Humanize the Earth!

Since my last update about my Marshall Square Parkway Garden Club C3 project update, I’ve spoken with Laura about the corner store being our first planting location on May 19th and with Marissa about ordering supplies from the city. Yay! Please let me know if you can come that day. I’ll be announcing the time once I know when I can pick up the supplies.

Right on, Michael!

what’s really wrong with public transit?

To start: there isn’t enough of it, of decent quality, interconnected and given priority.

I was in last fall’s Chicago Conservation Corps leader class, and wow, does it ever seem like the winter’s been long, with respect to my project. Don’t get me wrong, I love winter. Anyway, just wanted to report a wonderful conversation with folks at my local corner store tonight.

I don’t speak much Spanish, and the owners don’t speak much English, but I go in there all the time and we pretend we’re communicating. We’ve talked in the past about them selling recycled paper products and also about the possibilities of me getting ahold of free plants to beautify the parkways in the neighborhood. We’ve talked about it a couple of times, but never (until tonight) with any actual communication taking place. :-)

So tonight I went into the store with a 4-pack of recycled toilet paper to show them, and ask them to stock. We we around and around in circles between me and the wife and the husband, without anyone really knowing what we were talking about. Eventually they called their daughter to come translate. She explained to her folks and thought that they’d be able to get recycled products from their regular supplier. We exchanged phone numbers and some more chit chat, and then …

her mom talked about the free plants I’d talked about before. So I explained a bit about C3 and the East Village parkways and how we could do that in our neighborhood as well. Turns out she’s on the board of the Little Village Development Council, or something like that, and can see big visions of doing the whole street. I’m all for that, and also am realistic that sometimes small projects go smoother than big ones, so I talked about doing one parkway, and then another, and then another. She suggested the corner store as the first site! Awesome!

So now I need to get everything in gear for supplies we need and then pick a date for planting!

Lars asked me about vermicomposting, so I thought I’d post some more details. I wrote before about the plastic containers with whole drilled in for air flow. In went shredded paper. In went some sprinkled water to make the paper damp, like a wrung-out spong, and in went the worms (red wigglers) and some food for them. Since then, I’ve more or less neglected them and all’s well. I put food in from time to time and check to make sure they’re not drowning or all dried out, but they’ve been fine. Feel free to ask more questions, but that’s about all I know so far. :-)