To these ten little feet, we call it Mushroom Dirt. Grown-ups call it compost!
Picture courtesy of CarlisleFlowers

Shame, shame on us- fried chicken, spicy no less for Sunday dinner.  No veggies except coleslaw.  Hubbie in line for the family style box, movement to my left compelled me to get out of the car.  100 yards away were neighbors from the Radford-Winston area of North Baltimore (near Loyola College ) who were divvying up their vegetables for the week.  Every Sunday afternoon that is what they do, take their bounty from the raised framed rectangles and squares and enjoy their urban raised produce for the week.  This ritual lasts from April to November.  I suspect that it lasts all year long with talk of what seeds they’ll use next year, how will they rotate crops, and how will they rotate gardeners cum farmers.

There is a hedge between the fried chicken parking lot and this half acre cultivated land.  Doesn’t that sound nice, “Cultivated Land” as if the very fact of tilling, seeding and growing bounty gives the land a higher meaning.  Musing aside, children ran here and there.  A spokeswoman for the group pointed to the elevated sprinkler attached to a pole.  The children raced between the mist and what was left of the mushroom compost.  Its color, darker than dark compelled further inspection.  In fact if I wasn’t being beckoned to the car, my shoes would be off and running straight for that mushroom dirt too.