Narrows Botanical Gardens, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Posted on 2007-10-23 by admin

Update 2007.10.24:

The insect nymphs have been identified as Large Milkweed Bug, Oncopeltus fasciatus.
A work colleague translated the Russian sign for me.

Crabapple, Narrows Botanical Gardens

Yesterday I visited Bay Ridge for the first time to attend the fourth Blogade, organized by Rob Lenihan of Luna Park Gazette. This gave me a chance to visit the Narrows Botanical Gardens (NBG) earlier in the day.

NBG is a 4.5 acre community garden run entirely by volunteers. It lies between Shore Road and the waterfront trails along the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten island in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You enter NBG from Shore Road. Unfortunately, my visit yesterday was ill-timed. Two of the three entrances were closed for construction. And the gate to native plant garden at the north end of NBG, which I was most looking forward to, was locked off.

It was another of those warm, sunny days we’ve been having, more like late May or June than October. There was lots in bloom, and lots of animal activity. I was surprised at the number of things I didn’t recognize or couldn’t identify. If you can identify any of these “unknowns”, please leave a comment!

Water Lily

Modern Rose

Beautyberry

Pennisetum, I think

Crabapples

Sleepy Bee

Nymphs of Large Milkweed Bug, Oncopeltus fasciatus

Thanks to Hannah Nendick-Mason, Contributing Editor to BugGuide and urtica (Flickr), whom I know better as Jennifer Forman Orth, author of the long-running and indispensible Invasive Species Weblog.

Monarch on Butterfly Bush

Bamboo, Zen Garden

Morning Glory

Fruit of unknown shrub

Monarch Butterfly on unknown purple-flowering shrub

“Please, don’t pick the flowers”

One of my work colleagues translated the sign for me. Here’s the Google English to Russian Translation:

English: DON’T PICK FLOWERS, PLEASE
Russian: Не ставят цветы, пожалуйста

The word for “PICK” doesn’t match the sign.

Another Modern Rose

Amaranth flowers

Opuntia in Fruit

(Firefox’ spell-checker didn’t recognize “Opuntia.” It suggested Jauntily Haunting Prudential Aunties.)

Catching Up

Posted on 2007-10-22 by admin

I’ve been out of town for a week. I more than made up for it yesterday, with a trip to and from Bay Ridge using two different subways and buses. It was my first visit to Bay Ridge. I went for the Bay Ridge Blogade. I also visited the Narrows Botanical Gardens. I had to leave the Blogade early to return for the inaugural event of Victorian Place Cultural Center.

I took about 600 photos over the course of the day. These are getting seriously whittled down. Even so, it’s going to take me a couple of days to get to each set. So watch this space!

Bay Ridge Blogade This Sunday, October 21

Posted on 2007-10-18 by admin

The fourth Brooklyn Blogade, a more-or-less-monthly roving meetup of Brooklyn bloggers, neighborhood residents, and others interested in community-building, will be this Sunday, October 14. This month, Rob Lenihan of Luna Park Gazette is hosting in Bay Ridge at Omonia Cafe, 7612 Third Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. His post has more details, including how to RSVP.

Newkirk Avenue

Posted on 2007-10-14 by admin

Newkirk Plaza

This afternoon, Blog Widow and I had brunch at Picket Fence on Cortelyou Road, then strolled through Ditmas Park and Ditmas Park West. Yes, yes, there are beautiful houses there. But today it’s about Newkirk Avenue.

Watching You

A half-block from the Newkirk Avenue subway station is this imposing array of surveillance cameras. I’m sure I’m recorded somewhere now, and facial recognition systems will soon match this suspicious character to my 25-year old blog profile photo, my identity revealed.

Christ My Sufficiency

This is just south of Newkirk Avenue on Rugby Road. The sign caught my eye, as well as Blog Widow’s. He said I had to take a picture of this store-front church. He’s in the biz, so I assume it’s out of professional interest.

Of course, I had to ask him, “What’s a FourSquare Church?” It was founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in 1927. Which doesn’t explain anything to me. I’ll read the Wikipedia article later.

Markets and Grocery Stores

MYSTERY SOLVED! Bitter Melon on Newkirk Avenue

Frank Jump, neighbor and general cohort, identifies these objets as bitter melons. It looks like a hairy, warty cucumber. It just doesn’t say “Eat ME!” to me.

