Gardening Schemes with Colorish Dreams // 1st&3rd Tuesday Night Cafe

My friend A'misa (artist, writer, and creator of Colorish Dreams) and I have been sharing our growing dreams and schemes-- from future claimed public spaces to throwing all sorts of seeds into the moist earth to see if they grow. She and her mother have been incredibly successful with their saved seeds. Particularly cantaloupe seeds.

baby melons

She gave me this little pot of half a dozen seedlings (which I have no idea where to plant), and has a bunch more that she's trying to find homes for. We're on the lookout for a good spot for a guerrilla melon patch.

As for me, I have at least four dozen chamomile sprouts that I foolishly sowed into an egg carton. I have plans for places to plant them, but I doubt I'm going to find enough homes for them. They don't take much care, though, once they get established, and apparently even flourish with a little bit of neglect.

just-sprouting chamomile 

So we're going to bring our extra seeds and little seedlings to the next Tuesday Night Cafe and share them with any takers. I'm sure there are seed bartering/exchanging events around LA, through the Seed Library of Los Angeles and the like, but it's always nice to be able to incorporate new things with old stand-bys. And, there's going to be music, poetry, live art, vendors, and general community goodness at TNC. So why not add some living green things, too? Not sure where we're going to put them, but we'll figure it out.

Guerilla plant exchange/giveaway
1st&3rd Tuesday Night Cafe
Aratani Courtyard
120 Judge John Aiso St, 90012
Show starts at 7:30 so come by at around 7:00 to check out what plants make it to Little Tokyo.

If You Want Midweek Music Goodness

Go to these events:

MidTones TONIGHT (& every 1st Wednesday), 9p. in Chinatown

MidTones Open Jam takes place at legendary Grand Star Jazz Club on the 1st Wednesdays every month, offering an inclusive venue for musicians, noise-makers and music-lovers to experiment, explore and experience. Led by SK, music at the event ranges from Miles Davis to Black Sabbath, Michael McDonald to Bob Marley, Frank Zappa to Prince, Journey to uncategorizable pure improvisation.

common ground open mic (for music, poetry, and some tasty community vibes)

This month's common ground features Andrew Figueroa Chang (whose EP I fell in love with last winter), Quincy Surasmith (Tuesday Night Project live web stream master), and forWord (a spoken word collective of fellow UCI grads & Uncultivated Rabbits), which means, obviously, that I must go. 

One day, there will be convenient, efficient mass transit between Los Angeles & Orange County. This is the mantra I'm going to repeat whenever I find myself taking a circuitous 2+ hour transit route or sitting in soul-crushing rush hour traffic between the two.

Getting Dirty in Public // LA Urban Gardening

Before

I've decided to claim this little patch of dry, uninviting soil near my apartment. The weeds have died away, which means there's probably not a lot of nutrition in the soil right now considering how much rain we had the week before I took these pictures. That's going to change. I'm starting by putting my vegetable peels and trimmings in the ground. Sure, I could attempt to maintain a real compost heap and then amend the soil with that, but the energy expenditure it takes just doesn't make sense with limited space, time, and raw material I have. And I figure that the moisture from the raw vegetation will be good for the soil, anyway. 

First trench

After receiving a bounty of vegetable trimmings to add to my own healthy supply (which I keep in the fridge in marked containers to prevent strange and terrible odors from accumulating in the kitchen), I took to the streets. To this corner. I dug a couple of trenches with my favorite gardening tool, spread out the veg, and buried the goods.