Another thing I notice when I get back from PALM is the fireflies around my yard. This summer has been so cool (after the 90 degree day on PALM the next 90 degree day was August 8) that they have been around well into August.
After PALM the highpoint of my summer is the Detroit Urban Garden and Farm Tour put on by the Detroit Agriculture Network. I've mentioned the Garden Resource Program in Detroit, Highland Park, and Hamtramck. This year there are 244 community, 48 school and 517 family gardens participating, up 45% from last year. This your the tour was on August 5. You could take one of three bus tours or two bike tours. The tours started at Catherine Ferguson Academy, a Detroit public school for pregnant and parenting teenagers that has a farm with chickens, goats, rabbits, geese, ducks, turkeys and a horse plus a garden that produces food for both animals and students. All of the students are involved in the farm. Read more about gardening in Detroit here.
I took the Central City Bus tour and saw some gardens in the Highland Park area. One of the nice things about this tour is that you get to see some of the older distinctive homes in Detroit. Some of them are gorgeous, some of them need a lot of work, but even those show what they were. We saw a couple of first year community gardens, one started by a church for outreach and one by a community group that was trying develop a source for fresh vegetables for the neighborhood. The last garden, the Gloryland Community Garden near U of D, has a cistern, bee hives, flowers, vegetables, berries, and fruit trees laid out like a park. Afterward we all returned to Catherine Ferguson and ate some of the produce from the gardens at a reception.
Back to PALM. Our first PALM meeting will be September 13 in Lansing. It will be a picnic where we bring a dish to pass. We will be picking a route for 2010 from the proposals that people bring. If you would like to be on staff (and we are always looking for new staff), email us. I will post more details in a later post.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
Post PALM Post
Did you ever notice that the days are always getting longer leading up to PALM and afterword the days start getting shorter? That can't be a coincidence, can it?
This year's PALM was on the only hot week we had this summer. It was in high 80's or low 90's and it seemed a lot hotter because it was 20 degrees cooler on the weeks leading up to PALM. The Thursday before PALM we had thunder that sounded like artillery in SE Michigan. The next night, it poured. Either one of those nights would have been bad for PALM. You have to be careful what you wish for. Typically hot weather breaks with thunderstorms in Michigan. In fact we were supposed to get some bad weather Wednesday night and Thursday morning. 50 miles away it was bad, but we were lucky: no rain in Vassar and none on the way to Marlette. At 7PM, it sprinkled for 30 minutes, but everybody was setup already and it just cooled things down.
But it was hot. I drank lots of water (and we had SAGs with water every 6 or 7 miles. Thank God for the SAGs.) I still didn't drink enough. I kept forgetting where I put things and I was pretty cranky at times. (I apologize.) On Thursday and Friday I left camp at 7:30 AM and beat the bad afternoon heat. That made a big difference. It was a tough PALM for me. I was still tired for the whole week after PALM.
We start planning for PALM in September, the Sunday after Labor Day. The first meeting we pick a route (and who will hold what staff position, but that's the boring stuff). Ten months later PALM happens. For me it's the best part of the summer. I do the web site and it's hard for me to do any updates after PALM. This year I've been better than most years. It only took 3 weeks to get Dottie's pictures of PALM 2009 on the web site, drop the "Preparing for PALM" pages, and put up the Patch Contest page. Some years I haven't gotten this done until the end of August. If you read my PALM day by day description, you can tell it was too hot for me to notice a lot, but that Thursday and Friday were pretty good days for me. Fortunately we have a great blog from Ken Kaye. He nails what we hope that PALM would be all about for all the riders. Being from North Carolina, the heat must not affect him
This year's PALM was on the only hot week we had this summer. It was in high 80's or low 90's and it seemed a lot hotter because it was 20 degrees cooler on the weeks leading up to PALM. The Thursday before PALM we had thunder that sounded like artillery in SE Michigan. The next night, it poured. Either one of those nights would have been bad for PALM. You have to be careful what you wish for. Typically hot weather breaks with thunderstorms in Michigan. In fact we were supposed to get some bad weather Wednesday night and Thursday morning. 50 miles away it was bad, but we were lucky: no rain in Vassar and none on the way to Marlette. At 7PM, it sprinkled for 30 minutes, but everybody was setup already and it just cooled things down.
But it was hot. I drank lots of water (and we had SAGs with water every 6 or 7 miles. Thank God for the SAGs.) I still didn't drink enough. I kept forgetting where I put things and I was pretty cranky at times. (I apologize.) On Thursday and Friday I left camp at 7:30 AM and beat the bad afternoon heat. That made a big difference. It was a tough PALM for me. I was still tired for the whole week after PALM.
We start planning for PALM in September, the Sunday after Labor Day. The first meeting we pick a route (and who will hold what staff position, but that's the boring stuff). Ten months later PALM happens. For me it's the best part of the summer. I do the web site and it's hard for me to do any updates after PALM. This year I've been better than most years. It only took 3 weeks to get Dottie's pictures of PALM 2009 on the web site, drop the "Preparing for PALM" pages, and put up the Patch Contest page. Some years I haven't gotten this done until the end of August. If you read my PALM day by day description, you can tell it was too hot for me to notice a lot, but that Thursday and Friday were pretty good days for me. Fortunately we have a great blog from Ken Kaye. He nails what we hope that PALM would be all about for all the riders. Being from North Carolina, the heat must not affect him
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