Writings on the wall

I've spent a lot of time in the garden this week, planting summer Amaranth, Zucchini, and Cucumbers, building shade to protect new crops of summer lettuce, packing compost, and hunting and killing the earwigs and caterpillars that are starting to make a mess of things. So the writings on this week's wall are going to have more of a neo-hippy, green thumb kind of theme. By the way, you may have noticed a general lack of Tiffany around here lately, she claims to be busy "working," or some such. Actually today marks her last Friday at the office, with a remaining four days to go. So I suppose we'll have to forgive her. Slow Food Nation '08 I've said some unkind things about Alice Waters in the past, but more recently I've been thinking that Slow Food and the Guerrilla Gourmet might have more in common. Their annual conference is coming to San Francisco in August, and I'll probably head over to see what's up. The Yield of Magical Thinking, By Novella Carpenter As a simple "stick it in the ground and water it until it comes up", I find all this "cosmic ritual" talk a little weird, but everyone keeps saying the produce tastes so good...

Picking lettuce with black panthers, planting lettuce in front of City Hall, and more after the jump!

City Farmer The author of the above article also blogs about her ten-year-old farm in Oakland. And yes, we are talking about Huey Newton Oakland. Every time I think I'm soooo coooool for putting a few raised beds in the yard, I look at her for a reality check. Victory Gardens, 2008. San Francisco Planting a garden in front of City Hall sounds pretty far out, right? Well they're going to do it this summer and, as it turns out, it's not the first time. You Grow Girl! This site is really cute, and useful too.

Photo, Upper right: Ultraclay(dot)com.