(Nothing But) Flowers

I’m sure at least some of you heard about the NYT article that came out last week discussing how the Bush adminsitration refused to open an email report from the EPA and placed it in limbo status. This was not just any document but was, according to the article, “the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment.”
Last Wednesday Jon Stewart put together a piece called “Be Patient, This Gets Amazing!” on this (watch the show intro & through the first 5 minutes). This is absolutely nuts to me that they could get away with this, but Stewart’s right: it does get amazing(ly mundane) how many stories we’ve heard like this.

OK, I was wary of Gavin Newsome when he came into office but have to give him & San Francisco some kudos for some of the programs & changes that have happened there since he took office.
Just found out that SF is sponsoring a 2-year pilot program to establish victory gardens throughout the city. For those who don’t know, victory gardens were the food gardens that Americans were encouraged to grow during WWII to save fuel from going into food production. With it looking like we are either at or fast-approaching peak oil, the time is near for more of these sorts of projects.

Boston, by chance, has the last remaining original victory gardens in the park along the Fenway. Worth a walk-through if you are ever in the city!

Check out this post on the Rooftop Gardening website about the very cool rooftop garden that the Food Project maintains at the Boston Medical Center. Most of the food grown here gets sold at lower than market rates in the Roxbury-Dorchester area and also donated to food shelters around Boston. Yours truly helped with laying down watering pipes and planting some of the plants in the rows in the first pic (although I ended up planting ‘em too close together).
I have to admit to some weird obsessing on the idea of rooftop gardening– the other day when some friends described how they were going to build a deck over the garage behind their apartment, all I could think was: but, you could create a great rooftop garden up here! Luckily, I wasn’t geeky enough to say this to them. Kept it in my geeky little brain until writing it down now.

I bet many of you may have already seen these videos since I tend to be waaay behind on my pop culture references.

But, for those of you who haven’t seen them yet, you gotta watch this skit by Sarah Silverman telling Jimmy Kimmel that she’s (bleep)ing Matt Damon. Even better, is Jimmy Kimmel’s response. Believe me, these are well worth 5 minutes of your time, I almost died laughing.

OK, so this is probably only of interest to me (as much of this blog is!), but here’s a pic of our community garden plot. We just set it up this weekend, located in the Brookside Community Garden (behind Ula Cafe). We’ve got strawberries, lettuce, oregano, mint, 3 types of tomatoes, eggplant and cucumbers going right now. Cranberry beans, basil and chard are on the way! I’ll try to document as the summer moves along. . .