I just read an excellent article from the New York Times that a colleague sent me (have I mentioned recently that I love working for CivicActions?) that has me once again thinking that I want to grow some vegetables. This simple act not only will provide me with excellent, organic food at (once installed) near zero cost, but will also help my mind, body, spirit and community ties, not to mention fixing the tiniest dent in the global warming train wreck. But I have a problem: besides being strongly acidic, my back yard is sloped and heavily shaded, and thus would require a good deal of work to support even a small bio (or french) intensive plot.

So my next step will be to poll my community to see if there is shared interest in creating a community garden. What a wonderful project for the high school, though I'd rather it near Foster Elementary - my son's school - so I can easily walk to it ;-) This makes sense to me, as there are seven elementary schools in Mt Lebanon, so there should be (ultimately) at least five community garden plots.

I have many other home projects on my plate right now, too, but I'm pretty jazzed about this, and I look forward to following up with more specifics.

Mmmm... I can already taste the tomatoes and zucchini. (We'll just have to make sure the deer don't feel the same way!)

Update 2008-05-08: Since adding this entry, I've received some interesting and useful links that I'll list here:

• The Edible Schoolyard, a non-profit program located on the campus of Martin Luther King Junior Middle School in Berkeley, California. I was also pointed to the section in Hope's Edge about the same project.
• Jane Goodall operates a program called Roots to Shoots, which helps start community gardens.
• And in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this article was on the front page of the "Local News" section: Amid soaring food prices, urban farms are sprouting across the city