The Green Garage

Friday lunch: the buzz about bees

Well, hello there! After more than a year away, we've decided that it's time to dust off the old blog, in part to extend the reach of our Friday lunch conversations.

If you've never attended a Friday lunch, we hold them every single Friday (except major holidays) at noon. Everyone brings a lunch and introduces themselves, then we introduce the work that goes on at the Green Garage and host a brief presentation, either about our work in sustainability or the work of one of our businesses-in-residence. (After lunch, starting a few minutes past 1:00, we give a tour of our building.) 

From here on out, we're going to do our best to recap all the presentations here on the Green Garage blog so that folks who can't make it to lunch can still connect with the material & the people presenting it.

Last week, we invited Rich Wieskie, an avid local beekeeper, to talk a bit about beekeeping in Detroit. We met Rich in June when we interviewed him for a beekeeping-themed entry in Green City Diaries, our monthly sustainability series.

We changed our presentation format this time, hosting a Q & A between Matt Piper, the author of Green City Diaries, and Rich. Joan Mandell, Rich's partner in life and bees, was also in attendance and chimed in to help answer a few of the questions.

Rich & Joan in the Green Alley

We touched on a lot in a brief conversation: the history of beekeeping in Detroit, its current state, the ecological significance of the honeybee, the meditative personal dimension of beekeeping, as well as the life cycle of these fascinating creatures. A great insight from Rich was how relatively healthy urban bees have remained during the recent decades' honeybee crises, compared to bees that live near large agricultural sites. The diversity of urban flora (a diversity that is, in fact, promoted by bees) and smaller-scale use of pesticides in cities has helped urban honeybees stay safe. Fascinating. 

Cass Tech Visit

This past Friday we hosted about 25 students from Cass Tech who were part of a day-long program sponsored by NORR called Generation G. This program was designed to introduce Detroit students who are interested in architecture and engineering to sustainability or "green" concepts, such as site development, energy efficiency, materials selections and indoor environmental quality. The program lasted all day, beginning with short seminars and a viewing of the movie, 'The Eleventh Hour.'

In the afternoon, the students and teacher/mentors came over to the Green Garage to work on a "Sustainable Cobo Hall " project. The question they were to answer was: Based on the concepts of Site Planning, Water Management, Architectural Materials and Resources, Energy Management and Community and Neighborhood Connectivity, what can you propose as a solution towards a "Sustainable Cobo Hall?"

They divided into groups based on the above topics, and had about 2 hours to come up with ideas. Each group had a pizza box and a bunch of pictures to work with to represent their ideas. Pictures representing their final ideas were pasted onto the pizza boxes and the groups gave short presentations. We all took a break from the archival work we've been doing and enjoyed watching it all. It probably won't surprise you that the ideas were quite creative (how about roof-top vegetable gardens with the produce being sold into the community?).  Great way to end the week.

Biosand Filter Training in the Green Garage

You would think that the first 'customers' of the Green Garage would begin appearing in a year or so, when the building is renovated, but you would be incorrect! This past week the building hosted a biosand filter certification class over the space of 4 days for about 18 people, most of whom were from places other than Michigan. We had been contacted by John and Eileen Heasley of the Troy Rotary Club, and, with a little trepidation, offered our somewhat rustic building for the class.

We stopped by this morning to see how things were going, and it was so exciting to see people engaged in meaningful activity in our otherwise forlorn building! Everyone seemed so appreciative of the space. They generally find it difficult to find a space where they can do powerpoints AND build a filter with water, sand, etc. I'm happy to report that the space fit their needs perfectly. A good sign of things to come. Below is a snippet from the filter demo.