illegal wake time, justice gardens

i spent about 6 hours gardening with my parents a few days ago and my right shoulder, upper arm, & chest are in the final healing phase of that weird jello feeling you get from overuse. it feels good to get sweaty and filthy in the name of beautifying the earth. is it nerdy to like gardening so much? i scheduled the next garden club meeting for june 8th, wherein my friend and fellow garden nerd (sorry jared if you read that - the truth hurts!) will be talking more in depth about our plan to feed the homeless with our gardens. he has a great blog started up about justice gardens, hit it up folks. this idea springs from the idea of the victory gardens of wwii era but decidedly so it is a different sort of war effort involved. he and i have spent quite a bit of time talking on the phone, through email, brainstorming ideas how to get this idea Out There and into more hands (which means into more people's bellies). the idea so far i think, is for people to tithe their gardens and drop off the production to his house wherein we will prep the food and take it to a local home called rebecca's place, which is a home for women transitioning out of homelessness. excess will be taken to fruit of the vine (someone else suggested the clintonville food pantry of unknown name since it would fit with our idea of working within our "parish" specifically)

and sort of on that note, i saw this video yesterday and was riveted by it.



i really enjoy our neighbors, both literally and in the more general sense of the neighborhood at large. we are overrun with children in our area (but in a good way), jakken and andrew live directly behind us and we play in the commons area everyday and every night. (sidebar: why is everyday one word and every night two?) one child always seems to wind up with another mother, using the restroom, filling up a squirt gun, finding their oreo's and diving in without permission while no one is looking (this = augustine by the way). yesterday i got an email that there is a cookout in our neighborhood at the park, signed up to bring burgers. im just energized that i live near people that i am not friends with them merely out of proximity.

there should be a law against getting up so early and being demanded to be productive. It's not even 7:30 am and i've already nursed a baby, made a fort, breakfast (served within said fort to aforementioned waker-uppers), a generous and much needed pot of coffee, and started a load of diapers in the wash. it's hard to get mad at them though


me: don't you dare show me your belly!


two smiles in a chair


finally they get along!