Farmboy Racer




This Sunday I raced down to the beach farm in the hours before the studio where I needed to polish up my entry into the pinewood derby. The weather was brilliant, the weeds were abundant, and the lady who kept taking the pavers back last year was there yackin it up, and leaving, again, this time permanently. I was rushing about, weeding half-handedly, stepping on tiny leeks.

The lettuce were large enough for me to pull a few out and clip some others for our first greens of the season. I had lengthy thoughts about the human selection (as opposed to natural selection) of weeds, unintended as it may always be, to closely resemble desirable plants when young, and grow well at the base of desirable plants. It comes down to that, doesn't it? One hundred thousand years of weeding created the successful weeds we have today simply because the successful ones are the ones we missed year after year.

The greens were plucked, snipped, de-rooted, washed triply, spun, and placed in a bowl at dinner. We ate them with our fingers, ungarnished. They were the best damn greens I've had in years. Those clear clamshell greens have nothing to do with taste, nothing. In fact, a recent package I bought was filled with aphids. Others always have rotting reds, or rotting in general, which I hate to find, because, as far as I am concerned, rot ruins my appetite for salad.

It is exceptionally difficult to get a good shot under a fabric cover pinned to the ground. 

But look at that growth in two weeks. The weeds too, so difficult to pull that I needed to make swiping motions with my hand, scraping at the dirt. I wanted to lift the tents so that the broccoli could be exposed to the cooler air, but then I remembered the moths, and left the protection in place.

Yet this is all that remains of the broccoli I planted without a row cover. Two small standing plants, and all the others shriveled and out of the ground. But why -human, animal, insect, earthly elements? I don't think I'll ever know.

I'm expecting scapes in the coming two weeks. Can't wait.

And there's movement in the snap peas!

I could not resist snapping a leaf and tendril to taste as I worked. I snipped a few more for the bowl of greens -the sweet pea flavor to set off the slight bitterness of the greens. First bites of the growing season must be raw, without adulteration.

 I completely forgot about this -the bike tour. 

You should have seen the backup of cars behind this backup of bikes. Yikes. Thankfully, it was on the other side and I was able to make it to Greenpoint the fastest way just in time for racer check-in.

It's all a little silly, but my first derby proves to be a winner. That's my car on the far left.


Sea Scapes and Other Weeds


An important trip to the beach farm yesterday to see how things are doing. It is very hard to get to the farm this spring -way too many activities. In fact, the rush of spring food gardening is outside of my favored behavior. It's a lot of do it now! Our small plot hasn't helped matters, either, where quick decisions have led to cramped quarters and footprints on young seedlings. 

But yesterday had the nicest weather of my spring visits thanks to only light winds. The great growing weather we've been having lately has been a boon to the vegetables as well as the weeds. Little to harvest in the plot, my favorite part came to be harvesting the wild garlic which is abundant, and everywhere you look around the beach farm.

Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale -king of the weeds, rising above the courtesan Dead Nettles and Chickweed. I'm told you can batter and fry the flowers, while the young greens are sought after by some for salads and cooking.

The field of Herb Robert, Geranium robertianium? I hear it may be edible, but I cannot imagine which part -the root? Wait, wait. Maybe it's Filaree, Erodium spp. Don't eat anything before you're sure!

What I believe is Field Forget-Me-Not, Myosotis arvensis

A closer look.

And finally, the wild garlic, Allium vineale. Easy to confuse with the wild onion, A. canadense, in the field and the internet. Apparently two distinguishing characteristics: wild garlic has hollow round stems and unsheathed bulbs, whereas the wild onion has flattened stems and fibrous-sheathing on its bulb. I'm going to add another -notice the curvy scape-like stems/leaves? My cultivated garlic will grow curving scapes in May, which I am eagerly awaiting. The scape is the flowering "stem" that will eventually produce bulblets.


Things Grow



These are almost ready to bloom, even taller now than the day photographed.

Native honeysuckle survived a rough transplant from the front yard.

My favorite Dicentra, the eximia bleeding heart.


I Love The Smell...





Smell that? You smell that?

What?

Cat shit, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that.

[kneels]

I love the smell of cat shit in the morning.


The system. It hasn't worked. I stepped out on my way to work this morning and all I could smell was the festering. They went in five spots last night, on top of the mesh, in a 40 square foot area. I'm now thinking the only way is to bird net the whole area until the plants fill in. Only then, it seems, the cats will go elsewhere -mostly. But enough for me to claim...victory.


Green Scent




The basic Geranium. Pink flowers in summer. But what is it that makes it worth growing?

Crush the leaves in your pale pink hands and lift towards the nose. It's the first green scent of the year -not like flowers, mind you, more like positivity, goodness, well-being.


