Truxton Is In Shaw

I may resue this for the main site, or not.

Gardening in Shaw can be a challenge. Sometimes you don’t have a yard. Sometimes you do have a yard but it will never see sun. And then there are a dozen other challenges that make you roll your eyes when you look at regular gardening books and magazines, they assume you have space and sun. Then there are your own worries, worries I have discovered are a bit unfounded. I worried that people would come into my yard and steal my tomatoes. No one came into my yard to steal them. The greatest threat was the newspaperman who I swear always aimed for the vine knocking over a few unripened tomatoes. Then there are other worries about soil contamination, vandalism, and the run of the mill garden worries of pests and disease.

Looking for information for urban gardening is a bit fun. Below are some of the links found about gardening in the city.

Urban Gardening Links

City Farmer – Straight outta Canada is a wonderful resource for serious urban gardening. What is pretty cool is the discussion forum where people present questions and discuss gardening ideas that are particular to urban dwellers.

DC Cooperative Extension Service – Maybe you can find some information about DC’s cooperative extension service

UMD Home and Garden Information Center– Very informative, particularly the plant diagnostic tool, to figure out what is killing your plants. Site also has helpful online publications for the home gardener.

Rough Terrain Urban Gardens– Pennsylvania based and sponsored by International Paper. There are some great stories about people creating gardens in an urban landscape and some simple how to’s. More inspiring than informative.

Path to Freedom– For the anti-corporate types who want to throw off the chains of dependency from the Man by growing their own food. Uh, ok. Parts of it are very informative when researching the impact of a small (in the eye of the beholder) garden . The main site is interesting should you desire to live in an urban area but off the grid.

Container gardens the city dweller’s guide– Oh my I didn’t know you could use a child’s wading pool as a garden container…. now I do. Creative and informative and geared towards the city gardener.

Green Institute’s Urban Garden Tips– Includes page on gardening in lead contaminated soils. Perfect for DC soil.

Journey to Forever organic garden– Lots of useful links to a library of articles related to urban gardening and container gardening.

There is a house on the 400 block R St west of NJ Ave that had been in the process of being rehabbed. Everyso often we’d see little bits of progress here and there and admired how far they got with each improvement.

Yesterday they ruined it. They put the most ghetto a$$ed looking fence around it. Not chain linked. I would still respect their work with a chained linked fence. Not a nice cheap wooden picket fence. Nope. They are putting up metal railing, the type used for exterior stairs and staircasing. I don’t believe this was meant for gates or fences, and to use it for a fence is just to add a dimension of ugly to your project.

Okay, yesterday was my post that was a little anti-child, well more anti-stupid knucleheaded child. Reading an article about the lack of walking and the troubles with programs to promote walking to school I have one good thing to say about the children of Shaw, they can get from point A to point B without getting killed or kidnapped, without parental supervision.

In the Salon article “Walk to School yes, but don’t forget your lawyer,” the problem with getting kids to walk to school are SUV driving parents driving their kids to school. Reading about the attitudes some parents had regarding their children, I was thinking about the kids around my hood, which were the opposite. The kids around here have a bit more leeway. They might be limited to the block or a few blocks but they walk. I know a few who walk to school alone, navigating New Jersey Avenue to get there.

Raise your kid in the city and get free streetsmarts. The kids of this city are somewhat smart enough to navigate the subway, buses and streets alone. Now if they would just not act stupid I’d be so happy.

“Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day. It’s cursing and calling each other ‘n*gger’ as they’re walking up and down the street. They think they hip — can’t read, can’t write — 50 percent of them,” — Bill Cosby

“Dirty laundry” is the code word between my neighbor and I when we encounter the idiotic kids between work and home on the green line and on the street. The dirty laundry seems to get out around 3 ’cause that’s when we see them.

They are loud and obnoxious. They hit each other. They curse at each other. On the train we encountered a loud burp/hit couple, made the trip unbearable. The problem is you can’t ignore them.

Around 3-4pm weekdays the streets are filled with kids. Some of them seem to get from point A to point B without talking, offending, hitting, jaywalking, or loitering. There are others, girls and boys, who will hang out on the corner being as loud and obnoxious as ever.

