A Volley Happening Between Mother and Daughter in the Place We Call Home

After years now of garden expansion, my backyard lawn slipping away with each new bed and border planted, lacrosse sticks have suddenly entered my home, a brand new (to us), out-of-left-field pursuit in which my older daughter is now participating. And so it was that I found myself out there among the rosemary and broccoli rabe, the lemon balm and lacinato kale, tossing a small, heavy, neon pink ball from my netted stick head to hers as far away as she could stand without falling into the compost pile.

The stillness of the late afternoon and the golden hue of the sky, the light starting to dim, was punctuated by the gentle thwump of the ball passing, a swishing cradle action holding it in place, a volley happening between mother and daughter at an age when we can't always talk, although we try. With each ball drop, I scooped up more of the fragrance of what we are all about, of the land which we have nurtured, of the very essence of our souls, in the place we call home. Oregano. French tarragon. Lemon thyme. Chives. Every smell a shared memory.

As the light faded too much for my aging eyes, and the sticks and ball got put away, although there is not yet any official "away" for these new houseguests in our lives, my daughter and I smiled and said that was fun and let's do it again another day. And as she went back to her life, her friends, her thoughts, and I went back to mine, I noticed that my hands smelled of cilantro.

A Volley Happening Between Mother and Daughter in the Place We Call Home

2020 Vision (or What Happened When I Read About Ray Anderson's Big, Hairy Audacious Goals)

So I'm walking around with a book tucked under my arm. Staying up late reading it. And eschewing wheelbarrow-pushing for reading on a bench at the community garden.

"What are you reading that's so riveting?" someone asked me, prying my nose out of the book. No, it isn't some pot boiler mystery, and if this stranger knew me at all, he'd know that. I haven't picked up fiction in something like four years.

It's Confessions of a Radical Industrialist, by Ray Anderson, founder and CEO of the Atlanta-based company Interface, which is arguably the most sustainable corporation on the planet. Just as Anderson says he felt like he had gotten a spear in the chest after he finished reading Paul Hawken's book The Ecology of Commerce, and then went on to change his business, his life and the world, I feel like I, too, am being pointed in a more clear direction.

Big, hairy, audacious goals. That's what Anderson calls them. Big, hairy, audacious goals. That's how he eventually came up with seven goals of what he calls Mount Sustainability. But more on that another time. This post isn't about Interface. It's about how reading just the first 100 pages of this book snapped my 2020 Vision for The Little City That Could into focus. As chairperson of the Sustainability Commission for the newest city in the United States (which celebrates its one-year anniversary on December 1!), I propose this work-in-progress:

The 2020 Vision for the City of Dunwoody, GA (and, perhaps, you can adapt this for your city, too)

By the Year 2020:

* The City of Dunwoody will be carbon neutral, and will have the largest Zero Waste Zone in the United States.

* The City of Dunwoody will have a LEED Platinum (or comparable)-certified City Hall, and the highest number of LEED (or comparable)-certified buildings in the Southeastern United States.

* Every major artery in the City of Dunwoody will be a Complete Street.

* Every neighborhood in the City of Dunwoody will have a WalkScore of at least 75.

* The City of Dunwoody will have food-producing, usable green space within a half mile of every residence and business.

* The City of Dunwoody will have the largest number of locally-owned-and-operated businesses in the Southeastern United States.

* Every neighborhood lake in the City of Dunwoody will be a toxin-free, food-producing wildlife habitat.

* Every school in the City of Dunwoody, from preschool to college, will have a school garden, a Safe Routes to School program, and a No Idling program.

* No citizen in the City of Dunwoody will be food-insecure.

* The City of Dunwoody will be a designated Tree City USA, Bicycle-Friendly Community, and Atlanta Regional Commission Gold-Level Green Community.

Okay, fine. But how do we get there? Well, Anderson quotes the Scottish mountaineer William Hutchinson Murray (who borrowed from Goethe, including the quote that has hung in my office for the last 14 years):

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

And so, I do not have a spear in my heart. I have a trowel in my hand. And I point it forward. To 2020.

2020 Vision (or What Happened When I Read About Ray Anderson's Big, Hairy Audacious Goals)

Maybe We Could Do This (or How the World Changed When We Learned How to Inoculate a Shiitake Log)

So I was at an all-day mushroom growing class at Gaia Gardens, an Atlanta urban farm, yesterday, when I had the feeling I have at most of these classes at one point or another.

Not for me.

