Tag Archives: hostas

Climate Change Hits $60 Trillion. Bring on The News.

Go back home, fall.  It’s still just July.  What’s that you say?  You’re not a change of the seasons, you’re climate change and there’s no stopping you now?  Oh, in that case, I’m going back to Facebook.

I’ve never been a big fan of a/c.  We have one unit in our living room window, despite the recent heatwave.  We don’t run it all day.  I turn it on a few minutes before my partner gets home.  If I’m spending more time in the living room than where I usually am in my office (with a fan and windows open), I’ll turn it on for awhile.  So there’s no real schedule of its use.  We do experiment with how well the unit works in conjunction with the ceiling fan, and have mixed reviews.  It was some time yesterday that I wondered if I had turned the thing or left it on too long, or whether having all the windows in the house open was making it suddenly feel cold.  And if it was the latter, why that would be after weeks of having all the windows in the house open.  It seemed odd that the cold air could be coming from outside but indeed it was.  By the time I went to sleep last night, it felt downright like fall.  Waking up this morning, the birds are quieter than they were yesterday.  Fewer of them almost it seems.  The sky is gray.  The street does not having the usual bustly feel of summer.  And something just seems wrong.  I almost expect to see leaves falling to the ground (and not like the leaves on my hosta plants that wilted and singed yellow and brown at the edges from all the unbearable heat we’ve had lately).

Last night before going to bed, I checked online.  I looked around Facebook (there’s a page about m neighborhood that’s become somewhat addictive, and I like to watch the number of comments ring up after a comment I or someone else has made about something that only neighbors can be annoyed about — overcharging at a particular grocery store, the removal of waste cans on major corners because the sanitation department says they’re causing too much mess — or just the history of a building or person who’s been a fixture on these streets).  I didn’t do the full stroll and check in to LinkedIn and Twitter.

It seems anymore we don’t have to go looking for the news.  If we’re engaging in the usual social media rounds that most of our ethernet neighbors are, then the news comes to us.  I think there is the sometimes-false sense that we therefore know what’s going on.  Actual, true-life media outlets I’m sure are suffering from this hubris we have.  But in a way they seem to be chasing their tails too, sniffing out scoops online, and allowing the democratization of the news unfold without too much protestation.  If enough people are interested in it online, it must be news.  I’ve been seeing on morning television shows with increasing frequency (so now it’s just “regular” news) videos that have gone viral – a wild animal jumping into someone’s car because it was being chased by a cheetah or some other beast, Beyonce’s hair getting caught in a fan, a puppeteer who can make his puppets dance better than they do on Dancing With the Stars, you get the drift.

So what happens to the little articles that got lost in the swirl because maybe they’re a little boring, or because they’re not written simply enough for the regular reader to get their significance, or because it’s not a beast or Beyonce or a dancing puppet.  What if it’s just the Arctic taking its final swan song?  Before I went to bed, I happened upon a blog post or news article – dangerously, I can barely tell them apart these days – noting July 22, 2013 as the day to put down in the history books for when the North Pole became a lake.  I noticed it was the only article I saw like this, and even looking back now I can’t find the same article/post.  I wasn’t surprised.  If a poll were taken, I’d bet more people on FB preferred puppies and kitties and stars getting their hair stuck to the uncomfortable and downright painful truth of climate change.  I woke this morning thinking about it, wondering in my unscientific way if the air is carrying the last of the polar cap.  I wondered, too, about how that article was just a blip amid more enticing videos of stars’ hair getting stuck in fans and wildebeasts jumping in and out of Jeeps.

But then I woke up this morning and in searching for the blip on the screen last night, I found countless articles, most marked “22 minutes ago,” or “2 hours ago.”  Lots of them, too!  Turns out the arctic melting is gonna cost somebodies some big money.  Bring on the media.  This is not longer just enviro-blogger worthy.  Now it’s real news.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-24/arctic-ice-melt-cost-seen-equal-to-year-of-world-economic-output.html

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/24/world/climate-arctic-methane/index.html

http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/arctic-melt-gases-may-cost-world-60-trillion-1-3015046

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/methane-meltdown-the-arctic-timebomb-that-could-cost-us-60trn-8730408.html

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A. Ham

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Pushing up some not so healthy hostas…

I shot Alexander Hamilton’s final resting place earlier this year, and was impressed with the wholesome hostas surrounding him.  These wilting yellowish leaves caught my eye today and, frankly, made me feel better: if the groundskeepers of Trinity Church are having a hard time fighting the heat (or whatever it is that’s causing some cranky vegetation), maybe there’s some green left in my thumb after all.

