Rain, Patience, Beer, Soccer and Ten Watermelons a Week--UPDATED!

The sky darkened, the thunder clapped, and it rained.  Finally.  Soaking our seemingly-endless 95-degree (35 degrees Celsius) week, our thirsty crops, our lawns, our trees.  I flung open the window to smell it, to hear it, and I stood at my open kitchen door overlooking the garden and watched it until it stopped, until its little glistening raindrop remains hung heavy on the edges of welcoming cucumber and zucchini and watermelon leaves.

The watermelons.  They have just begun vining.  It has been a long journey these past nine years with me and the watermelons, learning patience.  Learning to wait until they are just right to pick. 

I stood there watching the cascading rain and thought of my daughter running in that fountain last week, in a neighbor city, after we swung by the Latin American Association garden my friend Bob and I had revitalized the day before.  I thought of how we don't have anything like that yet, a public place to cool off, although my city, less than two years old and still the newest city in the United States (as far as I can tell) just got ownership of the parks this past week and the county workers left.  So change is coming, and there is hope.  There is always hope.

I remembered that hot day mid-week when I finished reading My Life in France (one of the best books I've ever read for a plethora of reasons, by the way, and yes, Kate, it'll be on its way to you in Tasmania this week) at a nearby pool, where we ride our bikes, stopping for water at every corner, agreeing that biking is better than walking in this heat because at least you get the downhill breezes.  I had been sitting in the shade overlooking the little lake reading my book when I glanced up and saw this, a father and son, fishing.  I thought this scene was special, and that the father might appreciate that someone captured it for him and, perhaps, his son might cherish it one day.  The heat makes me slow down, and sit, and see these things, and they are gifts to me.

I heard the distant sound of the TV, which I don't usually have on, but there I had been, before the rain, watching soccer and drinking a beer, two things I just don't do.  Yet, for one thing, we're trying to find a different local brewery from which to divert spent grains from the waste system so that we can make more beer compost at the community garden.  We had severe flooding in the fall (which is hard to believe on these sun-parched days) and spent the whole winter mitigating stormwater and building that path so that we could resume the beer compost deliveries.  I was excited to tell Dennis at 5 Seasons Brewery and he said he'd be by right away.  But he never came.  He won't take my calls.  He doesn't call back. Months have passed.  The Veil of Weirdness has descended, and I've learned in life that when the Veil of Weirdness descends, with relationships or jobs or anything, really, it's time to move on.  

So we were talking with Sweetwater Brewery about it, and I was sampling the product. (Alas, it didn't work out with Sweetwater, although big thanks to Rick for giving it the ole' college try--the quest continues.) I hadn't had a beer since that one at Joe's Tavern almost two years ago, when I decided to bear witness to the sustainability decisions that my brand new city faced.  It was nice, the beer, a little tickle of my MemoryShed, of all the beers before it, especially those ones in Europe where my friend Julie from Maine and I backpacked through 10 countries on 20 bucks a day (including everything), 25 years ago right now.  We slept on houseboats, in convents, on trains.  And we had a different locally-brewed beer in just about every city, and I was shocked at how good, and different, they all were.

The soccer watching is more complicated.  Not the game, about which I know practically nothing.  Well, I know you kick the ball in the goal and the team with the most goals wins.  I know you don't use your hands; well, most of the players don't.  I know there is occasional head action, which seems to be the highlight of the game, in my opinion.  The complicated part is not even the FIFA World Cup host country of South Africa embracing a major initiative to green the games by reducing carbon emissions and leaving a sustainable legacy in most of the host cities.

No.  The complicated part is this:

These are the Fugees.  They are refugee children-of-war.  They come from up to 54 different countries.  They live 13 miles away from me.  Their formation as a soccer team has been immortalized in the truly life-changing book, Outcasts United.  And because of them, I am trying to learn soccer.

I first heard about them three and a half years ago, but they blasted back into my life about two months ago.   And.  I.  Don't.  Know.  Why.

That's the complicated part.