When I attended a beekeeping class at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, it happened right around the time when the instructor talked about what it felt like to get bee stings on your eyelids. Yesterday, at the mushroom growing class, I started glossing over when Daniel Parson mentioned the word "chainsaw." Much detail followed, regarding the recommended diameter of the white oak and sweet gum trees for the optimal inoculated shiitake logs. Phrases such as "spores are liberated," "spawn run" and "colonization of the substrate" started to fly over my head, and the whole idea of running out to Home Depot to get a 2500 rpm drill that would work well with a specialized high speed shitake drill bit had become nothing more than theory at this point.

I turned to Rebecca, the chair of the Dunwoody Community Garden (and yes, we have a space behind the cistern in mind for the "mushroom operation"), and whispered, "The oyster mushrooms will be easier, I think."

And then, of course, they weren't. I had been hoping I could repurpose the waste stream from local coffee shops to use coffee grounds for the oyster mushrooms in my garage or that little shed in my yard, the way these Berkeley grad students do on a much bigger scale.

But the oyster mushroom part of the lecture involved phrases such as this big red-light one, "make sure you keep them away from wood because they will eat your house." Gosh, is it really necessary to tell you any of the others?

So we had pretty much ruled the mushroom growing thing out, until we went out past the community garden, the stand of blueberry bushes, the bees, the bags of leaves being saved for compost, and the rows of cover crops and lettuces at the urban farm part of the land to where we were going to inoculate shiitake logs and oyster mushroom substrate (a bale of wheat straw was practically boiling in a huge wire strainer in a garbage can, if you can picture this) to bring home.

Daniel said that the process for inoculating the shiitake logs--drilling the holes, inserting the spawn, and applying hot wax to seal--was best done as an assembly line but that he found at these classes that everyone likes to do their very own log, so he had set it up that way.

This is when things took an interesting turn.

Our motley group of 10 (the other ten were currently tossing hot hay to cool it and then crumbling oyster spawn to add to it) somehow, without words, proceeded to completely reject this notion. Not one person grabbed a log to claim it. No one hugged a drilled log close to his or her heart, following it through to solitary completion of the process. People drilled when (and if) they wanted to. People took turns stabbing the spawn tool in a coffee can of spawn (which looks like crumbly compost, sort of) and then inserting it in the holes (this is shockingly fun, by the way), and dipping the round puff in the melted wax and rubbing it over the holes in completion.






The logs stacked up, no one seemed to care if they got the fat one or the long one or the one they had drilled.

I stood back, looked, and listened for a minute. At all the heads leaned in together. At the conversations among strangers. The laughter. The smiles. The sharing of tools and tender patience. And I looked at Rebecca, who couldn't believe she had changed so much in the last few months that she was actually attending a mushroom growing class, as she donned goggles and grabbed that drill.



And we both knew.

This is something good.

And we both went from "no way" to "how can we do it?" And the world changed, right then, right there.

Maybe we could work with the City Arborist or the arborist who provides our free wood chips to get the logs.

Maybe Tom and Rick and Bob, who love to build, could help with the equipment and the drilling.

Maybe we could get a crock pot at Good Will for the wax, or maybe someone has a hot plate and an old pot they wouldn't mind us using.

Electricity? Maybe we could figure that out . . .

Maybe, maybe, maybe . . .

I asked Daniel how much it would cost. 50 logs. Yes, that's a good, solid number that we could do. How much would it cost to do 50 logs? He estimated that, even with the one-time purchase of two of those spawn inoculators and the high speed shiitake drill bit, plus the cost of the spawn and wax, it would cost about a buck or two per log. And, guess what, each 40" log is estimated to produce approximately 5 pounds of shitakes, which have a retail value of up to about 20 bucks a pound.

Hmmm.

Maybe we could do this.

Maybe We Could Do This (or How the World Changed When We Learned How to Inoculate a Shiitake Log)

A Ton of Food, Green Globe, Zero Waste, and Terry Cunningham at the Finish Line of the New York City Marathon

So I'm outside raking leaves yesterday, or as us gardeners like to call them, "carbon," and I notice the side of my house and realize I haven't given you the final update. The lawn. Back in August, when I saw my neighbor getting trees cut down and arranged for the chipped wood to be left at my house, I ended up with a mega-pile that I then proceeded to spread everywhere, including making a web of paths on the side of my house, effectively reducing the lawn there by about 40%.

A Ton of Food

You see, I have two goals:

* One, to reduce my lawn and frankly, to get out of that manual push-reel lawn mowing chore--I hated it this year. (There, I said it.)

* And, two, to grow literally a ton of food (I think I'm just excited that I'm finally able to remember that this means two thousand pounds.)