Poll With Lilacs



I rounded the corner around 9pm tonight, and I was wondering just what is that scent suddenly ruined by the expulsions of an explosively accelerating SUV that also wrapped the corner? Oh, I see it, Larry's got flowering lilacs now. It only takes a one, on still nights like this one.

On the right, you'll see something new -a poll. The question is as inane as they come, so why not get everyone in on the action? Simply put, I am thinking about using a custom domain so that I don't have to garble the mouthful that dot blogspot dot com really is. I use the Blogger platform for the facility web page at work, and my experience has been that whenever I say the web address, students' eyes glaze over. Short and sweet is best, but NYCG has been taken in all its forms. The dot coms have already been scavenged as well, so here are the remaining choices:


  • nycgarden.net
  • nycgarden.info
  • nycgarden.org
  • newyorkcitygarden.net
  • newyorkcitygarden.info
  • newyorkcitygarden.org
  • Something altogether different
  • Don't change a thing

Thanks.



Cool Weather, Flowering Weeds, Beach Farm



These are the weeds blooming in our beach farm's plots this week, maybe this whole month, and year? Click on the pictures for monster size.

Dead Nettle, Lamium purpureum.

Pretty enough for a weed. Below, its flowering-at-the-same-time look-a-like. Both have tooth-edged, hairy leaves that purple at the top, upright growth habit, tubular pink-purple flowers, and the purple-green square stems of the mint-family. But, they do have significantly different leaf shapes, venation, and upon close inspection, dissimilar flowers. 

Henbit, Lamium amplexicaule. 

At first appears to be a chickweed, either Stellaria spp. or Cerastium spp, but the four-petaled flower says Whitlow Grass, Draba verna. Compare.

Likes dry sites, hmm. Like the sandy farm.

Quite probably Geranium robertianum, or Herb Robert or Stinky Bob.

This bloomed late late late fall too.


A Pea Grows In Brooklyn



It is well too soon to say for sure, but it is quite possible that sometime in mid to late May I will be speaking with Amy Eddings, host of WNYC's All Things Considered, in a segment which I believe runs regularly under the title "Last Chance Foods" -produced by Joy Wang. It was Joy who had contacted me after visiting this here blog. It's possible we will talk about growing peas and pea shoots, and now I'm thinking of growing every pea seed I have in my seed box. What is it about being interviewed that makes you wish you were an expert?

Speaking of peas, I noticed this pea growing not far from our stoop, sharing the nasty, nasty space with the utility poles. A pea grows in Brooklyn -indeed, but from where did it's seed hail?

These are the tomatoes, their growth stunted somewhat by sending them outside on sunny days. Some are beginning to yellow, cotyledons shriveled, and roots extending below their bond tube pots. Now they begin to demand potting up and whisper to hell with your peas.

I recently watered with more fish fertilizer, which I think instigated this bout with fungus at the pots' bottoms. I rubbed it off, filled the plastic containers with some soil, and shrug it off. Still a month before tomato planting time at the beach farm.

A painting I have been working on, with which I am finally hitting my stride. When it's time to plant the tomatoes, the park will look like this, and when the tomatoes are planted, this painting ought to be finished.



Risen


For those of you who celebrate Easter, happy and rejoice. Spend a few minutes in the garden today, or in a park. Life is up and so should we.

I'm not a religious person -in the sense of participating in organized religious activity, but it is not a reach to see the Christian liturgical cycles as mirroring the natural cycles. The hope in Christmas, sacrifice and work of lent, the Resurrection of Easter.

It's springtime and today you will feel it -it's going to be quite warm and probably humid. Showers or not, get out there. I will be delivering a basket of Easter eggs and chocolate to my 96 year old grandmother to brighten her day at the facility. She misses hard-boiled eggs. Then off to my aunt's, deeper on the Island, for an early Easter dinner.

Incidentally, an Italian woman who works at a local breakfast joint told us last Sunday, Palm Sunday, that back in Italy, and here back in the day, people made baskets out of those palms, not just crosses -and that was special. Every year they would try to outdo one another, creating new, crazier basket weaves. Was this how we came to deliver eggs in baskets on Easter?




Sunday Morning At The Beach Farm




The garlic is coming on strong now and the least weedy bed at the beach. Waiting for May's scapes.

Finally, with the recent rains, the chard has sprouted, but not before a thousand weedy competitors also sprouted. It wasn't too hard to identify the chard with its red colorations. Ack, that white thing is a paint chip from the scavenged fence.

The broccoli is finally growing under the tents, although they've taken a little beating with all the wind.

And there, too, the weeds are a sproutin'. The tented broccoli has a tender quality.  Those on the edges get whipped by the fabric rippling in the wind, but they're hanging on.

