This is one of the first gardens I saw in the Allentown neighborhood of Buffalo the afternoon of Thursday, July 8. Perhaps because it was first, it got extra attention. Nevertheless, I think you'll agree it was worthy of it.
A simple design made practical use of a small, urban backyard. The hub and spoke design creates multiple focal points: a fountain, a chair, and the blue door. This is an important design strategy for making a small space seem bigger, part of our conversation on the "short bus" one afternoon. At the same time, it grants reliable access to most of the flowers beds for maintenance. A strong design like this works even - especially - when flowers are past and leaves are gone. And Buffalo's notorious snows would highlight it further, when it's not completely buried.
A large group assembled for Amy Stewart's tour of Wicked Plants along the Annual Border of Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Lily Pool Terrace.
Saturday afternoon, Blog Widow and I went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for an afternoon of Wicked Plants: a tour led by Amy Stewart, a book signing, and a cake baked for the occasion.
Amy Stewart, rigged with portable amplification
Ricinus communis, Castor Bean plant
Book purchase display
The Cake
A Wicked Cake enters the Lily Pool Terrace
"Everything is edible, except the boards," said one of the cake wranglers. Well, that and the stems of the flowers.
The flowers were incredibly lifelike.
It's hard to justify eating artistry like this. But it was a hot and humid day, so what can you do?!
Amy regards a Tulip before taking a bite of it.
Blog Widow peals a petal off a Tulip. It tasted vaguely like wax lips. Technically edible.
The base was seven layers of chocolate and vanilla cake with mocha cream. Delicious, and worth the wait.
Glam Shots
Not everything we saw that day was wicked.
Double-Flowering Lotus
Dragonfly
Hens and Chicks
Okay, wicked, but kinda cool, huh?
Last Friday morning, the Chicago Spring Fling meetup of garden bloggers traveled to the Chicago Botanic Garden, one of the sponsors of the event. They provided a shuttle between the train station and the garden, free entry, and passes for the tram and this area: the Model Railroad Garden.
I had imagined a small kiddie ride of a train traveling through a garden. I thought it unseemly that a botanic garden should have an amusement ride in it. I also doubted that such a machine would have trouble handling my mass. So I wasn't planning to visit this garden, despite the free pass.
However, as I left the landscape gardens behind, the entrance to this garden was right there. Since I had a free pass, I thought, "What the heck." Similar to the New York Botanical Gardens annual display, this garden features, yes, model trains running continuously among model houses, buildings, dioramas and other scenes made of plant material. The difference is that this is outdoors, on and in the ground, with permanent plantings.
As a garden, it didn't move me. But that's not what this is about. It's model trains. Leave your cynicism behind.
The 7,500-square-foot Model Railroad Garden features 17 garden-scale (G-scale) trains on 1,600 feet of track. The garden-scale trains are 1/29th the size of life-sized trains. Train and garden enthusiasts, young and old, return year after year for the delightful sights and sounds of the miniature trains traversing high and low through tunnels, across bridges, and around buildings — all intricately handcrafted with natural materials, including twigs, bark, leaves, acorns, and pebbles. More than 5,000 tiny trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and flowering plants of close to 300 varieties re-create the topographical landscape of America. Vignettes of tiny people and animals give the exhibit a storybook feel, while sound effects and a working geyser capture visitors’ imaginations. - Railroad Garden
A masterpiece of Prairie School landscape architecture.
Originally built in 1889 for raising tropical water lilies, the Lily Pool was redesigned in the prairie style during the 1930’s by Alfred Caldwell. The landscape design of the Caldwell Lily Pool is a tribute to the natural ecology of the Midwest. It was originally designed to mimic a river formed by a melting glacier’s flow of water cutting through limestone. The stonework and paths have a natural look that conveys the interpretation that melted glacial water flows are cutting through moraines, creating dramatic limestone bluffs. A waterfall near the north end of the lily pool represents the source of this glacial river. - Lincoln Park Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool
After decades of disrepair and neglect, this site was rehabilitated and refurbished in 2001 and 2002 and reopened to the public. [bit.ly]
It's going to take me several days to slog through the 350 photos I shot today, let alone what's coming tomorrow. Suffice to say that I was overwhelmed and inspired by what I saw.