I grew a grand total of just over 100 pounds of food this entire year. For a value of, let's say, $5 per pound (organic greens run more per pound, but that's the going rate for organic heirloom tomatoes here, so I'm going with it and am probably underestimating), that means I grew $500 worth of organic, hyper-local food this year. I spent probably, I don't know, let's say $150, although that seems high to me (but I do seem to always be tinkering at that Farmer D store) (oh, and if you go to that link, I wrote the School Gardens Guide! My friend, Mike, with whom I took that farm course back in the spring, designed it).

Anyway, so I've added a handful of beds to the side of the house (they are pictured above with a winter cover crop on them), and I removed an overgrown, bird-planted privet bush thing that was using up too much space, causing allergic reactions and blocking the sun, so I have even more grow space there.

I also removed a dozen or so overgrown, mite-infested juniper bushes from the back by the hammock and have started putting in a small fruit orchard there. It's also where I will probably put the inoculated shitake log I get next week at the small-scale production mushroom growing class I'm taking at Gaia Gardens, a 5-acre urban farm where I cornered farmer Daniel Parson one day in the broccoli. (I know that 5 Seasons Brewing Company brings their spent grain there, too, so I'm curious to see how they handle it to see if there's anything we can do differently at our community garden with it.)

I'm also eyeing another batch of juniper bushes with the same thought in mind, and the other side of my house is just about next in line. Oh, I also expanded the mailbox garden and ran a border of wood chips up the driveway. I have visions of lavender and other herbs, interspersed with heirloom annual crops, for a sort of English garden effect (but adjusted for our climate, of course). All good, and pretty already, faster than I expected.

What is possible, I wonder? How much food (including culinary and medicinal herbs) could I really grow here? Yes, yes, I know about Path to Freedom. I attended their workshop at the Georgia Organics conference. I think of their moderate slice of property every time I try to imagine what on earth the little piece of land for which I serve as steward might become.

As a result of all this change on the side of my house, I've moved my garbage can to the backyard (since I don't have that privet to hide it behind it anymore). Since I've been on this waste-reduction kick, I only put it out once a week, and now that it's in the back, I'm even forgetting to do that. So I realized it had been nine days recently, and I was still at one not-full garbage can. Considering the average American adds 4.6 pounds of material to the landfill every single day, I was curious what my family of four would be adding in nine days. How much less than the average 165.6 pounds did we produce? The grand total? 47 pounds. About a pound and a quarter per person per day. Now, I know that many of you out there are doing much, much better than this, but this is very exciting news to me, and it makes me ask that question that I love so much--what is possible?

Green Globe and Zero Waste

At about this same time, I got to talking yet again with Holly Elmore, who is the founder and director of the Green Foodservice Alliance. She helped establish the Zero Waste Zone in downtown Atlanta (here is Holly's blog), and now Zero Waste Zones have been formed in a few other parts of Atlanta as well.

Per Holly's suggestion, I met with the Green Team of the Crowne Plaza Ravinia last week (which was started by a woman passionate about sustainability named Elisaveta Dimova, who moved to the United States from Bulgaria about ten years ago). This hotel is right here in the City of Dunwoody. We discussed the sustainability initiatives that they practice that have enabled that hotel to become the first hotel in the state of Georgia to receive Green Globe certification. And yes, they compost their foodservice green waste. They are, as far as I'm concerned, the stake in the ground for a Zero Waste Zone for the City of Dunwoody, although that hasn't been officially designated (yet!). And wouldn't it be nice to package and brand that finished black gold as City of Dunwoody compost and sell it to businesses and individuals, with a percentage of proceeds going to school and community gardens?

Terry Cunningham at the Finish Line of the NYC Marathon!

What is possible? What is possible? What is possible?

This question ran through my head like a mantra this week. And then just as things tend to happen, I got an email from my old boss at Turner Broadcasting (and good friend across miles and years), Terry Cunningham, who moved to Bozeman, Montana about 15 years ago. Terry writes for several publications, and he is one of my favorite writers ever. Really. The man should be much more famous than he is. (Agents, take note.)

Anyway, while "what is possible?" has been running through my mind, Terry had been running through the five boroughs of New York City! Yes, this former smoker whose idea of a workout was riding a golf cart somehow managed to run the New York City marathon! Here is the article he wrote just prior to running it. My favorite lines are the ones about his running style being "loitering," his body shape being "snacker," and his unique ability to come in second-to-last in every race he has run requiring a rare combination of sloth and cunning.