Compare the tented broccoli to the broccoli planted outside. Both are growing, but the untented row is tougher, more upright, and a little smaller.

But here is the real reason for the tents. This is last November's broccoli, over-wintered and growing. It's already been getting chomped by caterpillars. You can see the chomp-outs in all the leaves.

Pulling weeds from the mixed greens is fine finger work. We in-filled afterward with new seeds.

While weeding, multiple earthworms popped out of the ground. What must weeding sound like to them? The end of the world?

Notice the colorful sheen on its side.

The snap peas weren't worth photographing as they have changed very little. I feel that these may need to be pulled before producing anything, as they are in the line of the future rows of tomatoes. Wolf, one of our fellow gardeners, and one with three plots of his own, told us that we are serious enough to have more space and that we should get more space. He is right, we need it, and we are hoping it is just there for the taking as it was for him. Maybe our neighbor will never show up. He planted cabbages last year and never once seemed to return to check on them.



Gone Golfing



Last Monday was one of the few warm days since March one, and I intended to use it to photograph Van Cortlandt golf course for some possible future paintings. I was under pressure to get my shots under a cloudy sky, and only a few hours till the sun would burn off the clouds. Problem was that I couldn't find any visual access to the course from behind the fences and brambles. So, I followed the trail that followed the fence. 

I made my way around the southern reaches of the long, finger-like -err, what's the word, I don't play golf, uh, fairway? Throughout I found places where human desire and manual dexterity folded back chain-link so that I could jump on the green and steal a few shots.  And that's what it felt like -crime. The distinction between the course and the surrounding bramble creates a strong division, and I understood which side of the fence I belonged. If I am ever to progress toward making paintings of courses, I will need appropriate access, which I hope does not come with the 50 dollar tee fee, a permit, and a golf ball driven off my head.

Off the trail was a swampy pond-side vista. It struck me as a man-made pond that once graced a private landscape, but has since gone wild.

The willows' green is really quite remarkable, delivering such intensity that gray morning.

I crossed a ramshackle bridge covered with bird seed.

And the birds couldn't wait for me to pass.

The skunk cabbage was up, unfurling.

Maple flowers had littered the ground.

Ficaria verna, a buttercup, also known as Lesser Celandine.

It's a well known invasive. If you're out in early spring, you'll see this in wet woodlands.

Blue jay feather catches my eye.

I find myself between two greens, the liminal browns I suppose, on a path intensely dark.

A stream runs between the path and the course to the west.

Exceptionally flat and exceptionally straight. I start to think about where I am.

And the evidence of the old railroad makes itself known.

I realize that I must be on the Old Putnam Line, which I saw marked on a google map.

To the side of the trail, hundreds of trout lilies. The same were recently pointed out to me by my friend Jane, in who's garden they have formed dense mats under some trees. She hadn't seen them there in 40 years of gardening. I was aware of trout lilies -the flower, but never noticed the leaves, and then Marie put it all together the other day at 66sf.

When I approached the tunnel, I had to decide how much further I was willing to go. A little, I decided, and two hundred yards further I did turn around, and that was when I saw the rabbit.


My intention that morning was never to explore the park, so I made my way through a hole in the golf course fence, hustled up a green embankment, jumped over a section of fallen chain link, to the trail which we had been re-rerouting a few weeks earlier. From there I headed to the van, as I was beginning to feel ill, too hot, even for such a warm day.

I'm still not over the cold that developed that day, as it makes its way into the depths of my lungs. I blame the blasted winds that seem to be pummeling us daily, and especially on those days I need or want to be outside, such as mulch day at the Greenwood or yesterday at the beach farm. That post soon.



Dead Man's Mulch



I arrived early, the line already formed for the free trees. There were four types -Kwanzan Cherry, Prunus serrulata 'Kwanzan', Redbud, Cercis canadensis, Bur Oak, Quercus macrocarpa, and Carolina Silverbell, Halesia tetraptera. I happened to think the Bur Oak had fabulously interesting bark for a young tree, but I wasn't there for the young trees, I was there for the dead -the chipped wood pile.

And I was the only one. At first. Like that empty restaurant you pull into, it seemed as soon as I was bagging up, the pile was mobbed. No problem, there was plenty, and what they were giving away for free, I might've paid for.

This is the leaf and needle mold mixed with partially decomposed wood. It is an excellent, pine-earth scented mulch where I was only expecting plain old wood chips. I bagged 5 large to the point of splitting, then loaded them in the van, where they will remain until I fix the cat problem.

The wood chips are good enough for my intended use on the paths at the beach farm, and I will be back for more.

On my way out, the tree corral was dwindling, but the line remained strong.

