Summer

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.