Bonsai Monk, Tomato Models, and Three Chickens and a Goat

I am writing this on Saturday morning (instead of my usual Sunday) because I am on my way to 24 hours of silence at a monastery about an hour away.  I am going there to do yet another edit of my manuscript, Food for My Daughters, which is still on target to be released August 15.  I've gone there before to work on a different book project (about a year I spent knocking things off my Life List, called Tribbles, Twain and Too Many Bodies in the Bucket: see Chapter 7: Wholly Ordered to Contemplation), and so I know pretty much what to expect:

* I know that 24 hours of silence is very hard, but sort of a relief once I get into it;

* I know that the fact that Bonsai Monk dot com is headquartered there is horribly appealing to me, and the desire to hang out with the bonsai masters will be a large distraction;

* And I know that the new green burial grounds will be calling to me to tour them the entire time I'm there.  

Perhaps I'll take work breaks for these two pursuits.  I know for sure that I'll be up and out for the 4 AM chanting--finally, people on my early-morning schedule!  Trappist monks!  Oh, and did I mention my teen is coming with me? She has her own project on which she is working, and it'll be nice to have the (silent) company.

There is a flurry of activity going on regarding the production of my book, by the way, and I am loving every minute of it.  First of all, as I shared once before (read that and you'll understand more fully why I am so happy my teen is coming with me), I hired Amazon's CreateSpace to publish the book.  I also hired their design team to take my cover to the next level (and make sure it prints correctly and has the right ISBN information in the right place!) and to design the interior.  I worked for years in corporate marketing communications (see here) and used to direct designers every day.  I hadn't realized how much I missed it, and I have found CreateSpace to be extremely professional and responsive.  

As for how "successful" this book has a chance of being when it is published this way, I guess that has to do with what my goal is.  It has become even more clear to me over the last couple months that, first and foremost, Food for My Daughters is for my daughters.  It is, frankly, the most important piece of work of my life.  It is my legacy.  Good, bad, indifferent, it's what I have to offer.  If you also find value in it (and I do think you will), that is really a terrifically touching boat of gravy to me. 

So the pieces of this are coming together, including: 

* A funny tomato photo shoot (including spritzing water on the tomatoes like a moron) followed by my younger daughter eating all the tomatoes when I wasn't around ("You ate my models?!!!" I said, incredulously);

* My-self-portrait for my bio picture (which involved no less than 67 takes, and a very strained arm). Here is the lettuce-coming-out-of-my-ears photo, the crouch-and-smirk photo, the hey-let's-put-the-models-in-a-bowl photo, and the one I chose to use, in which the garlic that I reached down and picked right before shooting ends up ultimately getting cropped out (and I always laugh when cropping photos because they are usually photos of crops--no one in my house finds that funny but me);

* The cover art (which is undergoing one more round of revisions);

* And a 350-page document to which I've been referring as "the monster," which is currently being reviewed by a few of my friends and family members (and which is what I'll be reading at the monastery).  

I am enjoying this process so much that I have a new book in mind already.  In fact, I've already written a little intro copy for it on a dedicated blog (of course).  It's called Three Chickens and a Goat: what one mom did to feed her family legal, local eggs and fresh, homemade cheese (and what you can do, too) *warning: it means speaking out at City Hall, straining your marriage, and splitting your neighborhood 

I think I need to get to the monastery, and fast.

Bonsai Monk, Tomato Models, and Three Chickens and a Goat

This Week's Food for My Daughters Excerpt: Coke and the Pediatrician's Office

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This Week's Food for My Daughters Excerpt: Coke and the Pediatrician's Office

Now That Two Impatient Men Have Met, the World Will Never Be the Same

I intended to plant sweet potatoes at my community garden bed.  A perfect solution.  Put them in in May and harvest in late August.  Up to five pounds per plant.  I'd do 12 plants and harvest 60 pounds, which, added to my abundant pea harvest this spring from that same bed, would blow my annual total poundage goal for the bed of 64 pounds (2 pounds per square foot) out of the water.  And I wouldn't have to go to the community garden except for Team Food Pantry harvests each Tuesday.  Plus, my friend Stacey had plenty of sweet potato starts for me, so I wouldn't even need to hunt around at stores to find them.  An elegant solution to too much to do and not enough time.

Ah, the best laid plans . . . 

And then I went to Rashid's Wheat Street Gardens for the first time since January, the first time since seeds had been planted, since food had been harvested, since the now-getting-common 90-degree days started beating down on his currently-4-acre inner-city Garden of Eden.  

