West Oakland: Things Grow Here

Morning Sun Side, originally uploaded by geminipoet.

Poetics, Horticulture, and Being Environmentalists in West Oakland

Here’s a cliché for you: Think global, act local.

I am wondering who concretely does this, or at least makes effort to do this.

I have been thinking about the cliché, in light of the recent discussions on the civilizing missions elsewhere in the world not our backyards attitudes in American poetry, and its love and fetishizing of the exotic, quaint customs of the primitive third world brown people elsewhere never here. I believe this love for the exotic, quaint customs of the primitive third world brown people elsewhere never here stems from the dominant culture’s boredom and discontentment of its own cultural capital, and from a refusal to look at what happens in American cities, which isn’t all affluence, comfort, progress, and enlightenment, as much as it is corporate dependence, environmental non-sustainability, wastefulness, poverty, acts of directed violence, and terrifying homicide rates.

You know what else? I am tired of other people. I am tired of other people’s baggage. I am tired of talking about other people, and writing criticism about other people’s problematic work. Lord knows they don’t give a shit about me and what I think.

Horticultural Bits

(1) Mulch. Since it was time to re-soil and give the plants new mulch and food, our major quandary of the weekend was deliberating over cocoa shell mulch versus redwood tree bark mulch (not color enhanced). The price of the former is twice as much as the price of the latter, and I was interested in “local” or native California species versus “foreign” species. I am thinking now that because the cocoa shells are the roasted by-product in the chocolate making process, then it’s more environmentally sound to use these over redwood tree mulch, given that we are unsure of for what purpose the redwood trees are being cut down. In the meantime, cocoa shell mulch smells so awesome (like cocoa butter, for those of you who don’t know).

(2) Compost. It’s time to start composting; at least for us it is. There’s an appeal to utilizing all of our vegetable and plant trimmings, fruit rinds and all, that is, actually doing something that is not dumping stuff in landfill. IF you really want to know about composting the EPA link is here. My aunt used to feed her vegetable and fruit scraps to the cows, but um, we don’t have any cows.

(3) New plants planted: husky cherry tomatoes, and jalapeño pepper plants.

(4) Existing plants progress report (outdoor): very fragrant pink jasmines are blooming like a crazy person, and we need to find a larger trellis for it. Dwarf lime tree has new buds, and a resident ladybug eating as many aphids as her heart desires. Mexican lobelia is trying to hang in there; it might still be pissed off about the recent violent rains that waterlogged its pot. White leaf manzanita is also budding. White sage progress is TBD, but one of the plants is showing new growth and the other is trying hard. In the meantime, white sage and French lavender have been attracting some butterflies, including yesterday’s enormous yellow monarch. The various succulents are getting tougher and thicker.

Good Vernal Equinox stuff.