free digger
Monday, January 08, 2007
Before Columbus
I just finished reading 1491 by Charles C. Mann. Mann did a masterful job of assembling the evidence that (a) the American continents were not sparsely populated before the arrival of the Europeans and (b) Indian society and technology was as sophisticated as European. The Powell’s link above has a rundown of reviews--plus ways of ordering it besides Amazon.com.
Smallpox and other imported diseases killed off 98% of the population. But that 98% still doesn’t tell you what the baseline was. But the first accounts of the European explorers and conquerors portrayed a landscape bustling with towns, farms, and trade. Later accounts portrayed an depopulated landscape that was especially eery if you had any sense of what it had been like before. For native plant gardeners, and environmentalists in general, it calls into question the whole idea of ‘wilderness’ and of a continent untrammeled by humans. Mann indicates that the landscape was intensively altered by humans before the Europeans came. For me, that doesn’t provide permission for more thoughtless destruction. But it does give permission for a more active stewardship and inventiveness. It’s one thing to plant for biodiversity, wildlife habitat and species preservation. It’s another to slavishly try to recreate native plant communities that may or may not be “original.”
I was also struck by Mann’s descriptions of soil creation in the Amazon and controlled burning elsewhere. Pockets of a kind of soil called terra preta, an incredibly rich and friable soil composed form a base of charcoal, have been discovered througout the Amazon basin. In fact, some of these pockets have been mined for potting soil. This soil was the ground for a sophisticated agriculture based on fruit trees. This is a practice very reminiscent of the the permaculture movement’s forest garden idea.
Also of interest to gardeners are the accounts of the development of maize, the farming terraces of the Andes highlands, the extent of farming in the northeast and midwest.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Towers of Flowers
Click to enlarge
These are my holiday cards this year. When I saw them at the bookstore, I started to choke up. I know, it’s five years later. And I actually think I’ve seen this image before. So it’s old. But, hey, it’s the holidays. It’s ok to be hackneyed and embarrassingly sentimental. If only the envisioners of the rebuilding had seen flowers, color, life—instead of a 1776 foot tall office building. More prisons of boredom and meaningless work.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Packing Up
Click to enlarge.
I packed up the back patio yesterday. It’s a month before the move, but Judy is replacing the concrete patio with brick laid on sand. So I spent a day transfering plants, packing up plant pots, and dismantling a brick planter I had constructed. I’m glad I took the day off for the process. Leaving a garden always has a bitter edge to it, no matter how anticipated the destination.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Breaking Ground on Broken Ground
No, really, it’s sold. You can’t have it. Click to enlarge.
Here’s my new front yard. Juniper and I planted bulbs along the walkway last Sunday. The soil, I guess predictably, is in bad shape. A warehouse used to stand here. It was torn down to make these houses. What that means is that we’ll be gardening on rubble--which is nothing new for me. Most community gardens grow on the sites of demolished buildings. Digging in, we found trash, plywood, bricks, and chunks of concrete. My first idea on seeing the site was to make a Villandry-style edible garden folly. But I don’t want to eat anything grown in this soil. At any rate, I don’t believe that the vegetables would be happy. So come spring I think we’ll be forking it over, pulling out the rubble and the trash, and sowing cover crops.
But bulbs store their own food. So I’m looking forward to a cheery little display next Spring. Here’s the list of what we planted:
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Cities in Transition. . . into the trash heap
This is the refuse from one of the blandest, most overbuilt exhibitions that I’ve ever seen—Cities in Transition, a co-production of Madison Square Park Conservancy, the International Center for Photography, and United Technologies Corporation (yikes!). UTC was the moneybags for the production. Here’s the press release from UTC. And here’s the UTC website about the exhibition. Dork Magazine had a posting with photos that made the installation look more interesting than it was really was. As you can see, the curators idea of the city has nothing to do with people. Transition has nothing to with political struggle. And assertion of cultural authority has everything to do with massive and expensive construction. Plus the photographs were boring. A workmate asked “Why couldn’t they at least have given us something to look at?”
Click to enlarge
Today it all came down. Just a big pile of trash. I hope they at least recycle the metal.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
More Fall Phoros
I realize the reason that I hardly ever show people is that I think visitors to the garden should be able to enjoy it unselfconsciously. I guess I could take surreptitious shots, but that’s unethical. Anyway, I was in the Garden of Union for a few hours today, and spent some time photographing as well as general autumn clean-up.
See photographs.