Please visit the NEW SITE for Flatbush Gardener
Maybe I am more like Demeter, weeping for the hold darkness has over others, while reaching and hoping for a time when we can bring everyone back into the light.
- Standing Still 2021: Demeter Waiting
Observing the diversity of life that coexists in one place is one of the rewards of visiting the same natural area over a long period of time.
My garden not only offers myself and passersby such an observatory.
It's also a laboratory in which I can research how insects engage with their environment - both biotic and abiotic - and imagine, design, and create habitat to better provide for their needs.
I use iNaturalist to document the diversity of life in my garden. Although I only posted my first iNaturalist Observation in 2017, my garden Observations now span more than a decade. As of this year, I've documented over 400 insect species making use of my garden.
This biodiversity, and my documentation of it, is intentional. And although all of this is by design, all I can do is uncover the latent urban biodiversity in and around my garden. Each new species I find is a surprise to me.
Today is the December solstice: the winter solstice in my hometown Northern hemisphere, summer in the Southern.
The millenia-old story of Persephone and her pomegranate, in all their incarnations, strikes me as a deeper analogy this Winter. Persephone was abducted, held hostage in hell, and starved. Only under this extreme duress did she eat anything she was offered: a few seeds of the pomegranate to stave her hunger.
I can relate to "being held hostage in hell". I feel as though I've endured six years of it. I know others do, as well.
In a guest post on the ASLA's "Dirt" column, Alden E. Stone, CEO of Nature Sacred, writes:
[Our new report] is part research and part practical guide, and shares key insights gained through having co-created more than 100 Sacred Places across the country in communities, many under-resourced; in prisons, at universities, and in hospitals. A handful of these sites were also implemented as part of an expansive, decade-long design, build, and research project. ...
For the research portion of this paper, we focused our attention on four domains: nature’s impact on individual, community, economic and ecological health. ...
for many of the individual and community health benefits to kick in, people must engage with nature. Spend time in the green space. And this is where Nature Sacred has spent a lot of energy over the past two decades — looking at how to best engage the community and how to best design so that the community embraces, and spends time in, their green space.
She describes four "design elements":
These design patterns recur in many different types of gardens, whether intentionally healing/sacred or not.
My backyard embodies all four elements. What follows is an exploration of the history of my backyard, from inception to its current state, viewed through the frame of those four design elements.
Living in New York City most of my life, I'm not in what one would think of as "maple country". But the northeast is rich with sugarbushes - the managed groves and forests of maple trees from which sap is harvested and boiled down to make this nectar of the gods. And nearly every NYC Greenmarket (farmers' market) has at least one farmer that sells maple syrup and other maple prodcuts, even if it's not their primary business.
The name is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun stands still in declination; that is, its apparent movement north or south comes to a standstill.This year feels darker than most. Yesterday, as expected, the U.S. presidential electorate election was affirmed. "Standing Still" takes on a different meaning if there's a chance the light won't return.
- Solstice, Wikipedia
You can blow out a candleWishing for peace, wishing you peace, these dark days.
But you can't blow out a fire.
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher.
Etymology: Latin solstitium (sol "sun" + stitium, from sistere "to stand still")The name is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun stands still in declination; that is, its apparent movement north or south comes to a standstill.We've had no clear winter here in NYC. It finally got "cold" over the weekend, with temperatures threatening frost, but not quite making. So far, Central Park has had the 3rd longest run of frost-free days in history, and we are within reach of breaking the record.
- Solstice, Wikipedia
Etymology: Latin solstitium (sol "sun" + stitium, from sistere "to stand still")The name is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun stands still in declination; that is, its apparent movement north or south comes to a standstill.It's clearly winter here. The past few days the high temperature has hovered around freezing, and skies have been overcast. Gray, cold days. There seems to be little light in the world at large, these days. Sometimes it's enough to just hold out for warmer, greener days.
- Solstice, Wikipedia
The name is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun stands still in declination; that is, its apparent movement north or south comes to a standstill.This year's Winter Solstice is remarkable for an unusual astronomical coincidence: The lunar eclipse occurring later tonight, early tomorrow morning. I've seen a range of reports on the last time this occurred, from 372 to 645 years. According to Wikipedia, the last time this occurred was in 1638. Whatever, it's in centuries, so rare enough for my lifetime.
- Solstice, Wikipedia
In the New York area, the eclipse will officially begin on December 21 at 12:29 am as the Moon begins to enter Earth’s outer, or penumbral, shadow. But even in clear weather sky watchers will not notice any changes in the Moon’s appearance until about 1:15 am, when a slight “smudge” or shading begins to become evident on the upper left portion of the Moon’s disk. The first definitive change in the Moon’s appearance will come on the Moon’s upper left edge. At 1:33 am the partial phase of the eclipse will begin as the Earth’s dark shadow–called the umbra–starts to slowly creep over the face of the full Moon. At that moment the Moon will be roughly two-thirds of the way up in the sky as measured from the southwest horizon to the point directly overhead.
At 2:41 am the eclipse will reach totality, but sunlight bent by our atmosphere around the curvature of the Earth should produce a coppery glow on the Moon. At this time, the Moon, if viewed with binoculars or a small telescope, will present the illusion of seemingly glowing from within by its own light.
At 3:17 am the Sun, Earth and Moon will be almost exactly in line and, assuming clear skies, the light of the Moon will appear at its dimmest. Totality ends at 3:53 am, and the Moon will completely emerge from the umbra and return to its full brilliance at 5:01 am. By then the Moon will have descended to a point about one-quarter up from above the west-northwest horizon.
- December 20-21: The Night of the Red Moon, Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History
The name is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun stands still in declination; that is, its apparent movement north or south comes to a standstill.We got about 10" of snow over the weekend, and it's not going anywhere soon. So it's definitely wintery here. Here's another of my neighbors' illuminary displays.
- Solstice, Wikipedia
