Guerrilla Gardening – Year 3

It’s been over two years since my last blog story about my ‘Guerrilla Gardening’ adventures. This is a link to my favourite story about this topic…
http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.ca/2010/04/guerrilla-gardening-attack-2.html

… so that you can become familiar with the inspiration behind this motivation.

The spring of 2011 was so wet – it seemed that it was raining almost every single day – that I got behind with my regular veggie patch and so I had no time to tend to my ditch peaceflowers throughout the city.



This spring was rather dry and after I had got ahead with my own veggie patch, I thought that it would be good to check on my ditch gardens to see how they had faired over the last two years.

I chose this location for a guerrilla gardening site cuz I thought that only tall grasses grew here and that our flowers would be able to dominate and thrive. I learned that this area filled in with Golden Rod and these plants absolutely smothered the Day Lilies that we had planted. If our Peaceflower garden was to survive a lot of work would have to go into continuously clearing away the existing plants and I just didn’t have the time so I decided to not put any more effort into this garden.

This was another location where we planted orange Day Lilies in the shape of a peace symbol and you can see that I had many helpers for this adventure. We all had a really great time!!!

A few weeks later, I did manage to revisit this site to do a little weeding, hoping that our Day Lilies would dominate and thrive.



Upon my inspection of this site, earlier this spring, I noticed that several plants had actually survived but most had perished. I thought about why this was. I concluded that because the soil was a heavy clay that the roots weren’t able to survive. I thought that if I was to revive this garden that a lot of work would have to go into mixing the existing clay with a sandier soil to create the proper growing conditions. This would have been too much work for me to accomplish alone, this year, but I am hoping that one day I may be able to do this.

It’s such a great site and thousands of travelers would be inspired! Hopefully… one day…

Well, I had just one site left to inspect. I had my fingers crossed for a good omen, as I was feeling a bit disappointed by my two other failures.

As I got closer, I could start to see a few brightly coloured green leaves and this put a smile on my face. I began to move some of the dead grasses away, from last year’s growth, and I kept finding more and more Day Lilies. Yeah!!!!

Soon, I had found that most of the flowers that had been planted here two years before had survived and a few of them had also reproduced other Day Lily tubers (roots)!!! I’ve added some small green dots to this image so that you can see the shape of the peace symbol more clearly.



I figured that these flowers had survived because the soil conditions are perfect and there are few other dominating plants – this ditch is mostly grass.

I decided to add more Day Lilies to this ‘Guerrilla Gardening Attack Site’ to make it even better. I went home, to my gardens, and began looking for flowers to add. Many patches of Day Lilies that I had planted around my house had reproduced in excess of what I wanted, so I dug these flowers up to add to my ditch art.

This was a patch of a different species of Day Lily. Instead of blooming with tall stems and orange flowers, this species has shorter stems with yellow flowers that actually bloom earlier in the season than the orange ones. I figured that by adding these flowers to my ditch art that the peace symbol would be in bloom for a longer period. First the yellow flowers would bloom and then the orange ones.



I chose to dig up this patch of yellow Day Lilies cuz they just weren’t getting enough sunlight where they were. By moving them I opened up this space in my garden to plant other flowers that were more suited for a shaded setting.

So… with a shovel in hand and a bag of Lily tubers, I set off to enhance my peaceflower ditch garden. When I first planted at this site, I simply cut an X into the ground and pushed the tubers under the folds of the ground. This time, I dug deeper and pulled out small plugs of earth. I broke the soil up in my hands and planted the tubers in these holes, filling them in with the loosened soil, hoping that they would reproduce and spread more easily.

As you can see, the flowers were already quite large when I planted them.

Several hours later, I was finished! About thirty additional flowers were planted at this site and I was very excited to see how it would all look once they had grown and bloomed.



I really wish that I had more photos to show you. I wanted to finish this story showing the peace symbol in full bloom, but I never had a chance to do this. Over the last several months I did manage to drive past this site a few times and I did see the flowers in bloom, but on these occasions I was working and I didn’t have my camera with me.



So… to conclude… I will have to ask each of you – my blog readers – to use your imagination and picture these Day Lilies in full bloom, adding inspiration into the lives of all the passing motorists who happened to catch a glimpse of something very lovely and purely peaceful!!!



