Welcome To The Interzone

Picking up where I left off...

As soon as you pass through the stone wall, you become immediately aware of a shift in landscape management. What? Are those last year's oak leaves on the grass?

Hey, wait a second, this low bush blueberry couldn't survive a mowing at this height.

Little bells of blueberry. I'm not sure it couldn't be called 'darling.'

Look up and you see the middle stages of field reverting to forest. Dogwood and Cedar are making their move, and Sassafras staking a claim too.

Young Sassafras.

When I was a kid I knew Sassafras to grow under the oak trees in the woods. The leaves smelled lemony and in a child's world they became known as the 'lemon pledge tree.'

This beast is also amassing its army. Multiflora Rose, Japanese Barberry, Oriental Bittersweet and honeysuckle: Morrow's or Japanese Honeysuckle - a veritable Medusa's Head of invasive shrubbery!

Another old stone wall puts me into the second growth forest. The final ring in the system.

Cornell Cranky About Article

I picked up this blog posting about the NYTimes Lead Article at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture blog. It seems they were a little peeved about misquotes or misinformation in the article. They also mentioned my blog -how nice! I quote:

"Murray McBride of CSS and the Cornell Waste Management Institute was quoted. A little alarmist, with some significant misquotes - we are not in fact offering free soil testing, though we have gotten four calls as of yesterday inquiring about such a service… but generally not quite as sensational or inaccurate as we feared, but a bit too much for our taste. We are in the process of writing a letter to the editor with hope that we could turn this into a learning moment."

The Cornell Waste Management Institute has a page regarding soil quality. I will link to this permanently on my resources listing.

The Order of Things

Below is a series of photos highlighting the schema of Weir the landscape. Close to home -a formal garden. Outside that ring, the productive vegetable garden. Outside that ring, the tilled farm fields. And today, outside that ring, the wooded nature preserve. Imagine it like a solar system with the house as its center of gravity.

This is Burlingham House. It's the visitor center for the Weir Farm Historic Site.

On the left is the potting shed (of stone!) and its bleeding hearts. To the right is the staircase with cute plants I cannot name.

Looking back for another glimpse of the bleeding hearts and stone wall.

Down the stone steps is this formal garden planted by Weir's daughter.


Looking south over a stone wall we see what was once a vegetable garden.


Outside another stone boundary we find the farming fields.

The farm fields are bordered up-slope by oaks that seed the fields with their progeny.


Passing through another stone wall we enter a different zone. It has a sign.

Maybe you didn't read the sign either, but it does state 'no dogs.' I suppose even outside the city dog walkers aren't doing their duty.

2nd Chance

There are many varieties of lilacs in bloom here at Weir Farm. More than I could possibly want to photograph. Its been breezy and their scent...

Cut The Mustard

I suppose it is timely. Not only because I recently and guiltily posted photos of the mustard growing in my side yard and Michelle at The Clueless Gardeners called me on it, but also because it is blooming right now all over New England, its been on my mind since I saw it blooming in Cadman Plaza Park last week, and because of a video I saw months ago on Susan Harris' Sustainable Gardening.

On the train to my new setting in Connecticut I spied thousands of Alliaria petiolata or 'Garlic Mustard' plants and hundreds of Hesperis matronalis or 'Dame's Rocket.' I saw several good looking clumps of Garlic Mustard in Cadman Plaza Park last week, where I pulled some leaves and crumpled them in my hands to catch the faint, slow release of garlic scent they're named for. Dame's Rocket is blooming superlatively in my side yard right now, so its cousins on the rail and road sides called out to me as I blew by on the train. I saw lots of other invasives too, but let's talk about rail as a vector for weeds and invasives another day, shall we.

Behind my cottage is a stone wall. Walk along it and you'll find these steps, leading from the Weir home through the wall...

...to the field below.

The field is filled with many plants, including the mustard I speak of.

Dame's Rocket left, Garlic Mustard right.

I know these plants now, I see them. Before this year I hardly thought of mustard. It was those rangy herbs growing in ditch and roadside during my winters in southern New Mexico. When we think of mustard, and we must, we think of Guldens, French's, or even Gray Poupon. That is mustard! Or at least its seeds ground into condiment. But what of the other mustards, like horseradish, turnips, broccoli, etc., etc? North America is home to many mustard farms and mustard is a weed to many farmers. Hmmm.

Here at Weir Farm National Historic Site the National Park Service has a dual role. They must preserve and interpret a human landscape which carries a legacy of weeds and invasive plants and they must also be sensitive to the native habitat of Weir Preserve. How can they balance these? Tomorrow I take my tour with a ranger. I'll ask.

Rose

Grandma's rose is beginning bloom now. The shrub has more buds on it than I've seen since I pulled it from her yard. Marvelous scent.

This New Old House

This is my National Park home for the next month. Its called "caretaker's" because this is where... you guessed it. It sits on the edge of a deep ravine and at the intersection of two roads. Back in the day, there were little in the way of woods here. The hill was cleared for farms and I've read that you could see Long Island Sound. The woods is back, second growth.

The studio is upstairs, in the attic. It's nice, but a bit lusty for the studio they are building next door that would accommodate my larger work. 