Here's the outline for my entire Chicago trip. I'll be adding the links as I write the posts for each feature of the tours.
This is a 180-degree panoramic shot stitched together from eight hand-held and panned shots using the pano tool built into Microsoft Vista. Best viewed at the largest resolution your monitor can support. I took this shot while standing on the Nichols Bridgeway, just opened two weeks ago, which joins Millennium Park to the new modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. Monroe Street passes underneath, on the left and right of the photo. Downtown Chicago is to the left, and Lake Michigan is to the right. Millenium Park, including the Great Lawn and Lurie Garden, are roughly in the center of the photo.
I created this panorama of the Native Plant Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden the same way.
A meeting of online journalists, professional, citizen, and otherwise, with Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz a few weeks ago.
Looking forward to seeing my fellow citizen journalists at the Brooklyn Blogfest this evening.
I haven't been following the Senate Commerce Committee hearings on newspapers. Much of the testimony has contrasted big-house newspapers, and whether or not they need special protections, with citizen journalists - ie: bloggers - and whether or not they are a threat. In today's Gawker, Ryan Tate takes of the speakers - David Simon, creator of the TV series The Wire - to task:
As a newspaper reporter who spent a few years covering a town much like Baltimore [the setting for The Wire] — Oakland, California — I often found that bloggers were the only other writers in the room at certain city council committee meetings and at certain community events. They tended to be the sort of persistently-involved residents newspapermen often refer to as "gadflies" — deeply, obsessively concerned about issues large and infinitesimal in the communities where they lived. - David Simon: Dead-Wrong Dinosaur, Ryan Tate, Gawker, 2009-05-07
With so much quality civic reporting already being done online for little or no pay, it stands to reason we could eventually get quality government reporting entirely from bloggers, both professional and amateur, rather than depending on a federally-coddled cabal of conspiring nonprofit newspapers, as Simon envisions.
And there are reasons to think the quality would actually be better, since so many of the writers are deeply invested residents ...
Update 2010.01.03: Corrected all links to the old Gowanus Lounge domain to the new memorial domain. A Memorial Gathering for Robert "Bob" Guskind, founder of Gowanus Lounge, has been scheduled for the afternoon of Saturday, April 4:
A memorial gathering to honor the memory of Robert Guskind will be held from 2 pm to 5 pm Saturday, April 4 at the Brooklyn Lyceum, 4th Avenue between Union and President Streets in Park Slope.
Please RSVP if you can. (There is an opportunity to sign up to speak.)
There will be an opportunity to donate to charities in Bob’s name.
Update 2010.01.03: Corrected all links to the old Gowanus Lounge domain to the new memorial domain. Thursday night I attended the Flatbush Development Corporation's (FDC) 34th Anniversary Benefit Dinner. In my remarks, as one of the honorees, I spoke of the connections and communities that had brought me there that night: my partner, my neighborhood, Flatbush at large, and the Brooklyn blogosphere. I also told the 200+ people assembled there that Brooklyn bloggers had lost one of our own last week: Robert Guskind, founder of Gowanus Lounge, a friend and supporter of this blog and of Flatbush preservation efforts.
I only met Bob in person a few times. We launched our blogs within one month of each other in 2006: Gowanus Lounge in April, Flatbush Gardener in May. Gowanus Lounge quickly became Bob's bully pulpit from which he could speak, as friend and neighbor Brenda Becker phrased so well, as "Fool-Killer and Weasel-Slayer." I don't remember when I first discovered Gowanus Lounge, but the first links from there to this blog appeared in November of that year.
