Larvae

Could these be ladybugs? These are the eggs on a leaf of the fig tree.

I feel responsible for them! I don't see any aphids. What will they eat? How will they survive? Should I make tiny ladybug bottles and go out there every fifteen minutes to give them a drink?

Does anyone have cast off strollers or onesies?

Meyer lemon decision

I'm going to buy it.

How can one live without a lemon tree?

It's for the leaves, too. Now, at last, I will be able make the marinade for braaied lamb chops and sosaties that makes all other marinades look foolish.

What about winter, you ask?

We'll deal with winter when winter comes.

The Eglantyne is coming out, the lemon will go in. I feel very bad about the rose: all the way from Texas. If you have home for it in full sun...?

Gardening

Well, first of all, WTF, mate? Who did this? Not the Stem Nipper. This is like a small methodical animal with small teeth. Or is it caterpillar? Just the skin, and just two figs.

Also, something's eating a fig leaf, and someone has laid eggs on the underside of another leaf. So I'm waiting to see what hatches. And when they hatch they will want to eat more fig leaves?

Still, the figs are ripening fast; every day some new plump ones, quite perfect inside.

This is the fourth flush of strawberries, I think (Jim Glover's "fern" cultivar), and there are new flowers on the plants. It's really amazing that they keep going. New runners grow longer every day, long, slender green things questing for a nest of soil as far from the parent as possible, it seems: they grow inches every day. The main strawberry pot is now surrounded by small ones so that all the runners root. I think I will see over a dozen new plants from the initial three.

If you could watch any gardening show on TV, what would it be? Apparently the networks have no precedent of a "hit" gardening show so selling any idea is very hard. A bit ironic.

Taking suggestions.

I love the male zuchini flowers. Easy to spot since they are not attached to a zuchini.

I checked on the farm this evening, climbing up with glass of something delicious to drink, and meeting the cat halfway.

It's not necessary to splash but it's much more fun.

Looking down on the Pat Austin rose and the tall spikes of agastache.

More figs.

The delicious drink.

The cat.

The end of the light.

Edible weeds

Field garlic Gibson

...are up at AOL's Shelterpop.

Pigweed, lamb's quarters, field garlic, milkweed and purslane.

The most basic muffins

...are next door at (the Food)

New York City Community Gardens policy change

Mfinda Kalunga Garden, Lower East Side

If you live in New York, if you garden in a community garden, if you are thinking of joining one or have your eye on an abandoned lot which would be perfect for a small farm, if you have ever visited a community garden here or if you live near one and have feelings about it: listen up, please write a letter or email, or show up:

I learned from a piece in the NYTimes that, come September, the rules concerning community gardens will change. This was news to me. I did a little Googling:

The New York City Community Garden Coalition has links to both the new, proposed rules, per the Department of Parks and Recreation, as well as the old 2002 Memorandum of Agreement, which is expiring.

Liz Christy Garden, The Bowery

I have read the proposed rules on which the Parks Department itself is inviting comment, and I have read the memorandum. It's a bit of a morass, no part of which seemed that alarming to me.

But the NYCCGC has pointed out helpfully that Section 5 on Page 3 in the memorandum is at issue:

"GREENTHUMB GARDENS TO BE OFFERED TO PARKS DEPARTMENT OR LAND TRUSTS FOR PRESERVATION" as proof of present protection not included in the Proposed Rules."

One sticking point: the absence of any guarantee that the gardens in question will be preserved from development. Development means money, developers, buildings. To develop means to grow. Not in this case.

It would mean the end of growing.

6BC, Alphabet City

The New York Times commented vaguely that "members of a city wide gardening group" are encouraging city gardeners and supporters of community gardens to show up at the hearing on August 10th, to make their voices heard. I assume the Times is referring to the New York City Community Garden Coalition. I find it very odd that their article not link to any of the available public information about it all.

The hearing on the new Proposed Rules is on:

Tuesday, August 10th, 11am

at

Chelsea Recreation Center
430 West 25th Street

6BC, Alphabet City

To have your comments formally received, they must be sent in writing, by the 10th of August to the General Council of the Parks Department:

Mr. Alessandro G. Olivieri
Department of Parks and Recreation
The Arsenal, Central Park
830 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY
10065

... or electronically through NYC RULES at www.nyc.gov/nycrules on or before August 10, 2010.

Liz Christy vegetable garden, The Bowery

For some guidance on what the NYCCGC is proposing you say in your comments, read their Letter to Gardeners.

Apparently there was meeting at the BBG on July 28th, about which I didn't know. I would have liked to have been alerted, as a member. Not much outreach, there. I do get all cocktail party invitations...

Summit Street, Red Hook

For more information, also check out Flatbush Gardener's post on the subject, which is exhaustively useful.

So. Why the fuss?

Community gardens are about as quirky as the New Yorkers who live crammed together in this city. Some are aristocrats. Some are fey and haphazard. Others are slovenly. A few are straitlaced, with more rules than others. Many are beautiful. Most are green. Each of them is a pocket of respite in the concrete hum. Each is a green pause in the path of the relentless juggernaut of development. I think that many could be better managed and used. And perhaps this is a good opportunity for self-assessment and improvement in some cases.

But they must not be lost. They are part of the unique character of the city. They are not gentrification, but an outward manifestation of our appetites and our desires, our losses and our memories, our wish for tomorrow and our hope for next year. Gardens bear all these burdens.

If we as garden lovers, gardeners, see-ers of green, are to continue to live together in this city, we need to protect what green we have. And we need that protection in writing.

Running to Red Hook

My run to Red Hook started inauspiciously on Warren at Henry with the schmuck-driver of this car yelling at me, first from where he was stopped at a light, then cruising just behind me, where a poetic train of thought on his appreciation of the female form continued mellifluously from his open window. I don't often feel threatened by unter-civilized cretins like this, but idling just behind me was unusually creepy. So here's his number plate. Know him?

Funny how they speed up when the camera comes out.

Getting to Red Hook means getting over the BQE.

And then you're in the New York version of the heartland.

Old cars and trucks are the longing, perhaps, for an idealized, rural, all-knowing America. Jimmie Dean with a cigarette on his lip.

Liberty Sunset again.

And the figs and citrus trees from Monrovia. I am still thinking about that Meyer lemon...

I didn't know that there was a Lynden Miller garden here. The nursery steered me there.

There are some perfectly hidden benches with uninterrupted views of the water, the harbour and the Statue of Homeland Security Liberty. The garden does not look great at the moment, but that is probably due to lack of rain. That said, the plantings outside Fairway, farther down, look very healthy.

I liked the blue barrels showing the way from street to garden.


Last glimpses at not-for-long abandonment...


Leaving Red Hook via the route I chose involved this pedestrian overpass, where I half expected to meet shady characters around the turn, but the only people crossing it were young mothers pushing expensive strollers. Underneath zoomed the traffic entering and exiting the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel to and from Manhattan.