Monthly Archives: November 2018

Global Gardening: Benefits of Gardening with the Newest Members of our Community

PASSION, PERTINENT, POPULAR INTEREST, PRACTICE

by Maggie Fitzpatrick

For parts of our community, particularly newly arrived refugees and immigrants, gardens can be an important source of cultural expression and food for the home.  Having diverse and welcoming gardens can be an opportunity for all to thrive.  It allows for opportunities to learn unique growing skills and new perspectives on gardening. 

Whether people are newly arrived or had immigrant relatives generations ago, growing information is often handed down through generations.  From working with Bhutanese and Burmese individuals I learned about growing cucurbits through what we termed “shelf gardening.”  In other terms using a trellis, like an arbor, allowing for the plant foliage to grow and for the melon, gourd or squash fruit to hang down.  This was done with Asian varieties including bottle gourd and bitter melon.  Try this with delicata or acorn squash, nothing too heavy. 

Living in our commercial milieu, gardeners in the US often think they have to buy something to solve a garden issue.  The perspective on garden supplies is much different for refugee and immigrant farmers.  For trellises, I’ve seen community gardeners scour for large fallen branches.  The results of pole beans growing up and winding around the branches is beautiful and free! 

Working with a diverse set of gardeners also give the opportunity to learn about other cultures.  If you can engage with your fellow gardeners, you can learn about different crop varieties that are particular to other regions of the world.  Thai eggplant, Asian long beans, Thai chili peppers, okra, bitter melon and the list goes on.  By communicating with the people that know these veggies best, you learn how to prepare and cook these special veggies. 

Here are some tips for working with a refugee and/or language-learning community:

  • Have picture-based signage. Put as many garden rules into clear graphic signage so that no matter your language or literacy level you can discern the message.  If you can, interpret and demonstrate the rule to the group so that the meaning is solidified.
  • Seek interpretation when available. If there is a language barrier, try to find a family member or a community leader to help with communication.  Communication is key to good relationships between gardeners.
  • Navigate cultural differences and misunderstandings. Cultural differences will arise, however the benefits are well worth negotiating these issues.  Common misunderstanding can be over perceptions of neatness in the garden, plot boundaries and ownership of produce.
  • Provide information and learning for all levels and styles. Individuals have varying levels of experience and success with formal, classroom-based education.  Some may have no experience.  Remember there are many approaches to learning.  Materials and sessions that are text and graph heavy can be difficult for some.  Consider storytelling, role-play vignettes, and demonstration as techniques to use in addition to plain language handouts to send home.
  • Make space for empowerment and sharing knowledge. Many people have rich backgrounds farming in their homelands.  With pre-set garden rules and typical “ways of doing things” much of the information can seem one-directional.  Adults are most engaged and learn best when they can share and draw upon experience.  Make space for this sharing to happen, and invite leadership from any cultural communities involved in the garden.

One great resources for working with refugee and immigrants as farmers and community gardeners: ISED Solutions (2017). Teaching Handbook Refugee Farmer Training. Happy garden planning!

Maggie Fitzpatrick is the Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator at Cuyahoga County Extension

November

PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Mark Gilson

One day the leaves are gone.
And the wind makes dying sounds
within the humbled branches.
It is time.
The slow earth yields its precious heat.

In a cold hush before the sun
our garden perishes within the arms
of a stranger.  Vain, inexorable, patient,
He chalks his victims
in a pale and savage dust.

Marigolds and sweet alyssum
wither uncherished beneath the brittle weeds
that overtook our nobler intentions
in warmer months, when we were young
and soon distracted.

Rain, snow, frozen soil, the way
the blackbirds undulate across drab
sheets of grey sky in curving
arrows toward the recent past…
so many things go unremembered.

