First Garden Workday of the School Year

Come on out and garden with a South LA Elementary School!

Guerrilla Garden Expert Bulbil let me know about a gardening event in South LA happening this Saturday, October 24th, 2009. It’ll be from 9am-12pm at the 24th Street Elementary School Garden. Sounds pretty neat-o. Make friends with them on facebook and then you’ll be in the know for some gardening awesomeness. Info and links below:

We look forward to seeing everyone at our first workday of the school year, Saturday, 10/24 (9am-12pm) at the 24th Street School! Please mark your calendars. Bring your garden gear (garden gloves, some water, sunscreen, a shovel or pitchfork). We will be catching up on our fall planting, building some infrastructure, making new beds, and many other tasks.

The address is: 2055 West 24th Street, Los Angeles

From the I-10 Freeway: take the “Western Avenue” exit (3 miles west of downtown) and head south on Western. Take a right turn on 24th Street. The school and parking lot will be on the right-hand side on the east side of school. There will be plenty of street parking as well. Look for the banner reading “24th Street School Workday” and enter through those gates.

We are fortunate to have our partners from RootDown LA, Megan Hansen and Katy Atkiss, providing us all a delicious meal!

We look forward to seeing you then

LINKS:

Facebook Link to the event Here

Garden School Foundation Blog

Bulbil’s Website

 

Guerrilla Gardening this Saturday

And the season begins!!

If you folks want to start Guerrilla Gardening, you can come out this Saturday Oct 17th at 5pm. I just got this email with the details from my buddy Bulbil.

Hi,

I know it’s kind of short notice but with the rain coming I can’t think of a better time to plant some plants guerrilla style. We are going to be doing a planting (replacing some plants) at the Van Ness and Harold Way garden behind the Dennys (at the Sunset exit to the south bound 101 freeway) this Saturday at about 5PM. And there will be a weeding event at the same time across the freeway at the Sunset and Wilton garden (at the Sunset exit to the north bound 101 ).

The LA Guerrilla Gardeners group will be having a meeting very near these sites from 3 till 5PM then we are going over to work in the gardens. I’ve copied their email about their event below. It has a link to a map to the house for the meeting but here’s the address in case I do something wrong and the link doesn’t work – 1922 Taft Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90068

If you can’t make the meeting at 3 maybe you can still help out in the gardens at 5.

I think all you’ll need is some gloves but if you have a tool or two you like to work with feel free to bring them.

I hope to see you there–

Scott

AKA bulbil321
http://socalguerrillagardening.org/

 

It looks like Rain!

Yippie! Whoo hoo for grey skies. This is the start of fall here in LA which means it’s the perfect time to plant stuff. Yes, you heard that right, not spring, but fall. Everywhere else spring is the #1 time to plant. Here in LA spring is #2, and fall is #1.

Which also means it’s the best time of the year to seed bomb. Coming soon to a 110 freeway near me. COLOR! In a couple weeks I’m planning on gathering a crew to seed bomb the shit out of South LA. Specifically a good portion of the 110. The 405 freeway will cry with jealousy.

 

South LA and The Gays

I was talking to a friend of mine (who lives in West Hollywood) about South Central and it’s awesomeness. He had this question for me: “What does South L.A. think of the gays?”

Honestly, at the time I didn’t know. There’s very much a live and let live policy that goes on here. Some of my friends use to practice their punk band in my garage and my neighbors never had a problem with it. (We always stopped when it started to get late.) The house across the street from me has a party once a year that goes until 2am. But again, it’s once a year. I don’t mind and neither do any of my other neighbors. Life is meant to be lived. Other than that my street is pretty quiet. Really, really quiet. When I lived in San Francisco neighbors sucked. Anytime me, or anyone I know had a get together, the cops would always get called. My old friends, Leslie, Daniel and I would try and throw a party about once a year and it was always a pain in the ass. Come on people. Once a year is not a big deal.

So with this, live and let live, mentality that South LA seems to run on I figured it would apply to Gay friendliness as well, but I wasn’t sure. My friend then asked me: “Well how did everyone respond to Prop 8? Were there protests? Celebrations?”

I didn’t really notice anything one way or the other. So I checked around. This is what I found. There were “No on Prop 8″ rallies and protests showing strong gay support in South LA. According to this short LA Times article here there was a rally in Leimert Park nearly 1,000 strong with clergy members and gay couples that support gay marriage.

Photos by Zeal Harris:

Photos by Zeal Harris

Photos by Zeal Harris

Photos by Zeal Harris

Photos by Zeal Harris

Check out more photos here.

 

More Light Rail?

You mean I could take a light rail to the Airport? Like I use to do when I lived in San Francisco? (Map Here)

Well, LA is looking to become more and more of a “real city.” I just read an article and watched a video about a possible Light Rail from Wilshire to LAX. It’s called the Crenshaw Transit Corridor Project. It would run from Wilshire and La Brea into South LA and over to LAX. It would have connection points with the Expo (I’ve written about the Expo line before. It’s running along Exposition Blvd and should be up and running next summer (2010) and Green Lines and possibly the Purple Line if that gets extended.

L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas is stoked about this project. He set up a website (here) to let people know when the public meetings are, see the proposed map and watch videos. Good work Mr. Ridley-Thomas.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkwCM_AgZ_4&hl=en&fs=1&

 

How Sweet Is This?

 

I know, I know

Hi kiddies! I’ve been a busy busy bee this summer, but now I’m back in blogging action. Just to celebrate. Here’s a video for you all. Love it. Make out with it.

