free digger
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Herb’s Garden
Click here to see portfolio of Herb’s Garden
More and more, the gardens that I find interesting are the pocket gardens of the city. I guess you could call them guerilla gardens. These are really the gardens of hermits. They’re not community gardens. They’re gardens created by individuals who just love to garden, and steal a little corner to do it in. One of the most amazing ones I’ve encountered is Herb’s garden. And I’m lucky, because it’s at the end of my block, just off the dead end. Herb is actually a very sociable guy. I see him all over the neighborhood hanging out with folks in their front yard, community garden, or at the car repair garages around the corner. Herb actually used to live in this dead end. He built a gazebo smack dab in the middle of it and gardened all around. The city eventually cracked down. Luckily, somebody in the neighborhood arranged for him to be a caretaker for a new housing facility.
These photos were taken last autumn. Anyday now I expect Herb will be breaking down for the spring. I’ll try to take some pictures of the garden early in the year.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
What a Week
Click for larger view
These crocus are what gardening is all about. February is always the hardest month for me in New York. In California, where I’m from, February is when the daffodils, flowering plum, and acacia bloom. In New York, some of the coldest, snowiest days hit at the end of February. Spring doesn’t really get into full swing until April, although March is definitely a month for thawing. The end of February was especially hard for me this year. Last Saturday I fell 7 feet from the top of a ladder, breaking ribs and gashing my elbow. I’m fine--but coughing and sneezing still cause excruciating stabs of pain.
Then on Thursday I was mugged by a flock of teenagers. The mugging happened on a bitterly cold night at about 9 o’clock outside Bushwick-Aberdeen, my neighborhood’s main subway station. I live in between two subway stations; the other, Wilson Avenue, is a slightly farther walk. On Friday after work I stopped to buy some books. I found myself lingering and lingering in the bookstore. Then I realized I was avoiding going home. So I’ve been compromising and using Wilson Avenue, and paying much more attention to what’s going on around me.
So how nice it was to find these yellow crocus blooming outside my front door. They really, really, really lifted my spirits.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
In Search of Soil
Last spring I tried to facilitate a soil delivery for the Granite Street Garden. I had a graciously officious email exchange with Susan Fields, who at the time was GreenThumb‘s deputy director. She is now the program manager for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s GreenBridge program.
Turns out the last workshops that GreenThumb offered in Brooklyn to qualify for soil delivery were in October. Damn. A February 13 workshop in the Bronx was our last chance to qualify, unless we wanted to go to a worm composting workshop at lefty bookstore Bluestockings next week. Because the Manhattan workshop was clearly designed for the convenience of Lower East Side gardeners, who are disproportionately white, and not the gardeners in Harlem, who are proportionately people of color, I just couldn’t bring myself to support it.
Well, as a veteran of fighting City Hall, I can’t say that you can’t do it and win. But I can say that City Hall will always extract its pound of flesh. So even though I’ve been composting for 30 years, and even though I set up a composting facility at the Garden of Union that GreenThumb and others uses as a showpiece, I hauled my ass up to the New York Botanic Garden in the Bronx last night for a “Crazy for Composting” workshop in order to quality my garden for a delivery of soil.
As you can tell, everything about this set-up was a recipe to piss me off royally. But since I try to practice Buddhism, I know that feeding the flames of anger will just make me more miserable than anything else. So I worked on calming my anger all the way up on the D train to Bedford Park Blvd. stop, then walking 8 blocks to the gate of the botanic garden, then a series of dark parking lots, until I finally found the classroom.
Juniper tried to coax one of the other gardeners from Granite Street to attend the workshop, too. So he tried to Hopstop the directions to make it easier. Here’s his comments:
I think these folks really need a kick.
These directions are like a treasure hunt. Travel from Brooklyn to the Bronx, only one available gate. I have gone on the NY Botanic garden website, I can’t figure out the gate. There is no street address so it does not google or hopstop. Make the wrong turn and you are disqualified.
When I got there, I saw there were a couple old friends. So I wouldn’t say it was worth it, but it was nice to see Karen and Eileen.
The workshop teacher, Jodie Colón, did an enthusiastic, sometimes even funny, job. But the lesson plan was like: what is compost? how does it happen? how do you use it?
I repeat, I’ve been composting for 30 years. This was basically a reprise of the enforced boredom of working class public school.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Technorati Claim
I’m signing on to Technorati, which requires that I post something with this code: Technorati Profile. I wanna “increase my profile,” see?
True Spin
I just got back from the True Spin conference yesterday. “A PR Conference for Progessives.” Definitely an intense couple of days. By the end of the first day, if I heard the “Values-Problem-Issues-Policy” hierarchy--or the term frame, I would have wilted. So I ditched the “messaging track” and caught a couple of the more geeky workshops. The first workshop on Friday was lead by a guy named John Amos, who works with an organization called Skytruth. Mostly they’ve worked on wilderness environmental issues. But John pointed out the social and environmental justice potential of mapping, which I’ve been thinking about for a while. Gotta learn more about Google Maps.
Then I went to the geekiest workshop of all--Parsing the Political Blogosphere, lead by John Kelly. John discussed some tools that he’s developing that maps networks of bloggers with shared interests by analyzing what they link to. Interestingly, most blog links aren’t to other blogs, but to resources, such as media outlet sites and Wikipedia. And guess what site is at the center of the blog universe? The New York Times. I know that’s what I link to most often, try as I might not to. Juniper said yeah, there’s been a couple of active takeover attempts against the Times. Which, in his opinion, must be at least partly politically motivated.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Say what?
Anne Raver’s article in today’s NY Times on ”What the Nurseries Like for Spring” has her typical lack of rigor. She runs through all of the over-hybridized, alien-colored cultivars being promoted by the wholesale nursery trade this year. A bonsai dawn redwood. A false indigo that blooms yellow. Hibiscus hardy to 30 below. Why do we need these? She would probably answer that they’re showy and stand up to tough conditions. Ok, just say that. But she ends the article with a pollyannish statement:
I left the show with an optimistic feeling: maybe the gloom and doom of global warming and high fuel costs have given us gardeners a road map to smaller, hardier gardens that give back to, rather than take from, the earth.
Oh, so there’s a bright side to global warming. Chartreuse-colored coral bells.
Hey Anne, I’ll take the polar bears.
One thing she does right is call out the wonders of Edgeworthia chrysantha. Juniper and I saw a specimen at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden just this Saturday. Very nifty. A plant that blooms in January that looks seasonally appropriate.