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Showing posts from December, 2008

Patches of old snow and other winter colors

It’s snowing again in New Jersey. I am happy for the bright spot of color the snow will add to the winter landscape. More accurately, the snow will add natural color to a mostly grey and brown world. Winter, especially at night, is not wont of color; doors decked with wreaths and evergreens with lights brighten streets and neighborhoods. The evergreen wreath is a symbol of life in long, dark winters. Even house paint can be used to great effect. A few days ago, with only “patch[es] of old snow”* on the ground, I went looking for natural color. Strolling through the Fairmount neighborhood of Hackensack, here is what I found: Brilliant green moss in a parkway Young beech trees in the understory of a remnant oak woodland Festive orange rose hips and canes Hydrangea flowers dried to the color of wheat The classic white bark of a birch * From Robert Frost's poem titled "A Patch of Old Snow" here .

Wayback: Patio de los Naranjos

A year plus a few days ago plus a few days I was in Spain visiting Madrid, Caceres, Sevilla, and Cordoba. In Sevilla and Cordoba I walked through Orange Courtyards or Patios de los Naranjos. In Cordoba, the courtyard was located in the Mezquita which was constructed under Abd ar-Rahman I, Abd ar-Rahman II, and Al-Hakam II (Brigitte Hintzen-Bohlen, Art & Architecture in Andalusia, 2006). The Orange Courtyard attached to the Sevillan church Cathedral of Santa Maria (above) is evidence of "an Almohadic mosque destroyed in 1424," according to Hintzen-Bohlen. She also describes the Orange Courtyard in the Mezquita as follows: Cypress, laurel, and olive trees as well as fountains that worshipers used for ritual purification before prayer once stood in this wide courtyard ringed with arcades. The orange trees were planted later on by the Christians, who also had the mosque's 19 arcades walled up, drastically changing the interior lighting. In Moorish time, scholars sa

Weather and sense of place

What would New England be without winter weather, especially snow? Granted, in some years there is little or no snow. However, snow is a major element in New England's sense of place. Weather is rarely mentioned in written works or talk about sense of place. When it is mentioned, it is usually as climate and in association with the plants and animals of an area. In popular parlance, sense of place is something that can be designed or made; weather cannot be designed.

Draft landscape and neighborhood sustainability guidelines, benchmarks available for review and comments

The draft 2008 Sustainable Sites Initiative Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks is available online for your review. The deadline for comments is January 20, 2009. The Sustainable Sites Initiative is a project of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the United States Botanic Garden. Read more at the ASLA blog . The U.S. Green Building Council has released a draft of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Design (LEED-ND) rating system. The deadline for comments is January 5, 2009.

Stormy weather scenes

Foul weath'er delays flight Two more nights in town Arrive in time for lunch party? - a haiku Photograph: John Lok, The Seattle Times Photograph: John Tlumacki, Boston Globe Photograph: John Gurzinski, Las Vegas Review Journal Photograph: John Gastaldo, The San Diego Union-Tribune

Edible street trees: Orange trees in Italy

Thank you to Katydid on the Street for this photograph of orange trees in Italy. Read our related post about edible street trees in Sacramento (Calfornia) and Sevilla (Spain) here . The closest fruit project to me, in Berkeley, is Forage Oakland which operates in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco. I am a member of EarthWorks in Boston. Toronto-based not far from the tree was profiled by Dale Duncan of Spacing Toronto. Philly Orchard, the Philadelphia-based orchard project , provides a list of U.S. and international fruit projects including: Treefolks Urban Orchard Program, Austin Fallen Fruit, Los Angeles TreePeople Fruit Tree Program, Los Angeles Walnut Way Conservation Corps, Milwaukee Portland (Oregon) Fruit Tree Project Urban Gleaners, Portland metro area (read Civil Eats 's article about gleaning as well as an article by City Farmer News ) Community Fruit Tree Harvest, Seattle Richmond (British Columbia) Fruit Tree Sharing Project Victoria (British Columbia) Fruit Tr

Reading list: (Re)defining suburbia

Popular rainy day activity: watching a movie, at home or in the theatre. On my list is "Revolutionary Road" starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Sam Mendes, and based on Richard Yates's 1961 book of the same name. The setting of the book and the movie is suburbia, suburban Connecticut specifically. Instead of going to theatre, I am blogging about suburban books. I live in a suburban city. Several Berkeley neighborhoods fit the definition provided by Dolores Hayden in "Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000": For almost two hundered years, Americans of all classes have idealized life in single-family houses with generous yards... (2004, 4). Source: Library of Congress : T. S. Eastabrook House, Illinois, 1967, Richard Nickel (photographer) The following list is comprised of novels and academic scholarship. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit - Sloan Wilson The Couples - John Updike Holy Land - D. J. Waldie The Organization

