In 1997 I visited Jesuit priest turned anti-war activist 74 year old Philip Berrigan in the Federal Prison in Portland Maine.  He had just beat the computers on a nuclear powered naval vessel with a ball-pean hammer and then marinated the wreckage in his own blood that he had collected in baby bottles in the months prior to his "action".  He talked to me about a lot about the evils of war and frequently quoted the prophet Isaiah 2:4, and harped on Isaiah's mantra to "pound swords into plowshares", a concept in which military weapons are converted for peaceful civilian application. (A bizarre concept!)  As peaceful  a man he was, he seemed to have (and his "actions" took on) a violent edge.  I thought about Phil Berrigan when I read last week about Guerrilla Gardening. The concept is simple enough.  Find a patch of land (any size) that is barren or ignored, clean it up, plant some seeds, water it and create beauty where there once was ugly.  Why though the name, "Guerrilla Gardening"?  Why take something nice and give it a violent edge?  The website for the Los Angeles Guerrilla Gardening chapter recommends going on night missions and the story in the Los Angeles Times  talks about a group of school kids who were held by LAPD until backup arrived, then released with a warning.  Would this have happened if their mission had been "Barren Dirt Make-Over" instead of "Guerrilla Gardening?"  Would their (the school kids) attitude have been different?  Now the school kids have formed a group called The South Central Resistance and their saying is, not too unlike, "pounding swords into plowshares", "protect the plants at al costs."  Yikes.  Both the Los Angeles Times story and the LAGG website are worth checking out, especially the part about how to manufacture seed bombs.  For me I am going to find a piece of neglected earth and see how I can quickly and inexpensively make it beautiful; but I won't refer to it as Guerrilla anything.