Bob liked - or at least thought least unflattering! - this picture I took of him at the 2nd Annual Brooklyn Blogfest in 2007.
When the Second Brooklyn Blogfest came around in May 2007, we knew each other well from our online endeavors. We didn't get to meet at that time; it was too crowded, and too hectic. Bob, a speaker at the event, was an A-List blogger of the Brooklyn blogosphere, swarmed with fans, colleagues, and reporters.
Dave Kenny, another friend and blogging colleague, and I co-founded the Brooklyn Blogade as a way to continue the energy and relationship-building from the Blogfest, and expand into neighborhoods that were "underserved" by the Brooklyn blogosphere. Dave credits a discussion with Bob after the 2007 Blogfest as inspiring him to start the Blogades. With Anne Pope of Sustainable Flatbush, I co-hosted the first Blogade here in Flatbush in June 2007, and that's where Bob and I finally got to meet in person. The New York Times covered that first Blogade; a photograph from the event opens their article in this weekend's The City section on the future of Gowanus Lounge, the first time any of those photos have appeared.
I met Bob again on only two occasions after that. Most of our communication was online, through email, tips, and mutual links. I don't know how many scores of times Bob linked to this blog. I was especially touched by his last link at the end of January, in which he referred to me as "a friend and fellow blogger." As I write this, I still can't believe he's gone. We were the same age, and I wish there had been more opportunities and time for us to strengthen that friendship.
As many others have reported in their remembrances of him, Bob was generous in linking. He brought attention to many neighborhood issues that, I believe, without his support would have been overlooked not only by the general press, but other bloggers as well. He nurtured community in the Brooklyn blogosphere. When I reached out to him by email during lasts fall's hiatus on Gowanus Lounge, he said that he had received "hundreds of emails and comments." In response to his death, nearly 80 people have written their own condolences and memorial posts to Bob. There are many hundreds more comments across all those posts. That stands as a testament to the impact he has had, and will continue to have after his death.
He was generous and passionate, sensitive and courageous, humorous and outspoken, gregarious and private. I have learned only since his death that we shared a journey in recovery, different in the details, similar in struggle and spirit. I did not know Bob well enough or long enough to know the circumstances of his life or death. Whatever the circumstances, I have nothing but empathy for the man; they cannot diminish my opinion of him. Real people are complex, their circumstances, usually complicated. It's cost me a lot to learn that.
This was Bob's favorite of my photos. I know this, not only because the subject shows Coney Island - among Bob's greatest passions - in its glory, but because he chose this from the Flickr-Moo mini-cards I handed out at 2007's Blogfest and the first Brooklyn Blogade. If there is a heaven, may this be part of Bob's.
Update 2010.01.03: Corrected all links to the old Gowanus Lounge domain to the new memorial domain. I just discovered that Gowanus Lounge is back online. There is a placeholder post for future announcements:
With great sadness, a few of Bob’s friends, who were given access to his site, will try to update Gowanus Lounge with:
Update 2010.01.03: Corrected all links to the old Gowanus Lounge domain to the new memorial domain. Update 2009.03.20: A memorial is planned for April 4. Update 2009.03.14: Finally wrote my memorial post. Update 2009.03.11: The official, authorized, and epic obituary for Bob, written lovingly by his family and friends, was published online today. Please read In Memoriam, Robert Guskind on Gowanus Lounge. Updates 2009.03.06:
It's been all I can do just to keep up with the flood of online remembrances and other reports in response to Bob's death. As of mid-day, there are over 60. Reading everyone's posts brings back my own memories of Bob, which I hope to post over the weekend.
Changed the link for the Brooklyn Paper.
I just learned, from Windsor Terrace Alliance and Brownstoner, that Robert "Bob" Guskind, founder of Gowanus Lounge, was found dead in his home yesterday, March 4, 2009.
He was a colleague, and a friend. I'm stunned, and can't write anything else right now. See Links below for others' coverage of this terrible loss.
