, my granddaughter visiting us and another young girl visiting her grandparents in the cottage next door, became lake cottage friends. They did not know each other before last week and will probably never meet again. But for a moment of time they were friends brought together by the water and the sun.
Grandson and FishA day late, but the Diary of the Worm is back from fishing. I am not sure how the worms I took with me enjoyed the trip (most of them did not return) but we did. We caught some fish, some a little bigger than this one caught by my grandson and pictured at the side. However, the big ones that where in the lake either did not bite or got away. The person in the neighboring cottage kept telling us about the big ones he caught, bass and northern, but like we did with the little ones, he had released them back to the lake. My grandsons could not believe that he released large northern. He said he did it because northern were hard to clean and fillet and the bass too soft to eat. I believed him but gave him a hard time because all he had to show for all his fishing excursions with his children and father were pan fish. He and his family, like my son and his family, lived nearby and just came during the day to visit his parents and sisters and their children that were staying at the cottage. Besides fishing we played in the water, took some boat rides, had some good food and watched a lot of the Olympics on TV at night. All this made for an enjoyable but tiring week. It is good to go fishing but it is good to come home, even without fish.
Montezon Brothers Worm CondoI have been accused of giving “too much information” (TMI) many times. Perhaps this is another example. On this posting I have tried to put together a number of posting on the www.nonviolentworm.org on the subject of Worm Condos. Here it is:
Worm Condos are part of the How to in the Growing Renewable Affordable Food G.R.A.F. They are a major competent of the system.
Sifter for Worm Condo, posting of May 16, 2008
Worm Condo Revisited, May 15, 2008.
Worm Condo Value Is Rising, Oct. 20, 2007.
1968 A Year That Shaped A GenerationYesterday some friends from St. Louis came over for dinner and the night. By the time we enjoyed the garden, dinner, home brew and lots of conversation it was just too late for the posting on the Diary of the Worm. Tonight I had good intentions but my brother from Iowa called and it took us awhile to catch up with family happenings and Brett Favre news. Tomorrow will be my last posting for a week as I take some time out with my wife and grandchildren and friends to enjoy some fishing, swimming, cooking out and just being lazy. Because I did not post last night does not mean I have not been working. Working on the garden, working to eliminate the military on campus at Marquette, or serving the needs of persons through St. Vincent De Paul is work, whether I write about it or not. However, I do feel some obligation to anyone who reads these postings and myself to keep on posting. So tomorrow I will, to ease my conscience and because I have meaning to, put some of my postings together about Worm Condos. There has been some interest from persons in New Orleans about worm condos, and I am trying to help my friend Godsil to peddle worm condos for every community and home garden.
Dog See Dog - Tuesday, August 05, 2008
AnyaYesterday I took care of my granddaughter, and today my son’s family dog as my son and his family headed to the Wisconsin State Fair. They once again left the family dog, Anya, here. We discovered that Anya prefers being tied on a long line spiked into the front lawn to being inside the house or her kennel. So I let her stay outside in front while I was working on the rain garden in front of the house. I had some digging and planting to do while she watched. She is what is called an “alert dog” so besides silently pointing to any nearby birds or wildlife, she barked to alert me to someone approaching the house. She must have been a good observer of what I was doing for after a while she started, for no apparent reason, to dig in front of the house. Once I told her to stop, she did and did not repeat it. What dog sees dog does.
Like dogs we learn what to do from the example and action of others. My friend Godsil of the Milwaukee Renaissance received an email today form New Orleans asking for more information on Worm Condos. They had seen his stuff promoting worm condos. Godsil has joined our team of worm condo promoters as the “peddler.” We learn a lot about gardening, no matter what kind it is, from each other. The same goes for all kinds of things in life and it works both ways. What we see and observe can also teach and influence us in a negative way. For example, if someone is raised and trained with a sound appreciation of nature and its ways they will respect nature and not try to forcibly change it On the other hand we have the example of the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans in the 80’s making a channel through the swamp so large boats could reach the port of New Orleans. The elimination of swamps, this natural barrier against flooding, was one of the major causes of the disastrous flooding of New Orleans after Katrina. Now the government is reversing this decision, but it will take some time and effort for the salt water to leave the flooded areas and the cypress trees and other barriers to flooding to return. Mistakes are to be made but can we, like Anya, learn from them?
