able gardener 1 September Post

The past few weeks, I am thinking about food security and the labour of those who cultivate the food we eat. I have been working as a TA for a course on Global Education and Social Justice for pre-service teachers and we have been discussing migrant justice issues… we have just finished readings about migrant farm workers. In particular I am thinking about Deborah Barndt’s work on the Tomasita Project, which is described in her book Tangled Routes. Barndt traces the path of the tomato from cultivation to packaging and marketing in North American supermarkets. Again, I think the Children’s Garden could draw links to these readings. I think many educators underestimate young children’s understanding of social, political and economic issues, and the kind of analysis they are capable of.

Resilience alliance

research on resilience in socio-ecological systems

Do corn, beans and squash as a companion planting which survives brutal construction zone conditions constitute a system with built in resiliences?

Chris Turner (p.37) author of “The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need” quotes Brian Walker of the Resilience Alliance: “With resilience …we kind of embrace uncertainty. And we try to say that the minute you get too certain, as if you know what the answer is, you’re likely to come unstuck. You need slack in the system. You need to have the messiness that enables self-organization in the system in ways that are not predictable. The best goal is to try to build a general resilience. Things like having strong connectivity, but also some modularity in the system so it’s not all highly connected everywhere. And lots of diversity”.

able 1 Spiral

August: Barb. Pat and I worked with clay, placing spirals around the garden. This visceral experience was fascinating… holding the clay facilitated a sense of wonder and appreciation for the growth of this garden… in spite of such adverse conditions, the garden continues to flourish… I am really moved by the resilience of these relatively small gardens surrounded by clattering and sputtering machines. I think it would make a wonderful metaphor for a children’s book… B’s project also reminds me of a children’s book I have been writing for some time. It is called The Spaghetti Garden and it is inspired by my friend who immigrated to Canada from Italy after the Second World War. She is an avid gardener and recounts stories describing the significance of her garden in her first years in Montreal. After9/11, she saw many parallels between how she was treated as an immigrant from a fascist society, and the emerging Islamaphobia at the time [of 9/11]. After watching the news, she would say to me: You have to remember that this was a time when most people in Montreal had never heard of spaghetti. Hearing her experiences as a young person in a new country made me think of her garden as a metaphor for resilience… and the resilience of the garden at Ottawa U reminds me of her stories.

able gardener 1 June post

The children’s garden is in the very early stages of growth and has an important presence near the education building. It is exciting to think about what will be cultivated and also the concept of it being a “post-colonial” garden. I really appreciate Barbara’s commitment to this project and her attention to the agricultural practices of first peoples. I am hopeful that a new generation of teachers will  be  attentive to issues of food security, and especially culturally-appropriate food. The post-colonial garden reminds me of an initiative in Toronto, the Afri-Can Food Basket, which was an important food security movement: http://www.africanfoodbasket.com/

One of the co-founders was a fellow student at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and he inspired so many people with his commitment to the cultivation of, and access to, healthy and culturally-appropriate food. As I left Ottawa U. I walked past an elementary school near the campus and saw kids playing beside oak trees and small bushes. It was exciting to envision them in the process of cultivating food in the school yard. Undoubtedly they would bring important skills to such initiatives, in addition to learning new ones. I think that kids also bring an important element of wonder. Holding a seed, placing it deep in the earth and knowing that food will be cultivated is a realization that must elicit wonder!

Square Foot gardeners

Last spring I worked with a bunch of neighbourhood kids through the local church to get a square foot garden growing. We ate our harvest two weeks ago in a party at my place. we had pesto, and noodles, tomatoes, and green beans. We did exactly no maintenance on the garden.

I was reminded of this when able gardener 1 gave me her notes to publish, and reminded of David Gruenewald’s (2007) questions in Place-Based Education in the Global Age Appendix ‘B’

photo essay, fruits

It was strange how the clay spiral returned as an unknowing contribution from the construction workers, in the form of a spiral of copper wire.

(the spacing between these photos is part of the wordpress program I can’t seem to clearly understand or edit for)

participants/collaborators

As this is a thesis project requiring  multiple perspectives, I have been very lucky to engage the attention of two participant/collaborators. I’m calling them able gardener 1 and able gardener 2. I am looking for another able gardener # 3, who will together with myself (principle researcher) make four sides to our container planters. I received notice from the Ethics Review Board today that I can go ahead with the project. As I sat on the edges of the mini wheatfield today chatting with able gardener 2, we noticed the tiny sproutings of hundreds of wheat seeds that were planted on Saturday.

Able Gardeners 1 and 2 are now “categorized”, which means that when they write something they will tag themselves and afterwards all their blog entries will organize themselves so that they can be read as separate streams as well as intertwined contributors to this blog.

Invasion of Wheat

I was quite in despair about the state of growth of my boxes and then as I left, I passed by the infernal petunia boxes, where I had planted the first batch of wheat last monday-  LOOK!  my wheat has come up as weeds!  I am thrilled to note that seeds CAN grow here (perhaps only monocultures).

My new participant/collaborator in this escapelot will be known as “able gardener 1“. There will be another voice, another plotter, another denizen of this space.