Celebration Pancakes and Indoor Jungles

Today my pal Jhyl, who loves Craftzine, sent me a link to this completely inspiring indoor window jungle made by a DIY self-declared non-gardener in training. The Gomistyle window garden is beautiful because it's attainable - made from simple objects. I especially love his explaination: Let me begin with a simple admission. I don’t know much about gardening. Until a few weeks ago, I had never planted a seed, or maintained houseplants. My thumbs weren’t green, they were red and swollen from playing Xbox.

Gomistyle is pretty great.

Also, stopped at Community on my way home to get rice flour for pancakes. Their sign (below) made me glad. And happy that I was going to have pancakes for dinner. The cure for almost all ailments. And to celebrate momentous events.

Gluten/Dairy Free Best Pancakes in the World:

2 eggs

2 c. almond milk

1/2c. brown rice flour

1/2c. buckwheat flour

1 apple (shredded)

vanilla/cinnamon if you like that kind of thing.

Fry in a pan on med heat in veg. oil.

Indoor veggie gardening, community greenhouses, gorilla gardens, etc all are happening everywhere. It's a trend. It's popular for hippies and conservatives alike. Everyone sees that the "end is near" and we don't want to be stuck with no food in any apocalypses. So we're learning how to grow it, where to grow it, and when.

Everyday I feel like I hear of another organization helping urbanites to be more in touch with their surrounding nature. Today - it's an organization called Evergreen whose main objective is to bring "nature to our cities through naturalization projects." With offices in Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto Evergreen supports all kinds of projects to promote education, provide funding for school gardens, informational resources for home/public/community gardening, and a slew of other information that deals with municipal and provincial issues surrounding land use and gardening.

One of their most compelling projects BrickWorks is slated to open in May 2010 and will be Canada's first large-scale environmental community centre. This will house a plant nursery of native plants, youth employment training programs, educational programs, green design exhibits and interpretive programs, food gardens, farmer's markets, and a year-round grocery with local producers. Sort of like a mall for sustainable living.