Althouse: Find garden space where you can.

April 11, 2008

Find garden space where you can.

Here's an inspiring example, from Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights:

12 comments:

Jonathan said...: No doubt this was taken with Nikon's new environmentally friendly lens.; 4/11/08, 9:12 AM
rhhardin said...: The school busses are coming up in Ohio.; 4/11/08, 9:30 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: Those baskets around the tree with the coconut liners and moss really are inspiring. Round + square, lovely.

I'm going to try to get a jump start on annuals by planting seeds. Which is ridiculous. I'm waiting for a plastic greenhouse seed starter thing which should come today. It's an experiment. If it fails, I'll just buy plants. It snowed yesterday, and it's trying to snow today, and yet I have the door open because I do like to try to fool myself regarding weather as much as possible. No spring budding happening atoll, the perennials here aren't nearly as self-delusional.; 4/11/08, 10:33 AM
Palladian said...: Even the plants have high-rise condos. I wonder how much those pansies paid for that cool pad?; 4/11/08, 10:59 AM
MadisonMan said...: I would be unhappy to live somewhere where the only greenery are on postage-stamp sized plots. Kudos to the people for trying their best though.

chip, I've grown plants from seeds before every year 'til this one. This year I ordered from a catalog. Except for sweet peas -- those are still planted in little pots on the kitchen sill. And we have a lot of self-seeding annuals now -- especially nicotiana and cosmos.; 4/11/08, 11:36 AM
Palladian said...: One big postage stamp.; 4/11/08, 12:10 PM
MadisonMan said...: Oh yes, what a HUGE green space. 843 acres shared by all of Manhattan. If only half of Manhattan's 1.6M people use it, that's 843 acres/800000 or ~0.001 acres per person. About 4 square meters. If you are lying down, please don't roll over. And try to avoid the crime.; 4/11/08, 12:35 PM
P_J said...: that's 843 acres/800000 or ~0.001 acres per person. About 4 square meters.

Can I reserve a spot not in a pond?

I'm with you, Madison Man. I couldn't be happy being so crowded. But neither could many New Yorkers -- hence the postwar housing boom and the creation of the suburbs.

I'm just glad to live in a country where we have the freedom and opportunity to make those choices.; 4/11/08, 1:05 PM
Ruth Anne Adams said...: Is the title of this post a corollary to "bloom where you're planted"?; 4/11/08, 4:02 PM
blake said...: I'm with you guys.

I wish there weren't such a determined group of people trying to turn L.A. into NYC.

Sprawl allows us to have yards and gardens, so that it's not just concrete with occasional islands of greenery.

I suspect it's "inevitable", tho'.; 4/11/08, 7:54 PM
Trooper York said...: Now guys you can't believe the hype. There is a lot of greenery in NYC. The part of Brooklyn I live in is called Carroll Gardens because of the beautiful gardens in front of the brownstones. In addition, we have backyards that are loveingly tended and bloom just as nicely as many a suburban landscape. What we don't normally have is gigundus lawns that waste water and fertilizer that would be better used to grow crops in the wide expanse of the west. I think the people in the city appreciated the greenery more because we have to tend it and nuture it. Not just pass it by as another corporate landscaping deal done in a business strip mall. And we can get take out at 3am.; 4/12/08, 8:49 AM
blake said...: Ah, yes, the "I can get kim-chee at 3AM" argument.

One of the bummers of the recent expansions here is that while it has somewhat increased the opportunities for kim-chee, everything still closes up at about 10PM.; 4/12/08, 5:24 PM