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LifeGarden, a Contra Costa-based nonprofit educational organization formed in 1999 promotes ecology education and sustainable land use. We proudly introduce our e-newsletter to you, our members, colleagues and friends. It is modeled after our award-winning magazine, Gardens for Life. We maintain an informative website and a lending library with the latest publications on horticulture and ecolandscaping. While our mission indicates that our roots are in the home garden, we are increasingly involving ourselves with community projects that apply more broadly the same sustainable principles appropriate at home. Most recently we have participated in a restoration project in conjunction with the City of Walnut Creek's Annual Creek Clean-up and cosponsored an exhibit on the history and ecology of the City's creeks. We are most excited about the resumption of our Sustainable Trails Initiative along the Iron Horse Corridor. (see VOLUNTEERS NEEDED) Mission Of LifeGarden
Through an ecological approach to life, with
gardening as the focus, LifeGarden seeks to nurture the human
spirit and health of the biosphere. Using educational programs,
community projects and demonstration sites, LifeGarden fosters
an understanding of the interconnectedness of all life, and each
individual's unique role in creating a vital community
and world.
To contact us:
(925)-937-3044
860 Bellows Ct.
Walnut Creek, CA 94596-5867 |
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For the past two years LifeGarden has been advocating
for more sustainable maintenance practices along public
trails in Contra Costa County. Through a pilot project
in Danville we sought to demonstrate that mulching and
encouraging the growth of native plants were significantly
better strategies - economically and ecologically
- for weed management than the conventional ones of herbicide
use and mowing for maintaining trail edges. In
response to our efforts, Contra Costa County has now
introduced an Adopt-a-Corridor-Section program that acknowledges
the benefits of our program and provides the guidelines
for large volunteer projects like the ones we initiated.
Please help us on either or both of the Saturdays
listed above. Once the Danville sites are
completed, we will move north to Walnut Creek. To
participate, please download the 
LifeGarden is a membership organization. We depend on
our members and donors to provide the operating funds that enable
us to conduct programs like the one described above. Please join
us by completing our (membership form) and sending it
with a check payable to LifeGarden to 860 Bellows Ct. Walnut
Creek, CA 94596-5867. New and renewing members will
receive Bay Nature supplements on Mt. Diablo or on California's native
grasslands while supplies last. Check our Volunteer listings
and offer to help in any of the ways described.
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| Yoga Hike  NOVEMBER
11th - Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve LifeGarden advisor, poet and yoga instructor extraordinaire, Jan Enderle, is again offering a hike for our members. Jan is pictured above in the yellow slicker. The event will take place on November 11th in Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. To register for the event, please download the event flyer (pdf file) and contact Jan Enderle by email janandtess@comcast.com or phone 925-876-9694. Poem by Jan Enderle
2006 ...for a moment The children spill out of shiny SUVs and scatter like milkweed fluff bursting from the pod. The field trip brought them to me, to this strange world of oak trees and wind caves. I pick up the stone pestle and watch their eyes grow big and deep as the mortar holes that gape out of the bedrock. The chatter from Mrs.Barry’s third-grade class suddenly fades like the breeze on the mountain. Little-boy feet have stopped careening down the gravely trail. Pokey fingers have ceased teasing. Even the two little hand-holding girls lose their grip on each other. They lean forward on hands and knees forgetting about dirt and bugs. I blow them stories on my elderberry flute of children just like them playing games with oak galls, of grandmothers weaving redbud twigs into baskets, and grandfathers singing stories of the creation of their people, of homes made of tree bark, and eating handfuls of madrone berries, of fathers hunting deer and elk with bow and spear, and mothers grinding acorns together with currents and pine nuts. I crack an acorn with the pestle. I have them now. They are my children my tribe. Like finely crafted arrows I gather them one by one and slip them into my fox-skin quiver. "Tu-y-shtak," I exhalt, "this place where all life began." "Tu-y-shtak" they chant. The word pounds like drum beats like clapper sticks. I look into their square GameBoy faces and see the round baskets they now weave. Intricate new patterns with willow and tule. They are Volvon, Tatcan, Chupcan ... |
Website: www.lifegarden.org
© Copyright LifeGarden 2006.