2010 Wrap-Up

This photo of a community garden supporter in front of City Hall was one of my photos illustrating my 2010 guest rant on Garden Rant.


Here's my review and recap of 2010.

Stats

• 73 blog posts
• 41,253 visits
• 36,048 visitors
• 2,185 tweets

Highlights

• July 2010: I attend the Garden Bloggers Buffa10 meetup of garden bloggers.
• Fall 2010: I received my Citizen Tree Pruner's certification.

Most Viewed

According to Google Analytics, from which I've collected these stats, "unique page views" are the number of visits during which a page was viewed. Page views are higher, since the same page may be viewed multiple times during a single visit. Unique pageviews, however, doesn't distinguish multiple visits from the same person or IP address.

Mulchfest 2011: Recycle Those Trees!

The giant tree shredder in action at last year's Mulchfest at Park Circle in Prospect Park.


It's tree recycling season in New York City. Residents can have their trees recycled into mulch for the City's parks and gardens. Note that, although recycling pickup is still suspended after the post-Christmas blizzard, you can leave trees curbside for recycling pickup.

• Remove all lights, ornaments, tinsel and tree-stands from your tree.
• Leave your tree unwrapped. Don't put it in a plastic bag.
• Leave trees curbside starting Monday, January 3 for recycling pickup, OR
• Bring your tree 10am-2pm Saturday, January 8th or Sunday, January 9th to one of 70 locations citywide.
  

Residents can also pick up free mulch at designated chipping locations.

Brooklyn Locations

This year's Mulchfest locations for Brooklyn are almost the same as last year's. Those marked with an asterisk (*) are on-site chipping locations.

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Location	Address
The Amazing Garden*	Columbia Street at Carroll Street	Chipping
Cobble Hill Park*	Verandah Place & Clinton Street	Chipping
Coffey Park	Dwight Street & Verona Street	Drop-off only
Fort Greene Park*	Washington Pk. & Willoughby Avenue	Chipping
Green-Wood Cemetery	25th Street & 4th Avenue	Drop-off only
Hattie Carthan Garden*	Across from Von King Park: Lafayette Avenue & Clifton Place	Chipping
Lincoln Terrace Park	Buffalo Avenue between East New York Avenue & Eastern Parkway	Drop-off only
Maria Hernandez Park	Knickerbocker Avenue & Suydam Street	Drop-off only
Marine Park*	Avenue U & East 33rd Street	Chipping
McCarren Park*	Driggs Avenue & Lorimer Street	Chipping
McGolrick Park	Monitor Street & Driggs Avenue	Drop-off only
Owl's Head Park*	Colonial Road & 68th Street	Chipping
Prospect Heights Community Garden	252-256 St. Marks Avenue	Drop-off only
Prospect Park*	Third Street at Prospect Park West	Chipping
Prospect Park Circle*	Parkside Avenue & Prospect Park Southwest	Chipping
Sunset Park	44th Street & 6th Avenue	Drop-off only

Map

View Brooklyn MulchFest 2011 in a larger map

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Related Content

Mulchfest posts:

• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007

Links

Mulchfest, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation
MillionTreesNYC
Partnerships for Parks
Prospect Park Alliance

From Dark to Dark: Eclipse-Solstice Astro Combo

Illumination of Earth by Sun at the southern solstice.


This season's Solstice (Winter in the Northern hemisphere, Summer in the Southern), occurs at 23:38pm UTC on December 21, 2008. That's 5:38 PM tomorrow evening where I am, in the Eastern Time zone.

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.
- Solstice, Wikipedia

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.

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

Japanese Garden, BBG, Veteran's Day

Stone Basin with Cherry Leaves, Japanese Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden


The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden was another station on my tour of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Veteran's Day with Blog Widow. What's the connection between Veteran's Day and BBG's Japanese garden? Its designer, Takeo Shiota, died in a U.S. internment camp during World War II.

There are different styles of Japanese gardens. The hill-and-pond style is intended to be viewed from a fixed point, in this case, the pavilion that reaches out over the shore of the pond. The stone basin above adorns the entrance to the pavilion.

It is a blend of the ancient hill-and-pond style and the more recent stroll-garden style, in which various landscape features are gradually revealed along winding paths. The garden features artificial hills contoured around a pond, a waterfall, and an island while carefully placed rocks also play a leading role. Among the major architectural elements of the garden are wooden bridges, stone lanterns, a viewing pavilion, the Torii or gateway, and a Shinto shrine.

The steep hills, representing distant mountains, are a maintenance nightmare: they cannot be mowed by walking a mower across them. Instead, the mower must be rigged to bypass its safety features, and carefully lowered and raised down and up the slopes using ropes controlled from the tops of the hills. BBG staff are gradually replacing the turf of the original design with slow-growing dwarf Ophiopogon, Mondo grass. These will eventually provide the same scale and texture as lawn without the hazards to life and limb.

One of the treacherous slopes along an idyllic path.

Natural History: Patrick Dougherty at BBG

The view from within.


Blog Widow and I observed Veteran's Day by visiting the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The Fall foliage was still brilliant, especially in the Bonsai Museum. My other must-see destination was "Natural History," BBG's first site-specific installation, by Patrick Dougherty. This was my first visit to the Garden since it was installed in August:

The sculpture at BBG is woven from nonnative woody material that was collected from Ocean Breeze Park on Staten Island. The harvesting site was chosen by BBG's director of Science because of its proximity to the Garden and its large population of nonnative willow (Salix atrocinerea), which is designated an invasive species in New York State. Removal of saplings of this species helped protect the site's excellent assemblage of herbaceous plants. The park is owned by the City of New York and is targeted for restoration under the City's PlaNYC sustainability initiative.