Two Guys

I was taking a photo of the Drupali Grocery on Newkirk Avenue when these guys told me to "Make it a good picture!"

Each said I should take a picture of the other guy. So I asked to take a shot of both of them together. This was the third and last photo, after I prompted them to "smile!"

Welcome in Eleven Languages

This is the sign on the corner of the Newkirk Family Health Center, at the northeast corner of Newkirk and Rugby Road.

I don’t even recognize half of the alphabets, let alone the languages.
The first four are English, Spanish, Russian and French. I recognize Hebrew second from the bottom. I think the bottom one is Arabic script, and fourth from the bottom are Chinese characters.

Seeking bulb-planting volunteers for November weekends

Posted on 2007-10-13 by admin

Planting bulbs from the Daffodil Project in my front garden, Fall 2006

Thanks to the initiative of one of my neighbors, Stacey, in Beverley Square West, there will be 300-500 daffodil bulbs available for planting on the grounds of P.S. 139 along Rugby Road, and in the new tree pits along Cortelyou Road.

The bulbs will arrive at the end of October, in time for November planting. Stacey and I thought we would try to coordinate some plantings the first and second weekends in November. Stacey will be at the Greenmarket TOMORROW, October 14, from 10am to 12noon, tabling with free 9-volt batteries for smoke detectors. If you can stop by, you can sign up for one or more days. If not, you can “vote” in the poll at the top of the sidebar on this blog to let us know which day(s) you could help out.

Changes on Cortelyou Road, March 2007
The Daffodil Project, November 2006

Flatbush Viewed from Afar

Posted on 2007-10-13 by admin

It’s an odd feeling, to see yourself – or my neighborhood, in this case – described by a stranger. In today’s edition of the English-language Malaysian newspaper The Star, their “State Side” columnist Foo Yee Ping takes a look at Flatbush.

Kosher meat is widely available. One tour agency arranges for travel on Emirates, Etihad, Kuwait, Qatar and Gulf airlines.

There is a mosque, too. And there is a “yeshivah” (Orthodox Jewish school), just a five-minute walk away.

Nearby, a sign outside a barbershop proclaims: “We speak English, Russian, Urdu and Yiddish.”

Welcome to Flatbush, a neighbourhood in Brooklyn presenting a New York City seldom seen on celluloid.

– No clash of cultures here, State Side with Foo Yee Ping

From my home here in far Western Flatbush, I hear both sabbath sirens and muezzin’s calls to prayers. But they’re coming from our neighbors in Kensington.

One of those interviewed in the article is Mohammad Razvi, who was one of the dozen or so candidates for our City Council seat earlier this year.

Native Plant Swap TODAY in East Willamsburg

Posted on 2007-10-12 by admin

Today, Friday, October 12, from 3-7pm, the Butterfly Project of the Wildlife Conservation Society (NYC Zoos) is sponsoring a native plant share at the Heckscher Foundation Children’s Garden (Willamsburg Community Garden), 134-136 Scholes Street, across the street from the Martinez Playground, between Manhattan and Graham Avenues in East Willamsburg, Brooklyn.

Join the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Butterfly Project to receive plants and information on how to start a butterfly garden.
Note: All plants available are for planting in public spaces.
[emphasis added]

Closest subway stop is Montrose Avenue on the L train.

For more information: (845) 531-9745

Note: OASIS’ mapping system identifies the area as “East Williamsburg”. I don’t know the area, and I welcome any corrections for the name of the neighborhood!

Links
Butterfly Project
Willamsburg Community Garden

We Are All One World

Posted on 2007-10-10 by admin

NASA images by Reto Stöckli, based on data.

Spectacular composite images from NASA. If you have the bandwidth, definitely check out the full size renditions (Eastern hemisphere, and my home, the Western hemisphere), each of which is nearly 3MB in size. You’ll feel like you’re floating in space over the earth.

These are not photographs. These are carefully constructed from large databases of images taken at many different times and places.

