trend setting

I'm a trend setter. That's right, I'm setting the bar for what's hip and cool in my neighborhood. Or, if that's an overstatement, I'm perhaps influencing a handful of people in the immediate vicinity of my apartment.

Do you remember the fire escape garden I so lovingly grew and posted about earlier in the summer? I posted about it several times on here, and included some photographs in my blog entries. I noted the lack of other fire escape gardens on surrounding buildings, and hoped the situation would change.

Well, it has. Finally! Both of my next door neighbors now have gardens on their fire escapes, as well. The neighbors on my right have actually turned their patch of the outdoors into a jungle, in an almost literal sense of the word. Huge potted palms, tomato plants and ivies are livening up their property. The neighbors to my left have added a collection of potted flowers to their fire escape, as have two families below me.

It's a green revolution! And I'm loving it. As for my own little garden ... well, it suffered a little neglect for a bit, but it's back in shape. My herbs finally kicked the bucket with the cooler autumn temperatures, but my other plants are still standing tall and proud.

The time is approaching when I'm going to have to bring everything indoors. My roommate's cat eats plants, so I'm going to have to figure out a plan to keep him from attacking my green babies.

At any rate, it's a semi-beautiful day (a touch too cloudy and chilly for it to be perfect), and I have plenty of reading to do for class. All I can say about that is Durkheim is the driest writer ever, ancient Egyptian religion is convoluted, and reading ethnographies on the non-universality of emotion is certainly thought provoking if too based in theory to entirely wrap my head around.

Going to update the travel blog shortly, so keep checking back here and there.