bugs bummin' me out

the grey cabbage aphid is destroying all my brassicas! the kale was hit the hardest, but now they are going after the beloved brussel sprouts, the young cauliflower, and i even saw a few on the arugula! it makes no sense. i had never seen them until this fall, and they came on strong. my russian kale was lush just a month ago. they attack the young, tender, new leaves, which basically stunts the growth of the plant, and eventually kills it.



since i garden organically, i am used to hand-picking pests off of my plants. it is one of the benefits of having a small, back yard garden--a person can usually notice and keep up with pest problems. i started by removing these vile creatures with my bare hands, sort of sweeping the leaves with my thumb. but now i just blast them with a strong stream of water from the hose.



it gets them off the plants, but i have to keep doing it, every day. i finally gave up on the kale, and pulled it today. i hope to save the brussels sprouts and califlower, but i don't have a whole lot of hope.

in other bug related news, fruit flies have found my worm composting bins--both at home, and at work. again, this is a new phenomenon for me, and started in the fall. at home, they migrated to the kitchen, too. we have tried everything, including removing any possible food sources cleaning meticulously (and drying everything), plus trapping them with vinegar. we have reduced their population immensely. lately, we "vacuum" them up with the back of a hair dryer. it is strange, but effective (and secretly satisfying).

so far though, i'm not really finding any answers about the worm bin problem. experts say to bury the food scraps in the bedding, or to wrap them in newspaper to avoid attracting fruit flies. i always do one or both of those things, and have never had a problem. now, i still do those things, and i have a fruit fly infestation, and it is not going away. it is especially problematic at work, as i am trying to get the vermiculture system established, and this is a huge set back.

your suggestions and/or commiserations welcome.

living in an architectural rendering

maybe you're not familiar with what i mean when i say "architectural rendering." they are drawings that architects make to allow the general public, or clients who need to be sold on an idea, to imagine the future new building, or urban public space, and how it might be used. sometimes they are straight up drawings, or water colors. they include trees, and landscaping, and people inhabiting and interacting with the space.

this is actually one of the renderings for the b-line trail.

when i was in school, we would make slick hybrid drawings, using photos of the existing site, insert a drawing or computer rendering of our designed intervention, and then we'd stick in some scaled figures (referred to, lovingly, as scalies) which were usually cut out of magazines, scanned, and then reduced to the scale of the drawing.

from a project i did with bill rankin-- in nice, france

we would choose figures in action poses-- skateboarding, riding a bike, pushing a stroller, jogging--or a group of youth, gossiping on park benches. sometimes we'd pose people in the studio, doing specific actions related to our project, and use photos of our own for scaled figures.

in any case, the drawings are always idealized notions of what this thing is going to be, who will be using it, and in what manner. well, this week i had the bizarre experience of riding down bloomington's b-line trail, from city hall/showers plaza, to where it ends on second street, near kroger, and seeing an architectural rendering of the B-line trail, turned into 3D, real-time, lived space. and, i was IN IT.

this was taken on another day, but you can see what i mean

there were people jogging with ipods, pushing baby carriages, skateboarding, bike riding, studying historical markers. youth were gathered on park benches, smoking cigarettes, and texting. some guys were playing hackey-sack, dogs were being walked, couples were stolling, holding hands, or talking intimately on a bench, under a shade tree. i saw a guy carrying four kroger bags, full of groceries. the trail was being used for actual transportation, as well as recreation, leisure and fitness.

the weather was perfect, and i was capping off a rather idyllic day of community involvement. i'd started the day meeting with the project manager for the middle way house's new wings project-- discussing how i'm going to get the cubbies for the child care area built this summer. then i went off to one of mother hubbard's cupboard's community gardens, and put in a couple of hours there, thinning lettuce and radish seedlings, and talking compost with other volunteers. after a lovely salad of micro-green thinnings, plus some spinach, arugula and violet blossoms from my own garden (topped with the last of the easter eggs), i jumped on the bike and headed down to city hall, for the first annual meeting of the bloomington community orchard. at the meeting i saw the inspiring orchard design sketches, stunning photos of the many varieties of fruit trees being researched and chosen for the orchard, and we voted in the by-laws for the brand new organization.

riding home, through that picture-perfect urban trail scene, i couldn't help but believe, at least for that moment, that what we imagine and hope for, really can come true. sometimes.

let the gardens begin!

we've got green things growing in our basement! i started some seeds for cold-weather plants: brussel sprouts, leeks, parsley--and i also brought in a few of the seedlings that are barely hanging on outside in the cold frame. so, we have some lovely cabbage and broccoli starts warming up under our new grow light.



i didn't think it was possible to be more excited about the gardening season than i was last year...or the year before, for that matter. but, i am. this year, i have a better home garden space, and i am doing an internship with mother hubbard's cupboard--in the youth gardening program at the banneker center. this means i have two gardens to play in, and i get to teach a group of eight-year-olds about the joys of growing your own food!



plants are amazing things, ya know? last week, we needed some fresh thyme and sage leaves for a recipe. i went out into the back yard, to the spot where our thyme plant lives, brushed aside a half a foot of snow, found the layer of straw i'd put on top, in the late fall (hadn't remembered that i'd done that), and there i found those tiny, tear-drop-shaped leaves, all fresh and green and ready for soup! such a treasure. the sage was easier to spot, it's still standing, with silvery leaves peeking up out of the snow.



muddied my boots and warmed my heart.

spirited away

i was weeding a flower bed last week, when i came across a monarch caterpillar. not a huge surprise, since the zinnia bed my landlord planted before he left, has been attracting many species of butterfly, including monarchs. but from what i understand, monarchs only lay their eggs on milkweed, and milkweed is the exclusive source of nutrition for the monarch caterpillar. we have no milkweed in our yard.



so, i put the caterpillar in our old aquarium (minus the water, of course) and went down to our neighborhood stand of milkweed to pick some. i ran into ria, the one who stewards the community garden beds that run along brayn creek. she told me about the milkweed stand, and said she thought many of the caterpillars that hatched there this year didn't make it due, perhaps, to wasps. so, i felt it was important to do what i could to help my caterpillar make it to butterflyhood.



the little striped thing went to town on that milkweed. for two days, all it did was munch, sleep and poop. then carl and cosmo and i headed down the street for fresh milkweed, after dinner, on the third day. we left the caterpillar in the aquarium, inside the screened in porch.

when we returned, about an hour later, he had vanished. seriously. into thin air. i was baffled. first off, there was no reason for him to wander, and he hadn't been interested in exploring anything but leaves the whole time he had been in there. it wasn't like he was constantly searching for a way out. there were a couple of holes in the lid that were big enough for him to fit through, but it was difficult to imagine it happening. even if he did escape, how far could he get, in such a short time? i searched all around the immediate vicinity. not a clue. nothin'. nada.
my emotional response to the caterpillar's disappearance surprised me. i was devastated. cosmo seemed slightly bummed, but he clearly was not as invested in this little project as i was. carl was as confused as i was, and comforted me at first, but then, ya know... there is a kid to bathe, read to and get into bed...life goes on.

but i could not let go. and i had to fight back tears for the rest of the evening. that night, i dreamed the caterpillar returned, and i swear, i left some leaves out on the table, just in case.
but the next morning, he was still gone, and i had to face the facts, even if it didn't make any sense.

there is a larger life lesson here, i think, for other things that are currently bringing me down. someday soon, i'm afraid i am going to wake up in the morning, realize that this beautiful opportunity for meaningful transformation of our broken health care system has been hijacked by the heartless, misinformed, right-wing fringe. i won't understand it. there won't be a rational explanation for it, i will be devastated, and...i will have to except it.