Maple & Salt

This evening I roasted almonds with maple, cayenne pepper, and salt. Heaven and our house now smells like pie and ice cream and all wonderful things. Next time I'll add vanilla. And a pinch more cayenne. Also, probably should have baked them on parchment paper, not directly on cookie sheet. Woops!

I'm still researching grants and monies available for urban garden teaching initiatives that one might like to strike-up for children. And thinking seriously about Square Foot Garden modulesfor this. Love this idea, 4x4x1 ft box divided into 16 sections big enough to grow a few seeds of different plants.

In researching other ideas for small teaching gardens, I remembered about vertical gardening initiatives. Of course I'd like to learn more about how this is being done in Canada mainly, but also in the rest of North America in various climates. I also stumbled on a great comprehensive blog based out of NYC called Inside Urban Green which had some great articles on all matters of urban gardening, including vertical gardens and similar yet different kinds of square foot gardens.

Also, a couple of days ago the City of Calgary announced a Major West Downtown Redevelopment Plan. Basically, this would be focused on the "west village" (located between 11th st SW, Crowchild trail, and the Bow River south to the CPR track). There is a pool of monies available called Community Revitalization Levy that the city will use to fund infrastructure improvements. The posting on the city site is boring. But, I learned from the sidebar that Calgary has 7,772 hectares of parkland.

If you want to know more about what's going on with Calgary development and research, the Plan It Calgary group has been dissecting potential and past land use, transportation, housing, etc. After all of their digging, a Municipal Development Plan was formed and presented to city council this past summer for review. The research and recommendations in the two documents they have drafted would, theoretically, ensure sustainable growth and development over the next 50-60 years. That's the optimistic stance. And it's interesting.

If you're even MORE curious about Calgary City Council and their goings on, attend a meeting!

Calendars of upcoming 2009/2010 meetings can be found here. The calendars are deeply coded, but still available. The most relevant would likely be the monthly Hearing on Public Matters, as well as the SPC on Land Use, Planning and Transportation which also happens almost every month.

To wrap it up, here's some lovely Sin Fang Bous who I just was lucky enough to see live last week at the Marquis Room. Blew. Me. Away.