Jim

First And Then Last

A little over a month ago, I began the process of weeding the areas surrounding the flowers that I’d planted in some of the ditches around London. I’ve shared stories about two of these guerrilla gardening attacks before http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.com/2010/04/guerrilla-gardening-101.html - & http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.com/2010/04/guerrilla-gardening-attack-2.html.

This is the short story about the guerrilla gardening attack area that I planted by myself, earlier this spring. These flowers were the first to be planted and the last to be weeded – and I’m sure that they didn’t mind!

This is what the area looked like when I arrived. You can see that one of the Day Lilies has bloomed, but you can’t see that it was planted to make the shape of a peace symbol. This year, the lilies are all healing from the transplanting.

I’m happy that any flowers bloomed at all – I’d estimate that between 20-25 flowers bloomed this year. Next year should see all the flowers blooming at the same time – thus making the peace symbol easily recognizable with an estimated 25-35 flowers each day for the entire blooming season – 3 weeks. That’s a total of over 900 flowers!!!

I chose this location for two reasons. 1) I drove my bus past this location once a day, to take my high school students home – so I planted these flowers for them.

2) As you can see, this is a fairly high traffic area (especially during rush hour) with traffic going in both directions. The location of my peace flowers can be viewed from both directions – thus doubling the amount of people who will be able to see this design.

By pulling and cutting the grasses that surround the lilies I’ve taken away the flowers’ competition for sunlight allowing the flowers to grow bigger and stronger.

I bunch up the weeds and grasses that I’ve pulled and lay them on the ground about eight inches to the side of my flowers.

The grasses and weeds dry, changing to a light brown colour and when I’m finished the peace symbol is recognizable again. You can see the lilies in the middle of the design.

This peace symbol will be seen by thousands of drivers over the next two months. At the end of this time, the weeds and grasses will have grown tall again and it’ll be time for me to do a little more weeding. Until then, I’ll simply enjoy the results of my peaceful labours…

Jim

Weeding For Peace!!!

A little over a month ago, I shared the story about a Guerrilla Gardening adventure that I had with a few of my friends - http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.com/2010/05/guerrillas-are-on-attack-again.html. We got together to plant Day Lilies, in the shape of a peace symbol, close to a railway track so that the train passengers would see our inspirational garden!

Last week, I thought I would go and pay a visit to this area to see how the flowers were coming along…


This is what I found!!!!

The entire area had filled in with grasses, Golden Rod, Milkweeds and other plants that had been growing here for many years. They are all about 20” high, now! I did expect this, but maybe not to this extreme.

When I was deciding on the location for our planting I spent a bit of time studying all the dead plants from the previous year. This gave me a few clues as to what would be growing in the area this year. I was looking for an area that was filled with mostly grasses, so that our flowers would be able to grow without too much competition. I was partially successful.


It took me about ten minutes to find the Day Lilies that we had planted. They were struggling for light, as the surrounding plants were dominating. I decided that if I wanted to see our flowers survive that I would have to do a little weeding.

I pulled all the plants that were within 16” of the Day Lilies. I kept the weeds in small fisted bundles and carefully laid them on the ground at the edge of this area, thinking that they would help to make the peace symbol more visible, when this job was finished.


I figured that by weeding in this manner I would accomplish two things. #1 – the Day Lilies would have a chance to grow and be strong. #2 – even though I’m only expecting a few lilies to flower this year – next year they will flower ten times more – the peace symbol will still be recognizable from a distance.

After an hour and a half of soiling my knees as I crawled around on the ground weeding, I had to leave. The rest of this work would have to wait until I had time to return.


And return I did - just yesterday, after work!!!! It was drizzling rain when I arrived and another hour and a half later, with close to thirty mosquito bites now covering my arms and legs, I was finished!


A few of the lilies had died, but for the most part I was rather pleased with how they were coming along. I inspected each plant and was delighted to see that several of them had sprouted flower buds! I have no doubt that this garden and the two other gardens that I planted around London, will need a bit more love and care over the next few years, but it’ll be worth it in the end. I have plans for adding more flowers to each garden, as each year passes and in a few years these peace gardens should be the dominating growth in each of the three areas!