The Great Lakes Cycle

PERTINENT, POPULAR INTEREST, PRESERVATION

by Elsa Johnson

On Tuesday I spent an hour (not really enough time, but I had a meter running) at Cleveland’s Museum of Contemporary Art, free on election day (great idea there, MOCA). I wanted to see the current exhibit, The Great Lakes Cycle, by artist Alexis Rockman, who aligns environmental activism with art in a most satisfying way. The exhibit introduces itself through a collection of some of Rockman’s field ‘sketches’ – which are actually not sketches but black and white watercolor renderings with a delicious, ephemeral watery look –

Following that, in the first exhibit hall, is a collection of large scale equally watery, equally delicious watercolor paintings that allow one to appreciate Rockman’s loose yet explicitly detail-suggestive handling/execution of this challenging medium.

Leading to the largest room, in which hang the five great paintings for which the exhibit is named. These fill-the-wall scale paintings are visually rich, emotionally affecting, and intellectually exhilarating, educating, and depressing. Don’t let that last keep you away. This is a must see exhibit.

These five paintings are visual studies through a vast extended timeline of man’s interaction with and effect on the Great Lakes. One ‘reads’ the paintings from left to right, with the left side representing the original pristine natural environment.

 In all the pictures the left side is the oldest in the timeline, and the timeline changes progressively through time toward the right side, which is the historically most recent and most ecologically disturbed, abused, and debased. That juxtaposition on one canvas, of those effects of which we are not unaware but often not thoughtful about, brings the alteration profoundly home. It is a slice through time and physical reality that shows us, both above and below the water, the changes wrought as it enumerates the natural, the unnatural, and in one painting the imaginary, denizens of the lake and shore. The paintings are a little overwhelming and deserve more study than a ticking meter allows.  

A little Great Lakes history here, cribbed from an accompanying book of the same title (available in the gift store): The Great Lakes were carved by glaciers over vast millenia of geologic time, and were equally slowly revealed as the glaciers receded. Better described as inland seas, they reached their current form roughly 5,000 years ago. They carry 18 to 20% of the surface freshwater on the planet. If combined into one, that sea would span the combined landmass of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The Great Lakes hold 6 quadrillion gallons of water – enough to cover the continental United States with a layer of water 10 feet deep. The northernmost lake, Superior, is the world’s largest lake by volume of water, while Lake Erie, our canary-in-the-mine lake (my description, not the book’s) is the southernmost and shallowest. Lake Erie has the most productive fishery, and is the most quickly flushed (my choice of words, not the book’s – and believe me, fast flushing is a good thing). Surrounding the Great Lakes is a rich diversity of ecosystems. 

There are 5 paintings. It is not really clear to me that each painting represents a specific lake. Rather, each painting addresses a common issue all the lakes have.  The painting titled Pioneers, focuses on aquatic life, and the in-migration of aquatic life since the end of the last ice age, from the sturgeon that fed the first Native Americans to today’s aquatic invaders, shown as a stream of small creatures ejected from an anchored ships ballast water.   

The painting titled Cascade is a study of man’s continuing impact on nature, a mix of human and natural history, from the elk swimming across the water on the left to the blighted industrial landscape pictured on the right, set off by buoys.

The painting titled Spheres of Influence explores how the interaction of the global ecosystem (weather, birds, insects, bats, and air-borne micro-contaminants) has shaped the current condition of the lakes

The painting Watershed illuminates the shift that happens as pristine streams and rivers are contaminated by modern agriculture and urban development. It’s pretty disturbing…

And finally, the picture Forces of Change illustrates these – both the past, and the potential future – complete with an imaginary e-coli kraken – if we continue on our current polluting ways.

