Grounding the homeless

["Nick Routledge" <fellowservant@yahoo.com>]

A couple of nights ago I was asked what my passion was, and I said "...the
cause of freedom...but it's not an entirely selfless endeavor, because I
find the path leads me to the most beautiful people and plants in the
world." Yesterday morning, I found myself in the fields of the Homeless
Garden Project in Santa Cruz, on the coast, south of San Francisco. This
project, unique in the U.S. we understand, is an effort to teach the
homeless bio-intensive farming. Students can work there for up to three
years. They've got three acres under intensive use. Sandy soil, foggy
coastline. Little noticed and little understood. Amazing diversity and
health. Walked in on one of the fattest leeks I've ever seen. Patrick, a
wise, wise-cracking Irishman and Alaine, a beautiful and thoughtful
youngster, hold the operation together. They grow a great many flowers,
too. They had only one requrest: venidium seed. In particular, "zulu
prince" and they believe there's an orange as well as a white venidium out
there. I fell head over heels in love with the plant. Does anyone have any
seed they can share with this magnificent exercise in beauty and truth?
600 square feet  worth? I understand the flower is originally outta south
Africa. It was the English sage, Brian Eno, who said, "We gotta get more
Africa into the west." Amen to that. Alaine's email is
alaine@hypocrisy.org

I wasn't able to touch base with a permie crowd in Santa Cruz. Alaine
didn't know of anyone. I have a sense that the horticultural impetus
around SC has been deeply influenced by the Chadwick biointensive farming
thang. In truth I sense the tendency toward annuals, on their plot as well
as at other dirt-poor gardening projects I've encountered, is deeply
influenced by the lack of certainty surrounding the use of their land. The
Homeless Garden Project's land tenure, though gifted with a peppercorn
rent, hangs by a thread. That Damoclean sword has crushed a couple of
projects I've encountered, and continues to sway planting strategies. We
recently lost a magnificent urban farm to the bulldozers in Eugene - as
the church who gifted the use of the land, suddenly built on it. Food Not
Lawns lost a community-planted park to developers last year.

The day before Santa Cruz, wholly serendipitously, I found myself lodging
four blocks from the house that sits at the heart of the Oakland urban
permie set. Oakland is a big American city. Arguably the most impressive
zine I've ever encountered on any topic, "The Guerilla Girls Guide to
Greywater Management" - as fat as a book and now in its second edition,
hails from that house. In the circles in which I move, this particular
zine has emerged as the definitive urban greywater treatment text. I'm
away from contact info just now (van broke down and is in the garage
getting fixed) but will forward their details to the list should anyone be
interested in chasing down a copy. I'm also carrying a copy should anyone
wish to photocopy it along our route.

One thing led to another, and after I'd checked out the Oakland greywater
scene and dropped a buncha seed on them, a passing gardener happened by
and offered to lead me off to the Bay Area Seed Exchange Library at the
Eco-Literacy Center in Berkeley. She handed me a large box and said, "Help
yourself." Left me alone for a couple of hours. I had mysself some fun.

n.

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide
the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and
endless sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery