Posts tagged as Gardening
Tiny Gardens: The Terrific Stoops, Roofs and Bitty Front Lawns of Brooklyn
Last August, Jill Harrison bought a house on a very manicured block of Crown Heights. She hasn’t had to leave her property to meet the neighbors. The time she spends on her front lawn, installing native plants, herbs and sedum, brings neighborhood kids wanting “to pick something” and nods of approval from old-timers headed to the nearby Baptist church or West Indian restaurant. Most impressive to passers-by: her stoop, where, in more than 17 pots and containers, she’s growing wild strawberries, Portuguese peppers, a blueberry bush, lemon verbena and cucumbers—basically, she said, “things we can eat or put in our drinks.” READ MORE
The Daylily, Harbinger Of Your Sweet Death
One of the worst things about summer, at least in New York City, is that by the time the Fourth of July rolls around, you’re pretty much ready for it to be over. It’s beyond hot, everyone has stains down the middle of their backs and under their armpits, you can’t afford a beach vacation, you’re crushed into subway cars touching other people’s sweaty arms and legs in ways that would fall under a definition of intimate relations in almost any other scenario. For these reasons and more, it’s a good idea to stop and pay tribute to the daylily. READ MORE
A Tree Peony (The Lives They Lived)
Like so many from the old country, my parents were hard workers. They led quiet lives and poured their hopes into their offspring, of whom I was the eldest. READ MORE
Trees and Plants of Human Use and Significance
Recently I spent a week in Ithaca, where I went to Cornell from 1986-1990, or six hundred million years ago. Not having been there since graduation, I immediately noted a very important difference between my present and former self: namely, I couldn't wait to spend some time in the botanical gardens, toward which I had been largely oblivious as an undergrad. READ MORE
The Pleasure of Ruins
Lately in my travels through the blogosphere, I've detected increasing unhappiness with the intrusive nature of what could be called our "brand economy." As someone who identifies with this discontent, I was led to wonder if branding has actually grown more intense in recent years, or if by getting older-in the way one generation always complains about the next-I'm more impatient with the status quo of our more-or-less-in-theory capitalist system. After all, it's hardly controversial to say that since the dawn of mass production, and perhaps even earlier, we've lived in a "brand-driven" society; it's natural for companies to make products and advertise with the expectation that customers will recognize brands and be more inclined to buy new products by the same company. READ MORE
Damselfish Fish Even More Obsessive About Gardening Than Previously Thought
Marine biologists have known for a while about the territorial instincts of the damselfish. (That's one in that video there, the two-tone yellow-and-black number, telling a bunch of other fish and a scuba diver to get the hell off its lawn.) The small, tropical reef fish is famous for claiming a patch of algae and chasing off any other creatures than swim or crawl nearby. But that's not all! Scientists at Japan's Ehime University have recently discovered the damselfish, or stegastes nigricans, actually tends its garden, cultivating certain types of algae it likes to eat while weeding out more fibrous, less digestible varieties and dumping them outside its property. "An intensive farmer, stegastes nigricans does weeding on less digestible algae," said Ehime's Hiroki Hata, "and it results in a monoculture of a specific algal species." READ MORE
Cascading Campanula
With spring almost a fading memory, the June garden offers more subdued and textured pleasures. The deciduous trees have leafed out, the tips of the conifers-which just a few weeks ago were shimmering and almost translucent-have matured, and the deep burgundy tones of the Japanese maple and columnar beech have been diluted with a more pedestrian if not completely unsatisfying green. Not that I'm complaining: there's still much to look forward to during what remains of the growing season before the August doldrums, and if anything, later arrivals in the garden should be all the more valued as a result of our awareness of the limited time that remains. READ MORE
The McKee Botanical Garden
On a recent trip to Vero Beach, I was interested and a little dismayed-in a way that's probably unavoidable in Florida when you consider the ongoing clash between the lush vegetation and strip-mall civilization-to learn that my parents' condominium is situated on the former site of a large botanical garden. Originally called Jungle Garden, it was built in 1922 on land purchased by Arthur McKee and Waldo Sexton (an engineer and a citrus grower, respectively) who like many of today's rich-ass motherfuckers financial leaders were obsessed with orchids and water lilies, and brought rare specimens from around the world to showcase to the interested public. READ MORE
Hellibores!
The transition from March to April, as we all know, is most often associated with madness, daffodils, spring crocuses and the blazing yellow branches of forsythia now rising like a thousand sunbeams around the city. In Washington Heights, however, it is the hellebore that now takes the stage, with a more subdued and gothic charm. READ MORE
Friends! Take Heart! Winter Was Indeed Harsh, But Spring Is Here!
After the blizzards and hurricanes of early March, I went out to the garden to assess the damage. The plants, a sad exhibit of cracked limbs and blackened, desiccated leaves, seemed to confirm that for all concerned, it had been a fucking brutal winter. READ MORE