You do not need to wait for an event to pick up free wood chips or mulch at Greenwood Cemetery. Go during open hours to the 5th Avenue gate and ask the guard to direct you to the mulch pile. Bring sturdy bags or containers and a shovel.

Free wood chips and mulch in parts of NYC may be a direct result of the Asian Longhorn Beetle and the subsequent quarantine program. Tastes like lemonade to me.


Tuck Yourself In



It's only now beginning to get nasty. Before nightfall -heavier rain, more wind, and possibly some lightning. Probably no tornados, although this is the storm that killed 16 people yesterday with tornados and straight line winds. 


I know I said I wouldn't, but on my way out to the cemetery I couldn't resist a few shots of the early bulbs that will get matted by some heavy rains later in the day. Tuck yourself in, enjoy the indoors.

These have a wonderful scent you must stoop over the fence to notice, and much better at night.

 I planted 'Darwin' type tulips because they return, and I prefer them closed.



Wind And Woodchips



Watch the winds today, from the SE I believe, as I think they're already gusting. I'm off to Greenwood Cemetery to pick up three or four trash bags full of woodchips. I hope they let me in early, to get it done before the rain. Then off to the studio for some work, and with inspiration, progress. It's a shame there is often much work but little progress.


Well Aye Doo Day Claire


...it is springtime.

Thinking about going to the Flatbush plant swap to unload some things on Sunday  Saturday. If only they didn't make it in the middle of the day! Oh, no, I don't have lazy Sundays Saturdays like the brunch crowd. I'm usually off working in the studio by then. 

Also, thinking about getting some materials for the anti-cat scat idea. Despite my cold, it felt quite like spring this morning. And now I want to get the side yard in shape, and don't want to pull the plants too late, as my idea requires.


Trail Blazing


On April 2nd I had my first round with trail rerouting in Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx, New York, North America, Earth. Trails require such micro to macro thinking (thank you Google).

The group was a handful of middle-aged men and women(40-55, and that includes me) and a group of extremely well-mannered and thoughtful teens. 

Many of the teens were out planting new shrubs and trees along the trails.

We hiked to the location (me with full wheelbarrow -oof), a descending trail on a highway overpass embankment. The embankment trail is rutting and washing out in heavy rains. 

Christina and Tom, of the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, laid out the new route.

I tackled a water hole (my take -careless drainage from the adjacent golf course), letting it flow down to the right of the re-routed trail. 

This is the upper portion of the embankment trail. The stone crew will be here over the coming weeks to begin making a stone staircase. I got to make my first stone check dams. At first glance, it seemed there wasn't much to do, but then after 4 hours, it appeared we had done a lot.

The soil level raised, another stone check dam in place, and a drainage trench dug to channel water off to the right of the trail. Plants planted alongside the trail too.

I had to keep my gardener-self somewhat in check. Otherwise, I would have been asking why we are planting such large-growing, sun-loving shrubs under a mature pine. In many ways the group was simply planting only to redirect traffic, not to encourage growth of those plants. But I had to let it go, it's not a garden, it's a weedy woods on a highway embankment. Yet, I have vowed to myself that if I am going to participate, I may as well be the expert on natives and weeds in urban habitats so that I can help decide which plants pulled should be replanted or tossed. It seems to me that knowledge would be quite useful on metro trails projects.

After we finished up on the embankment, we headed up top where another group was removing an old rusty guard rail. Next meeting, on May 7th, we'll be working with the stone crew on the steps, and then clearing brush for a reroute on the upper portion of the trail. Not a big fan of the brush clearing in this bramble-filled roadside location. I'll bring a machete.

I spotted a dead bird of prey while we were working.

A ranger came by to take the carcass away for testing.

She identified it as a red-tail hawk.



Gardens And Beasts



All the tulips and jonquils are blooming, and holding on quite well in these moderate temperatures. I have chosen not to photograph them this year, as you and I have done that dance in years before. But they are lovely, I promise.

This year, it's all about trails, and the beach farm's new promise. And some new expeditions through unknown locales. And, a very big if, should I figure out a way to convince our neighborhood cabal of cats from distributing their fecal fecundity in my poor plot, you will find those answers here too this season.

I've got one idea, of which I dislike, but it may just work.


Whoa, Tomatoes



They really are growing too fast for my liking as I imagine this point where it's outside or nothin'. Yesterday they spent the day outside, which I am hoping puts the breaks on their rapid ascent. Today I will put them out too.

The largest ones are approaching 7 inches tall, and a few sets of leaves. I had hoped not to pot up, but now I am thinking I will put soil in the plastic bin and just let the roots swirl around in there until May 1st. Roots are already beyond the bottoms of the tubes.