when i arrived on campus at 7:21 this morning the air positively reeked of nitrate fertilizer...not like someone had spilled some cleaning product, the way anhydrous ammonia smells in the cornfields...more like i'd stepped into a bag of scott's 20-20-10 turf-builder plus...the unmistakable odor of chemical fertilizer, and that's just what was going on...motorized spreaders were moving across the lawn flinging pellets of fertilizer as they went...i have written about the condition of the ground when we opened the garden in earlier posts...the bulk of the activity last autumn and of the early spring this year was devoted to ovecoming its chem-lawned sterility...from the addition of 3/4 of a ton of organic matter ( mostly compost and composted manure )to the worms and cowpeas there has been some effort to esablish and maintain soil that is fertile because it supports the life that makes it so rather than because it is chemically infused...the guy that was doing the lawn by hawthorn hall was very careful not to get too close to the garden ( because i was there weeding and doing a bit of watering? if you click on the thrid photo you can just make him and his buggy out ) ....he didn't do the strip of grass between hawthorn and the garden, and he stayed a good ten feet away on the south side so i do not think the garden was compromised by the chemicals...but it ceratinly does highlight the way the corporate and institutional worlds approach plant life and the more organic and self-sustaining philosophy we are trying to work out in the garden
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