from linwood to chopping wood

As much as I adore Patterson Park, on occasion I do find a need to leave my lovely neighborhood for a little change of pace and altered scenery, and the great thing about where we live is the amazing proximity to so many easy day trips of easy weekend getaways. As I mentioned in Friday's post, I went camping this past weekend for the first time in my adult life. N and I left our Park around 3 o'clock and headed to Elk Neck State Park. It was probably about an hour and fifteen minutes door to tent, and a really lovely drive that avoided the Bay Bridge entirely - woohoo!

I chopped wood to build my very first fire, hiked a lot, cooked meals outside, and played football in a river. While it reminded me of why, say, I like living in a HOUSE, it was pretty neat to be so totally out of my element. I only complained a little bit about Nature's relentless attempts to conquor me ;-)

It's pretty neat that in under two hours we Patterson Parkers can be down in D.C, flitting around Philly, camping riverside in a state park, or skiing in the mountains. As awesome as our neighborhood is, it's good to get back to nature every once in a while, or explore other cities. After all, doesn't absence make the heart grow a fonder?

So next time you find yourself with a free weekend (which might be hard, given the Patterson Park social calendar...), check out some of these ideas, or close your eyes and pick a spot on a map and take off for a day drive or a weekend trip to explore somewhere new. Just make sure that you come back!

love k

i scream, you scream...

...we all scream for ice cream! Our neighborhood association president recently entered Patterson Park into Edy's Neighborhood Salute. And guess what? Well, of course we won! I thought her 250-word entry really demonstrated what a hard-working, cohesive group we have in our neighborhood. It really sums up why so many of us love living here (and why it's nice to get a little recognition from the outside world sometimes too!). Have a loot at her winning entry:

Patterson Park neighborhood is a vibrant, diverse community in Baltimore, MD. To say our neighborhood is a social group is an understatement! Most of our time spent socializing is during and after the hard work we put in volunteering our time to improve the neighborhood and the City. Every weekend we meet up to do many different projects including neighborhood and alley clean-ups, tree and flower plantings, Citizens on Patrol walks, sponsoring and coaching youth sports teams, as well as many other week night projects as well!

An ice cream party would allow us all a reason to get together that doesn’t involve a project. It will give us an opportunity to sit back and admire what we all have accomplished by working together. In the 5 years that I have lived in the neighborhood, I have seen our neighborhood transform into a safer, cleaner, and greener community, all through volunteer time of neighbors. Its time for us to celebrate all that we’ve achieved and I can’t think of a better way than the Edy’s Neighborhood Salute!

So stay tuned for further details, but tentatively pencil Saturday, July 25th in to your calendars for a neighborhood ice cream party to celebrate our hard work!

love k

game balls and dough balls

Today I took a mid-afternoon break from work to relax before evening appointments and showings. I didn't exactly kick-back however... Instead, N and I headed to the park for a sort of sports camp-esque couple of hours. We played soccer in Patterson Park, where a couple of kids walking by got a real kick (HA!!) out of joining in. Then, we headed over to the courts for some basketball, once again joined by the same kids. They were both around 11 years old and just so much fun - they had the burgeoning swagger of teenagers, but none of the antagonism or angst. They were great sports, and the four of us kept up a lovely banter over a game of "fifty." Respectful, polite, and friendly, these kids exemplified everything you'd pray to find in inner-city boys. Just goes to show that if you don't expect the worst and are open to spending a little time with neighborhood kids, they might just surprise you after all.

Oh, and I baked these almond-apricot tarts with apricots from the farmers market:


And tonight I made this whole-wheat pizza for dinner, with basil and oregano from my garden, CSA broccoli, garlic and onions, and a whole mess of cheeses. Yummers:
I'm going camping for a few days, so I hope you all have a lovely weekend - feed the ducks, play some ball, hit the pool, bake a home-grown pizza... I've given you more than enough ideas, no?

love k

duck tails

Sometimes, I'm totally giddy when I think about how many cool/fun things to do Patterson Park presents one with. The other day, N and I found ourselves with some time to kill on a beautiful afternoon. We took some left over bread we had lying around over to the Boat Lake and fed the ducks, whom we had named a few weeks back doing the same thing (for the record, Veronica is very sweet, has a gnarly beak, and will eat out of your hand; Marta, however, is bossy, large and very loud). This time, there were lots of little ducklings, as well as a few teenage ducks that were starting to stray from their parents' watchful eyes. My, how quickly they grow up...

The first time we went, I'm pretty sure N didn't really think the activity would be all that fun, and was mostly just humoring me (which I appreciate in and of itself). However, I think he came around in the end, and was kinda stoked to go back - I mean, ducks! Who doesn't love feeding ducks! If you haven't been to the boat lake in a while you really ought to save some bread next time you're finishing a loaf and head over on a nice afternoon or evening.

My camera died after only a few photos...


Completely unrelated....I took this photo from the master bedroom of a house I showed on Ellwood the other day. Somebody, please buy it from me so I can come admire this view whenever I want!
love k

it is, however, delicious being green

To continue with my "green" theme I seem to have going...