I wanted to hand-deliver the magazine issue, not yet on newsstands, in which my article features him.  And I asked Bob to meet me there, Bob who is chief of staff for a county commissioner and has more than 20 years of municipal zoning and planning experience (much of which has proven critical to the success of the newest city in the United States' start-up); Bob who has helped legalize a residentially-based organic farm, helped approve the building of the first school for refugees in the nation, and ensured that every police car in my city has automated emergency defibrillators (which has already saved at least one life); Bob who fell down the hole of urban agriculture two years ago (having never planted even a radish before then) and has barely come up for air as he has helped build or rejuvenate no less than ten vegetable gardens; and Bob who used to be on the verge of a stress-induced heart attack and now finds comfort in the increasing acreage over which he serves as steward (and uses as scalable pilot examples for others to follow), even launching a blog named Dunwoody Farmer Bob.

Bob came, and then Bob and Rashid met.  

I know what that means.  My friends Angela and Rebecca and Tracy and Ashley know what that means.  I even think Bob knows what that means.  But I don't know if Rashid, one of the pre-eminent urban farming educators and experts in the world (and the vice president of Georgia Organic's board of directors) who surely meets many powerful people in his travels and during the time he generously spends hosting visitors, truly knows how monumental it was what happened this past innocent Friday.

Overwhelmed a bit at this realization and knowing there was no way I could communicate it, I walked this former piece of squalor now planted with squash, onions, garlic, healing herbs and more, noting the aesthetic beauty (a characteristic of all of Rashid and Eugene's urban farms) of the farm's details:

* And yes, the seemingly endless rows of neatly planted raised beds take your breath away;

* The plowed fields planted in rows and lined with fruit trees and vines make you ache for what you know is possible on all the wasted land around our metro area, our country, our world;

* The golden light that fills the greenhouse romances your soul, and even the sun's striations on the spot where a homeless person has set up camp across the street, next to barbed wire, broken concrete, and graffiti, illuminates the beauty and potential of every human condition;

* And the sheer joy that emanates from Colleen, the woman hired to stimulate sales of this abundant fresh produce to restaurants, makes you almost want to open your own restaurant just so you can anticipate her visit every week with picture-perfect fistfuls of carrots and a cooler of greens.

But the tiny detail to which my eyes kept returning?  The flowers planted beneath every single tree that lines the edge of this property, an action that took time that you would think was needed elsewhere.  Yet their symbolism was not lost on me.  Impatiens.  Everywhere impatiens.  Impatience. An urban farm that broke ground just this past December and is now a national model of sustainable organic practices. Replicable ideas about compost, irrigation, cultivation, and post-harvesting handling captured on a cell-phone camera by a man who couldn't care less about all this not that long ago. Two men who don't like to waste time who are standing still talking.  And a world that was shifting right under my feet, a shift I could feel, a shift that was knocking me off balance.

And then, really truly right then, Eugene (shown here harvesting carrots with Colleen), his calming essence even stronger than the first time I met him, handed me a flat of tomatoes and another of eggplants, all of which were stressed.  "They need love," he told me.  But if they make it, they will bear fruits named Yellow Perfection and Black Beauty.

I drove back on the highway through the city, the skyscrapers surrounding me, cars whizzing by, the sickly plants in my trunk.  And I knew what I needed to do.  I needed to add balance.  To the world.  To the community garden, where our impending expansion is throwing our percentage of beds dedicated to the food pantry out of whack. To my life, where I had interpreted my readiness for the next stage as time to leave the community garden.

I made the decision to designate my community garden bed as a permanent food pantry bed.  I planted Eugene's tomatoes and eggplants in them--Yellow Perfection, Black Beauty--knowing this means I need to go there several times a week more than I was planning.  That I need to trust that I am meant to be there still.  And I named the bed the only name that made sense, the only name that would hold feet firm while the cosmic shift in the world's energy swirls around me, now that two impatient men have met. 

I named it Patience.

And I shall wait and see what happens next.

Now That Two Impatient Men Have Met, the World Will Never Be the Same

The Smell Test

My younger daughter came in from our home garden, which she knows bare-footed and blind-folded, and told me one of the pomegranate trees we planted back in January has a flower.  My older daughter had told me a month or so ago that the second tree, which I thought was no longer alive, was indeed still green under the bark, and when I went out to see the flower, I saw that that one has big red buds on it now, too.

I would have missed it, that first flower.  I know this for sure because I looked out my office window earlier this week and saw a rotting magnolia flower hanging from my neighbor's branch over my compost pile.  I realized then that I had not noticed the magnolias in bloom at all (and let me add that they are as big as melons here in the South).  I realized then that something was just not right.  That my life was not passing "the smell test" right now.  That there were signs in nature that I was missing, and perhaps I was at my own crossroads and needed to pay better attention.

Once you've read enough, and seen enough, and done enough, you start to recognize this "smell test" more. You start to trust your gut.  You start to notice when things are just not right. 

