Mike
We just visited 2 sons in the San Francisco area and as usual lodged at Pacifica. On the BART train we passed the houses clustered on the hillsides of Daly City which inspired:
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There are green ones and pink ones and yellow ones and blue ones and today they all cost a lot of money.
Pacifica is a small town with undistinguished buildings overlooking the ocean and has lovely cliffs and walk/jog trails . The cost of shoreside hotel accommodation has increased rapidly over recent years as technology sourced wealth laps outlying areas. Each morning we follow a gentle trail to our coffee shop train.
Along the path is a floral memorial to the victims of Sep 2001.
This time I noticed red plant tubs marked “gopher proof”.
Interesting concept and as I paused for a photo an elderly man appeared and asked my interest. He Introduced himself as Mike Mooney and we later discovered he is a celebrity in the area and the founder of the community gardens. He told us the history of the tubs. The previous recycling company had issued to every resident 3 color coded tubs for different materials. The new recycling company provided one man size container for all recyclables and had a contest with a $500 charity award for the best idea for repurposing the old tubs. Mike entered and suggested gopher proof planting containers and won. I asked what diameter holes should be drilled in the bottom of the tubs for water drainage and he said the diameter was not important, just lots of them. He said gophers tunnel horizontally and not from the bottom. His eyes moistened when he discussed September 2001 – if the 3,000 were going to war and were killed that’s one thing, but these were people going to work and did not come home at the end of the day, and that’s wrong, he said gently.
He maintains the gardens alongside the path and they are beautiful. He applies lots of mulch from the nearby disposal site.
His cap and jacket said “go native”. I asked about invasives and he laughed and said he was given the apparel. But as to invasives he said the Mexican primrose can be a problem.
He suddenly reached down and pulled out two large bunches of primrose. Look at their large root structure they are survivors, he said. Lot’s of people try to transplant them but few succeed. The trick he said is to wrap the roots in soft paper, place them in a pot of earth and place the pot in a bucket of water and when the roots have regrown then transplant the roots and soil to their final location. He gave us several bunches of primrose plus a succulent for our son’s garden. He then retrieved his wheelbarrow and with his small dog following, returned to his mission.
