Tomorrow, we move to the East Side

Just a reminder that tomorrow we will be attacking with our second garden, on Austin's East Side. We'll be meeting at Megan's house, a lovely menagerie of pets and materials in the area of Springdale and Webberville. Then we will proceed to a traffic circle and turn it into a garden. Hooray! If you are not on the email list and want to come, please email for directions.

This weekend I spent a wonderful evening at Megan's other gardening project (the hardest-working community-minded gardener in Austin, she is), Quilumbo. It's located not too far from where we will be tonight. The goal of the night was to create a raised bed and a sign for the garden's entrance. With the help of some kids and parents with handy construction skills, we were enormously successful. A bonus point is that it was really fun. Here are some pictures:

A photographic tour of our veggie garden

Our sign: Large, beautiful, stuck in the ground.

The tepee: Good-looking and functional.

The peas aspiring to climb up the tepee.

Zucchini squash.

The tomato plant's first blooms.

Can someone please identify if this is a weed? We neglected to mark what and where we planted. Besides for the tomato. We know what that is.

Also, Renee Studebaker of the Statesman has a short report on our first mission up on her blog. She posted a couple photos of the Posse in action, as well.

Last night at 34 & Guadelupe

The nice thing about a guerrilla garden is that even though the guerrilla gardeners move on, the garden continues to grow. I love the idea of the Garden Posse leaving a footprint of growing things all around the city. That, and Garden Posse signs. We finally got our sign painted last night, and planted it firmly in the garden. As I noticed at my bus stop this morning, you can read and admire the words "Garden Posse" from across the street! It's kind of like the Great Wall of China, in some ways - visible from a great distance.

We also set up the tepee for the peas to climb, and between the sign, and the tepee, our little plot's guerrilla garden qualities have gained prominence on the street. (Yes, I will post photos soon.)

The Posse was also excited about gaining some new members, and a visit by a small girl who liked to garden at her school but did not like pizza. She did, however, enjoy playing in the rocks outside the pizza place.

Okay, but the business. We decided our next site will be a traffic triangle near Megan's home on Austin's East Side, near Webberville and Springdale. We'd like to plant a peach tree there. So Megan will be taking charge of site design, and creating a list of needed materials. This is to be standard practice for Garden Posse members who wish to host a guerrilla garden near their homes. And then we'll all collaborate on collecting these materials and planting.

We also discussed Emily's suggestion of gardening the vacant lots on East Riverside, where she was accosted by a man seeking female spit. We decided this would require additional site planning and we would make it an upcoming project. Today, however, I awoke to the news on KUT that there's a neighborhood meeting TONIGHT on a new master plan for East Riverside. The "vacant lots" were specifically mentioned as opportunities for development. Perhaps we should mention that vacant lots are also opportunities for community gardens?

The meeting is tonight in the Travis High School Cafeteria. The City of Austin has more information.

Also, I've put a poll up on the blog to vote on a Garden Posse logo. You can vote until the end of September, and the poll will be part of a continuing discussion on a logo. I think we can agree that polls don't decide anything themselves.

Guerrilla park in Austin

One day, a man named Joe Zamecki got tired of seeing trash stored in the open space behind the fence across from his North Austin apartment complex. This video is the story of the ongoing conversion.

A post on guerrillagardening.org's community board for Austin tells that the project now involves a vegetable garden. Nice!

It's not all about gardening

Sometimes, it's time to garden. And sometimes, it's time to get together and eat some food and drink some beer. For the Garden Posse, that time was last night. We gathered in my tiny studio apartment and talked about things that are not gardens or potential gardens. Like Sarah Palin, for example. Sarah Palin is not a garden, nor does she inspire us to garden. She just inspires us - and the entire country - to talk about her.

But anyhow. The potluck was fun and delicious, and I made my first ever panazella, for which the recipe is here, if you're interested in recreating a special moment. And then you can invite us all over to your house to share.

I keep forgetting to mention that someone left a garden temper with a blue handle behind on the very first dig. I put it in a prominent place in my house last night, but again forgot to mention it. Apparently this hand tool is very forgettable. If you forgot it, and you want it back, let me know. Otherwise, I'll count it as a donation and try to figure out how to use it.

So next week, we'll return for the final week to the garden at 34th & Guadelupe. Then, we'll decide where to move our roaming garden posse next. Maybe we'll just close our eyes and zoom in on a Google map of Austin. Or we could make a responsible decision. Who knows? Come and find out.




Oh, and a note on the blog: I've transferred ownership to a new Garden Posse account. Now you can contact us at gardenposse@gmail.com. And now you can also contribute to the blog, when you email gardenposse@gmail.com and say that's what you would like to do. Wouldn't you? But if you are more of the spectator/lurker type, you can request to receive an email every time this blog is updated. Technology offers something for everyone.

Garden arts n'crafts

Hey, does anyone want to make a moss terrarium?


It could be kind of guerrilla, you know, taking moss from forests. Maybe later we could deposit them outside fifth-grade science classrooms, so kids wouldn't have to do their homework.

For more nice nature crafts, click here.

Establishing the pizza crop and a garden schedule

Last night the Garden Posse returned to the guerrilla garden at 34th & Guadelupe. In the week since it was born, our first garden has begun to sprout. Cucumber and squash seedlings have poked their heads above the soil, and peas and cosmos are making tiny appearances. Our leggy tomato plant continues to signify the vegetable garden, and the flower border is making it all look pretty.

(Photographs will be added here)

I've been watering the garden - across from my bus stop - with thanks to the generosity of Salvation Pizza. The owner, as he helped me wrench the spigot open (it's child-proof), offered that he would be willing to trade us basil for pizza, if we grew a crop in our garden. They go through 4 - 5 lbs of basil a week.

Salvation Pizza is really good. So, I got some basil. We now have a whole basil section of the guerrilla garden. Here's hoping that it will yield a pizza. (The pizza plant! Anyone seen Wall-E?)

We also fattened up the flower border, with plants courtesy of the Shoal Creek Nursery. And Megan and Travis put together a tepee for the peas to climb up. This morning I found it blown over onto the basil, and I had to do a bit of salvage work. Soon that will be anchored down, and we'll have a real structure in our garden.

We were also planning to put up a Garden Posse sign, but the arts n'crafts portion of the evening fell through, as the art shop I was planning to get paint apparently only sells tiny mosaic pieces. So that will get done next week.

Speaking of next week, and the whole future ahead of us, you'll see that we've added an "Upcoming Events" calendar in the upper-right corner of the blog. Last night we worked out a rough schedule on a 4-week cycle.

Week 1 - establish new garden
Week 2 - maintain/expand new garden
Week 3 - do something fun, potentially involving beer
Week 4 - final return to garden

All meetings are Tuesday, at 8pm, unless otherwise noted. The schedule is, of course, subject to change. We're also planning on trips to Blackland Learning Garden, Quilombo Communal Garden, garden art projects, seed bombs, and plant give-aways. So many possibilities! The Posse also spoke of guerrilla gardening bus stops and guerrilla plant propagation.

So next week, according to "Upcoming Events," we'll be meeting at my house for a potluck and sign painting session. I'll be sending more details (such as where I live) in an email. If you're not on the list and you want to be, leave your contact info in the comments.