Chapter 8: Assessing Your Progress

The samples in this chapter have been the most helpful to me while drafting progress reports. Since we have started working on this project, I have focused less on the book and more on in-class work, the wiki page and work on this project.

Green Florida group?

The group formerly known as the Bartlett Park Community Garden group met with Shari this Saturday to discuss the proposal. It was my first time down to the garden, I admired the obvious differences in gardening styles and all the plants thriving in their own little rectangles. I expected the neighborhood to be much worse, but it was nice, with people on the porches and very little going on. We met Joe, a member of the grounds committee and Tom, a gardener. Drew, Amanda and I grabbed a shovel and a pitchfork to turn the pile of compost while a few of the members worked on changing the filters in in the drip irrigation system.
When the new compost and all of its inhabitants were cozily tucked away under the older, more "digested" stuff, we talked with Joe about his expectations of our project. Joe wasn't much a fan of making a volunteer handbook, but for very good reasons. This is a community garden, people should be coming out to be in a happy place with their neighbors, family and friends. Garden members should get to know each other, teach and learn, and take care of the community.
We also talked shop with Tom, a week old member of the garden, who was in the process of amending his soil. He taught us that lady bugs eat aphids (a very common garden pest, often called plant lice, that will eat almost anything you plant) and earthworms are your best friend.
We left the garden and met Shari at her house where we talked over the proposal.
I was given an entirely new outlook on this project- more then likely because I had not yet met with Shari or Angela about what they needed. Our project shifted from a volunteer handbook to a guide for the drip irrigation system and an information pamphlet for Green Florida.
I feel a lot more confident in my understanding of the project after being able to talk everything out.
Shari also mentioned referring to the neighborhood the garden sits in as "underprivileged" should be avoided. After visiting the neighborhood, I understand why. We want this community to be proud of where they live, and not ashamed or belittled. We want to let the public know that Green Florida isn't around to help a lesser neighborhood out, but to show them that they can help themselves.

Going for the green

Today, I've been clicking around the internet to find website with information we could include in the Bartlett Park Community Garden fact sheets. I'm really amazed with the amount of region-specific information that is available on organic gardening; and even more amazed by the number of community gardens there are in the U.S. When these gardens are started in lower-income parts of cities, they tend to improve property values and provide these families with very affordable, healthy food.

If you go to the grocery store, and for the sake of bottom-dollar pricing we'll say a Walmart Supercenter, you might find three small tomatoes for a dollar. They won't taste much like a real tomato and they might not be very ripe- but you only paid a dollar (and the gas to get to Walmart). If you spent that dollar on a packet of tomato seeds from the same Supercenter, you would have tomatoes all summer long for the price of water (pennies a gallon). In my experience, some of the easiest plants to grow are herbs, and we pay two or three dollars for a few sprigs? Maybe growing-your-own is more of a secret than I first thought.

Chapter 6: Managing Your Collaboration

This chapter goes over the most effective ways a group could work together. There is, of course, the most ideal group would have all of their time to devote to the project, but this isn't the case for our group.
I really like the idea of a field journal- a dated log of each members' work on the project. Adding one of these to our group wiki page might help everyone stay on track even though we won't be able to have face-to-face meetings more than once or twice a week. It will also help us keep up with the progress reports.
Google Docs and the group wiki page are awesome places for our group to work on the same documents, with most the freedom one would have with a physical meeting. It also eliminates the existence of several word documents floating around waiting to be condensed into one piece.

Chapter 5: Refining Your Project

Many sections of this chapter provide the reader with very important guidelines for writing a proposal and deciding on a proper project. The sample proposals were useful to me when drafting our initial proposal, but the outline of how a proposal should flow (causes->problem->objectives->solution) was especially helpful in not only out proposal draft but also presenting our project to the class. Now, we didn't stick to the format, and that is something we need to work on, but it gave us an idea on how to do something we have never done before.

To bee or not to bee.

Although I love going to school and learning everything I can, I am excited to graduate. I have been attending USF since 2003, and though I have learned so much about so many different things, I feel as if I have been wandering aimlessly through the course catalog.
In my life, I know that I want to be active; I want to make this world a better place. I have recently (within the past few months) been able to set my sights on a degree- English-Technical Writing. Words are one of the most powerful weapons, but using words is a difficult skill to master. I want to be able to use my hands as well as my mind and pen to make this planet healthier, happier, and more peaceful.
If I could accomplish one thing in my lifetime, what would it be? Right now, today, I would decide on saving the honeybees. I would campaign for everyone to have a hive in their backyard, and to plant flowers. Humans are at war with animals and nature. Through education and understanding of how this world works, we can live harmoniously with the creatures that roam around us.

Field Trip to Mt. Zion Human Services

When only reading about Mt. Zion Human Services, that it was faith-based and in the heart of St. Petersburg, I most definitely had expectations. I thought it would be much more church affiliated and a lot more rough than it actually was. These assumptions were proved wrong after seeing this organization at work. The staff were cheerfully working hard and looked tired after a long day, the children were happy and well-behaved and the place was lovingly decorated with the children's artwork. "Faith" was barely an issue. Although Pat Fried's discussion with us about the organization gave much information on the history and how overwhelmed the staff was with the work that needs to be done, I feel that visiting the day care and other buildings was much more effective, at least for me, in understanding that this is a real organization that battles a huge workload with little time to cover it and few faculty members to do it. I feel more compelled to help MZHS after seeing how it works, beyond simply completing an assigment, and would be willing to help them after this semester.