Robert Guskind, speaking at the second Brooklyn Blogfest in May 2007.
The July 2008 Brooklyn Blogade was a picnic at Prospect Park this past Sunday. Mother Nature smiled upon us, as thunderstorms bracketed, but did not interrupt, the picnic proper.
We did, however, get delayed in undertaking a walking tour of Prospect Park, guided by my neighbor Brenda Becker, whose Year in the Park was recently highlighted in the New York Times. While we waited out the rains, we sheltered in the Music Pagoda.
The Tour
At the Dongan oak Monument
Battle Pass
Sullivan Hill
Because we set out 45 minutes later than planned, we had to cut short our tour. But we did make it to the top of the Ravine.
Rustic Shelter
Rock Arch Bridge
Ambergill Falls.
The Picnic
Our hosts, Dave Kenny (Dope on the Slope) and Brenda, organized an awesome spread. Everyone contributed something.
The Shout-out
Nay-chuh
We enjoyed some of the idyllic ideal envisioned by the Park's creators, Olmsted in particular. Mostly insects, but some other orders, as well. There were also lots of chipmunks about, but I didn't get any good shots of them.
The Nethermead
Halysidota harrisii, Sycamore Tussock Moth, Caterpillar. Thanks to Mthew (Flickr) for the id!
Dog-Day Cicada
Thanks to Dave for the id of this Xenox tigrinus, the Tiger Bee Fly.
A highlight for me at last night's Blogfest was the chance to see some of my photos on "the big screen." This video was produced by Morgan Pehme, Brooklyn Optimist, compiled from submissions from several of Brooklyn's "photobloggers." Six of my photos appear from 1:40 to 1:59 in the video.
This evening I had the pleasure of attending Amy Stewart's appearance at The Horticultural Society of New York. Amy was promoting the paperback edition of her bestseller, Flower Confidential, and provided a synopsis of the themes she covers in detail in her book.
I enjoyed her talk. She illustrated her stories with photographs from her research and travels for the book. The photo above illustrates Florigene's attempts to genetically engineer a blue rose by combining Petunia genes with a Rose's. Telling stories through pictures is something I strive to do here, however statically. Amy's talk was a model for me.
Amy was also an animated speaker, so few of my photos successfully captured her spirited delivery. A couple of quotes:
"What would a blue rose mean?" We have cultural associations for Roses of other hue: white, red, yellow. Blog Widow suggests a blue rose should signify "disease," ala The Glass Menagerie.
"You don't see a lot of flowers in bloom" in greenhouses. Except for Gerberas, most flowers are cut, prepped and shipped while still in bud.
"We Americans know nothing about flowers." (On national pride in flower-growing)
"There are good and bad farms everywhere." (On making assumptions about floral industry practices based on the region of the world in which they're located.)
"The focus is you." (Advice to brides seeking her consult on where to obtain the "chocolate" rose.)
"Florists have to have a careful understanding of human nature." Which leads us to the florist's axiom:
"Use a different florist for a different woman."
Amy also announced her next project: "Wicked" Plants - illegal, illicit, immoral, murderous, and so on. Sounds delightful! It reminded me of the wormwood, Artemisia vulgaris, I've been striving to eradicate from my gardens the past three years. It has been used as an arbortifacient in early pregnancy. I have thought of simply keeping some of it in a container, but it's not the most attractive plant, and its flowers are visually insignificant.
It was also a pleasure for us to finally meet face to face, having known each other only through the gardening blogosphere up to now.
The Horticultural Society of New York
This was my first visit to the offices of The Horticultural Society of New York (HSNY). The building was midtown non-descript at street level.
But HSNY announces itself when the elevators open on the 13th floor. (It didn't strike me until just now how unusual it was that the building even has a 13th floor.)
This simple arrangement of Spring flowering bulbs stood on the other side of those green doors.
Daffodils
Fritillaria (pallidiflora?)
Their beautiful space is open to the public Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm. Their library is impressive.
