Skip to main content

Community Gardening Bust

While I was staying with my wonderfully supportive boyfriend who was letting me borrow his car to get back and forth to work (I now have my own set of wheels again...yay!) he and I went for a walk around his neighborhood.  

We came across what had once surely been a magnificent community garden complete with a children's garden, raspberry bushes, and herbs. But it was no longer the beauty it once had been.  


You could hardly see the vegetables for the weeds and the grass and you could tell that no one had been taking care of it recently.  


So this brings me to a frustrating question: should we really create community gardens?  I know you're all screaming "yes! Yes! of course we should!" but this is not the first garden I have seen get neglected by its creators.  Another baby community garden in Wilmington was overlooked almost completely this season, some of the beds were not even planted!

Of course we all know the pros of community garden: teaching people to grow their own food, teaching children where food comes from, teaching children through gardening (science, math, etc), eating healthier, etc.  But you cannot simply plant a garden and expect those things to happen.   You must continue the work throughout the season.  You must meet with the families and teach them first how to plant, then how to water, how to weed, how to harvest, and what to do with what they've harvested.  

I rescued a ripe zucchini and squash from the garden after sadly seeing several rotting away into nothing.  Rotten tomatoes litter the ground; other plants, weed choked, produced nothing.  

I just wish people who come up with these great ideas and start organizations and projects and initiatives would follow through.  Its a great gesture to plant a garden but is the gesture not unlike a fake smile if you allow it to rot and become choked with weeds?

Is there a solution to this?


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shoes

Shoes Shania Twain Tell me about it... Ooh! Men. Have you ever tried to figure them out? Huh, me too, but I ain't got no clue How 'bout you? Men are like shoes Made to confuse Yeah, there's so many of 'em I don't know which ones to choose (yeah, yeah, yeah) Ah, sing it to me If you agree There's the kind made for runnin' The sneakers and the low down heels The kind that will keep you on your toes And every girl knows how that feels (yeah, yeah, yeah) Ouch, ah, sing it with me Chorus: You've got your kickers and your ropers Your everyday loafers, some that you can never find You've got your slippers and your zippers Your grabbers and your grippers Man, don't ya hate that kind? Some you wear in, some you wear out Some you wanna leave behind Sometimes you hate 'em And sometimes you love 'em I guess it all depends on which way you rub 'em But a girl can never have too many of 'em It's amazing what a little polish will do... Men ar...
4 comments
Read more

DIY Wood Stencil Sign

I purchased these cute blank signs from Target--here's what the original item looked like.  The original item Then I created a stencil using 631-this is removable vinyl.  I chose removable vinyl mostly because I had ordered a large number of a color I didn't intend to use again and had extra, also it works great for things like ceramics where you're worried 651 permanent vinyl won't remove easily.  The key for me was USE TRANSFER TAPE.  In the past a majority of my bleeding has been from the centers of the letters because I was individually placing them by hand and they weren't sealing properly.  Transfer tape not only removes me individually placing letter centers, but it also gives you a better seal.  Just take an old credit card and burnish your transfer tape FOREVER.   I had to use two layers of transfer tape cause my roll isn't wide enough.  I mean, burnish until you think there can't possibly be any bubbles under that piece of viny...
2 comments
Read more

DIY Mug Stencil

I wanted to do a follow-up of my previous post to show you how easy it is to use the same process on a mug. I had these great plain mugs I got for 99 cents at a local discount store and I decided they needed to say something cheeky. Boring Originals  So I went ahead and created a stencil using 631.  This is an example where removable vinyl or stencil material is a MUST...if you use 651 you're going to cry because the vinyl is not going to want to come off everywhere and you're just going to end up frustrated...so make sure you understand your materials before creating the stencil.   Now let's talk paint, you can use oil based sharpies on your stencil, but I already had this glass and ceramic paint available (and my sharpies are all mysteriously missing).  Keep in mind you CANNOT use just any paint as it will not stick to your mug.  This paint is made exclusively for glass and ceramics.  Then, once you're done painting you must FOLLOW THE DIR...
Post a Comment
Read more