hello world

I needed a place to put down my thoughts on how to prepare myself and my kitten for the end of the world, or the end of corn, or the end of oil.

I'm lucky enough to have a home in the middle of the most polluted region in the US, down the street from the LA ports and refineries. This stretch of the LA river is mostly homes and a long bathroom. You should see the way it floods when the rains come, the view from PCH, zooming past the flower shop.

I'm lucky enough to have a shared backyard, a patch of dirt seeped with decades of heavy industrial metals and chemicals. There's a luscious ficus tree right in the middle of it. I got some fruit and vegetable plants last week-- strawberries, peppers, chrysanthemum, tomatoes, gourds, three different kinds of mint. I'm still figuring out where and how to grow them. They need good soil and nutrients, protection from pollutants. I got seeds too: kale, peas, cucumber. I want blueberries, and I want a lemon tree.

The chainlink fence that blocks off the bigger dirt patch will be our trellis, or the gourds' rather. I want to grow passionfruit next to it. That will be the gourd patch, the grass in front of our neighborhood dumpster. The peppers and chrysanthemum will need their own bed above ground; maybe next to some purple sprouts or spinach. Garlic, onions, carrots; root vegetables need their own soil.

Mostly, I want a garden bed for table scraps-- the ends of spinach bunches still held by their crowns, carrot tops, onions (sweet, yellow, green). This is the planter I'm most excited about.

I heard that ssuk pulls up impurities from the ground. I wonder how many years it would take for it to clean this patch of dirt, not to grow anything from it, just to make it non-toxic again. Ssuk is mildly toxic to cats, however, and I bet it would take over this whole neighborhood. There are beautiful patio gardens around here if you look.