My friend Bob took the above photo at one of their practices, before eating food cooked by one of their mothers.  How we got involved is here: 13 Miles and a World Away.  By why.  Why, I do not know.  I don't know much about soccer.  I can never seem to get to the weekly dinners.  I don't have all that much to offer, in money or time or knowledge.

Yet . . . .

There's Tania.  And Tracy.  And Luma.  And the circle keeps expanding.  My emails get more interesting.  The pull I feel gets stronger.

A fellow community garden member's friend's daughter is in AmeriCorps (did you follow that?) and is, coincidentally, working at the Fugees Family soccer camp this summer.  She needs 10 watermelons a week and lots of other snacks to feed 50 boys every day until school starts August 9 (yes, that's when school starts here, if you can believe it).  I can't tell you much more about this young woman just yet, but please trust me when I tell you that the last thing she needs to worry about right now is 10 weekly watermelons.

And so, back to the watermelons.  It will be a long time before I have grown one, never mind ten.  And so, today I buy them.  And tomorrow I deliver them.  And next Monday, Bob said he'd deliver ten.  And the rest of the Mondays?  Well, email me at sustainablepattie@comcast.net if you live in Atlanta and you want to take charge of a Watermelon Week. I'll let this young woman know. 

You deliver them on Mondays between 10-4 to 1019 Rowland Road, at the blue building across from the Clarkston International Bible Church in Clarkston, GA, (30021), the most diverse city in the United States, 13 miles away from the newest city in the U.S.  And if you're like me, you don't ask why.  You just do it.  And you have patience that one day, the answer will come.  

UPDATE: June 28 29, 2010

Just two one No Mondays are is left for volunteers (thanks to Bob, Sally and,  Rebecca, and Ashley, and Rick for taking the other weeks!): July 26 and August 2.  Email me at sustainablepattie@comcast.net if you want to volunteer.  Watermelons are $3.99 at Costco, so this is a $40 donation (tax-deductible from the Fugees Family) and a time commitment of maybe two hours (to purchase and deliver the melons).

Rain, Patience, Beer, Soccer and Ten Watermelons a Week--UPDATED!

That Happy Place Between Whimsy and Tacky Where Every Soul Can Soar

I live with a soul that soars around color.  Lots and lots of color.  Bold color.  Aubergine and Tuscan yellow and indigo.  My favorite color is, and always has been, red.  And so it happened naturally that when I went to make signs for the community garden the other night, I chose bright colors I love.  I crouched on the ground with brushes in hand and found myself in a state of flow, the hour or so flying by on crimson wings.  And this is what resulted:

The top two signs go together on a shopping cart that the manager of a nearby Kroger supermarket donated to be used at the community garden for a demonstration "Meals on Wheels" food pantry bed. It looks something like this now:

The bottom sign will go on the bike trailer I'm trying to get donated so I can transport more freshly harvested food to the food pantry via bike (which seems to break down cultural barriers and build a bridge between the food pantry clients and me).  Until that bike trailer magically appears, I've put the sign on my current system, which involves my two panniers:

I brought the signs with me one of the three 6:30 AM mornings this week that several of us met at the garden to work on our rain garden stormwater mitigation project after a recent downpour set us back a bit.  I was excited about the signs and the shopping cart and the bike.  But when I showed them to a fellow board member, he said, "Ya' know, there's a fine line between whimsy and tacky."

Huh?  Well, yes, I know that.  But my soul soars with color.  And fun.  And living out loud.  And inviting more people into the conversation in a way that just might make a measurable difference.

Seeing my perhaps-crestfallen face, he went on, "I mean, you're also talking about adding a bottle tree, and a tire planted with flowers."

Well, yes, I have that bottle tree in my home garden, that nod to African folklore immortalized so beautifully in the movie based on the Newbery Award-winning book, Because of Winn Dixie, and repurposed in my yard to "catch the demons" of plastic bottles that we find discarded in our travels.  I thought something like that might make a positive educational addition to the community garden, since we're a Zero Waste Zone.