Choose Hope - Monday, August 04, 2008
Granddaughter’s First State Fair Cream PuffToday the rain took care of the garden and I took care of my granddaughter. I took her with me on a shopping trip with my friend Ella of Ella’s Patch Quilts and to the Wisconsin State Fair in West Allis. At the fair she had her first State Fair Cream Puff. It was a messy and delicious experience as you can see in the picture. Tonight when my wife was home to take our granddaughter and my son’s family dog I took time to put on the web the article 4000 U.S. Deaths, and a Handful of Images and the slide show Casualties in Iraq. So on one hand I have this image of hope and joy with my granddaughter and, on the other hand, the images of despair and sadness from Iraq. Between hope and despair is the garden that offers both death and life. I choose hope but cannot ignore despair. This is another reason why I need the garden.
One of the lessons learned from gardening is that more does not necessary mean more, and less is sometimes better. Too much rain in a garden will not allow the plants to take root and give enough oxygen in the soil for growth. Too much sun and heat will burn many plants unless they are watered. You can say similar things about lots of things in a garden. Balance, not more or less, seems to be the best. The same seems to be true in life today. I see parents presenting children with more things to do and more things and more opportunities. More can be good but unless it is balanced with less and the use of the imagination that comes with less, it can be harmful. I struggle not only in the garden between more and less but in my own life. There is so much to do but doing more could be doing less in quality.
As the name of this web domain, Nonviolent Worm, indicates, my focus is on developing a home garden model of Growing Renewable Affordable Food G.R.A.F and on studies in taking nonviolent actions for the common good in the political world of social justice and peace. But even in these two worlds of concern there is too much to study, do and reflect on. In the Growing world I try to focus on the word ‘affordable’ in growing healthy food, and in the world of nonviolent action I am trying to focus on closing the four military departments at Marquette University. If by ‘more’ I can mean go deeply into these two movements, growing affordable organic food in a garden and closing military schools at universities and colleges, I think I can do something, even if it is not visible. More in this way can be less and more. But just doing more in the conventional way can be less. Another lesson from the Garden: Dig deeper into what you are doing that is meaningful, and by doing less you can do more. More is not more and less is sometimes more.
Planted - Saturday, August 02, 2008
Dawn & Marna Planted in the DMZToday, the first Saturday of the month, was the monthly sale of plants at the commercial interior landscaping store near my old house. For less than $4 I got a nice shrub for outside, a flowering yellow ‘shrimp’ plant for the kitchen and an orchid to try to grow again. I also went up to DMZ to bring some coffee grounds and to get some wood chips and small collard plants for my garden. Marna and Dawn are doing quite well in the DMZ community garden. Also today my daughter-in-law sent me pictures of the three gardens on their land up north. She was getting them ready for a country garden show walk or drive. Naturally I worked a little in my own garden today, mostly planting the new collard plants and adding wood chips and stuff to compost pile to grow soil. I find it easier to keep my own life planted in the Now when I am around plants, inside and outside, most of the day. Part of the healing power of gardens comes from dealing with plants planted in the earth. It is easier to ground one’s own life and thoughts in the present when we are planted, like plants. In “A Book of Hours” made of quotes from Thomas Merton there is this quote that applies to living in the moment:
I am the appointed hour,
The “now” that cuts
Time like a blade.
(Breath Prayer “Song, If you Seek…,” Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, p. 340)
The more planted we are in the moment the more we can experience the eternal.
Tomato plants on garage roof?Some of the best tomato plants I have seen were on Godsil’s garage roof yesterday. Now tomatoes on a roof seems like an upside down idea but it works. I think tomatoes need lots of humid heat and water, of which we have one or the other in Wisconsin but seldom both together. In contrast, when I was in the St. Louis area, the capital of humid heat and rain, the tomatoes were doing great. Also my friend Tegan’s tomato plants were doing great in Bay View. But she mulches to keep the roots from drying out. Tomatoes are an excellent home garden plant. I will have plenty small ones soon but already have some ideas of how to make changes to grow bigger and better tomatoes next year. One idea, the driver on the ride from airport home gave me, is an upside down planting of tomatoes. Someone gave me three great web sites on growing tomatoes upside down, which I will share with anyone interested, or in postings in the future. Upside down tomatoes also make good use of vertical space, which is important in urban gardening.
