Tree Bed

A year or so ago the City came and took down a dead tree in front of our building leaving our tree bed a bare doggy toilet. Despite efforts to plant some small annuals by the neighbors, it continued to be tempting acreage. The problem was the dogs, the rather large stump that took up most of the surface, and an unknown time frame as to when the City would come and give us a new tree.

I don't begrudge the neighbors letting their dogs go to the bathroom in there, I guess it's kind of like a little vacation, but it was obviously planted and maintained with a fence around it. I knew in order to keep the dogs out, I needed to get a taller fence. I spent much of the summer wandering around hardware stores looking for a solution but most places didn't have anything short enough or attractive enough. (Orange hazard fencing was about as close as I came). I had a fantasy of sharpening one end of some bamboo sticks and creating my own fencing but that seemed like a potential hazard if someone pulled it out. I finally found a very simple solution at the big box hardware store down the street: decorative, thin wire fencing. Light, easy to stick in the group and above knee height to make it hard to jump into.

I should also note that one factor in planting this is teenagers. Our stoop and block are frequented by roving bands of drunk, bored teens and pre-teens. It is not uncommon to find upended plants, beer bottles, and other teen romper room trash to be strewn about our street. For example, over last weekend someone pulled a vacuum out of the trash someone where and went to town on smashing it in front of our building. There is a very good chance that they will destroy it. Knock on wood, kids have been pretty good so far.

Okay, fencing and dogs taken care of. Next the stump and potential new tree. I knew we couldn't take the stump out ourselves. It likely has deep roots that run under the sidewalk and it would take a professional to remove it out and a likely redo on the sidewalk. I'm going to leave that to professionals. I decided to just buy some very large pots and treat the tree bed like a 4' X 8' container garden. If and when the City comes, I can move the pots to someplace else.

Once I figured that out the rest of the thing was very easy. I went down to one of my favorite stores, Liberty Gardens in Red Hook and explained my project. Like a good wine store, a good nursery should be able to just tell you what you should buy. Full sun, full wind, top of the hill, dogs, teens, cars, and trash? Mix of annuals, perennials, evergreens, and flowers? Relatively inexpensive? Needs to all fit in a minicooper?

Check, check, check, and check! Once I purchased the plants and got them home it took me about 90 minutes to get the fencing in, plants and shrubs transferred into larger pots and arranged in the tree bed. I've gotten tons of compliments and thank yous (though I'm sorry I didn't get it done in time for Greenest Block in Brooklyn) and I'm quite sad I hadn't figured it out before.

I'd love to have planted everything in the ground but this was honestly the right amount of time for me to have spent on this. I encourage everyone to container garden their tree beds. Most around our block had the basics of wrought iron fencing up and some dirt. Make sure you don't pick expensive, flashy plants, make the containers as heavy as possible and I highly recommend the thin wire fencing.

Summer's Finally Here!

Summer is finally here! And I get to take two weeks off before starting my new job. That's right, I'm leaving AMNH and beginning a new adventure at the New York Academy of Sciences. If you ask me what I do, I'll probably stammer a bit and mumble something about science education. I'm not inarticulate but my work is fairly difficult to describe and doesn't fit neatly into a few words. My stammering is actually an attempt to be polite because I love what I do and don't want to bore people to death. But, if you're interested, I'll talk you ear off.

This new job can be described pretty succinctly, I'll be starting a K12 outreach initiative for the Academy. Meaning that the Academy does science and would like to positively change K-12 science. That sounds pretty simple, right? I feel extremely lucky that I was able to find a new job in a timely manner given the current market and I can't wait to get started and not blog about it on my gardening/cooking blog.

In other news:

- I have a new niece. She's a baby and is totally adorable. Everyone is very happy and Walter, the dog, seems to enjoy guarding her. Sonny, her brother, is being a great big brother and I'm very pleased that he learned to "pet nice" before the baby came along. In this picture, Walter is both guarding the baby and watching tennis. He's some dog.





- I'm once again enjoying the heck out of the world cup. Last world cup I was writing my dissertation and this one I'm off for a few weeks. I wish I could say that I planned all of this but no, it's just a happy coincidence.

- I still have another week off and hope to do a few neighborhood tours. We took the ferry to Governor's Island last week. While I don't recommend the NYC Beer Festival, I do recommend ferry rides in the Hudson.





- The garden is going great. I had a big haul of basil and have tons of tomatoes on the vine. I added some worms to my window boxes but haven't seen any sign of them. More pics to come on the plants.

Sunset

I know I have some folks who read this that like sunsets. Here ya go.

A few things I've learned...

I probably write this post after every major planting but I'll write it again because it makes me feel wise. This is my third season of gardening at our apartment and every year I get a little smarter and a little less likely to get pulled in by flashy plants and flowers.

I used to consider what I was doing as container gardening but this year I've decided to rebrand myself as a "window box gardener". The basic principals are the same (a bound and set amount of soil) but there are some very distinctive differences, namely the window boxes are bolted to the sides of our house and are therefore immovable. Aside from some pots down on street level, my windows are my gardening destiny and no matter how rough the conditions, they are there to stay.