And, yes, my younger daughter did find that tire in the woods there and asked if we could incorporate it into the community garden somehow, and I remembered how my mom had turned a tire into a planter that looked like a bright yellow flower when I was a little girl, which I thought was nothing short of brilliant.  I thought perhaps my mother and daughter could make it together and we could add it by the children's woodland trail that an Eagle Scout candidate is spearheading (complete with consideration of children with special needs).

I walked away and pitched wood chips into the bright red wheelbarrow to dump into our big puddle.  And I felt the soft and subtle squashing of my soul, a feeling I know intimately as I've felt it a million times before in my life.

I live in a city with leaders who wanted to require bike racks on private commercial property to all be painted a standard muted color, even though the cycling expert who was championing the effort warned that that requirement would be an unnecessary impediment to businesses participating.  The bike racks never happened.  I live in a city that wants to extend "overlay district" architectural requirements throughout the entire city, limiting color palettes.  I live in a city that almost passed an ordinance that would outlaw colored Christmas lights (I kid you not).  I live in a city where at least once a year my younger daughter says to me, "Tell me again what's wrong with a yellow house or a purple shop, Mom."  I live where fear of what people will think trumps fun more often than anyone cares to admit.

Another board member just repaired our community garden front fence.  This girl was at the garden when he and another garden member were doing it.  She helped.  Other children in the garden at the time were thrilled with the outcome.  I'm not sure how my colleague concerned about the Fine Line Between Whimsy and Tacky is going to feel about it.  But I do know that, for me, one of the hardest parts of being in a community garden is finding those happy places between here and there on the idea spectrum, between acceptable and not, between whimsy and tacky, where every soul can soar.

(photo used with permission of child's mother)

That Happy Place Between Whimsy and Tacky Where Every Soul Can Soar

Year Three, Drug Free

Bernie and I stand there, our hands on our hips, and just look at it, amazed at what we have somehow accomplished.  Bernie is the new man in my life, or should I say, my lawn's life, and granted, I had a two-year head start on what we are now deeming a joint success, but if not for him, I'd still be ankle deep in what was looking like donkey fur.

My back lawn, where the majority of my organic garden is, has been drug-free for years, but it was only a couple years ago that I went drug-free (and oil free) on the front.  This year marks the third, and if I were seeking organic certification, three years is what it takes.  I push-reel-mowed until about September of last year, when I just plain old gave up.  I was spending weekends at the community garden and my blades were no longer sharp and there was a patch of that lawn that had gotten so thick you could lose a small dog in it.  I had done it so far alone, but I knew I needed help, and the first step in recovery is to admit you have a problem and need help, right? 

I gave myself the winter to ponder, considered the philosophical joys of push-reel-mowing, of which there are many, and continued to try to find a place to sharpen my blades (of which there are none any more, as far as I can surmise).  I was hesitant to bring oil back into the process (in addition to the human-powered lawn mower, I had been edging manually, snipping with grass shears, and sweeping with a broom, as opposed to power tools for all of that) but I also wanted a lawn that looked good (I live in a city that worships at the altar of aesthetics).  That way, others (for whom not poisoning their children, their dogs or our shared water supply are not enough reasons) might be inspired to go drug-free, too.  

So, winter over, I knew I didn't want some big company that requires a 12-month contract for a seasonal business and then comes in the dead of winter and blows four leaves around, polluting our air with toxins and noise just to look busy and get paid.  I also didn't want a company with revolving crews that cut, edge, blow and go.  I wanted a relationship, and not just a relationship, but an honest one, one that admits the job is seasonal.  One that is willing to say that at certain times of the spring and fall, once every two weeks is more than enough.  One where the goals are shared and the vision motivates us to work as a team.  And, really, by the grace of God, I somehow found Bernie.

I hear his truck pull up on Fridays while I'm writing and my heart does a little flutter knowing my lawn will look amazing in mere moments.

I hear that lawn mower start and the feeling of hatred I had been developing for those endlessly noisy machines in my neighborhood has somehow transformed into a warmth.

I race out to catch him before he leaves and he smiles, commenting on the 40 wheelbarrel-fulls of wood chips I'd spread the previous week or how the mailbox garden's tomato plants are hanging heavy with fruit, or about the small meadow we're creating together in the back so when I cut the junipers there is still ground cover for wildlife (so I can keep my Certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat designation).  I give him herbs.  He gives me advice.  We are a team.

