More Gardens! & Permaculture Action Tour "Action Day" on Sunday November 9th 2014
Heartfelt thanks goes out to all the people who gave roots to this action day:
Permaculture Action Tour -A part of their “The Pushing Through the Pavement” NYC day! It was lead by Ryan Rising on the final day of the tour with The Polish Ambassador (music band) members and volunteers.
Smiling Hogshead Ranch - This amazing urban farm in Long Island City queens is a permaculture magic land of composting, weaving beds of greens and herbs, composting toilet, and so on.
Gil Lopez, Jenelle Malbrough and Jennie Pea and other volunteers made this day a powerful and fun learning day for all the attendees.
Boardwalk Community Garden - Major thanks to the organizing by Boardwalk community gardeners Yury Opendik and Alexander "Sasha" Sokolov to rally up the neighborhood and community gardeners. The community gardeners strongly united are coming up to a year of having been uprooted from their beloved land by the Coney Island ocean. Fighting in court they are calling out for all allies (you) to pack the courts this Dec 15th at Brooklyn State Supreme Court. Big thank you to Andrew Faust speaking to the deep need of the ecology and community and the immediate return of the Boardwalk community garden to its original site.
Banner Making - Thank you Crystal Clarity for sketching the banner's vision & Pooja Rue for sketching out the words. The perma volunteer group then did a gorgeous job of painting the banner on the day of action.
Boardwalk Action - in the words of the community gardeners:
About 40 people showed up, brought a beautiful banner, video cameras, food as most importantly great energy. It was healing to see so many great folks that care about us and our cause. I personally would like to thank Aresh (More Gardens!) for making this rally happen. It was great. I will let others provide more details.
- Yuri Opendik, Boardwalk Community Gardener
It was a beautiful deep day with some permaculture greats sharing their thoughts (Andrew Faust spoke!) a truly beautiful banner urging everyone to call 311, (which we all did at one point which was awesome- political and performance art(!?))...There was an incredible prayer from Makrand Bhoot to Ganesh (!) the elephant God who removes obstacles and helps with new beginnings (complete with a miniature Ganesh statue with an anchor), Copal incense, a wonderful group seed ball throwing (into the garden) with seed-balls made by Gilly from Smiling Hogshead Ranch in Long Island City. There were short speeches from gardeners, (many Boardwalk gardeners were there), a guided meditation, a talk about using social media and marketing ideas for progressing permaculture and personal projects, a closing ceremony complete with bass drum, and as Yury said, food, videographers, and most importantly friendly and supportive, truly lovely spirits/folks.
Also an incredible sunset!
This was the last stop for a group which has been traveling across the country doing permaculture actions- they gave us a shovel which travelled across the country with them- they first used it at an empty lot in Portland, Oregon which had been plastered with development signs- they created a garden there in a day which left the neighbors cheering!
I feel so blessed that we now have this shovel.
& I feel like our garden family and the greening movement grew today from our having the event so again I must thank Aresh!
- Carolyn McCormic, Boardwalk Community Gardener