A day following my trip to MOCA to see this exhibit I attended an evening panel symposium at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, discussing the state of our lake. What good timing I thought! I  thought I could include a synopsis of that panel discussion here at the end of this article, but I have come to see that it is a separate article of its own. So I will end here with a synopsis of each lake’s problems as taken from the book:

Lake Superior is the fastest warming large lake on the planet. Warmer waters threaten this lake’s cold water fishery. Lakes Michigan and Huron are essentially one lake; they have been invaded by zebra mussels, which filter immense quantities of plankton through their bodies. This gives the water clarity, but that clarity is indication of meager fish. Lake Erie suffers from toxic algae blooms, which are likely to double as the climate changes. And Lake Ontario suffers from being used as a toxic dumping ground, which are now locked into the lake’s bottom sediments. What follows is a map from the book showing cumulative stresses on the lake. It does not differ significantly from one projected on the screen at the museum talk, so I include it here:

I hope you will go see this exhibit and spend some time with it. Take the kids.

Exploring the Paine Creek Parks

PERIPATETIC, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

Parks play an important role in greening a metropolitan area—including the parks that are not actually within the city itself. Cleveland is lucky to have an especially rich park system close in.  But Cleveland area people often miss some cool parks that are a little further out —  close by but not real close by – and a bit harder to get to. From the eastside. It’s easy to get to Holden Arboretum; the Lake County parks that are close by Holden are hard to miss and draw a lot of visitors – like Penitentiary Glen. But way out on the farthest fringes of Lake County there are a collection of not so easy to find parks with some unique features. As a long-practicing landscape designer I have often gone to Klyn Nursery. It was easy to get to Klyn’s via Route 90 and Vrooman Road. When I would get to the bottom of the hill on Vrooman, before it passed over the bridge crossing the Grand River, I would notice a gravel and dirt road that turned right and wandered off ….somewhere.  The road less traveled.  It always intimidated me a little bit, looking  isolated and rough, as it did, and I was on my ‘getting plants’ mission anyway. So I’d pass it by. Then they (the ubiquitous ‘they’) closed the Vrooman Road bridge. So I found myself looking for other ways to get to Klyn’s, and began exploring the back roads, and In doing so I discovered a trio of interesting parks.

I’ve written before, I believe, about Indian Point Park, which is where you find yourself if you if you take that road less traveled. Paine Creek, a small tributary stream to the Grand River, enters that larger flow at Indian Point. Yes, there’s a real legitimate reason it is called Indian Point, and you can discover it via the Lake county Parks website. You can climb up to the top of the point for a view out over the Grand, an Ohio Wild and Scenic River. In the springtime the forest floor here is covered in Virginia bluebells; and in a few weeks there will be glorious fall color. Then, were you a duck you could swim or waddle up Paine Creek, pass under the I-90 freeway, and, not too much further on, arrive at Paine Falls Park. But if you are human, you will have to use your phone navigator or an old fashioned map and zig here and then zag there. The duck will arrive first.

From Paine Falls Park, if you are a duck, having flown to the top of the falls, you will continue up the Paine Creek stream and soon arrive at Hell Hollow Wilderness Area. But if you are human, you’ll get in your car and zig and zag again, and eventually, with luck, find yourself at the same place, but at the top rim of the hollow rather than down in the bottom with the duck.

The charm of the Paine Creek parks and the Hell Hollow Wilderness Area is not to be found in a long hike – there are no long trails – rather, the charm lies in the intimate exploration of Paine Creek (even though you’re not a duck, you get to play in the water). But at Hell Hollow, before you do that, you have to walk down two hundred and sixty three steps (remembering that what goes down must come back up again).

There are great views from the rim trail out over the hollow to the creek below.

The creek bed is shale, not mud, and on a warm summer or early fall day, with the water low, wearing water sneakers, we walked both along and in the water, feeling like explorers, noticing the creek side vegetation (knotweed even here!) and the tiny darters dashing from one sheltering stone to another. Nowhere was the water higher than my ankles.  A young naturalist we came across in the stream showed us a crayfish he held in his fingers, a sign of the unpolluted quality of the water.

I should note that in higher and colder water this watery exploration probably would not be a good or safe idea.

These three destinations put together would make a nice day trip for a city dweller, or someone looking for a little adventure, although I find myself wishing that somehow these three parks, so well connected by nature, were better connected by and for people, so that one could explore them as a continuous hike.

Perhaps someday.