I emailed Terry to find out exactly what happened at the race. Here is what he said:

The Marathon was a blast! It was an overwhelming experience and I still have a goofy ear-to-ear grin on my face. My time (4:31:25) was better than I had anticipated. It’s not “fast” by any stretch, but for me, it was a pleasant surprise. I used a good training program I found online and training at 4,750 feet probably helped, but it’s the NYC crowds that pull you through. When I realized at mile 21 that I was actually going to finish and have a better time than my training runs would indicate, it was quite a relief. I’m a slow guy, but I’m a happy slow guy. For the record, I think I finished in 26,187th place, and there were 43,700 finishers.

And, for the record? Terry came in second-to-last out of the three runners from Bozeman.

So, what is possible? A ton of food is possible. The City of Dunwoody participating in a Zero Waste Zone is possible. And Terry Cunningham at the finish line of the New York City marathon is possible. In my book (which has yet to be published, by the way. Hey, agents, how about a two-author deal? Oh, and add Terry's and my friend, Brad, okay?), that means just about anything is.

A Ton of Food, Green Globe, Zero Waste, and Terry Cunningham at the Finish Line of the New York City Marathon

DeKalb County, Georgia, USA, Joins Other School Districts Nationwide That Are Restoring Children's Right to Recess

BREAKING NEWS

ATLANTA, GA--
The DeKalb County Board of Education voted last night in favor of mandatory, daily unstructured recess of at least 15 minutes, preferably outdoors, that cannot be taken away for any reason, for all students in grades K-5 in DeKalb County public schools. It also stipulated that recess would be at the principal's discretion for all students in grades 6-8.

The DeKalb County School System [DCSS] is a metropolitan Atlanta public school system located in the second largest county in the state of Georgia. DeKalb County, one of the most culturally diverse counties in the nation, has a student enrollment of approximately 100,000 students in 153 schools and centers, according to the DCSS website.

For those of you not in the United States or who think that 15 minutes is so short it's a joke, please note that year after year, more and more children in the United States get absolutely no recess at all, or they have it taken away as a punishment or for other reasons. The pressures and demands of No Child Left Behind legislation have resulted in an obsessive fixation with "teaching to the test." In the meantime, childhood obesity is skyrocketing, behavior issues are through the roof, and our kids are increasingly disconnected from fresh air and from the developmental value of unstructured play. Parents nationwide have been advocating for the return of recess, and I am proud to have been just one of the many, many voices that supported this effort.

In addition to the many benefits of unstructured outdoor play, I believe it to be a critical building block of environmental stewardship.

Here is a post with questions you can ask and actions you can take, plus some helpful links for those of you who are advocating for recess in your school districts.

DeKalb County, Georgia, USA, Joins Other School Districts Nationwide That Are Restoring Children's Right to Recess

Opening Windows

This is Dr. Flagler. She teaches inner-city children with emotional and behavioral development issues. I met her this week because her window was the only one open and I was standing outside it.

FYI, here's what that little pink note on the window says:


I was standing outside it because I was touring the new native wildlife habitat that sustainable landscape designer Lindsey Mann created at an impressive middle school (where the morning announcements end with the song "Ain't No Stoppin' Up Now"), surrounded by homes that are boarded up or in desperate need of repair. Here are two houses directly across the street from where I was standing:





Dr. Flagler leaned out the school window to thank Lindsey for what she had done. I asked her if she has always been opening her window, and she said no, that it's just since the wildlife habitat went in. She mentioned that she takes her students out there for lunch. She suggested that she and her students add some fish to the little pond. She offered to be the caretaker of the pond motor, which Lindsey had been hesitant to add unless someone was going to care for it. She said what Lindsey had done had made a difference.

Here's what Lindsey had done (two views):







Lindsey and I sat and talked for a long time. She showed me the river oats and the lavender and the other native and edible ecosystem-appropriate plants she had chosen for this space, plants that will fill in and flourish in the next few years to create a haven for butterflies and birds, and for children. Here is the plan:


That night, at dinner at home, I showed the photos of the houses to my daughters. My younger one commented, "Okay, well, they don't look so great now, but they certainly have potential."

Potential.

I thought of Dr. Flagler and the four middle-school boys whom she introduced to us, who poked their heads out the window, too, and waved. Who asked Lindsey if she was the one who wore the hat whom they had seen before. Who smiled big and broad when talking about the serene, green space in front of them. Who may have lived in one of those houses, or in the apartments across the litter-strewn field.

I thought of windows that should not be open, yet are. I thought of what would happen if everyone, everywhere had a space like this to call his or her own.

I asked Lindsey if I could see more of her work. I want to see what sustainably designed landscapes can do to change the world. One child. One teacher. One open window at a time.

We're going to visit proposed urban farm locations for the United Methodist Children's Home and the City of Decatur this week. Stay tuned!

And keep opening windows.

Opening Windows