A cluster of Community Gardens in Lansing

I had a dentist appointment this morning after dropping Kubota off at his place-of-employment.

I took advantage of being in Lansing by swinging by a cluster of Community Gardens on the Red Cedar floodplains between Kalamazoo St and I-496.

Community gardens are in the region circled in red.

Over-head images are in very close proximity. This is the most northern "snip".

Part of the backstory is that many of these properties reverted to Ingham County during the 2009 mortgage crisis. The county treasurer was aggressive about demolishing impaired properties (i.e. black mold, flood risk) to create open space. That open space was made available to the Greater Lansing Food Bank to use for community gardens.

These images were taken in the summer. Lack of sunlight is an ongoing challenge for these kinds of gardens.

This part of Lansing has many similarities with New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward.

Garlic is planted in the fall. You can see the first leaves poking through the mulch.

Huge numbers of Tee-posts. I assume they were paid for by a grant. The first and third rows had pole beans growing on them. I flushed a rabbit out of here.

Kale or collards. There as also a similar planting of what looked like Brussels Sprouts. This area was very well tended.

Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea) in bloom!!!

This is the first time I ever saw purslane (Portulaca oleracea) over-winter in Michigan. Purslane is a green that is edible raw.

This cluster of gardens has an orchard. Many of the newly planted apples are a classic, British (hard) cider variety named Dabinett. They have gobs of tannin in the skin and neighbors will only steal them once because they taste nasty.

All-in-all, a good use of very marginal land for housing and pretty well managed.

 I was surprised when I saw a butternut on the ground. They are not very common around here.

A quick look around revealed this tree in a neighbor's yard. It is about 22" in diameter.

Most of the trees in the neighborhood are sycamores, hackberry, black walnut, mulberry and box-elder.

It was a pleasant surprise to see that the public park that bounds this area on the north was landscaped with Juneberries (Amelanchier alnifolia).