Across the street is the Weir residence. It's being renovated, along with his studio and other buildings. Sounds of construction carry the day, but keep the quiet from lulling me into sleepiness. 

I went on an exploratory hike yesterday evening. The overwhelming nature of the experience, alone in the woods and field, with low raking light pushed me to take a million photos. Then I stopped. To relax, take it in. In some ways I feel I've gotten over that moment, so now to engage in creativity. To have the time to just think about what would be fun to explore, think about future work, learning something new. This is a wildly fantastic context for me. A mixture of the old and the new, and much in between, looking back and looking forward. I have many questions for the National Park Service Rangers, and I have incredible access to them.

Weir I Am...

There is a frost/freeze advisory for tonight. I'm not an hour from the Tri-Boro Bridge, I mean RFK bridge. A cold front passed through at my arrival. Cool air and the woodsy mustiness make me feel its autumn, should I not look up at the green. I've already had my first hike. Report tomorrow.

This Week...In The Garden

I am sad that I will miss the high point of our summer flower season while I am away. But the rocket and irises have put on a good show before I am to go.

Can you tell the difference between the nursery purchased mother on the left and its offspring, on the right. The offspring is huskier in every way, including leaf width, petals, and overall plant size.

I will miss the spirea blooms, which in so many ways is not the reason to enjoy this plant.

This iris is taking its sweet time. Warmer weather would open this guy right up, but we're looking at a three day time lapse between these two shots. Amazing color, isn't it?

Early Clipper

Both these plants are in the family Asteraceae. I usually clip them back in early June so that they don't get too tall. This year, maybe because all of the rain, I need to clip them now. The aster below reached forward because I had my cold-frame over its spot until about a month ago.

Carless In Connecticut

I am about to embark on the most ironic of retreats. I will be off the vehicular grid in a wealthy suburb of NYC. With no way to get around, except by foot on shoulder-less roads, I am packing a healthy quantity of food for a month's stay. But I've never packed for this long before. Embedded in the grid. I'm reminded of Marie of 66squarefeet, with her sumptuous feasts in the deserts of Namibia. How do you shop for four weeks and cook well? Where do the vegetables come from? Shall I forage on the National Park lands? OR better yet, raid the backyard potagers of the neighbors like some kind of forgotten sasquatch. Wouldn't that be something.

My trusty apple gets boxed tonight for tomorrow's travel. I've sent posts for the weekend, then back on line this Monday evening. Yes, embedded and on line, but off-the-grid. I will be in touch.

I will miss the hay day of late May in the garden. The blooms of course, but also the changeover from peas and greens to tomatoes and beans. All that I leave in the capable hands of my lovely wife. There's no one better to trust the growing to, she can do it all with a song and a smile. Though I think the plants will miss my gripe and crank, really -they will.

Snow What?

I got these from Adriana at the plant giveaway. She wasn't sure what they were. My call -snowdrops, though it seems late for them. What do you think?

Paradise Lost

Photographs rarely feel as if they capture what you can see. This image of the grassy knoll I described in a previous post comes close. I knew a whacking was coming, seed heads were fully formed. I took this photo a few nights ago. This morning it was whacking time, by NYC Parks not DOT.

How Grows It?

The snap peas are producing lovely flowers, but barely a snack's worth of eating. Sorry snap pea 'Sugar Ann,' your probably off to compost land. I want to put in the tomatoes, so I will snip all the shoots and eat them instead.

The tomato seedlings, after many hardships are waiting to be potted up. They almost fried, they almost drowned in all that rain (I forgot to take them out of the pan), got pelted by roof drip, and then the slugs worked their stems a bit. Its time.

The broccoli 'Calabrese' has taken off, but warm weather looms. I do think it'll be better to grow the broccoli in the late summer and fall, tenting them when it frosts. The plants are sporting some mini florets.

The side yard broccoli already has the flat leaf parsley planted in its pot. The broccoli moving along slow, so I thought I'd give them some motivation. Its the parsley planter after all.

Leafy greens shooting back after their first haircut. Soon they'll have tomatoes to skirt.

Basil and cilantro are potted up.

Extra Extra, Read All About It....Here

Well to my surprise the Times article came out on line this evening. It'll be out in print tomorrow.

Just a few points before you rush to read it.

• I rent an apartment, not a house in Brooklyn.
• My vegetable patch is barely bountiful, produces vegetable snacks -with exception of the green beans and herbs.
  
• My soil lead in the side yard is at least 50 times N.Y.S. background levels according to the numbers I received from The Environmental Sciences Analytical Center or 90 times the U.S. agricultural soil levels average according to the University of Minnesota Extension.
• My vegetables are all in wooden planter boxes or plastic nursery pots. The soil in them is a mix of bagged potting soil and bagged compost, not "nursery dirt."
  

That covers my corrections. I spoke to Dr. Cheng at Brooklyn College today and he has agreed to put together a short bit about dealing with heavy metal contamination in NYC soils. He told me he is getting plenty of new samples since listing his service on nycgarden. I will also post soon about the simple things you can do to help if your soil has high levels of lead. Start with this one thing -keep your kids from eating the dirt!

