I just saw this video on Gardening Gone Wild and felt the need to share it with you.
In honor of spring, and changing the bit of earth where you live, be it in the country, suburbs or the city; I submit to you this encouraging video! In all fairness I must warn you that he likes the “s” word, but he has some awesome thoughts to share!
“If kids grow kale, they eat kale. If they grow tomatoes, they eat tomatoes!” Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA
Now, go plant some [stuff]!
😀
Life on the Farmlet 
he makes a great role model! i love his attitude and spirit
Doesn’t he, Lisa?
If I didn’t know better I’d swear he was talking about my neighborhood. He put into words what I’ve tried to say for years. Thank you!
Yes, Anita, he really brings the point home about leading by example and motivating positive change in your own neighborhood!
Anita, thank you… and shame on me for not doing the same for the blog in which I found this feed! Fixing that before I go to bed tonight!
I make that mistake every now and then too. 🙂
😀
Inspiring video.
One of my greatest regrets in life (as an inner city dweller) is not having a garden of my own.
My 86 yr old Father (& my Mother before she passed away last year) always grew their own fruit and vegetables for themselves and the excess to neighbours – even in their small retirement village back yard.
If only every one with a front grassy verge next to the road converted it into a garden – but, it’s hard to get around council laws.
Victoria, people are fighting against those laws everywhere now. If not for the community then for their own benefit. I wish I could remember where the link is, but I read about a neighborhood in England that is doing this. Last I heard it was working splendidly! It feels so good to garden even if it is only in a window box. 😉
I know this seems to be a logical place to plant a garden but I wouldn’t want to eat it. Why? Think of all the car exhaust landing on the plants. I’m all for using public lands to grow foods but wouldn’t something a little further from car fumes be better?
Anita, living on the side streets in LA there are not a lot of cars going by. There is also not a lot of land available around your house or apartment. That said, wouldn’t it be wonderful if all those miles and miles of vacant lots he spoke of could be converted to growing allotments? (!!!) I don’t know what the chemical residues are from car exhaust these days, but I know that there is no longer lead in our gasoline. It was the lead residues that were getting into the soil before we changed the composition of our gas. For me, I am more worried about the stuff the growers are spraying on, and the changing of the plants DNA by Monsanto, than I am about car exhaust.
Interestingly, since I have been growing my own lettuces and greens I have noticed that when I soak and rinse them (to get the bugs off) there isn’t an oily residue on the inside of my soaking pan! What is that oily residue left behind by the store bought produce? 😯
*WARNING, here I go again… What next – wax on apples, “colourised” citrus, now an “oily residue”?! A “pre” salad dressing perhaps? The imagination runs wild!! *ACK!*
Y’know, I was going to say “Some questions are really better left unanswered”, but, better instead, to ask “Why?” and “What do you people think you’re DOING?” and ask loudly! This is FOOD we’re talking about, for Pete’s sake!! How much is done, how far do companies go in the quest for profit?
No wonder inner city dwellers are starting to “grow their own”. And GOOD for them, I’d say – in EVERY sense of the word. Now THAT’S “taking back the streets”!
Joy, health, knowledge and accomplishment to you all: )
LOL! You go, Deb! 😀
“ACK!” Indeed!
Inspiring video. We need to teach our children how to live healthy and grow veggies and fruits which they can enjoy. My parents did and looking back, I am truly grateful.
Mr. B, I have no doubt that you are doing just that with your son, and the wondrous thing is this:
That he will most likely do the same with his children!
And that is a lovely thought!
He’s SO right, what a great message! It’s a basic human right, isn’t it, that everyone should be able to grow their own food?
Thanks for passing this along, Lynda. Got me cryin’ again, but tears of joy this time: )
YES! 😀
People hassling other people for growing food responsibly makes as much sense as “environmentally conscious” homeowners’ associations refusing to allow people to use clotheslines. Let’s see – we support solar and wind power, but we won’t allow people to use the wind and the sun to dry their clothes. We want them to use electricity.
Excuse em?
It is a crazy world out there for sure. I used to get all kinds of strange, over the wall, looks from the neighbors in “Claremont” CA (home of Harvey Mud and Pitzer colleges) for hanging my undies out in the sunshine.
“P f f f f f f f ft!” I say! 😉
Excellent!!! 🙂
Yes, I think so too. I like it when people see a problem and instead of letting themselves be a victim of it they provide a solution. Then, going forth to inspire others, they work together make it go away…
As in this case, one small garden at a time!
I LOVED this TED! This goes hand in hand with the Grow Food Not Lawns effort underway locally. And there’s the group “Food Not Bombs” too.
Long ago an design firm put the question of what to plant in all the “empty” places along local highways, entrance and exit ramps and street medians and the kids in one tiny private school came up with “gardens”. The city didn’t go the vegetable route but they did plant flowering trees and other appealing plants. I agree with Ron Finley that a shovel can be a very powerful weapon. And considering the efforts by some forces to even prevent people from catching rainwater in order to water their plants, gardening is indeed becoming a guerrilla act expressing the right to self determination on a very foundamental level—food for survival. It’s another means to avoid the rising tide of GMO foods–which are now banned in Europe for excellent reasons involving human health.
Thanks again, Lynda!
He, in my mind, is a powerful activist for change that I can believe in. I’m glad that you liked what he is doing, because it is a very important message! Eva, I hope you will share it with your readers too!
This is my kind of urban rebel! Wonderful.
YUP, me too, Annie!
I love that! We have a community garden where I live that supports the local food pantries, but that takes it a step further. He has my mind going in a hundred directions trying to figure out how I can do something like that around here. Thanks so much for sharing! You’ll get another pingback on Wednesday on my other blog where it will get a lot more attention! 🙂