It's a Thorny Situation

The update on the Basilica/Dunwoody Gardens at Loring Crossings is long past due. After more than a year of neighborhood activists, local business people and other members of the community attempting to work with the City to arrive at a solution to cleaning up this area, a representative from a City Councilperson's office hosted a meeting of all interested parties and progress seemed to be in the works. While individuals were not going to be allowed to participate legally with the clean-up, businesses or non-profit organizations that would sign a liability insurance waiver could make agreements with the City and organize teams to do the clean-up and install new landscapes.

Unfortunately, this happy plan is falling apart. Apparently, signing an insurance waiver is no longer sufficient. The participating businesses must purchase an encroachment permit and add a rider for $500,000 in coverage naming the City as additional insured. Further, it seems that at least one participating business was being 'encouraged' to hire the landscape architect firm of the City's choosing. The City also declines to pay for the water to maintain any installations. The water bills would be the responsibility of the participating businesses. So far there are no businesses or organizations that can afford or are willing to take on all of these requirements.

Some neighbors are concerned that, not only is a lot of trash being trapped in the brush, but that as it becomes tinder dry, it is a fire hazard. Bonfire anyone?

The immediate goal isn't to relandscape this area, but to clean out the dead roses. The challenge right now is debris removal. There will be alot, and there will be a cost to hauling it away responsibly. Coordination efforts to manage that are now in the works on a guerrilla level. We'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, Saturday May 1 is International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day. At 10:00 am on that day you can go to this location and get some sunflower seeds to plant in support of gg efforts around the world to fight the filth with forks and flowers.

See you at the garden.

Marilyn Benjamin, my friend...who are you?

In profile statements it seems that Foreclosure Park was my first Guerrilla Garden. Not so. In the early years of occupying my former home, I caught sight of this sign. Barely visible from the street only steps away, the sign was covered by scrubby brush that had grown up around it.

It seemed not a good idea to leave a memorial garden untended and five or six years ago, I began cleaning it up and renovating it. It has been a slow process. Over time, I have cut down probably 20 volunteer scrub trees. These trees created too much shade for a Butterfly Garden to thrive. Gradually, with repeated applications of Round-Up concentrate, cutting, and burying stumps under mounds of black compost, and amending, amending, amending the soil, this year the garden promises to emerge from its chrysalis and qualify again as a true Butterfly Garden.

I hope Marilyn Benjamin would be pleased. I don't know who she is. I've made some minimal efforts to find out, but no luck. If anybody can fill me in, I would be ever so pleased.

BTW--Friend Horace (see Foreclosure Park 4.9.2010 post) lives across the street from this garden. I was pulling Creepy Charlie out of the bed last night and he came over to visit. He has grown more frail since I last saw him, but in general seems well.

The Ants Go Marching One by One...

...Hurrah! Hurrah! Somebody once told me that when the ants wake up and start making their ant hills it's ok to plant. I noticed ant hills, lots of them, in the cracks of the sidewalks around Foreclosure Park on April 5th. For any readers out in the wider world, we are talking Zone 4, Minneapolis here. The thought of planting in early April is crazy. It's been interesting observing the gardens waking up this year, though. Some of the minor bulbs came 2 weeks early. Others I haven't seen at all. Does that mean they aren't coming to the party, or they know how to read the calendar? The daffodils that are supposed to bloom the same time as the early iris look like they might be done before the irises get their buds. So much for that combination!

It's like that with the visitors to Foreclosure Park, too. Like the scilla and the daffodils, Musician Paul and Teacher Vant stopped to wish me a Happy Spring and said they'd been wondering when I was going to get to the cleaning. Like the crocus and muscari, I haven't seen my elder friends Horace and Nina yet. Joe came by though. He asked me to do the math to figure out how old he is, and was tickled I got it right. 81-years-old last November. I got to hear again the story of how he gave up his retirement lake home Up North to live out his days in town with his wife. They've been married 54 years, so he thought he'd stick it out with her. I promised to look for some bush cucumber plants for him. The other kind send vines across the driveway. That's apartment living for you.

In spite of the massive snow mounds dumped at Foreclosure Park last winter, just about all the perennials show promise of returning. The exception being my cherished Cary Grant Hybrid Tea Rose. Sigh. It wasn't really hardy to Zone 4, but I was hoping! I called the nursery that sells them and got a release for sale date, so I will be replacing it in May. Right on time, not too early, not too late. For sure.

Living the Lush Life

I've been told, and I know it's true, that sometimes I seem standoffish. Even when I am working in the garden. Appearances being different from reality--at least most of the time--it's more likely that I am lost in my thoughts, or I am focused on my work. Or that I am trying not to puke. As rewarding as guerilla gardening is, at times, especially during spring clean-up, it can be dirty, disgusting work.

On March 17, St. Patrick's Day, I went to clean up the Lush Life Garden. This space is mostly filled in with juniper shrubs and is located behind a bus stop at a key intersection in the neighborhood. Clean-up here doesn't mean clearing out leaf mulch and plant debris. It is plucking empty liquor bottles and paper beverage cups out of the juniper, sweeping up cigarette butts, and raking over vomit. Somebody else's, not mine. I discovered a used condom, but actually found some charm in that. It was bright kelly green, and being it was St. Patrick's Day and all...it seemed a good fit (for the garden).

Once the filth-fighting was accomplished, the light began to return to my outlook. GG Sean came by to say hello. Sean works at the bar across the street and did the mulching and some planting at Lush Life. I showed him how the RadRazz Knockout Roses his brother planted survived the winter. He talked about wanting to rip out all the juniper and replace it with hosta. I almost sent him away. We noted bulb graves planted last fall are resurrecting tulips and daffodils. It won't be long. The days of lusty lushful living are upon us.