On a practical level this means that I've given up on some of them. That's not to say that I don't plant them but I really just put plants in them that require zero maintenance. Three of my front window boxes are quite extreme: full sun, zero rain, high winds, and a lot of pollution from the bus stop. They are also in our bedroom which means I need to wake up the husband to water them in the morning. As you can imagine, I value my marriage more than my window boxes. My first season I planted one box with sedums (hens and chicks), pretty flowers, and some raspberries. Everything but the sedums died. The sedums are still alive and well so I decided to just plant the other two with some more sedums and call it a day.

As a side note, I planted geraniums there last year and they did very well for themselves. The nursery only had a few geraniums so I planted them in one of the other front boxes.

This lesson: If you can't maintain them just buy plants that don't need your attention and call it a day.





My other window boxes are much more accessible, aren't full sun, and do get rain. These are the boxes that I actually garden in and got the full treatment of tomatoes, herbs, and some flowers. I also refreshed the soil with some plant food and turned the soil.

If you haven't gardened on the 4th floor of an apartment building in Brooklyn, you may be under the impression that you won't have any pests. I'm not sure if it's just me or some bad karma on our building but we have plenty of pests, mostly aphids. On the flip side, we also have lots of pollinators who are happy to work their magic. But if I've learned anything it's to not get too attached to plants, they get eaten, squashed by pigeons, fall to their death, and sometimes dry up when you go on vacation. Don't buy expensive plants and try to quash any infestations before they get out of control.

Ditto for the plants that I put at ground level. The first year we were here I didn't plant anything downstairs but last year I put out a few pots and planters. I also spent a lot of money on this little endeavor only to have the neighborhood kids pull them out. I think when this happens you can go one of two ways: shake your fists and decide that the neighborhood doesn't deserve your gifts or just buy cheaper plants. I waffle between these two poles but decided to put out even more plants this year.

So for this lesson: don't get too attached to your plants, do your best to keep them alive, and don't get too bent out of shape and mourn the future when drunk teenagers pull your plants out, you too were young and mischievous once.

Finally, if you're just starting out, buy some geraniums. They're hard to kill, don't need a lot of attention, and look great. Every plant, whether you've spent hours planning your arrangement or it pushes through the cracks in the side walk, makes the city and your neighborhood a bit more livable and we could all use a bit of that.

5th Ave Fair

The 5th Ave fair is a real fair, not one of those fake fairs that they have in Manhattan where the same vendors roll out their boring tired stuff week after week. Some of that shows up in Park Slope but much of it is local bars, restaurants, musicians, and shops that turn the sidewalk into their store. They also have small rides, carnival games, and you can drink beer on the street. Our friends always come out in force and we were lucky to have Alex and Cleo with us (both were just months old last year and now they're stealing each other's juice). The best part is that all of the restaurants open stands and you can just buy little things here and there and stuff yourself with everything from pulled pork to margaritas.

As always, a good time was had by all and of course I took some pictures.

Miami

I just got back from a quick trip to Miami with some friends. We spent most of the time lazing about, reading, chatting and enjoying not being at work. I did pry myself up from the beach towel one day to wander around South Beach and take some pictures. The light wasn't great but I managed a few decent shots.

After a long photo hiatus, I'm starting to get back into the swing of things and hope explore a few new neighborhoods in the coming weeks.

Happy Spring

Happy Spring! We had a string of very hot weekends and now that it is actually spring, it feels like cold, dreary winter. It has been a busy and stressful spring so far. Lucky for you I don't write about my professional life on this blog but let's just say it has been a roller coaster. I've been quite unsettled and mopey the past two months, in fact, I've felt a bit like the world is fighting against me. I've realized, through the help of my best friend, that last spring was quite similar because there are so many markers around my dad's death: last meals, last movies, those sorts of things.

As always, my friends and family keep me going by offering endless conversation, hugs, always well timed phone calls and emails, and the reminder that while I've lost two really important people, there are so many still around (and another niece or nephew on the way!).

We've decided to hold off on the roof deck for a while. The cost of getting the bare minimum of what we wanted was just too high, even after splitting it a couple of ways. Plus all of the estimates came with the caveat "if we don't find asbestos", a terrifying phrase.

The window boxes are good but the beer hasn't been working out. We've had tow skunked batches so far but hold out hope for our third.

To continue this random list, I accomplished something that I had always dreamed about: I turned a double play in softball. I know that sounds silly BUT it was one of those physical goals that I've had for myself. Most people want to run a marathon or something of that nature but I don't share those dreams, I just wanted to turn a real double play (not the kind where you catch the ball and step on the bag, those are a dime a dozen). So thanks guy playing shortstop for cleanly fielding the ball and tossing it to me and thanks guy on first for catching my pretty decent throw. To be honest, I actually turned two double plays in last weeks games, for thanks again shortstop and first and thanks to the girl who stopped running because she thought that there were already two outs.