As you all know, I'm sharing a CSA share with three other people. Conveniently, they are my roommate, my boyfriend and my neighbor which makes for fabulous ease when splitting it all up each week. But here's the challenge - what do you do when you have four people and 3 beets? 2 heads of broccoli? A head of cabbage? We decided this week we'd try something different and pool our resources and food and make a CSA feast together (or, as I like to term such occassions, a "group dinnie"). First, I'll list what we had so you can be impressed with how much we used later on:

• 4 zucchini
• 2 broccoli
  
• 1 cabbage
• 3 shallot onions
• 2 bunches of unidentifiable greens
• 3 beets

In my garden I also had:

• Thyme
• Rosemary
• Oregano
• Lots of other things that are irrelevant to this story but I'll post pictures of anyways

So what I made was:

• Cabbage salad with crumbled bacon, toasted walnuts and bleu cheese dressing
• Broccoli with melted sharp cheddar cheese and crispy shallot flakes
• Baked zucchini with grated parmesan cheese and pepper
• Roast beets
• Whole chickens roasted with thyme, rosemary, oregono and lemon (and bacon greese from the previousy fried bacon to crisp the skin)

I mean look how many ingredients were either homegrown or locally grown! And it was all delicious, inexpensive and lots of fun. I'm thinking this should be a weekly event and we can just rotate who's week it is to do all the cooking and who brings the wine.

Here are some gratuitious photos of my garden right now - my tomatoes are really starting to come in, as are bell peppers and a banana pepper. My herbs, especially the basil, are just flourishing and I can barely keep up!

love k

it's not easy being green (part II)

Yesterday I gave you the history and overview of "Alley Gating and Greening." Today you get to hear about "All-out Hating and Screaming." JUST KIDDING! But that was good parallel phonetics, no? Seriously, though, the Alley Gating and Greening (AGG from henceforth) process is a challenging one. Yesterday, I mentioned the double-headed monster of inertia and trepidation.

Let's talk definitions and examples:
Inertia (noun) - Resistance or disinclination to motion, action, or change
With a higher percentage of homeowners on our alley than many others, one would think we'd have a much easier time with AGG. One would be wrong. You see, while absentee owners and landlords may be hard to track down, once you do they often don't really care what you're doing in the alley as long as they don't have to spend a lot of money. Resident old-timers, on the other hand, can be a true force with which to be reckoned, the prevailing attitude often being if they have made it this long without whatever it is you want to do, it must be a bad idea and not worth considering.
Example conversation:
"Gating our Alley will promote safety and security for all of us!"
"I don't see why you new people can't just do what I do - double bolt the doors, put up security camera, and stay inside." *scowl*

Trepidation (noun) - A state of alarm or dread; apprehension
Those who do not outright shun the idea of change in and of itself can instead be quick to come up with fearful lists of "what-ifs" and "might happens." I'm not talking questions that are requests for solutions, ideas and answers. I'm talking hypotheticals to which the only acceptable answer (to the asker) is: "You are right. This is the worst idea ever. The sky will actually fall down."
Example conversation:
"Police and emergency personnel will be able to access the alley with a knox box"
"But what if they can't? What if the extra two seconds it adds means my entire house burns to the ground?"
"Well, they use them all over the city - so far it's really not been a problem..."
"But what if it IS? What if they CAN'T! Think of what might happen!"

But I kind of understand it. I mean, it is true that there hasn't been a lot of research. It is important to consider the risks along with the benefits. It is natural to be afraid of change. But what we have now isn't working. As the 18th-century author Samual Johnson wrote in Rasselas (a novella about happiness), "Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome."

Future posts will address specific issues, but here is my over-view statement of why I am pro-AGG:
Theoretically, no, I don't like the idea of resorting to gating our alley to protect ourselves and our homes. That's in THEORY. The REALITY is that it makes me sad to know that neighbors up and down the three blocks of our alley have guns to protect themselves from the intruders they feel are bound to come sooner or later. I am disgusted by the used condoms I've cleaned up, and the violent fights of non-residents I've heard in the alley, and the clumps of hair I've found the next day. It worries me to hear mothers torn over whether or not they can realistically raise kids in our neighborhood when they can't even let them out back to play unsupervised. I want to live in a clean, safe, sanitary environment, where people want to live, and professionals want to buy, and families want to stay.

And you know, if there comes a time when that final sentence is true and the rest of that paragraph is false, I'll be the first to take down the gates.

love k

kermit was right: it's not easy being green (part I)

Recently, my block and the other two that share our T-shaped alley have been working hard to get our alley gated. For those who aren't familiar with this phenomenon, here's a little history:

The first "community green" in Baltimore was Chandler's Yard, in Federal Hill. In 1976, Bill Streuver (yup, of Streuver Bros. ) joined forced with residents surrounding a redevelopment block he purchased to gate and green the space behind the properties. Replacing concrete and crumbling walls, trees and pavers created a communal space for neighbors to socialize. It also made Streuver's development a whole lot more marketable...

Jump ahead several decades, and ASHOKA selected Baltimore as one of several cities to pilot the Community Greens initiative. After four years of hard work, Community Greens succeeded in getting Mayor Sheila Dixon to sign the "Gating and Greening Alleys Ordinance" in 2007. This ordinance gives citizens the legal right to create new commons and green spaces in their alleys, thus promoting public health, safety and well-fare.

However, before the greening comes the gating. And before the gating comes a lot of hard work to get 80% of homeowners to sign a two page consent form for the Department of Public Works.

While at first blush it seems hard to imagine anyone wouldn't want to transform a rat-infested, drug-ridden and garbage-polluted stretch of concrete into a clean, safe, attractive social space, it is a little more complicated than that. You see, reality and rationality have to compete with two very strong forces: inertia and trepidation.

More on how things are going on MY block next time...

love k