It was quite a climb, getting to this height to take this photo. I climbed all the way to where the train tracks go by to see what train passengers might see if they happened to be looking down into this field. Not half bad – eh????!!


What’s that? You couldn’t see the peace symbol. Okay! Here’s another photo with my camera set to ‘zoom in’!

This peace garden will be the most work, out of the three gardens. I’ve been watching the other two gardens growing steadily over the last month – as I drive by each of them daily – and they will need a bit of weeding, too, but not to this extreme. The other two gardens were planted in grasses, mostly, so they should take a bit less work to keep them thriving.

I hope to have those gardens tended to in the next few weeks and I’ll be sure to bring my camera so I can take pictures to share with you.

Until again,

Be Green! Be Peaceful!!

Jim

The Guerrillas Are On The Attack - Again!!!

I spent the first few hours of my Earthday afternoon planting trees with other Londoners in Watson Park – last blog story. I would have liked to have stayed a bit longer, to plant more than just one tree, but I had plans to meet some friends to do some more planting of a different nature.


Since I had all the shovels, Day Lily tubers and measuring instruments to carry, I was driving my car this day. I unloaded the supplies at the meeting place and just as I was about to start my friends arrived to help.

Shawn, Ingrid and Kim had joined me – with four others – for my last guerrilla gardening adventure (story - http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.com/2010/04/guerrilla-gardening-attack-2.html) and I was glad to work with them again.


The last two guerrilla attacks took place on the slopes of ditches, so that when the Day Lilies bloomed people would be able to see the designs we had created as they drove by in their cars. We planted the flowers to create the shape of a peace symbol. This time, however, I twisted this idea around a little bit to do something really unique.


This time, we were planting our flowers on flat ground. The area that I had selected is a flood plain by the Thames River. This land slopes upwards to a great height where the CN Rail train tracks were built. The idea was to create our flower art so that the passengers on the trains would be able to see it.


In my mind I was imagining many thousands of passengers from all over Southern Ontario and the States viewing our flower design. My hopes are to spread this fun idea to many others, possibly inspiring a few people to copy our idea to create their own peace flower designs in other cities around the world!


This area has a walking path going right passed our planting area and not to far off is a raised bike path. I’m hopeful that walkers and cyclists will also be able to see our design as the summer progresses. I’m hopeful that many walkers will actually visit our flowers to get a closer look. If this happens – and I’m sure that it will – our artwork will then become ‘interactive’ and more people will talk about it and know about it.


After a few minutes of discussing the process for planting, we began.


Shawn and I did most of the measuring so that our peace symbol was actually round.


I suspect that this will be the most successful guerrilla gardening attack yet! I had brought with me, over twice as many Day Lilies so that we could plant more, closer together.


At one point, Ingrid and I climbed up the sloping hill to get a better view of the progress of our work. As you can see the centre line of the peace symbol has been completed and about half of the circle.


Soon, we were all back to work as a team.


About twenty minutes later, the circle was finished. Now we simply had to complete the two 45 degree angles and then we’d be done.


As it turned out, Ingrid had the honour of planting the very centre flower.


From there, we stretched the two 45 degree angles outwards from the centre.


I’m sure that you can all imagine that we did a lot of talking while we planted. It was a great way to get know each other a bit more. Here, I was telling them the story of the time when Joanne and I were living in Nova Scotia. We had gone for a walk to a lookout point, where almost the entire town of Wolfville was in our sight and the waters of the Bay of Fundy stretched out to the horizon. Suddenly, just to my left I heard a slight rustling in the branches of a tall white pine tree. Joanne and I both turned our heads to witness the lift-off of a great Bald Headed Eagle. It flew just twenty feet away in front of us and it was only about ten feet above our heads. I told of the shivers that went through me as I could see each individual feather on this bird as it spread its wings. We could feel the air moving past our faces as its wings forced their way through the air. I’ll never forget that experience!


When we had finished our planting we all looked at each other wondering how we were going to take a group photo. As I mentioned earlier, their was a walking path just a few feet away, and while we were wondering what to do a couple passed by and we asked them to help us. They smiled as we told them about our peace flower and they were very happy to take our picture!