 

Toured it

I finally went on that LA Eco Home tour I told you guys about. I highly recommend it.  The lady’s home is pretty sweet. She’s got solar panels, solar hot water heater, a ton of trees (drought tolerant in the front and tons of fruit trees in the back), learned some little things I can do to improve the insulation of my house, (Keeping cool air inside in the summertime and warm out. Keeping warm air inside in the wintertime and cold air out.) raised bed gardens, composting, greywater system etc…

The only problem I had is that I wanted more. More information. I already know all these things exist. What I was really hoping for was something more detailed. I want to go under the house and see how the piping actually WORKS for the greywater system. (And then, in a perfect world) go away with plans on how to make one myself.

Poo! Maybe the greywater will have to wait. Or maybe I need to make more “green” buddies? Find a “green” guru. Maybe more “green” folks will move into my neighborhood and we can exchange info…Drop some knowledge bombs on each other…. That would be rad.

The tour got me to thinking, maybe there are some folks out there that don’t know about some of the little things we an all do around our homes. In the coming weeks I’m thinking of adding a “Knowledge Bombs” section to the blog. Let me know what shit you folks want to learn about. We’ll start with the basics.

Anywhoo, check out the pics. She’s does have a really sweet home.

 

South Los Angeles… Wetlands?

South Los Angeles is making moves. Serious moves. Apparently the city is transforming a former Metro bus yard at 5413 Avalon Blvd into the “South Los Angeles Wetlands Park.” Yay for us. And if you all forgot, we’re also getting a light rail along Exposition Blvd (Phase one is from downtown to Culver City) which will be done by summer of 2010 (Phase Two extends it all the way to the beach in Santa Monica.) The 9 acre wetlands park (phase one) is also going to be done in 2010. December is the word. June 11th was the ground breaking so things are officially underway.  The computer renderings look amazing. I hope it lives up to the dream. It’ll be nice to have some more green space in South L.A. And 9-acres worth, even more awesome! Looking at the drawings for the Exposition light rail, the plans for that include green space on either side and a bike path. So those two projects alone are going to give us some serious greening up.

This is all really good news to me. I just got back from a trip to beautiful Seattle. I love that city. Everything is so green and healthy there. I come back to LA and it hurts. LA may have sunny skies but this city is so damn grey. Grey concrete everywhere. It kills me on the inside.

This wetlands news is such a breath of fresh air. And it will be, literally.

For more photos and articles about the wetlands check out these links:

LAist

View From A Loft

Curbed Los Angeles

 

I made jam last night. I even picked the nectarines from my backyard. Yay for me!

Sooooo, in the city of Los Angeles it is very very tough to find canning jars. Most of the places I called (Osh, Home Depot, Smart&Final) no longer carried them. I ended up getting mine at Target. Next time I’ll plan ahead and order them online. For some reason pretty much every time I try and get something in an actual store it ends up being a huge headache.

If you’ve never made jam before it’s one of those funny things that’s really easy but hard at the same time. This was my first time making jam as an adult. I did it a few times as a kid with my great-grandmother. But I remember very little about the process.

I followed these instructions for nectarine jam that I found online:

So the basics. You need to sterilize your jars. You can do that by putting them in boiling water, or the dishwasher. You want the jars to be hot when you put the jam in so you don’t break the jars.

I highly suggest having the right tools. I am going to buy some jar tongs before I try canning anything again. I tried to use the regular tongs I had and it was a horrible idea. Even though I tested them out beforehand to make sure they’d pick up the jars, when the tongs got hot they didn’t work. I am going to buy some specific jar tongs.

I learned this the hard way. When I went to pick up a jar from the boiling water it dropped back into the water splashing me in the face. I ran to the sink to splash cold water on my face repeatedly. I didn’t have a lot of time, because everything has to be done hot, and right then. (You can’t let your jam boil to long or it gets weird.) I didn’t have time to run out and cut some aloe, so my solution was to then run to the fridge and rub a stick of butter on my face. Yes, yes I did. And now I’m telling you all about it.

I proceeded to make jam with a buttery face and got everything done on schedule. It was weird smelling butter for most of the night.

Some things I learned in the jam making process:

1. Have the right tools.
   You’re dealing with a lot of boiling/hot things. Boiling water, boiling jam. For safety it’s best to have the proper supplies. And if you plan on making more jam (which I TOTALLY DO!) it’s probably worth it just to buy the darn tongs, and a funnel.
2. It’s not as hard as I thought it was going to be.
   I looked all over the internet, read different recipes and instructions and at the end of the day, it’s just a recipe. A recipe like any other. If you can make cookies, you can make jam. It did take me most of the night, cause I kept re-reading the instructions and didn’t have things timed right, but I feel really confident that next time I do it, it won’t be so confusing.
3. The box of pectin comes with a bunch of recipes.
   Kind of like how the bag of chocolate chip cookies tells you how to make the cookies. The box of pectin tells you what you need to do and has recipes for different fruits. Pectin is what makes the jam “set”. (So it’s not runny.) Pectin comes in different varieties. Regular sugar, low sugar, and no sugar varieties. I suggest the low or no sugar. The low sugar still has a lot of sugar in my opinion, and the regular kind suggests twice as much. (3 cups of sugar for 6 cups of fruit, vs. 7 cups of sugar for 6 cups of fruit.) A little overkill in the sugar department.

Supplies you need to make jam:

• Big pot with a lid, for boiling the jars (before you put jam in them and after)
• Big pot for boiling the jam
• Jar Tongs (Get the jar tongs)
• Metal funnel (To put the jam in the jars. Unless your big jam pot has a spout for pouring.) Get the metal one, cause you can boil it to sterilize it. A plastic one you can’t sterilize cause it’ll melt.

This is what you need at the very very least. I think I’m going to go ahead and buy one of those $30 kits. Seems worth it to me.

And that my friends is how I make some jam.