Wordless Wednesday - the Baltimore City Hall Garden

Another Visit to City Hall

I usually don’t repeat here the same photos as I do on Examiner, but I just like this picture and I have a bit of a time crunch today. I used it at the end of the slideshow for my recent report about the Baltimore City Hall Garden. I was happy to find it thriving and productive. Though it is less showy I like it because it seems like they are utilizing the space well and the crops selected are good for a continuous harvest. I also like the addition of sunflowers here. They bring a bit of cheer to an otherwise utilitarian garden. I plan to do a Wordless Wednesday with more photos tomorrow.

I just noticed that Examiner now has spammy little ads on the bottoms of my photos in the slideshow. Ugh! I shouldn’t have done one.

A Nice Set of Cabbages

Last week I went down to check on the City Hall garden. Someone emailed me about a harvest date, but I couldn’t make it on that day. But, I still wanted to write about the garden each month because my focus is Baltimore gardening and you can’t get closer to the topic than the City Hall garden. It looked a lot better this time around. The black mesh was gone and things were getting big.

Actually, there is an interesting variety of cabbages down there, plus lots of kale and mustard greens. (I apologize for the red signature on this photo. I couldn't get it readable any other way.) The beds nearest the War Memorial building were empty but the lettuce was once there and I’m sure that was what they harvested. Since I didn’t make the harvest day I instead wrote "What we can learn from the Baltimore City Hall garden" to promote the usefulness of it.

The photographs I take there look great but it amuses me to see Baltimore life in the garden. Here and there are beer cans and random items of clothing. Street people were washing up in the nearby fountain. I’ll be back down there in a couple of weeks to do another “progress” article, hopefully with a slide show.

Speaking of slide shows Examiner wants us to focus on National Rose Month this weekend. This means that everybody else will be writing about roses. Every time some kind of editorial focus comes up with a garden focus I am busy with other more newsy topics so I never really do it. Rather, I think I’ll plan a slide show or garden history article for the following week.

A City Garden and Examiner Thoughts

Hmmm…I thought of titling this entry “lettuce behind bars” but thought better of it.

The other evening after work I went down to City Hall here in Baltimore to take pictures and get some writing material. This garden was great for me last year because I could just report on it monthly and it gave me an interesting series with lots of photos. This year, I hear that budget cuts and practicality trumped over the free flowing and widely varied design of last year. Actually, it doesn’t look too bad, except for this black netting. I assume it is there to keep both people and critters away. But, this being Baltimore city if people or rats wanted the vegetables they would just cut the net and take them.

They don’t have any educational materials out for this garden yet, but I did notice labels on almost everything this year. Some had cute little signs but others at least had plastic sticks. To see any differences see my current article and then go look at the article from this time last year. There are some similarities, but I miss the free design and the kohlrabi.

In other news, I got an email about changes with the Examiner web site but I’m not sure how this will pan out. They want to create more of a social network, which I think is a great idea long past due. Right now, everyone that wants to comment can only leave his or her name and comment and it is not linked to a profile or anything. So, I feel like a complete stranger if I comment even though I’ve been writing there for a year now. I would like to be able to leave a connection to my profile. I think this would be valuable in hooking up with other Examiners or even just interacting with the readers. It doesn’t look professional when I can’t leave a signature of some sort.

Another thing is that Examiner is going to “archive” past articles and we won't be able to edit them. They said we’d get some warning, but I’ve been working on tightening up my old articles so I’m going to step this up. In my old articles I don’t have many links to my other articles, nor do I have the “more info” paragraph with links to my Twitter page and this blog. I want the appearance of my page to be consistent.

Hyacinths and City Hall

I was putting out my recycling yesterday when I noticed a blooming white hyacinth in my yard. It puzzled me, but then I remembered that a student gave one to me last spring. It was potted and I saved the bulb and must have mixed it in with the daffodils. I spotted these hot pink ones when I was walking home from work yesterday. There are near a building in Remington that Hopkins uses, I think, for facilities management. Nice guys work there.

I’m trying to do my latest Examiner article but there is a problem with the photo upload tool. This is aggravating because part of my strategy is to have colorful, pretty, eye catching photos to draw people in. I’m just writing about this weekend's events, though.

Speaking of that, I was pleased that the City Hall garden is going to be up and running again. With the recent turmoil surrounding Sheila Dixon, my main worry was if the garden would continue. I was down there a lot last summer and really enjoying photographing it and writing about it. The June article has a slideshow that I particularly enjoyed making.