Tag Archives: community

The Daily Feed, We Green DC
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Learn to be a Backyard Farmer

Photo courtesy of
‘Double Red Ripe Tomatoes’
courtesy of ‘Wayan Vota’

If you’ve ever had a tomato or zucchini plant gone wild, you might appreciate this.

Soon, an area farmers market may carry produce from folks who farm in their own backyards. The Maryland Organic Backyard Initiative (MOBI) wants to create community farmers markets that lets people who have organic gardens trade with each other.

Tonight and for the next two Thursdays at 7:30 at Crossings in Silver Spring, MOBI will hold classes where organic backyard farmers or wanna-bes can meet and learn how to grow, eat and trade delicious, organic, fresh, locally grown produce.

The Daily Feed
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Film to Highlight DC Community Gardens

Photo courtesy of
‘Great Lettuce Harvest of 2009’
courtesy of ‘Wayan Vota’

An area filmmaker is now editing a documentary on seven community gardens in DC — and the people who tend, love, and learn from them.

The film will explore the role of these gardens not only as sources of fresh, nutritious food, but as outdoor classrooms, places of healing, centers of social interaction, and oases of beauty and calm in inner-city neighborhoods.

Already there’s a long and heartwarming trailer that shows all the good that playing in the dirt and growing your own food can bring. You can see it on the newly launched Community of Gardeners Web site.

Life in the Capital, People, The District, The Features
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Why I Love DC: Kirk

Photo courtesy of
‘Pointy Houses in a Row’
courtesy of ‘Bill Jones Jr’

“Creative people have LA and stylish people have NYC,” said a person that I met at the bar. “Nerds like you and I, we’ve got Washington. It’s our city, man.” Flippant, yes, but philosophical at the same time.  This stranger that sat down next to me on a Friday evening hit at what, to me, makes DC a great place: community. It’s part Mecca for CLA geeks, like myself, and part city of unseen potential.  Since getting to know Washington, DC, I realized that its a place that most Americans visit, but never actually see.  The true beauty of this city is known only to residents and this provides a strata of a commonality that binds them together.  Why do I love DC?  Community, plain and simple.

I’ll admit that I lived in the area for a solid 4 years before I began to discover that DC actually had a personality. Cracking the marble facade of the city takes time and effort. To most, Washington, DC is a giant, historical landmark. It holds our nation’s great monuments and provides beds for its leaders. It’s an effective, yet insular bastion of power that lacks the cultural panache of other, major cities.

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