Write This One Down

Feb 5, 2010 by Dark Martha

A few years ago, the idea of rain catchment and use was flirting with mainstream media. If you wanted in on the trend, you could drop a couple of hundred bucks on a fancy rain barrel to attach to your home’s downspout, and with luck you could save some money on your water utility bill while keeping your lawn and other growing things on your property properly watered.  (You do know, by the way, that you are charged TWICE for the water you get from the City, right – once on the way in, and again on the way out via the sewers?  Hmm??)  This was by no means a new concept, I mean, what do you think people did before municipal water systems??  But I digress.   I thought it was cool that another basic means of conservation was gaining a foothold in the mainstream.

In the fall of 2008, I completed a course through Cincinnati State for a certification to be a Master Rain Gardener.  The class met here in Northside, at the McKie Center, which, I soon learned, was very appropriate, considering that there is a Native Genotype preserve (a sanctuary for native species of plants found in the Mill Creek Valley prior to 1750) on the Center grounds.  The class covered a wide swath of responsible water-use techniques: the proper construction and use of rain barrels; the theory and application of grey water systems; the theory and construction of green roofs; and the basic concepts of rain gardening: using “pit-and-mound” topography, drought-tolerant and native species of plants to create landscapes while recharging the watershed.  This was A LOT of stuff to digest in a very short period of time, and a heckufa crash course in Native Botany.

The class was taught by Don Brannen, a seemingly endless font of knowledge on the subject, and I met with him recently to talk about the progress of another of his projects, one that I think is vitally important to not only our modest neighborhood, but our City at large: Vision Trek.  Vision Trek is a mentoring program that takes kids from the inner city and gives them the opportunity to learn a skill that they can then turn around and teach to someone else. Don teaches them some fun things, like kayaking and snowboarding – and also more “restoration-based” skills, like when our class learned how to make a rain barrel, it was one of the Vision Trek students that taught us.  Don told me that some of the kids had actually made a business out of the rain barrels, so when the time came for me to put one into my garden, instead of making one myself, or spending beaucoup bucks on one from a catalog or high end garden store, I commissioned a barrel from Vision Trek… at a fraction of what it would have cost elsewhere, using mostly reclaimed and recycled materials, and it was made exactly to my specifications.

Since then, I have pointed anyone who was interested in a rain barrel in the direction of Vision Trek.  When I spoke to Don the other day, it broke my heart to hear that not only the funding for the organization had suffered massive cuts (I know, not surprising considering the current economic environment), but that he had not even been able to treat his kids to a skiing trip that they had been promised, and had earned.  We talked a little about some of the other projects that he has in the works: the Vision Trek kids are currently making bird houses from reclaimed materials that are for sale to fund the program; they are making composters now (Earth Barrels) along with the rain barrels; the hillside adjacent to the genotype preserve is being slowly crafted into a series of rain gardens; and Don is working on propagating native medicinal and edible plants to add to the green roof prototype on the “water shed” in the space.

Don and I share a passion for educating people about these things.  He said, “Write this one down… inculturation.”  This is the only way these conservation practices are going to catch on, you see, if they are adopted into the mainstream, accepted as normal, made an integral part of our culture.  The work he does with Vision Trek not only empowers kids that may not have otherwise ever thought in that direction, but through the potential business opportunities it opens to them, it takes on real value.  They experience a perception shift regarding their community, and are given the tools to pass it on.  Strong work, indeed.

Dark Martha

http://www.consciousurbanliving.com/