* You start to see disposable water bottles in front of city leaders at City Hall meetings still, almost three years into cityhood in what is supposed to be a "green community" and you know it doesn't pass the smell test. 

* You see a neighboring city's ripped-up sidewalks for more than five months, with no alternative pedestrian access to safe travel, a quarter mile from two schools where many children used to walk (and some still do, despite dangerous conditions, and let's not even get into the days it rains), and you know it doesn't pass the smell test. 

* You hear about yet more genetically modified crop approvals, and you know it doesn't pass the smell test. 

* You see increased evidence that our children are being poisoned by everyday products (can you say triclosan?) and the environment (can you say bus idling?) and you know it doesn't pass the smell test.

* And you follow the truly disturbing story about municipalities and private industry claiming sewage sludge, with all it pharmaceuticals, persistent herbicides, heavy metals, and other toxins, is safe to put on food gardens and farms.  You know, beyond a doubt, that this doesn't pass the smell test, yet no labeling is required when sewage sludge is included in bagged compost, and pseudo-organic reference to these "bio-solids" just makes it more confusing as a consumer.  You read everything Jill Richardson of La Vida Locavore has written about this, and you say, "Thank goodness for Jill in this world."  (I loved her book, Recipe for America, from a couple years ago, by the way.)

As for my life and its stop at the Smell Test Counter, the answer came to me by way of sweet potatoes.  I was planting them with 5th graders in a garden they are leaving.  The plants will grow all summer and will be ready for harvest just after the new school year starts.  The potatoes are a gift to the kindergarteners who will be in that classroom, and the kids wrote messages on sticks to them about taking care of the garden.  The kids and I talked about how we serve as stewards, and then we pass things on to others to be stewards.  And that's how it goes. The 5th graders were members of E-Witness News, an environmental journalism blogging club that I started with my younger daughter's teachers, Diane Wilbur and Amanda McGehee, who is one of 85 teachers from across the United States you will see next week in media coverage at the White House. She will be the science teacher from the state of Georgia who receives the Presidential Honors for Outstanding Math and Science Teachers.

And so I thought of the sweet potatoes as I left the school, and how I had served as a steward in my local community and metropolitan area, but that now I was feeling pulls elsewhere--inwardly (home) and outwardly (beyond my borders and around the world).  I decided to stop my other blog, Sustainable Pattie, and to step back (or, rather, to encourage others to step forward more) in my leadership role with Team Food Pantry, in order to make more space in my life for whatever it was that was trying to bloom for me.  

And as I was walking away, I came upon a magnolia tree, and tucked right there, on a branch within touching distance, was this.  In full bloom.  And it smelled beautiful.

No, I hadn't missed it.  I hadn't missed it at all.

The Smell Test

Where Food Grows, So Does Hope

Nineteen Al Quaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes, deliberately flew them into buildings, and people died.  My mom moved to Atlanta from New York.  I started a garden.  Ten years passed.  My daughters grew up.

I woke up and heard the news.  The head of Al Quaeda, who had organized the attacks, was killed by the U.S. military.  Like ten years earlier, I had no words.  I couldn't work.  Farmer D's truck arrived moments later.  I spread new compost all morning.  I nurtured land.  I planted seeds.  I gathered fruit.

 
I saw footage of Ground Zero, the place where the Twin Towers used to stand in downtown Manhattan.  A hole.  A gaping hole.  And then I remembered what was happening just blocks away in Battery Park, something Carolyn Zezima of NYC Foodscape, one of the people I interviewed for my article about what we can learn from urban farms in the July/August issue of Urban Farm magazine (the preview copy of which I just received yesterday), told me: there is now an urban farm.  It is a one-acre farm shaped like a turkey (I found the aerial photo of the farm here), believe it or not, and lined with a fence made from bamboo repurposed from the Big Bambu installation that I actually saw last July when I was in NYC, which was created from bamboo harvested from the state of Georgia, where I live. 

I wondered how this came to be, food growing instead of fear, on precious real estate literally overlooking Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, the first view of the United States so many people who came to this country (including all my grandparents as I'm a second-generation American) had.  Warrie Price, the founder and president of the Battery Conservancy (a non-profit organization committed to restoring the Battery's 25 waterfront ares and revitalizing its landmark castle), explained to me:  

photo from Inhabitat

"We knew we had space for more than a vegetable garden in the park where for six years subway construction had occurred and we wanted to do some added soil enrichment in preparation for the new Battery Garden Bikeway. Our Battery Conservancy's Vice Chairman had created a mini roof top urban farm and we were impressed with how much produce came from his efforts. We also wanted to do outreach to the surrounding neighboring schools to let them know the Battery was their outdoor classroom.  We now have 8 schools and 680 students participating in the Urban Farm at the Battery."

