Violating City Ordinances with Home Garden

Violating City Ordinances with Home Garden

"This week Adam Guerrero, a math teacher at Raleigh-Egypt High School in Memphis, TN., along with three students became lawbreakers after they continued to tend to a garden after it was deemed a neighborhood nuisance. Guerrero was citied for violating city ordinances 48-38 and 48-97. His crime, as reported by the Memphis Flyer, consists of failure to maintain "a clean and sanitary condition free from any accumulation of rubbish or garbage" at his Nutbush home.
http://kitchengardeners.org/blogs/roger-doiron/stand-solidarity-adam-guerrero

UNBELIEVABLE...and they wanna know why this country is in such a mess...???

Instead of allowing three inner-city youth to learn an honest skill that they will benefit from and use all their lives (and that they are obviously interested in learning!!!), the court would rather have them sitting around, idol, with nothing to do, UN-employed, and figuring out new and creative ways to get some (generally, illegal) $$$...

Makes me sick the way this country is running. Common sense is just about dead and gone...

Just this morning, CBS news reported on the mismanagement of government funds used to schedule meetings department. Seems, it was nothing for the planners to cater meetings with:
►$16/per muffins,
►$8.47/cup coffee, and
►hors d'oeuvres to the tune of $4/per bite!!!
►And fly a meeting planner (3 times round-trip) from Alaska to Los Angeles (or vice versa) to plan the meeting, at $3,700 in airfare!!! You'd think they could find a competent meeting planner in one or the other city, right???

MAKES ME SICK THE WAY THIS GOVERNMENT IS RUNNING!!!

I know I risk getting some flames for this, but...

Some years back I tried to start a vegetable garden at a rental house a few miles from the UF campus. My vegetables always ended up with nearly every known insect pest within a short time of sowing or setting out, and I never could understand why (none of my neighbors were gardeners) until I happened upon a local "cooperative" garden plot run by the school, less than 1/4 mile from the house. They had created and maintained an "organic" reservoir of every imaginable pest. The kids would be really interested at the start of the planting season, until they realized how much work was involved and had a few failures (itself mostly due to the residues of previous neglect). Since they never bothered to clean up their messes, they had incredible crops of cucumber beetles, borers, loopers, tomato/cabbage/corn ear worms...you name it, they had it. And since it was an "official" GOVERNMENT-sponsored project, and a designated ORGANIC garden, it would have taken an act of God or Congress to spray it or plow it under long enough to get the thing under control.

I now live far from there and I'm actually kind of glad my nearest neighbors don't garden...

-Rich

No flames, Rich!

I just discovered this same potential with "neighbor" gardening this past fall. I inadvertently created a monster by giving my gardening neighbor two doors down 28 of my surplus tomato plants in February. He was outside tilling up his ground, and these were the last and rattiest of my seedlings.

He planted them ALL and got a total BUMPER CROP of tomatoes. Lovely. But...after a while I noticed an infestation of stinkbugs on my otherwise bug-free crop of tomatoes in my yard. Since this is my "hang-on-the-fence, let's-have-a-conversation" neighbor, I mosied on over and hung on the fence examining his crop. Which had ripened, unpicked, HEIRLOOM tomatoes all over the vines that were being infested with STINKBUGS..

As a good friend of mine is fond of saying, "No good deed goes unpunished" ;o).

-Rich

I know that friend!

Judge Rules: Victory! Math Teacher Can Keep His Urban Garden

http://www.care2.com/causes/victory-math-teacher-can-keep-his-urban-garden.html



__________________
"We believe we mere debtors to God in relation to each other and all men, to improve our Time and Talents in this Life, in that manner in which we might be most useful." Shaker Covenant 1795

This message was edited Sep 27, 2011 10:44 AM

This message was edited Sep 27, 2011 10:49 AM

Just playing devil's advocate:

To be fair, the original article didn't bother to mention the smell...or the mosquitoes.

And "The Government" didn't initiate the action - his neighbor did. If you lodged a complaint with your local government, you would want them to respond and investigate, and to uphold the applicable ordinances, wouldn't you?

And that photo accompanying the article showed only a fairly tidy well-managed front yard covered in green, something familiar to most of us. It clearly did not show any ponds (which were apparently found to be breeding mosquitoes) or the numerous worm beds (the owner was told to "reduce the number").

I think we need to be careful of cherry-picking the facts or making assumptions based on incomplete information. The author of the article made an obvious effort to create an image that would appeal to people like us, and completely ignored the inconvenient concerns of neighbors who might have wanted to use their own yards without swatting avoidable (and potentially dangerous) mosquitoes or smelling the usual "stuff" that finds its way into worm beds.

I've had neighbors who insisted that burning their plastic bags and milk jugs in their back yard helped "to keep them out of the landfills". Never mind the potent carcinogens created by incomplete burning in an open fire, and the fact that I couldn't enjoy my 10-acre "yard" several days each week or had to close up my house in nice weather to keep the stench out of my carpet and curtains. They insisted they were being "environmentally conscious" - but that can be very much in the eye of the beholder.

-Rich

I know what you mean, Rich. I once assisted a woman who had been turned in to CPS for having a filthy house - she was hoarding to keep things out of the environment, and refusing to use cleansers or paper towels. I went over armed with cleaning supplies to help her and she complained that they were not good for the environment. I told her "You have 3 days to completely clean this place or LOSE YOUR LITTLE GIRL, and right now I don't care if a thousand rolls of paper towels go into that landfill and neither should you!" She got the point, and we cleaned like crazy. In the end, her refrigerator was so disgusting she threw it in the landfill and bought a new one - what sad irony. (I do give her credit, after this catastrophe, she sought mental help and things are going much better now).

So yes, "environmentally conscious" is very much in the eye of the beholder! But, I read everything I could on this math teacher and feel that the ultimate call was the right one. He is not some derelict, he just has a lot going on and needed to make a few reasonable changes, not lose his entire garden. The changes should be to everyone's benefit (a bubbler for his pond to keep the water from breeding mosquitoes, etc.). All in all, I'm very happy for him and his students and am even more thrilled if there will now be an attempt to find a plot of land to start a full-fledged educational garden.

"AYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY-MEN!"

And I wasn't responding to the good sense approach that hopefully will satisfy both the teacher and his neighbors.

I was concerned about the tendency we sometimes have to a knee-jerk reaction whenever some journalist presents half a story involving the Big Bad (Local!) Government. We individually have a lot more control over local ordinances and enforcement than we do at the state or national level, both through supporting candidates who share our views and via newspaper editorials to help share and spread those views.

-Rich