Water Garden

My favorite class in college was an Environmental Studies class that had nothing to do with my Economics major except that I had to take it to satisfy a certain number of "other" science credits in order to graduate. A large part of this class was conducted through field trips. I enjoyed these trips immensely, which now makes me wonder why field trips can't be incorporated into more classes to bring theory and practice together in a tangible way. I'll save that for another post [thanks to the inspiration of Brazen Careerist Penelope Trunk -- I think I know the answer to yesterday's question now].

Along with my classmates I hiked into a landfill where we witnessed the bleak resting place of infinite human consumption, layer upon layer of everything imaginable -- dumped then bull-dozed into a man-made mountain of waste. We took a behind the scenes tour of a waste treatment plant to see how water is cleaned, then recycled. We joyfully tromped around protected wetlands in rural Wisconsin, knee deep in peat and mud. We visited a reclaimed prairie with native grasses 10 ft high, bordered by a majestic oak savanna. We walked through a gorgeous arboretum in misting rain, which was more like playing a game of tag than participating in some academic pursuit.

One of the most important lessons I learned from this class sank in while on a "sidewalk safari" in the middle of town. A sidewalk safari is basically a deliberate observation of plant life (and sometimes animal life) that go unnoticed 99.9% of the time while walking along any given urban sidewalk. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to point things out to you, to realize that nature is EVERYWHERE ...even in the most unlikely places!

So this takes me back to the title of this post, Water Garden. One thing on my to-do list during my year off is to plant a garden. No, the irony of moving from 4 acres of land begging for flowers and shrubs -- to living on a boat -- is not lost on me. And neither is the fact that I've never actually planted anything. But at least I now know conditions exist down here that are conducive to growing stuff. For example:

This little guy took root under the sun pad on the front of our boat:



This ivy is growing on the boat next to us, between fiberglass and rubber siding:



This melange of weeds is growing from a drain pipe which runs through the marina retaining wall:



But the most impressive specimen of all is this shrubbery growing from the tail pipe of a nearby boat that clearly has not been moved in a while:



Wish me luck with growing my first potted basil plant! Can't wait to make some pesto!