Big Wing Review has recently published my poem “Crowdsourcing:”
There’s snow on the ground around my house at the moment. Yet I’m already dreaming and scheming gardening ideas for the upcoming growing season.
Though I consider myself to be an amateur gardener and forager, I’m grateful for the ways that gardening and foraging build relationships. I therefore dedicate this poem to my friends at the Brookland Village, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit of neighbors helping neighbors. Brookland Village’s gardening group meets at a different neighbor’s home every month during the growing season so we can get our hands in the dirt, and support each other with weeding, planting, education, and plant swapping.
Another neighborhood gardening group, the Greater Brookland Garden Club, not only hosts a free plant swap, but they also give away tulip bulbs at a local market every year. Some of those tulip bulbs are currently hibernating near my front porch.
Just as the stanzas of “Crowdsourcing” accumulate in depth, like compost and mulch settling onto the earth, this poem represents the accumulation of wisdom from gardening friends and teachers. Poet Camille Dungy, in her book Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, deepened my understanding of the concept of “weed;” plants like chickweed (pictured above) and dandelions can nourish humans, while pernicious bindweed serves as a perennial metaphor for white supremacy. Dungy shares additional wisdom regarding gardening, environmental writing, and relationships themselves, which I explored in a book review last year.
I also want to give thanks to my friend Liz Guertin, who has taught me much about foraging, as well as slowing down to notice the plants and birds immediately around me. The pictures below are from an October foraging walk with Liz beside the Potomac River in Maryland, including some edible autumn olive berries Liz helped me to identify.
So many plants in my yard started as gifts from friends who shared from the abundance of their own gardens. The more I garden and forage, the more I indeed equate these practices with crowdsourcing.
When you think of “crowdsourcing,” what images come to mind? What experiences have you had with gardening and/or foraging? I’d love to hear what you think!
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Photo credit: jeans_Photos on Visualhunt