Drawing on data from multiple satellite missions (not all collected at the same time), a team of NASA scientists and graphic artists created layers of global data for everything from the land surface, to polar sea ice, to the light reflected by the chlorophyll in the billions of microscopic plants that grow in the ocean. They wrapped these layers around a globe, set it against a black background, and simulated the hazy edge of the Earth’s atmosphere (the limb) that appears in astronaut photography of the Earth.
…
Most of the data layers in this visualization are available as monthly composites as part of NASA’s Blue Marble Next Generation image collection. The images in the collection appear in cylindrical projection (rectangular maps), and they are available at 500-meter resolution. The large images provided above are the full-size versions of these globes. In their hope that these images will inspire people to appreciate the beauty of our home planet and to learn about the Earth system, the developers of these images encourage readers to re-use and re-publish the images freely.

– Twin Blue Marbles, NASA Earth Observatory

Links

Blue Marble: Next Generation

Carolina Silverbell: One of a Million

Posted on 2007-10-10 by admin

Just the thought of Mike Bloomberg and Bette Midler together makes me giddy.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and New York Restoration Project (NYRP) Founder Bette Midler today launched the Million Trees NYC initiative to plant and care for one million trees throughout the five boroughs in the next decade. The Mayor and Ms. Midler planted a street tree in the Morrisania section of the Bronx – a neighborhood with too few trees and high rates of asthma – and declared the Carolina Silverbell to be the first of one million trees.
– Press release, Tuesday, October 9, 2007

And if not for the much-needed rain tonight, we could see that the Empire State Building is lit green to note today’s kickoff.

Not once do they mention the botanical name of the tree, Halesia carolina. It’s a lovely, graceful tree. I don’t know how it fares as a street tree in NYC. It’s native to the southeastern United States. It’s in the Styracaceae, the Storax or Snowball family.

The nomenclature for this genus seems confused. Wikipedia lists H. carolina as a synonym for H. tetraptera, but the USDA Plants database identifies the latter as a different species, the mountain silverbell, with two subspecies. I’ll defer to USDA Plants as the authority.

None of the four species of Halesia are native to New York state. According to the Atlas of the New York Flora Association, both H. carolina and H. tetraptera are known as escapes in the wild.

The Parks Department will receive nearly $400 million over the next ten years to plant 600,000 public trees by reforesting 2,000 acres of existing parkland and lining New York City streets with trees. The City’s partners, including non-profit and community organizations, businesses, developers and everyday New Yorkers will plant the remaining 400,000 trees.

There are many ways to get involved in Million Trees NYC:

plant a tree in your yard;

join a volunteer group planting trees in parks and on public land;

request that the City plant street trees on your block;

learn how to water, mulch, and prune trees;

educate other New Yorkers on the importance of our urban forest; and

become an advocate for planting trees.

Each request for a street tree will trigger an evaluation of the suggested site by a Parks department inspector. Considerations such as electrical wires, underground utilities, light posts and building entrances will be part of the inspection. If it is possible to plant a tree in the site requested, a tree planting contractor will be assigned to plant the tree in the next possible planting season, in either the spring or fall.

Links

Halesia carolina (USDA Plants Database)
Million Trees NYC Web site (also in the sidebar under Links > NYC)
New York Restoration Project (Bette Midler’s joint, also in the sidebar)

April 22: 1M Trees in 10 Years

A Weekend in the Garden

Posted on 2007-10-09 by admin

A fallen leaf from the cherry tree in the backyard

Some macro shots of what’s happening in the garden now. Most of the shots are from the backyard, some from the sideyard, along the driveway.

I was really surprised to have this Cicada fly right past me and land on the fence long enough for me to get a good shot of it. I’ve never see a live one so close up. I usually see them dead on the sidewalk, often missing their abdomen from predation. In that state, the markings on the top of the thorax (?) are dull dark brown and black. I think this is Tibicen canicularis, the dog-day cicada.

I’ve been watching the aphids on these milkweed stems for several weeks. This photo doesn’t capture the intense orange-yellow color of these bugs; they look more yellow in the photo than they actually are. I wonder if their color is caused by feeding on milkweed, much like the warning red-orange colors of Monarchs?

Berries of Pokeweed, Phytolacca americana

Berries of Winterberry, Ilex verticillata

Sweet Autumn Clematis

Sunflower

Flatbush Gardener

Urban Habitat Gardening with Native Plants

Monthly Archives: October 2007