Strange Synergies and Curious Coincidences

Skip back a bit first, to Earth Day (April 22). We were on the road. We left Grant's Pass Oregon in the morning and when we checked out, the desk offered us some bottled water for the road. Normally I would decline but as I knew we were likely to be in the van for most of the next 8 hours, I accepted it. Before I stashed it in the back seat, I looked at the bottle and snorted because it had traveled about as far as we were going to; the water had been bottled in Hope, B.C.

Sticking with the Earth Day theme, further along the highway we hit a stretch where there was a lot of paper swirling around and a few miles later, we hit a flattened cardboard box -- I watched as the box exploded into shrapnel in the rear view mirror, shrapnel that thankfully seemed to keep close to the ground. Another few miles and we caught up to the culprit. A flatbed semi-trailer was laden with bales of recycled mixed paper, one of which had come undone and was leaving a trail of recyclables along the I-5. "Happy Earth Day," said Hubby.

Today is Tax Day here in Canada -- most of us had until midnight tonight to file (we filed yesterday). Coincidentally (or maybe not) Kiddo's school hosted a "Math Arcade" tonight (though I was dismayed when one of the problems she was asked to answer gave her the "correct" answer only when BODMAS rules were ignored. Grr.). Anyway, she was keen to go and proved it by doing all the upper grade sections first (and correctly, I might add). Hubby asked her at one point why she hadn't done our taxes. I told her next year she could -- I'm sure she can't be any less accurate than H&R Block.

Guerrillas on Campus

Regular readers know I am not one who loves lawns. They are great if you have kids or pets who need somewhere to run but in a city like ours, there are far better uses for land and I don't mean houses with bigger footprints. And don't get me started on golf courses.

I mean gardens. Food is ideal. Landscaping with native plants is good too. Hell, even reclaiming one's yard as a Garry Oak ecosystem would make me happy. That said, I'm not about to go ripping up someone else's lawn to make my point.

That's exactly what a Facebook group called "Urban Agriculture at UVic" did yesterday:

They started over the lunch hour and inside two hours, they had built an impressive little garden. Campus Security officers watched from a distance and called the Saanich Police who also observed before returning to other duties. Gardening continued. When I left work at 4 there were still people working at the details but the musicians had packed up and the crowds had long since dispersed. A coworker noted that when she left a lab at 9 pm the garden was still in place. On arriving this morning, it was all gone; it had been leveled before the janitorial staff arrived around 6 am:

The event was called Resistance is Fertile: a Food Democracy Teach-Out. Planning for the guerrilla garden/flash mob looks like it started last fall. The activists brought shovels, plants, musical instruments and a soundsystem. It's not clear where the dirt came from but the buckets I saw being used were the smokers' ashtrays (wonder where they dumped the butts?) and the rocks were removed from the retaining pond on the other side of the library.

I don't think it is a coincidence that this event was timed in the same week as a Campus Food Forum, hosted by the Campus Urban Agriculture Collective, part of the UVic Sustainability Project (which is student run and not affiliated with the Office of Campus Planning and Sustainability though they do work together on some fronts) and the Food Matters! Regional forum on food security, hosted by Capital Region -Food and Agriculture Initiatives Roundtable.

I do think it is unfortunate that all of this takes away from the very real issue of the relocation of the existing Campus Community Garden -- an issue which, coincidentally, prompted Hubby to suggest exactly this location as an option for the relocation; others have suggested the Cedar Hill Corner (aka CJVI lands).

While Twitter was a-buzz with the goings-on yesterday and my co-workers kept an eye on things out their office windows, the media was largely silent. Nothing was reported on either local evening newscast -- the only UVic story was about the rabbit problem on campus. However, this morning I did find a brief piece in the Times-Colonist: "Budding Gardeners Spring into Action at UVic."

So, what's next? This morning, as we sipped our coffee in the Bibliocafe, we watched a small subset of yesterday's guerrilla gardeners gather at the scene. Will they try again? Possibly. Will the University administration remove it again? Most definitely. Everything on campus needs to happen according to a plan -- it's not all about bureaucracy, either. Issues such as access, safety, maintenance and much more all have to be considered before any project begins whether it's a warehouse or a greenhouse.

To plant a garden is one thing, to maintain it is quite another. Even the most laissez-faire gardener like me has to devote a certain amount of time to weeding, thinning, watering, fertilizing, and general care. A lot happens between seed and harvest and I suspect that the enthusiasm these gardeners showed at the outset would wane long before the first carrot was ready to be plucked.

If you want to support urban agriculture on campus, please write a letter in support of the Campus Community Gardens. They've been growing food on campus since 1996 and any extra food is donated to the student food bank. There is currently a waiting list for plots -- tell Campus Planning and Sustainability that local food matters.




EDIT to ADD: At 1:00 today, a small group planted makeshift gravemarkers and three signs in the remains of yesterday's garden. They stood in a circle and held a memorial, leaving the signage behind.

Corvus v. Big Tobacco

Tuesday, I saw something that made me laugh riotously and wish I'd had my camera with me: a very rough looking crow (feathers sticking out at all angles, some bald patches) fished around outside a restaurant and hopped away with a cigarette in its beak. Yes, it looked like it wanted a smoke.

Hubby tried to get a photo with his cameraphone, but the crow dropped the cigarette. I expected the bird to give up and go on to something else. Instead, it started picking apart the cigarette and eating the tobacco.

That can't be good.

Then I wondered, can crows become addicted to nicotine? How about seagulls? I smell a nice juicy class action suit.....

Spreading love in toy form

I love the idea of The Toy Society -- it's a little like Bookcrossing but with hand-made plush toys instead. While I am tempted to send some Huggitz into the world this way, I would be crushed if they just vanished, as many of my Bookcrossing releases do, never to be heard from again.

Hey look, a meme!

It's been a long while since I've done one of these random this and that memes but, like Darren, I couldn't resist this one to make an album cover. The instructions:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

My results:

1. Article about Live under the sky, a jazz festival in Japan.
2. Quotation by Moliere, "To find yourself jilted is a blow to your pride. Do your best to forget it and if you don't succeed, at least pretend to."
3. Photo called "rosary sunset" by the half-blood prince. [Like Darren, I reloaded until I found a Creative Commons image; it only took one reload.]

My album cover:

I think the title reads better with live as in "live free or die" rather than "live, from New York..." but I'm pretty pleased that all those random things converged to create a believable album.