Flower of the Day: March 6th 2017

Since I’m not sure which flower Cee is picking for her flower of the day today (I see some tulips and daffodils and maybe a lily), I am posting a favorite photo I took a while back. These are tulips.

The flowers in my yard don’t look this pretty. At the moment, they are just starting to bloom. I have citrus trees, narcissus, miniature roses, mums, petunias, clematis, lilies, and a few others. The ones that grow best are the weeds (clematis vines cover everything)!

I was going to work in the yard this weekend and start planting. I have grapes, raspberries, pomegranate and lots of flowers to plant. It’s been raining all weekend and so I’m waiting for things to dry out. I think that’s what killed so many of my plants last year. It rained so much right after I planted them. I hope we don’t have floods like we did last year again (supposedly a 500 year flood), but the forecast is calling for rain all week and there are flood warnings out for the rivers again already. 🙁

Fruit Tree Projects

Communities Grow Stronger with Fruit Tree Projects – Community – Utne Reader.

I think this is a great idea and hope it spreads even further. I’d like to see it ‘go viral’, spread world wide, everybody getting involved! It has already spread from Santa Cruz, California all the way to Vancouver, to Australia, and even Fiji! 🙂

I have always hated to waste anything. Especially food. Maybe it has something to do with growing up where my parents always insisted I clean my plate. They warned about the ‘starving children in Africa’. I never figured out how my clean plate would help those starving children, but had to play along anyway.

I’m still a member in good standing of the ‘Clean Plate Club’. I’m sure I’m fatter then I should be because of it. I am working towards creating less waste in my kitchen and everywhere else.

I’ve tried to grow a garden in the past, but because I spend so much time at sea, I have not had much success. I do have a lime tree that is making plenty of fruit. Way more than I could ever use. I hate to see them just rotting in the driveway, so I already told my neighbors to just take whatever they want.

I think it would be a great idea if more people could do the same sort of thing. Like the article mentions, these fruit tree projects not only provide much needed and appreciated fresh fruits, but they build community in the process. They also teach useful skills and promote sustainability. I think they are probably fun too!

I’m not sure what the heck is going on in the US lately with the local vendetta on gardening. We used to encourage everyone to grow a garden. Now, we are allowing localities to force people to tear them up?!? WTF???

I remember a few years ago, my town forced my neighbors across the street to tear out the garden they had in their back yard. Supposedly it was illegal! Illegal to grow a garden? Behind a fence? On your OWN land???? In America, the land of the FREE??? I would have sued the SH*T out of them for a HUGE violation of my property rights!

If you want to tell me what I can do with MY land, then YOU can pay the mortgage and the taxes and every other expense. Then, and ONLY then, will it be your land. That’s when YOU get to decide what to do with it. After all, ownership implies being able to USE the thing you own. If you can’t use it, then you don’t really own it.

Apparently, this abuse of local tyrants citing ‘loss of property values’ as some kind of holy grail is spreading like wildfire around the nation. Here’s a link to an article from just the other day…http://www.care2.com/causes/why-are-cities-attacking-home-gardeners.html.

I really hope enough people are outraged by this kind of thing and will get out and raise holy hell with their city councils and homeowners associations and put a stop to this kind of thing.

Help out by signing the petition, Miami Shores: Let Couple Keep Their Vegetable Garden! – The Petition Site, watch the video and give a hand to the Institute for Justices’ Food Freedom Initiative (www.ij.org/foodfreedom) which is trying to help the couple involved in this latest outrage and by extension all the rest of us. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=avHrPbONTzE

Property values are NOT the be all and end all of the value of a neighborhood. In fact, they are probably far down the list for many people. Friendliness and community spirit are probably up there pretty high. I know they are for me. 🙂

Bringing Life Back to Soil

Bringing Life Back to Soil.

Another interesting article from Utne Reader this morning. Since we’ve started our “Liberty Garden” (at my local Campaign for Liberty meetup group), I’ve been paying a lot more attention to this kind of thing.

I’ve been trying to get things to grow around my house ever since I got my own place. When I had other people living there, I thought maybe I could grow an actual garden. Yeah, riiiiight…. I left it all nice and healthy, when I came home after 2-3 months at sea everything was either eaten up or covered with weeds 🙁 Since then, I’ve given up on a formal ‘garden’ and have been just trying to find things that will grow by themselves. Things I can leave alone and don’t have to worry about tending to.

So far, I’ve tried grapes, almonds, pineapples, oranges, limes, lemons, pomegranates, apples, pears. So far, the only thing I have had produce anything is the lime tree. It just loads up with little green limes that turn orange later on. I almost had a pineapple a couple years back but then it froze 🙁 I guess its not cold enough for the almonds, will have to switch back to peaches tho I really don’t like peaches nearly as much as almonds. Everything else is too young to know if they will eventually produce or not.

Oh yeah, the roses are hanging in there. I have canna lilies that do real well. I also have mimosas that just won’t stop ( I whack them down every time I come home and they’re back again when I get off). The clematis is so pretty but grows like a WEED and covers everything! Anybody know how the hell to get it to STOP??!!? Its growing all in my grass and mowing it doesn’t really help much. I pull it all off the other plants when I get home, but it just comes back even worse! I think its this one- Sweet Autumn Clematis (Clematis terniflora).

Clematis terniflora

Eating Rich, Living Poor – Mind & Body – Utne Reader

Eating Rich, Living Poor – Mind & Body – Utne Reader

I can really relate to this writer. I have had food issues almost my entire life. I can hardly imagine what it would be like if I had to go through the same thing. I do really appreciate the whole idea of becoming more attentive to GOOD food. Growing your own if possible, learning how to preserve and prepare it. I’d like to be able to grow a garden again, but it doesn’t work while I’m still sailing and gone for so long.