Now read it and weep lead!

Then compare to nycgarden post My Farm (where all this started) and Mutterings on the Mutter. Its a shame thy blog did not get a mention. But the Times photographer, Patrick, did a good job despite the toxically bright sun that day.

I'd like to post about how the garden is doing before I split for Weir Farm. So moving on.

**UPDATE**

The online addition corrected the "9 times" to read " 90 times" based on the facts presented later in the story. Alas, the Late Edition print can not say the same.

A New Landscape For Awhile

In a little while I will be leaving for a new landscape -the hardwood forests of nearby Connecticut. I will be the artist in residence at Weir Farm Art Center, part of the Weir Farm National Historic Site. Last January I spent a glorious two weeks in the winter wonderland of New Hampshire at MacDowell Colony. This new program will be much different. I'll be the only one in residence, with all the house-keeping, cooking, and what-else performed by yours truly and that's just fine by me. If they'll let me, I may even get to cooking over fire.

What I am most interested in is the immersion in this landscape. I know little about the woods of Connecticut, with only a slight sense of it from drives on the Merritt Parkway. I'm hoping for Beech trees. I like them most in winter when they appear like apparitions in the woods, but I'll take them in late spring without complaint. There are hiking trails through the acres that I will generally have to myself, I think.

The site is surrounded by woods and residential development; not too far from NYC so that it is no doubt part of the tri-state economic zone. The landscape was a farm and artistic retreat for painter J.A. Weir in the late 19th century. Connecticut's farms could seem like a world away in those days, but one must retreat very far from NYC to afford the same kind of tranquility today.

I'm interested in the role of the rural retreat as a nurturer and shaper of art. Most artist residency programs are in locations removed from urban settings. Obviously, its the quiet, the lack of social distraction, the clean air- it can clear your head. But as a landscape painter, I'm more interested in the institution of the bucolic, art retreat and how it reinforces a way of looking at landscape and certainly, at art. The easel painter 'en plein air' is certainly a part of this set of expectations.

Do you remember when Captain Picard would retire to his quarters on the Space Ship Enterprise to paint at his easel. This always made me cringe. This, however, makes me laugh:

Vine of Horrors

Have you seen this article. Unfortunately, the NY Times does not have a photo of the porcelain berry vines in summer on the Saw Mill River Parkway. I've seen them. Its amazing. It looks like a giant green Henry Moore sculpture that goes on and on. I wish I'd taken some photos, but speeding down the parkway makes that tough.

Ampelopsis brevipedunculata or rather commonly, Porcelain Berry Vine

It certainly didn't seem right when I first noticed it on the parkway a few years ago. The roadway cuts through the woods, creating an edge land that the vines easily exploit. Its an amazing sight, but they should cut them down in one great concerted effort.

Shovel Over Shoulder

On Sunday I was posed and photographed by a photographer for the NY Times. After a week or more of cloudy, garden-photography perfect days, they had to come on the sunniest of all mornings.

I know these problems all too well, the extreme contrast, blown-out highlights on the tops of leaves, the dull colors. And me, having casually refused to link my face to my blog, is being posed as a gardener-type, complete with shovel over shoulder. My trusty shovel, now a prop.

The sun was hard to look into, but the camera required it so that I wouldn't have neanderthalish brow over deep-pocketed eyes. There was the moment he asked me to put my hands under broccoli leaves, an offering. I had to laugh and figure the irony of being asked to mimic that very same gesture I mocked not long ago. When the newspaper comes to town, there's a feeling of things leaving my hands, things out of my control. What will it say, how will it re-present me, what is the story it will tell.

Come and Go Greens

I clipped my arugula, spinach, mesclun and asian greens mixes. All told, I got about 4 cups worth out of this first clipping. Thing is, the spinach and the arugula were already bolting. I don't know if it was the heat a couple of weeks back, my poor thinning, or just the varieties I chose, but the last week's weather seemed the kind to put on some healthy leaf growth. But not so much.

These pots have new things to go in them and I want to take advantage of the warm weather to get those new vegetables off to a good start. So it is that I may be pulling these greens before their true finish time. Alas, that's the downside to such a small plot.

City gardeners with small plots, let us thank our local farmer for bringing to us what we cannot grow ourselves. If growing food in the city is just a trend, a passing fancy, it will at the very least illuminate so many on how much work producing food is and how fragile its reliability can be.

Another Successful Giveaway

The plant giveaway went well. I gave plants to about four people, including these guys below.

It was close one, but fortunately the paramedics were the first on the scene, arriving just in time to save some asters. Said asters are now recuperating, in stable condition, in the garden.

I also gave another gardener a bunch of asters and a yarrow, and she brought me some chives, a mystery white flower for shade (me thinks snowdrop, but its kinda late), and a houseplant called walking iris, Neomarica gracilis. That's now living on the shelf made for seed sprouting in the
kitchen.

Also gave away some coreopsis and eupatorium, but couldn't sell anyone on the spiderworts (already everywhere) or maximilian sunflowers (always an easier sell when flowering).

Over all, quite a few divisions were spared an untimely death. Have to get going on that plant swap idea...