During a visit to BBG a year before beginning the work, Dougherty drew sketches and made word associations based on the feelings he experienced while exploring the potential work site. When asked about some of the words that came to mind as he contemplated what he wanted to build in Brooklyn, Dougherty smiled and said "lairs; a place for feral children and wayward adults."

The sculpture will be on display until August 2011, when it will be dismantled. It's going to look awesome in snow.

Slideshow

Fall Foliage at BBG's Bonsai Museum

Detail of the fall foliage of a Moyogi (informal upright) specimen of Acer palmatum in BBG's Bonsai Museum.

Dad's Dogwood

The Dogwood which my family sponsored, and I helped to plant, outside the 3rd Street Playground in Brooklyn's Prospect Park.


My father's birthday was November 2. He would have been 79. He died almost two years ago, early in the morning of December 1, 2008. I've been going back over what I wrote about his death. But the best thing to read, to get a sense of who he was, is in his own words: How Old Will I Be?

This morning, Blog Widow and I helped plant a tree in his memory in Prospect Park. The Prospect Park Alliance Commemorative Giving program provides opportunities to sponsor an existing tree or plant a new tree. There are no plaques or signs on the trees themselves or in the park; their Web site provides an online register, indexed by commemoration name, of the sponsored trees, their locations, and the season they were planted, going back to 1983. My father was born and raised in Brooklyn, so this seemed an appropriate way for the family to remember him.

My Dad's favorite tree was the native Dogwood, Cornus florida, so that's what the family selected to commemorate him. Luis Lemus, the Prospect Park arborist who coordinated this morning's planting, told me he purchased it from a nursery in Pennsylvania. Just three days ago it was in the ground. And now it is again. Luis was joined by his Parks colleagues, Eric and Jose. The three-man crew made quick work of planting. It was all over in a little more than a half-hour.

The location is lovely, just outside the 3rd Street Playground, behind Litchfield Villa. Prospect Park lost hundreds of trees over the past year, in a winter storm, and this summer's tornado-macroburst storm. A few large trees were taken down in this location, opening up the canopy. Countless thousands of park visitors, a few of whom we met and spoke with during the planting, will enjoy this tree for decades to come.

Slideshow

NYC Leaves: Project LeafDrop 2010

Cherry Leaves, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, November 2008.


For the second year, a city-wide coalition of community gardens and other groups has organized Project LeafDrop to collect leaves from residents for composting. Again this year, most of the drop-off sites are located in Brooklyn. Check the map for locations near you, and the dates and times of your preferred locations.


View NYCLeaves: Project LeafDrop 2010 Locations in a larger map

Flatbush area residents have three exciting new options: community garden and composting sites which didn't even exist a year ago, for last year's LeafDrop! Sustainable Flatbush is collecting leaves this Saturday, November 6 and next, November 13, from 11am to 1pm at East 21st Street and Kenmore Terrace, at the site of the new Communal Garden in partnership with the Flatbush Reformed Church, the Flatbush CSA, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Compost for Brooklyn, at Newkirk Avenue and East 8th Street in Kensington, and Prospect Farm, in Windsor Terrace, and also new.

Press Releases

Local Leafin': Street Tree Walking Tour Sunday 10/24

Japanese Maple leaves (red), with Linden in the background (yellow), at the corner of Rugby Road and Cortelyou Road in Beverley Square West, Flatbush, Brooklyn, November 2007.


The Sustainable Flatbush Fall 2010 Street Tree Walking Tour will be this Sunday, October 24. Tours begin at 11am and 12noon. I'm proud to once again be one of your guides. Your other guide will be Sam Bishop, Director of Education of Trees NY. As in the past, tours will start at Sacred Vibes Apothecary, our other community partner. This is also listed as a NeighborWoods Month event.

After a dry summer, October brought ample rains just in time to salvage some fall foliage. Dogwoods, Locusts, and Ash Trees are showing strong color. The neighborhood should be at near-peak foliage conditions for the year for the tour.

On the tour, you can see:

• Acer platanoides, Norway Maple
• Aesculus hippocastanum, Horsechestnut
• Amelanchier, Serviceberry
• Betula nigra, River Birch
• Cercis canadensis, Redbud
• Cornus florida, Flowering Dogwood
• Cryptomeria japonica, Japanese Red Cedar
• Fraxinus americana, White Ash
• Ginkgo biloba, Ginkgo
• Gleditsia triacanthos, Honey Locust
• Liquidambar styraciflua, Sweetgum
• Metasequoia glyptostroboides, Dawn Redwood
• Pinus strobus, White Pine
• Platanus x acerifolia, London Plane
• Pyrus calleryana, Flowering Pear, Callery Pear
• Quercus palustris, Pin Oak
• Quercus robur 'Fastigiata', Columnar English Oak
• Sophora japonica, Japanese Pagoda Tree, Scholar Tree
• Tsuga canadensis, Eastern Hemlock
• Ulmus americana, American Elm

... and many more.

Map

Community Gardens Town Hall Meeting, Saturday, 10/2

This event is also listed on Facebook and EventBrite.

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When:
Saturday, October 2
12:00pm - 4:00pm

Where:
The New School - Wollman Hall
66 W. 12th St, 5th Floor
New York, NY

On October 2, 2010, the New York City Community Garden Coalition will convene a Town Hall Meeting to discuss the recently published "new rules" for community gardens on City land set to go into effect on October 13, 2010, as well as look to alternative legal strategies for long-term preservation.

While media reports have characterized the Coalition's opinion of the rules as favorable, NYCCGC has officially held comment, ...and has been meeting with Coalition members, conferring with other greening groups, and consulting with legal experts to fully assess the scope and impact of the recently updated rules.