free digger
Monday, April 04, 2005
Our Gardens, Our Future
Haja Worley and Karen Washington from the New York City Community Garden Coalition. Click here for more photographs of the Our Gardens, Our Future meeting.
I went to the the Our Gardens, Our Futures meeting last Saturday, April 2. The meeting was organized by an ad hoc group called the Forum Planning Committee, which included folks from the New York City Community Garden Coalition, More Gardens!, the Green Guerillas, and at least one fellow Garden Kvetch (Hi Jon!). According to the flyer for the event, this was a citywide meeting for community gardeners to “help decide the next steps gardeners should take to meet our biggest challenges.”
Edie Stone, the director of GreenThumb, the city agency that administers the community garden program, said it most succinctly, “How do you translate a grassroots, anarchistic, rebellious movement into an institution--and still keep what’s vital about it?” She was referring to her own organization, but I think it is a challenge that we all face.
Friday, April 01, 2005
Feral Visions
Gathering wild mint. Photo from wildroots.org.
I went last night to ABC No Rio to see the Feral Visions slide show: “A Slideshow about rewilding, radical homesteading, and realizing our wildest dreams!”
I must say their fashion sense was amazing. Lots of natural fibers in muted earth tones--similar palette as their website. And one of the women had a fabulous neck scarf and fanny pack fashioned from the pelts of road-killed animals. I’ve noticed that when people unplug from the grid, frequently much of their liberated time goes into making and maintaining a look. Which, speaking as a drag afficianado from way back, I think is a good thing.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Lady B, Urban Reforester?
I thought this photo was pretty funny. Laura Bush, bringing her message of womens’ rights, education, and nice dressing to the women of Afghanistan. According to the New York Times article from which it came, Laura Bush Carries Pet Causes to Afghans (ahem), the First Main Squeeze was only in the country for six hours. Could she perhaps be taking some PR cues from Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan woman who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Price for mobilizing women from her country’s underclasses to plant over 30 million trees? Naaa. Laura is sincere. She reads books.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
March Pictures
Click here for some pictures I took in March, well, actually last Saturday, of the various places where I garden. Saturday was the first really good weekend gardening day. Things are just starting to wake up from winter.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Up and Running
Ok, first entry. I wanted this site up by last weekend, but halfway through pulling things together, I realized that I had named it wrong. I had originally called it markleger.net. While I do intend this site to be a highly personal account of gardening and observing gardens, particularly of the community and guerilla variety in New York city, I also want to foster an open-ended conversation. So I mothballed markleger.net and took out freedigger.com. Much less all-about-me.
So welcome, and I look forward to hearing your responses to my musings on random acts of gardening--and the politics that affect them.