More About Fall

This November has really been warm: it was up in the 60's and sunny again last Saturday. At 3:00 I decided to take a bike ride: down Outer Drive, thru Rouge Park (to check on the new statue) to Dearborn via a bit of Hines Drive and the new bike path. I stopped off at Starbucks at about 4:10. Some things don't change in Fall even if it is in the 60's. It gets dark and early. I got home around 5:20. It wasn't twilight, it was way darker than that. I should have started at 2:00. Thank goodness the traffic was light (no pun intended).

My garden is down to some scraggly Swiss chard and one collard plant with leaves as large as a tennis racket. But this Tuesday was the Garden Resource Program's Fall Potluck and Planning meeting. It was a gathering of gardeners from all over the city at the 4H Center. ( I still can't believe that there's a 4H Center on the near eastside, south of Gratiot at 5710 McClellan Street. Look it up on Google Maps.) Even though winter is ahead of us, it was a large, diverse, enthusiastic group fresh from a great summer of gardens. This season the Garden Resource Program distributed 48,000 packets of seeds and over 200,000 plants to over 850 community, school, and family gardens within Detroit. There were over 3500 adults and 7400 kids involved and they produced and sold over 11 tons of fresh vegetables, all within Detroit. There were 40 workshops ranging from gardening (pest control, composting, seed starting) to cooking (bread making, west African cooking, making garden fresh pizzas) to vegetable preservation (pickling, canning, freezing and dehydrating). The potluck was a mixture of everything in the city: neighborhoods, ages, nationalities. We reviewed what we did the last year to see what we did well and what we could do better. The program grew by 40% this year. Their big question was how they could make it even bigger next year.

The PALM meeting was on Sunday. The sites are coming along well: some of the sites even know what their meals will be. This year most of the sites have pools we can access. The total mileage of the route will be 253 miles (spread over 6 days). We'll be going by lots of lakes (with swimming) and we'll have shade. A tentative route has been laid out and Andy will be getting it out on MapMyRide soon. I'll be getting with the printer about the 2010 application in the next couple of weeks. Summer is here before winter has even started.

November

So far November has been much better than October. We and a group of friends do a Tuesday night bike ride around downtown Detroit (roughly New Center, Mexican Town, Ren Cen, Belle Isle, Eastern Market, and Wayne State). On last Saturday we had a party to celebrate this year's biking season. We invite everybody who has done the ride at least once and give out "awards". Even though the bike season was over with the miserable weather in October (and the shorter days), it was good to see everybody and talk about the summer. This year we took the suggestions of some new riders and made a few alterations to our route: we started taking East Grand Boulevard after Belle Isle past the old Packard plant all the way to the Poletown plant instead of going through Eastern Market and Wayne State. The road was wider, traffic was lighter, and we got to see more of how Detroit looked back in the day. We also rode the River Walk on the way to Belle Isle instead of taking Larnard. This took us right along the river, hard to beat that. Next year the I-75 construction by the Ambassador Bridge should be done and we'll be able to use the pedestrian bridge to include more of Mexicantown in our ride like we used to do. The Greenways Initiative offers some interesting possibilities next year, besides the Dequindre Cut.

So far the weather in November has been what the weather in October should have been. I was able to ride my bike for the first time in a month. We rode Hines Drive last Sunday. It was a beautiful sunny late fall day. As a bonus, Hines Drive was close to motor traffic so that they could put up the holiday lights so we didn't have to worry about cars. On our way there we went through Rouge Park and went by where they fly remote controlled model airplanes. We also met an artist there who was installing one of his scupltures in the park. And today I was able to squeeze in one more bike ride. Would you believe it, it was in the 60's and sunny two weekends in a row. Fall light and fall colors, what could be better? It's all the sweeter because October's weather has already shown us that we are stealing these days.

The next PALM meeting is November 22. After that I have to get to work: I have to put together the 2010 PALM application and get it to the printer. Remember that we mail out these applications by 1st class mail at the end of January. If you are interested in getting on PALM, the best thing you can do is to get on our mailing list by emailing us your mailing address, ie where you will be in January. You cannot register online (we're too cheap for that) and we don't put the application online for about 10 days. People who get the application mailed to them have the first crack at getting on PALM.

Bikes and Halloween

Happy Halloween! I helped giving out candy at our Community House. We had a Haunted House and had almost 1,000 kids swarm there for candy and scares. The scariest thing I saw as a man walking his cat on a leash. I stayed far away.

I got a postcard from Adventure Cycling about a meeting to be held at Second Baptist Church downtown that mentioned the Underground Railway Bike Route . It was about bikes, it was at night, it was in town, and I hadn't ridden all month so I went. The meeting was far ranging and I learned a lot. It ends up that Detroit was an important stop on the Underground Railroad and that the Second Baptist Church and the First Congregational Church were major centers here. I found out that Adventure Cycling is adding a spur off their original Mobile, Alabama to Owen Sound, Ontario Underground Railway Bike Route route that will go thru Detroit. There was a presentation on the Greenways Initative for bike routes within Detroit and the metro area, complete with maps of planned and existing routes. I now have places to explore on my Tuesday night bike rides in the city. I got to take a tour of the church and hear about the interactive exhibit on the Underground Railway that will be at the African American Museum here in 2010. Not bad for a cold October night that looked like rain.

While the only thing growing in my garden is the compost heap, the greens are holding their own. It takes a deep snow to kill off kale, Swiss chard, and collards. As long as they hang on it's not winter yet. I'm harvesting them bit by bit and waiting for the green tomatoes to ripen. In the fall, I collect leaves that my neighbors rake up to add to the grass clippings next summer in the compost heap. I'm learning a little bit each year. Now if I can just control the insects and mildew.