Organic Gardening | The Canary Report

MCS Awareness Month: Yellow colors our world

Posted on May 02, 2010 by Susie Collins in Blog, MCS, Organic Gardening, Susie Collins

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Many members of our canary community have adopted yellow as this year’s theme color for MCS Awareness Month!

Heralding MCS Awareness Month, profile photos radiating the warmth and vibrancy of yellow are popping up throughout our community on Facebook and on our network. Yellow, for those of us with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, symbolizes the canary in the coal mine, with which we all identify. Our identity as a canary embraces and honors our bodies’ wisdom, and uses our song to alert the world of the menacing dangers of toxic consumer goods and a polluted planet.

“The color Yellow has stood for wisdom and intellect throughout the ages. It is full of creative and intellectual energy. A sun color, it makes us feel happy and optimistic. Expansive and free to do and be all that we can be. Cheerful, Joyful, Curious, Yellow promotes optimism. Helps you feel expressive, friendly and experimental.”

Jacki, who had to give up her career as a nurse due to developing Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, turned her misfortune into a blessing, inspiring us all. She’s athletic, often kayaking, hiking, and working in her garden. She and her husband, John, live a completely nontoxic lifestyle, growing veggies and roots crops in an organic garden, and raising chickens for meat and eggs. John, who took Jacki’s photo above, hunts wild game, bringing home venison, rabbit, goose, turkey, beef, lamb and goat. They eat tons of fresh veggies, green smoothies, but not much bread and no sweets.

About the above photo, Jacki says, “Yellow is the color for MAY… learn, and educate others on MCS… we need your help. Thank you for caring and sharing… love ya, jj.”

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Thanks to Lourdes Salvador for her contribution to this post about the color yellow.

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Tags: Food, Fresh Air Photos, MCS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Photography, Support

Short film: The People’s Grocery

Posted on Jan 29, 2010 by Susie Collins in Blog, Food, Media/Videos, Organic Gardening, Susie Collins

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Food justice: The People’s Grocery in West Oakland is an inspiration to communities everywhere about the importance of a healthy diet and about knowing where your food comes from. Director of the project Brahm Ahmadi is a hero!

In West Oakland, California, where liquor stores have replaced markets, People’s Grocery is creating a healthy alternative, offering access to organic produce. Through urban gardens and local farms, People’s Grocery supports a culture based on connection to the land, sustainable agricultural practices, and regenerating community.

Brahm Ahmadi is the co-founder and executive director of People’s Grocery. He has a B.A. in Sociology from the University of California and is an MBA candidate at the Presidio School of Management. Brahm combines social enterprise, cooperative economics, urban agriculture, public education and youth development to build healthy and stable inner city communities. He is also Executive Director of the North Oakland Land Trust, which preserves properties in North Oakland for the exclusive purpose of community gardening.

Link (A great site with oodles of online films to watch!)

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Tags: Children's Health, Environmental Health, Food, Healthy Living, Organic, Video, Work

The Christmas Egg

Posted on Dec 26, 2009 by Susie Collins in Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

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This is Betty, our new hen, a Rhode Island Red I was given by my neighbor. This is her first egg she laid after coming to live with us (not actually on Christmas Day, it was a couple weeks ago, but I just couldn’t resist the play on words). We were all so excited! After a bit of a rocky start when she first arrived– she picked on my littlest bantie, chased all the wild birds out of the gardens, pooped all over everything (and so named Betty Poop), and would not go to bed at night in the coops– she’s now all settled in, getting along perfectly with everyone else, ignores all the wild birds, snuggles in at night right alongside the others on the roost, and now gives us an egg a day. She still poops gigantic poops all over everything, but we love Betty!

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Tags: Garden, Hawaii, Healthy Living, Organic, Photography

My Solstice

Posted on Dec 21, 2009 by Susie Collins in Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

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Happy Solstice!

I spent Solstice evening in the garden, puttering around, taking photos and planting a bed of vegetables and flowers (you can see the seed packets on one of the slides). After the series of storms that blew through here over the weekend, the evening was calm and peaceful, barely a whisper of a breeze. The melodious laughing thrushes sang and sang from the bamboo. It was one of those perfect evenings in the gardens.

Find more photos like this on The Canary Report

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Tags: Fresh Air Photos, Garden, Hawaii, Healthy Living, Leisure, Organic, Photography

Susie’s Secret Garden: Ponds, chickens and vegetables

Posted on Oct 10, 2009 by Susie Collins in Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

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Some photos from my garden. I love harvesting fresh greens each night right before dinner!

Find more photos like this on The Canary Report

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Tags: Food, Garden, Hawaii, Home, Organic

Hibiscus in bloom

Posted on Jun 29, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Linda Sepp, Media/Videos, Organic Gardening

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Double hibiscus

Post by Linda.

I found a flower on my indoor hibiscus yesterday, totally missed that it had a bud!

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hibiscusst2

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Tags: Garden, Organic, Photography

Therapeutic gardens and the power of scent

Posted on Jun 01, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Organic Gardening, Susie Collins

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Scent, fragrance and memory can all be found in the garden.

Naomi Sachs, who writes at Therapeutic Landscapes Database Blog: News and Other Good Information about Landscapes for Health, wrote two very good posts on “Garden fragrance as an emotional memory trigger” (5/14) and “More on scent, fragrance and memory: Guest blog post” (5/31). In the two essays, she explores the scent of flowers as powerful triggers of memory in elderly people whose memories are slipping away.

A commentor to Naomi’s first post, Wendy Meyer, left the link to her own thesis on “Persistence of Memory: Scent Gardens for Therapeutic Life Review in Communities for the Elderly.”

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Tags: Air, Chemicals, Environment, Environmental Health, Garden, Healthy Living, MCS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Support

More adventures in veggie gardening

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Susie Collins in Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

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Time to plant!

It’s been awhile since I updated you on the new veggie garden. For those of you who missed it, we started building a serious organic veggie garden with raised beds on Winter Solstice last year. In February, we filled up the beds, right on top of the lawn, with compost layered with straw and banana leaves. Then we let the beds “cook” during the rainy season; the moisture and warmth broke it all down, creating a perfect, nutrient rich soil.

So here’s where we are now:

We fenced in the whole garden. The gate is still to be built. The main purpose of the fence is to keep the chickens out. The salad buffet is closed!

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Tags: Food, Garden, Healthy Living, Nontoxic, Organic

What’s blooming today?

Posted on May 17, 2009 by Susie Collins in Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

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Spectacular bromiliad welcomes the spring.

bromiliad

My gardens are exploding with blooms as the weather warms up and the sun comes out. It was a long, wet and chilly winter, and all living things are happy for spring!

Look at this spectacular bromiliad! We got this plant about 15 years ago as a sucker, about 4 inches high. This is its first bloom, and to give you some perspective on how big it is, that fence in the background is four feet high. I had to get up on a ladder to get the photo. So this bromiliad is gigantic, and blooming in a gigantically AMAZING way!

It started the flowering process about a month ago by sending up that pillar out of the center top, which then began unfurling the individual blooms last week. At left is what it looked like before it started blooming.

It’s not unusual for bromiliads of this size to bloom only once in 10, 12, 15 or even 25 years, so it’s very exciting! I can see it from my office windows, nestled there in the red heleconia, which is doing some amazing things itself.