Oh, Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun…
June 2nd, 2011, 3:34 pm
Today was a most productive day for us. We started off by getting together and while some of us were finalizing a design plan for the cell garden, others were making phone calls for more donations, and one person went to meet with the Media team about getting a new sign for the post in front of the Ecohouse. A few different options were discussed with both groups, and we will reconvine next day to discuss their viability.
We managed to get 10 bags of soil donated to us before we even left Lebel to go work on site, and one of members (along with a certain helpul person from the Engineering group) took off to go pick it up right away!
After a talk with Justin about our midterm, we took off for the Ecohouse, and continued our productive day. We managed to get quite a bit done, as we finished two whole planters, bringing our total up to 3. Thank goodness the weather is finally co-operating!
We cleared the areas of woodchips and cardboard, put down fresh cardboard, and made holes in it for our flowers. We planted more Marigolds and a few Black-Eyed Susans in these new planters, and covered the area with topsoil and peatmoss, and watered.
Pretty Marigolds
Clearing area for the second plot
Planting the second garden
Watering what we planted last day
The Marigolds we planted previously around the signpost are already looking taller, and some of the old wildflowers are growing back as well! We greatly hope we can continue working at this pace, and although the lack of enough tools for the whole team is a hinderance, we make the best of it by working alternately and everyone taking initiative to be productive in their tool-less time.
As this day ends, we still wait for more donations of flowers and soil, and are ever-hopeful for the days ahead.
Mudplay
May 26th, 2011, 9:16 pm
May 25, 2010
Today our group did the presentation. In the presentation we talked about the goals for our project. The feedback we received from Noel was to remove the weeds even more by using a Bobcat. Remove wood chips from the ground, try to get permission for an osprey post. Also, have other members of the class to help us out one of the afternoons.
After the class we all went to the the eco house to dig holes and plant in them. While we were doing it we had individuals from the earth ship project show up to unload their materials onto the other half of the plot. There were some other students that came to help our planting efforts, but were unable to do much because of the inclement weather.
Two of the group members are digging the trench for the grass partition. 
Here two of the members are planting the border for the sign.
some of the plants donated to us.
Day 3: Drawing Weeds
May 19th, 2011, 10:42 pm
Another fun-filled day for the Greening team, but despite the difficulties faced with both our projects, we remain optimistic about the future.
Today we began by having a sit down with Noel and one of the lovely guys from the engineering team regarding the rooftop gardens. There are still many issues with it, including liability and plant viability, not to mention the irrigation system atop Mac Hall being dysfunctional. We hope to talk to the administration some more and hopefully make some headway about getting up there to have a look for ourselves to see what we’re working with. We discussed that maybe Virgina Creepers are the way to go.
From there we proceeded to our Eco House project, which is seeing slightly more (but not by much) fruition. We spent the a couple of hours discussing design ideas and drawing up possible plans. Our group came up with a lot of ideas today in terms of placement, design, and types of plants we may want to look into, including indigenous ones, in the interest of creating a low- to no-maintenance garden (turns out zero- maintenance gardens are impossible. Huh.). We did some research into the San Francisco Victory Gardens and all agreed that we like the idea of a peastone or woodchip area with small or medium sized planters (made with sandbags, like in the victory gardens, possibly tiered) for our flowers, incorporating some tall hardy grasses and sunflowers into the design, maybe even bamboo.
Planning
Ideas on paper
Later, the group went out onto the lot and began weeding. In a relatively short amount of time, we actually managed to clear about one-third of the plot of weeds, as well as relocating the ill-located composter to behind the house. We had a good time being out on the field and enjoyed seeing the snails, mushrooms and other creatures hiding in the soil.
Hard at work.
Pepe, our new snail friend, amongst some mushrooms and weeds on a clump of dirt.
Just a fraction of what we pulled up today. We also broke both of the spades. Those weeds have tough roots!
In the next class, armed with a fresh variety of designs, we hope to clear the rest of the weeds, and dig a trench near the back of the plot to separate our designed area from the naturalized one we planned for the back. We also hope to plant some of the flowers donated to us, so that our progress can be seen.
Yes, that's a weed we dug up. Yes, it's half her size.
Day1: Planter project on residence buildings and eco-house wildflower garden
May 12th, 2011, 10:48 pm
Today our group got things started on our projects allocated to us. We have been assigned two projects from the Greening,Growing and Earthship Architecture. One project is to get the rooftops of the two residence buildings green. In order to achieve our goal we would have to get permission from the University of Windsor’s Vice President of Finance Steven Willox to carry on with our project. We would achieve that by going to see him at his office on Monday and persuade him if needed. We would assure him that the expenses that would occur to renew this project would be covered by Green Corridor by fund-raising and it would only benefit the university in many ways; the image of the university would become better, the buildings would have protection from extreme weather due to insulation etc. Over the weekend every group member would go over the archives for the projects and would gain the knowledge required to achieve the final goals. Also we would have to go to the residence management and ask them for access to the roof tops. We would survey the roof tops and later have a brainstorming session to come up with ideas.
For the eco-house project we need to read the archives and survey it in order to get an idea what it is all about and we plan to do it sometime before our next class on tuesday, we would contact each other and come up with a suitable time for the survey and would come up with ideas for it next week.
Group members:
Muhammad Isa Khan Niazi
Fanny Lai
Laura Gentili
Marcy Boles
Rain Farooqi
Ashley Bujold
