I’m starting to leave notes and tasks for myself— things to do in the Spring of 2008. But while my Palm can schedule activities like that, I gotta wonder if I won’t be trading in for a new gadget by then.

It all started a few months ago when I read an article about about guerrilla gardening. I can’t remember where I first came across it, but it seems to be popular enough. The idea is to plant seeds and bulbs in places like vacant lots and street meridians, and I thought this would be a great idea to do with my kids.

Since then I have come up with lots of great ideas… some of them quite strange (I must confirm their suspicions). The problem is they are both under the age of two, and some of my ideas will be better appreciated when they are older.

Hence my long range task list.

I don’t want to get caught up in chauffeuring my children from school to soccer to dance … I want to be the alpha teacher! But I want to teach my children both manners as well as the times to break the rules… and sometimes finally experiencing this rule-breaking for myself. So, I thought I would list a few of my ideas here to see if anyone has any others to offer.

• Guerilla Gardening. A family, we walk every day, and it would be great to plant bulbs somewhere along our path (their choice of course) and see how the plants fair year after year.

• Flower Passing. I’m going to raid the dumpster of our neighborhood florist and give away the nicer specimens to total strangers. Maybe they will just come out of my own garden… dumpster diving isn’t a trait I want to condone just yet in my offspring.

• Sidewalk Poetry. Along with some of my previous thoughts on sidewalk messages, I got an idea from the latest issue of the Utne Reader to distribute a multi-lined poem over several blocks.

• Money Distribution. The other day while waiting for a friend of mine at a restaurant, I noticed a copy of the local newspaper on top of a vending machine. On looking closer at it, I noticed a large number of coins under it. I know a socially engineered situation when I see one, and left it alone to watch people’s reaction to it from inside the restaurant. I want to do things like that with my kids.

• Local Pen-pal. I want to start up a pen-pal-type correspondence— but with some anonymous person in my neighborhood, so that after a few months, we can meet for coffee.

You get the idea. Actually the more I think about it, the more I like this idea of a constant stream of project ideas from the past coming to me in the future. It will be like reconnecting to a far more idealistic person not drained by the constant soccer practice shuttling.