He knows about Greg, and isn't jealous.  In fact, he welcomes Greg into our newly shared lives.  Greg comes now once every couple months and adds organic amendments like chicken manure and kelp to the lawn (and to my vegetable plots as well). He puts this sign out, and I leave it in for at least two weeks so that passersby can see it and perhaps it gives them pause. Perhaps they see that the lawn looks good now, as green and lush as any other, yet it is completely drug-free.

Perhaps they see how I've eradicated a few bits of my lawn and now zucchini and tomatoes and lavender grow where once drugged blades of Bermuda hung on for dear life.  I sit at the newly-brightly-painted bistro table and pick blackberries in my new "outdoor living room" and marvel at how much has changed in such a short time.  And I wonder if perhaps there will be a paradigm shift and another person will go drug-free, too.  And another.  And another.  And one day, children will once again do cartwheels on lawns all over our drug-free nation.

Or perhaps I will simply wave hello, and share fistfuls of herbs, and invite folks to pick from the mailbox garden, as they have the last two years as well.  Perhaps it's as simple as that.

My journey to a drug-free lawn may be the most documented individual lawn story in America.  There's sweat (lots of it!), there are statistics, and there are a whole lot of simple truths.  If you're interested, you may enjoy push-reel-mowing your way through these (the first post is the one at the bottom):

It's Not About the Lawn

The Return of the Weeds and Lawn

Click, Clack, Mow (and It's Damaging Alternative)

What Gets Measured Gets Done

Feeling Edgy (or a Completely Honest Lawn Update)

Sixteen Households Make a Community

Reel Mowers.  Pushing On for the Planet.

Year Three, Drug Free

Surprised by the Weight of It

I was surprised by the weight of it.  I stood at the front right hand corner and I had to twist my wrists awkwardly to grip the edge, my back turned one way, my neck another, so that I could move ahead while holding on to it sideways.  Breathing in, breathing out, as I had done a million other times those past nine frenetic months, I took my first step forward.  The black and white skirt I had chosen so carefully to wear, respectful but not somber, the same skirt I had worn three years earlier out to dinner at that wonderful French country restaurant for my 40th birthday celebration, swished a bit as I walked, breaking the ominous silence of the stagnantly humid day.

"I didn't know I could do this," I heard myself whisper as I helped carry the coffin.  "I didn't know I could do this."

I didn't know I could open my home to children who weren't mine, feeding them, helping them with homework, tucking them in, trying to ensure that one day, when they were no longer 8 and 10 but rather 20 or 40 or 80, they would have memories of a flowering garden, fluffy white towels, a roaring fireplace and at least a little laughter when they thought back to the nine months during which their mother died.

I didn't know I could sit for hours at a time with a woman whom I didn't really know all that well, even though we had run in the same circle for years, and keep her company as the medicine that was meant to save her dripped into her body.  I didn't know I could carve out time from the middle of my workday to watch romantic comedies with a woman who needed desperately to laugh, and leave baskets of fresh muffins specked with flax seeds and raisins for a man whose life was falling apart so fast that eating a meal was a luxury he had all but forsaken.  I didn't know I could do such simple, simple things, the kinds of things that others had been doing all their lives but I hadn't, and make a difference.

Granted, I wasn't the only one who did this.  An entire community of people rallied to help this family, the way communities do.  But I was never one of those people before, part of the casserole brigade.  Yet, here I was, boiling eggs each day for the sandwiches which were the only things my friend could tolerate eating and tossing them to her husband through open windows in carpool lines. 

I'm a writer. I sit barefoot in a corner of my house, overlooking my garden, and I write in the dark of early morning to the sounds of crickets.  I don't stand at funerals and deliver eulogies.  Yet I did that day.  I didn't know I could do that.

I'm a gardener.  I shovel dirt on new life.  I don't join a line of mourners taking turns to shovel dirt into a grave.  Yet I did that day.  I didn't know I could do that.