Warrie Price was a founding director in 1983 of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas, created to champion the use of native plants along public access ways and in urban landscapes.  I wrote about Lady Bird Johnson's national wildflower project once, in a post titled Where Flowers Bloom, So Does Hope.  And now, of course, all these years later, it's clear. Where food grows, so does hope.  Where children innocently plant on a piece of land that hadn't been cultivated since the early Dutch settlers, the future takes shape.  And just as Ben Franklin suggested the turkey should be our national bird, perhaps, in this turkey-shaped urban farm (the shape of which was chosen because there is a wild turkey named Zelda who apparently lives in downtown NYC), it finally is.

And so, for me, the words have come again, and as always these past ten years, they come in stories of food.

Where Food Grows, So Does Hope

Food for My Daughters Radio Show: This Week's Episode (4 minutes)

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Food for My Daughters Radio Show: This Week's Episode (4 minutes)

I Got Cash. I Packed Almonds.

And so, the news report said "horrific," and this was before the tornadoes came and ravaged the southeastern United States this past Wednesday.  This was the forecast.  Horrific.  

I had never seen a coming storm referred to that way before, and let me tell you, when the thought of a horrific storm coming your way hits you right between the eyes, priorities become clear very fast:

* I made sure all my family members would be home, and, rather anally-rententive, showered, before 8 PM (when it was all expected to start).

* I contacted my city to find out where my nearest emergency shelter is (and guess what?  There are none.  None.  Nowhere in my city of 45,000 citizens).  

* I took the above photo of my backyard garden, in anticipation of it perhaps being gone the next day, in case for some reason I felt the weird, burning need to show someone on a cot provided by The Red Cross my garlic and onions and peas.  

* And I packed an evacuation bag, which included, interestingly, all the silk wrap skirts I've been collecting one or two at a time from a local shop in Delray Beach, Florida, during my annual trip there, because you can dress them up and down and you can even wrap them in up to 100 different styles.  How versatile if I'm homeless, I thought, oddly. And my daughters could wear them as well.  How efficient.

* I tucked a flash drive with the manuscript of my book, Food for My Daughters, in the zippered pocket of my purse, no surprise there.  

* I put fresh batteries in the flashlight and my Flip video camera, and charged my cell phone.  I got cash.  I packed almonds.

* I called my family in New York (pretty much freaking them out) and told them they would be the place we called with updates on our whereabouts in case we got separated here and couldn't communicate locally for some reason.  (I had read this tip somewhere in my exhaustive emergency-preparedness research over these years since 9/11 and it somehow stuck with me.)

* I cleaned the little bathroom off the kitchen, the only thing we have close to a "safe room" in the house, in case we all needed to sleep there with bike helmets on, although my goodness, what good would that have done if the tornado had hit us?

It didn't.  The wind never got over 25 miles per hour.  The lightning stayed high in the sky.  The pelting rain and golf-ball-sized hail from just a week before never came.  And the roaring sound of a train, thank goodness, never reached our ears.  More than 100 different tornadoes touched down from Texas to Virginia, and they hit north, south, east and west of metro Atlanta, with the highest number of lives lost several hours away in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  

They spared my city (still the newest city in the United States, as far as I know) and my larger metro-area this time, but everyone I know knows of someone who was in or near the tornadoes.  And I know that wherever you are around our Foodshed Planet, you have heard of them as well.  I know this because many of you have emailed me to make sure we are okay.  Friday morning, a full day of photos and headlines under our global belt, I got an email from Kate in Tasmania checking on us.  We were both up to watch the Royal Wedding, a complete 180-degree shift in emotion from the headlines of destruction and despair.  I had made scones and herbal tea from my garden, the only effect of the storm on it the added nitrogen nourishment from lightning.  I had woken my daughters to watch with me.  I had worn my skirt.

The next day, I saw the hairy vetch was overgrowing everything, including the chair where I like to sit in my side garden, in the place that used to be lawn just a year and half ago that now grows leeks and lettuces, potatoes and peas.  

And so I sat on my blue recycled-plastic Adirondack chair in the back (you can see it in the upper corner of the photo at the top), under the trees I had planted ten years ago in the hope they would one day hold a hammock (which, as you can see, they do), in my skirt, with my yellow toes, the latest copy of Jamie magazine on my lap (you know how I feel about my Jamie), the one I've been meaning to read for weeks but hadn't found the time.  I saw the blackberries are blooming, in a new place where I hadn't planted them.  And the blueberries are ripening.  And the fig tree has new leaves.  And my new pomegranate trees have buds.  

And life, at least here, at least now, goes on.

I Got Cash. I Packed Almonds.