Summer Moves Along

This summer I am growing beans, onions, a giant bowl of mixed herbs, carrots, mixed spring greens, broccoli and strawberries up on my decks. In the abandoned illegal dumping lot next to our condo, I have randomly chucked sunflowers, more beans and onions, and a few cherry tomatoes to compete with the black eyed Susan seeds I threw out there a few years ago. So for a few months the weedy backlot becomes pretty, before the Kudzu crawls over everything.

It's easier than you think to grow stuff in the middle of the city. The cranky old curmudgeon who owns the urban brownlot next to us has no idea that some of my other neighbors are now farming his unused land outright, putting out rows of produce that put my small unstructured efforts to shame. Next up for me: Pumpkins. There will be a pumpkin patch back there with the abandoned electronics, rotting trailers, and occasional homeless folk getting a night away from the shelter.

I like raising stuff downtown, especially the kids. The picture at the top of this entry is Diana playing in the water element at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. While we don't have a yard, I don't think the girls are lacking for it. We go to the park and the museum almost every weekend. Next weekend I am driving them out to the middle of nowhere to visit my Grandfather, and they can play on a small farm.

I have no idea how the idea of cities being sterile came to be; ours is verdant, lush, and if anything, overrun with greenery and twisting vines. This year flash floods have town new gulleys wherever they could, changing the slope of the land and spreading thin layers of silt across some roads that had to be cleaned. You can hear chickens in the morning, and count all kinds of bees and insects at all times of day. Giant trees are far more common here than in the suburbs. When you come to visit, we will share our green food with you, and you can watch the children grow, and relax; it's much too hot to do anything else.