D.C. gardening

the place i'd found to stay in D.C. is called thug man$ion, but jill, the lease holder and one with the couchsurfing account, tells me they are looking for a new name. i suggested LOVE Mansion. kind of a play on 'love shack'.

i'd been informed previous to arrival that help was needed in the garden. this drew me of course and i was excited to see it when i arrived. that first night i just took a peak. it was a mess alright, and the next day i started by just tidying up a bit and picking up trash. i picked some lamb's quarter to cook up.
during the few days i was there i worked in the garden a little on my own and a little with jill and her boyfirned d'mille. we made some good progress in preparing the bed space for planting. the method jill uses is to cut the weeds down with shears, lay newspaper, and then an inch or two of compost and/or wood chips. i did a little work on the compost since we were gathering some valuable green materials from the clearing of the space. i layered it up nice and tried to tuck it in with what cover material was available, which was not quite enough for a proper biofilter. this garden has a good vibe to it, with a huge tree on the north side of the yard, wild lawn at it's feet. jill said the soil seemed to have a healthy history when she arrived. she has had success growing food on it, increasingly for the past five years.

the interest in plants runs in the family apparently. jill's sister juliet is an instructor at chestnut school of herbal medicine, in asheville.

my second night in D.C. jill told me about a bicycle ride she noticed was happening. it was being put on by this shop called bicycle space. i had really wanted to make it to critical mass the previous night but had arrived just too late and it was raining. don't even know if it happened, but this ride was definitely happening, as we confirmed with jills couchsurfing friend glen. it was to meet up in just an hour, so i quickly shifted gears from making miso soup and relaxing at home to a long evening out with a group ride and social event.
it was a lot like critical mass rides i used to go on in seattle. some of the more fun and organized ones that is. we did not make a lot of noise as most people seemed to be engaged in conversation with their neighbors. it is impolite to hoot and holler in the middle of a conversation. still, i did it a couple times i think. i was really excited to be on this ride and had worn my cape. it made a great ice-breaker for sharing about the hoop tour and the superhero bicycle ride i will be attending in august. i was the only one out of possibly two hundred riders with a cape on.
the most magical feeling on the ride was when the ride folded back on itself doing a u-turn in front of the washington monument. we had one run-in with the cops where it was decided we could proceed IN SINGLE FILE through this tight section of streets and bike trail. i saw a couple of people fall. one of them looked pretty serious, the other was okay.
the gathering of folks at the end was really wonderful. there was just enough food for every rider there who wanted to eat. mostly pasta dishes, chicken, and potato salad. i ate mostly the food i had brought with me, including the last of the sausage provision i had bought in roanoke, earlier on the ride. i got to meet the man, eric, who was responsible for putting on the event, with the help of others of course. he told me it was all about encouraging positive cultural change. right on!

the second place i stayed in D.C. is called the Dharma House. i met one of the members of this household at the group bicycle ride and he had said to me in parting, "come back, and you'll have a place to stay." i decided to take him up on the offer right away. this is a house of meditators, which i did not know before arriving! both nights i was there nathan and i were going to meditate together and ended up doing other things, like talking.
i spent some of the day there cleaning the kitchen, and i was shown how to take out the compost. the method employed is what i will call 'worm-trench method', because it involves placing the materials in a trench, where worms and other organisms digest it. this learning experience, with house member ken, was rewarding for me. i think worm-trench method could be more useful than passive pile thermophilic composting in some situations. ken was interested in my suggestions and i recommended he try the passive pile, making sure to keep plenty of cover material as a barrier/biofilter and always depositing the material in a hole dug into the center of the pile. this should effectively prevent pest invasion and save a lot of labor.
in the evening i joined nathan and betta, their italian house mate, at the air and space museum, where there was viewing party for the transit of venus. it was too cloudy though. we enjoyed a picnic in the park anyway. i made brown rice and sauteed vegetables, including some veggies from their CSA box. it occurred to me that it was almost as good to just picture the transit in our mind's eye; a dot crossing over the face of the sun... nathan did a juggling performance for us and a bunch of kids who joined our party. one of the little girls was really interested in the mbira and sat with me playing for a while.
on the way home we dropped by the white house. i felt like i had to see it at least once in person. very anticlimactic. the scene was stale.