QUESTION: it’s been posed already (thanks Ralph!) but want to put it out there again .. anyone else having a rough a growing season?  If so, what do you attribute it to?  Is the heat doing us in?  Anyone want to argue global warming’s a myth anymore?  In 100 degree weather, does it matter?  Go ahead … gimme the dirt.

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Diggin the Dirt on Flowers

Fellow revelers, help me out with the following question that was posed:

What types of flowers are the readers out there growing? I’ve almost ignored flowers since I started my renewed interest in the garden. I have a few calendulas (pot marigolds) growing in a small pot, and a handful of neglected bulbs in the ground along one fence which keep coming back year after year. Any ideas on some nice flowers to grow?

As for me, in the front yard I have my famous day lilies from Wisconsin alternating with the hostas (which bloom every year now that they’ve matured – this is one of the things that I very much love about hostas, which can otherwise seem kinda bland).  Again behind the front row of flowers/hostas, I have some white small flowers whose name I cannot remember.  I want to say nasturtium but I know that’s not it (anyone who can take a peek at my photo here, and help me out, please do).  The native plant garden is just behind that, with a black-eyed susan that’s now giving me plenty of blooms.  I love having this in my yard.  It reminds me of the Replacements song, I Saw Susan Dancing in the Rain.  I think next year I may grow daisies just b/c of Prince’s song that has the line in it: I’m blinded by the daisies in your yard…

Onto the steps, where I have zinnias, three pots for each of three of my favorite people.  In the backyard I have begonias, and upstairs petunias so I can sing the song, “I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch, an onion patch, an onion patch…and all I do is cry .. boohoo boohoo.”

A few days ago I bought some bulbs at Home Depot because they were 75% off, and they looked pretty.  Hard to resist.  I’m planning on keeping them for next spring, though I’m not sure how well they keep (I’m assuming there will be no problem with them but have no experience to go on here).  They’re gladiolas and dutch irises (LOVE the smell of these).  A friend, many moons back, gave me crocus bulbs but it was in my pre-garden days and I never did get them in the ground.  I may get some next year; these would be inspired by the Joni Mitchell song about having crocuses to bring to school tomorrow…

QUESTION: Has anyone else’s garden been inspired by a song? Any recommendations for any particular flowers?  I used to keep marigolds around some of my vegetable plants but haven’t needed them this year.

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Thanks Very Mulch, Neighbor

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If you are the person that says, “why?” when someone says, “garden,” I have an answer for you.  I have been living in this house in Brooklyn for eleven years now.  Most of my gardening over these years has consisted of growing vegetables in the back, and planting other things like a peach tree, a cherry tree, and what I believed (until today) to be elderberry bushes.  My frontyard gardening consisted of little more than putting in a couple hostas that a neighbor gave me when I first moved in.  Those hostas, with little care and no prodding, have gone forth and multiplied, as all good hostas do.  When I looked at them a couple weeks ago, I realized I was the only thing holding them back; they needed room to grow and since they’ve no feet, they needed me to move them.

So I have ventured to frontyard gardening and need both hands and feet to count the number of neighbors I’ve met since I started, barely two weeks ago.  Today, lo and behold, I met the son of my next-door neighbor, who answered in 30 minutes what might take me several weeks of posting these questions to accomplish: the elderberries I was going to begin harvesting for wine this year are, as it turns out, dogwoods (I still need to confirm this – will post a pic later b/c I didn’t think that dogwoods grew berries but I’m not really sure); my hostas are hardier than I thought and can probably survive that shady patch close to the house where no other plant could make it; the little flower bush which popped out of nowhere a few years ago is actually a non-native invasive plant (my jury’s still out on the degree of importance of native vs. exotic – at least in small time gardening like mine – and, if I have a native that’s growing on its own and still rather pretty, maybe I should just let it be — taking opinions on that one too).  Along with bits of wisdom that came from his own experiences as a prize-rose-grower and several years working for NYC Parks Dep’t., he also gifted me with some beautiful black gold, pictured above.  Most importantly, he introduced me to my across-the-street neighbors, his mother and aunt, an octogenarian and noctogenerian who keep their front yard more pristine and pretty than any probably any other on the block.  I’m not sure if it was the introduction from their kin that made me okay in their eyes or the fact that I was finally tending my – we won’t say neglected but rather left to nature – yard.  Either way, it occurred to me that the adage “love thy neighbor” is good, but you gotta know them first.

QUESTION: what are some of the fringe benefits of gardening?  If you garden, what have you gotten from it that maybe you didn’t expect at first?  If you want to garden, what keeps you from it?  If we were to start a campaign to encourage more people to garden, what benefits – both obvious and hidden – are there that might might sway more folks to dig in the dirt?  How does gardening make you a happier person?  Or doesn’t it?  Go ahead…gimme the dirt.

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