It had taken us just over two hours to create our peace flower and we were all a little dirty from the experience. Just a few steps away, the Thames River flowed by, so we took a little walk to wash up.


Ya know - it’s always great to have wonderful ideas that lead to wonderful adventures, but it’s even greater to be able to share these experiences with friends!

Jim

Guerrilla Gardening – Attack #2

There sure was a lot of eco-light activities happening in London, Ontario, last Sunday afternoon. After I had spent an hour or so enjoying the crowds – not cars – in the downtown core (see last blog entry) I made my way to a different sort of gathering.

http://www.lightworkersoftheworld.org/

Last year I joined a Facebook group called ‘Lightworkers’. There are Lightworkers groups in many cities across Canada and around the world. Those involved in these groups are peaceful, happy people who want to share a lot of love with the world. I have met a few of those who attended, before, and I was glad to meet many new faces. Some of those who attended had traveled from Windsor, Bayfield and even Burlington.

I was planning on creating my second guerrilla gardening (link to first story - http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.com/2010/04/guerrilla-gardening-101.html) art attack later that afternoon so I had asked a few other Lightworkers to join me. I could see that a few people would have liked to join me, but that would have meant them leaving this gathering. I went home alone.


While I was preparing all of the Day Lily tubers for my art attack I began to think that if I went back to the gathering near the end of the event that I might be able to convince some ‘fence sitters’ to join me. I really, really did not want to go guerrilla gardening on my own anymore. It was too much fun not to share this experience!


I was hoping that one or two people would join me and I was pleasantly surprised to find that seven others wanted to participate. I told them where the area of attack was going to be and we made plans to meet there. If you look closely at this photo you will notice that two people are standing inside the area of attack. Let’s see who it is…


Oh! It’s Carolyn and Bob. They look armed and dangerous and ready for action!!!


Glory be!!! It’s Shawn, Kim, Ingrid and Jessica and with me that makes seven!!!!


I shared details with everyone as to how we would create a peace symbol using the Day Lilies.


Some of us prepared the lilies for the planters.


Some of us dug the holes while others did the planting.

And then we all got busy…

We all had a great time!! We shared inspirational stories with each other, we slipped on the grass and tumbled down the hill a few times…


…and we all smiled, thinking about the over 100 000 people who would see our flowers this summer! I smiled the most!!!


When we were finished, Bob walked to the top of the hill to call upon The Flower Spirits…


…to ask for protection for our lilies as they grow and flourish!


Someone got the bright idea that we should all lay down inside the ‘peace of flowers’ to take a group photo. We were hoping that our bodies would be able to take the shape of the symbol… but instead it just looks like a bunch of weirdos laying around on a hillside – LOL!!!! Ha! If you look closely, though, you can see the formation of parts of the outside circle with the straight centre line and the two 45 degree angle lines.


Then, it was back to our cars to carefully balance my camera on a car hood to take this group photo. Lorraine joined us for this photo. She was our long distance supervisor. It would have been difficult for her to help us on that slippery slope so Lorraine watched from a distance.

+ + + +


The people who now devote their lives to healing the environment are ordinary people like you and me, who have a keenly developed sense of right and wrong and the courage to stand by their convictions.


They are not people who go looking for a fight, but they stand up to injustice when they are confronted by it.


Let us take from these examples of human spirit and will and begin a process of change: first in ourselves, then in our friends and neighbours, then in our communities and finally in the world.


It is not as difficult as is seems, once you look at the changing mindsets of our society as a chain reaction, similar to the piling of grains of sand to form rising structures of interconnectedness.


As sand is poured, grain by grain, on a table to form a pile that grows higher, we can witness the change of the whole pile as individual grains fall on top. Sometimes, a single grain of sand triggers a little avalanche of change. Less frequently, larger avalanches occur – again, they are triggered by a single grain of sand.


With this example we can be assured that the weight of the world is not on individual shoulders, but dispersed evenly, among everything living.

It does not seem, then, too far out of our reach to bring everyone together to add their peace of the world to the whole.


Let us hope that these peaces are pure and clean and then after the world has been put back together, we can give it freely and wholeheartedly to our children – the rightful heirs of this planet!


Thank you, Lightworkers of Southern Ontario, for encouraging me and helping me to bring a vision for this world to life.

Jim