Reading list: Municipal services

Struck by the devastating cholera outbreak in Harare, Zimbabwe, and the relationship between the disease and a lack of several services - water, sewage, and trash - I compiled a list of books on the topic of municipal services. Other prompts for this post include a recent sewage spill into a Berkeley tree well and a glowing review of Rose George's book about human waste , "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters." Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash - Elizabeth Royte The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present - Martin Melosi Bay Cities and Water Politics - Sarah S. Elkind Creation of Quabbin Reservoir: Death of the Swift River Valley - J. R. Greene The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism - Robert W. Righter Liquid Assets: A History of New York City's Water System - Diane Galusha Large Parks - James Corner, Julia C

Reading list: Water in California and the arid West

Presenting a list of books about water, in California and the West, because it has been a dry winter (rain is predicted this weekend). But first, an excerpt, from "Bay Cities and Water Politics" by Sarah S. Elkind. The bay cities referenced are Boston, Massachusetts and Oakland, California. Oakland city officilas had little influence over water service because individuals and private companies claimed East Bay water resources long before the city was ready to build a public waterworks. Boston faced no such barriers because Massachusetts law reserved Great Ponds for public use. Simple abundance did contribute to generous provision for public water rights in Massachusetts. Pre-nineteenth-century legal traditions intended to protect common uses of streams, however, did even more to protect public interests. By the mid-nineteenth century, the demands of industrial development placed enormous strains on public or common water rights even in Massachusetts; California was settled in

Wayback: Streetscapes from the Treeinfo.org archives

Treeinfo.org preceded local ecology (and this blog, local ecologist ). From the name, Treeinfo.org, you can guess that the Web site focused on trees. I recently recovered the photographic archives and present here several photographs of streetscapes. Most of the photographs were taken in the Northeast, particularly in Boston, Mass. The definition of "streetscape," according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is 1 : the appearance or view of a street 2 : a work of art depicting a view of a street Read other definitions here .

Update: Most frequently used words

We have been writing about, or at least using the words, tree(s) and stormwater more often since August 2008. Images created in Wordle .

Tree Walk: Infrastructure vs. street trees and tree planting sites

Infrastructure, in the wrong place, can decrease tree vitality and shorten tree life. Most of us are aware of the negative impacts of sidewalk and road construction on existing street trees. This might be more of an issue in northeastern and mid-western states. In my tenure in Berkeley, I have noticed that street trees fare better post-construction here than they do in Boston, for example. Of course, the full impact of construction damage is often not apparent until several years after the work is completed. The "Arborists' Certification Study Guide" outlines five ways in which trees can be damaged by construction: (1) physical injury to trunk and crown; (2) cutting of roots; (3) soil compaction; (4) smothering of roots by adding soil; and (5) exposure to the elements. In his 2003 book "The Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm," Tom Campanella describes several infrastructure changes in New England that had sore consequences for elms. More th

News: Street trees growing in structural soil mimick forest hydrological cycle

We cannot mimic pre-development hydrologic cycles without plants (Susan D. Day and Sarah B. Dickinson). On November 19, 2008, the findings of the “Stormwater Management with trees and structural soils” research project were released . The explicit goal of the project was to manage stormwater in urban areas. The team developed a stormwater best management practice (BMP) that incorporated the rainfall interception function of trees, the tree development and pavement support qualities of structural soil, and the infiltration and drainage qualities of subsoil (Day and Dickinson 2008). The lead scientists on the team are Susan D. Day of the Urban Forestry and Urban Horticulture programs at Virginia Tech, Nina Bassuk of the Urban Horticulture Institute at Cornell University, and Qingfu Xiao of the Department of Land and Water Resources at the University of California at Davis. The project was partly funded by the USDA Forest Service Urban & Community Forestry Program. As Day and Dick

Gates of Berkeley

This post was inspired by the winter 2006 Cite magazine cover story of sculptor Gertrude Barnstone and her gates. Cite author, Olive Hershey writes, ...Barnstone's gates and screens have seemed to sprout and bloom in Houston's private gardens. Animals and birds of unlikely colors leap and perch and soar amid the foliage. It is almost as if the concrete and steel metropolis was being reclaimed, in some small part, by plants and animals whose impulse is ever to play. If you are in Houston, here's a short list of Barnstone's work, provided by Hershey: Lolly Jackson Gate, 7505 Morningside Booker T. Washington High School Spark Park Gate, 119 East 39th Street Gayle Degeurin Pool Screen, 2106 Persa Betsy Siegal Front Yard Sculpture, 1900 Vermont Judy Chapman Screen Door, 2218 Colquitt Balustrade, 1214-1216 West Gray Rubenstins Door, 2154 Dryden Garden Gate, 4535 Sunburst Cindy Toles Gate, 5201 Blossom Patsy Cravens Gate, 3605 Sunset I have been photographing gates in Be