The worse part is not so much the volume, thought that is bad, but what is coming out of their mouths, and I’m not just talking about the cursing or the burping. They can’t speak English. My drama teacher used to call it lazy tongue, when apparently it too much energy to enunciate. These kids sound just so ignorant, and they are loud and ignorant. They advertise their ignorance. Maybe this is a call for better schools? I don’t know.

Sitting in the car trying to turn on NY Ave from NJ Ave I saw two fellows selling squint is that… yes… that looks like a DVD for National Treasure, which is still in theaters, and I got an idea….. the ghetto gift basket(ggb). The GGB would include 1)bootleg DVD or CD 2)the most popular scent sold by those guys in the Metro with the little bottles (I think they sell “booty call”) 3)a bag of chips sold in bodegas with the picture of the brown woman against the brick wall, I forget what they are called but I see the bags littering the street all the time and 4) a do rag. You can present this in a lovely black plastic bag or a plastic milk crate filled with crumpled pages of the Washington Post, the City Paper, or what ever.

Yes, I vote this as my most offensive post ever.

Quick note: The Garden District over on 14th Street & S has a boat load of Christmas trees in. If a Christmas tree, well a live one, is too much for you they also have green garlands, mantel pieces and wreaths. Also herbs are 50% off. There aren’t too many herbs left, lot of sage, 1 laurel bay, some yellowy thyme, and cilantro.

A used … pink bathrobe

A rare … mint snowglobe

A Smurf … TV tray

I bought on eBay

My house … is filled with this crap

Shows up in bubble wrap

Most every day

What I bought on eBay

–weird Al “Ebay”

The Post featured an article “Building with EBay” today in the Real Estate section. I am trying to think have I incorporated any ebay purchases into the house. I buy a lot off EBay. Ebay is my shoestore. I have bought plants off eBay (ps Jimbo the agave is dying so don’t worry about pick up), clothes, computer equipment, several palms, books, CDs, worms, and everything else, but no building materials. I have looked at building materials on eBay. Shipping and storage are the big hindrances.

Once I saw this really cool door up for bid. It was a solid wood door with a porthole window, like you’d find on a ship or boat. Pretty. I bid once on some stained glass windows, got out bid. I have bought oriental rugs. I wasn’t looking for high quality, just pretty wool for my feet. Some of the flooring looks good but the problem is point A to point B. Sometime the shipping looks like it is worth it, like the tiled mosaics.

Right now I deciding if I want to buy a heavy Celtic iron cross for the backyard. Shipping is about $11. Yet I really need to curb my eBay purchases. So far I have bought too much in one week.

Well I wanted to put up a great gardening page for the main In Shaw site but left it on a remote computer, so I won’t have it till tomorrow. The gardening page was for urban gardeners and I found some really cool sites relating to small gardens, container gardens and urban issues. One site in particular I want to share is Path Project’s Urban Homestead Diary. Path Project is run by the Dervaes family who live in Southern California and try to feed a family of five on the food grown on their city plot. The site is a record of their attempt to become self-sufficient in an urban environment.

Took a look over at Ziprealty and the cheapest thing in Shaw (20001 zip code) is $299,950 1419 New Jersey Avenue a 2 bedroom 1 bath house. I guess we have now run out of crack houses to buy. Normally I would scream that the realtors are on crack. I have now accepted the realities of market forces.

There is no obvious bike parking around the New York Ave metro station. But I found something to attach the bike to. I have seen a bike attached to the station rails right near the token gates, but I figure the troll in the booth would yell at me for that. There is still construction and many, many yards of tall chain link fence around yet to be built offices. I attached my bike to the fence. Now keep in mind the bike in question is the crap bike, a rusty 3 speed thing with 1 working brake. I’m not too worried about it. Besides I have 3 locks for it. A cable, a U-lock with a round key and a U-lock with a key-key. You gotta really want my bike to steal it. Well after 3 hours of leaving it alone, it was still there. Of course the station is still new, bike thieves may not have discovered it yet.