I'm a sharer.  I troll the little moments of my day for the bigger lessons, and they turn up immediately as dinner stories at my kitchen table that very night.  I don't keep secrets.  Yet I did that day.  In fact, I kept a secret for over four years now.  I didn't know I could do that.

But now, I have decided I am going to tell you.

A few days before my friend died, I was sitting with her at the hospital, just the two of us.  She had taken a dramatic downturn, but it hadn't hit anyone yet that this was going to be it.  My friend and her family had decided somewhere early on the Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis train that they were going to ride in the optimism car (for, my goodness, she wasn't even a smoker), and there had been no talk about preparing for what was increasingly looking like the inevitable.  My friend was having extreme difficulty breathing, and I could see a change in her eyes, an awareness, perhaps, that hadn't been there before.  Our conversation was short that day, and I knew it was possibly our last one alone.  After what happened next, I called her husband and told him he needed to come to the hospital, that things were not well.  And that phone call marked the turning point between life and death, between denial and acceptance, between hope and preparation.

But first, here is what happened.  I told my friend she needed to write letters.  To her daughters and husband.  And she said, simply, that she would.  The next day, she did.  The girls framed their letters and they now hang in their new bedrooms, in a different house, with a different mother.  She never got to finish her husband's letter, although when he finally read it, he didn't need or want an ending.

After I told her that, she told me something.  And this is the secret part.  She told me that she always believed in paying things forward.  And that's what she wanted me to do.  To not look back at what happened these last nine months, the length of time it takes to bring a baby into the world and that it took to take a 46-year-old woman out of the world, but instead to pay it forward.

I was 43 years old that day, an age halfway between my 40th birthday, an occasion I marked by learning to ride a unicycle, and the age of my friend who was days away from leaving this world.  Her words knocked me off balance.  The lesson I learned from unicycling is that it's much easier to fall forward than back.  Trust me on this one.

So pay it forward, she had instructed.  How would I pay it forward?  What could I possibly do to honor this woman and the community of people who had come together during this tragic time?   I told myself I had three years.  By my 46th birthday, I would do it.  I would pay it forward, in a public way that made a difference.

***

I was surprised by the weight of it.  I lifted it out of the back of my car and placed it on the grassy meadow.  I lifted the next one, and the next, and the next.  Sixteen in all.  I carried them, one at a time up the hill and over the paths which had been covered with wood chips, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, by people whom I didn't know just six weeks earlier.

I had surprised my family and friends by getting involved when my suburb of Atlanta became the newest city in the United States just nine months prior, the length of time it takes to bring a baby into the world.  I had become the chairperson of the new city's Sustainability Commission and was charged with helping it achieve Green Community certification.  I hadn't realized where this road was taking me.

I hadn't realized it would lead me to a piece of land our city didn't own, past the dog park, on the left, where the sidewalk ends.  I didn't realize it would put me in fields with weeds up to my knees with strangers trying to figure out how we could do it, how we could start a community garden in a place where we were told it could not be done.  I hadn't realized all the conversations at broken-down, ivy-covered picnic benches, through emails, and over the phone and across the Internet that would happen in less than the length of a summer.  And, mostly, I hadn't realized that the first day of National Community Gardening Week, the day we ended up opening a community garden to 60 families who snapped up plots in less than 48 hours after the garden was announced, was my birthday.  My 46th birthday.

I carried a bag of dirt up the hill, across the path and to the plot where I had arranged the cinder blocks to form a raised bed garden, in the midst of what would be a brand new community of people.  I stood there alone, the smiling crowd from two days earlier gone, the mourning crowd from three years earlier scattered in the next phases of their lives.  I opened the bag and threw a shovelful of dirt onto my 4' x 8' plot.

I planted seeds.

I paid it forward. 

I didn't know I could do that.  

 

Surprised by the Weight of It

FoodShed Planet Resumes This Sunday, June 6!

I've missed you, and I have lots to share!  Am looking forward to joining you on Sunday mornings again, and hope you'll make room in your day for me.

Check out Sustainable Pattie to see where I've been hangin' my hat in the meantime.

FoodShed Planet Resumes This Sunday, June 6!