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.

Photo Woes and Earth Day

This photo is a “leftover” from my article this morning. It took me an inordinately long time to select a photo today. I liked these dogwoods because the colors and shapes are reminiscent of Earth Day themes, (round, green white, ect.) and I have the one I prefer with the article. But, with the weird way that Examiner crops their photos on the Home and Living page I wondered if it would end up showing the blank spot near the middle of that one. (Sometimes the crop makes the subject of the photo completely unrecognizable.) So, I plowed through my backlog of photos to see what to use and then ended up using my original choice anyway. It seems to look all right.

I wanted to make a good impression for Earth Day because I slaved away on a series for Baltimore Green Week but so far it has only average readership. Plus, I’ve had such a busy week and didn’t like the photos I chose for the other articles. They were just things I had, but didn’t quite fit. I’ve been too busy to go on photo expeditions and now I seem to be paying for it. Note that yesterday’s Wordless Wednesday was a random April flowers post full of more leftover pictures. Actually, I might use the azaleas from that post for tomorrow’s article.

Another thing that I did this week was post an Examiner article every day. Again, only average readership so I’ll go back to my regular schedule next week. This only really works if I have gardening news that is hot for a day or so. Plus, Examiner told the Home and Living Writers to spotlight National Gardening Month over the next few days so suddenly everybody is writing about gardening. It is also National Park Week and National Volunteer Week. Why don’t people write about that?

Oh, yes, I’m going to stop my complaining to wish everyone a happy Earth Day!

My Baltimore Green Week series

Tree Baltimore aids city residents during Baltimore Green Week
Volunteer opportunities for Maryland Gardeners
Rethinking your garden habits
Earth Day facts for Marylanders

Tulips, Open Doors, and Cement

Yesterday when I was walking to work I spotted tulips in someone’s yard. Technically, it was still March so this seems rather early to me. I then spotted a snapdragon on the way home. Despite the wild winter we had, things around town seem to be doing well even though it is so early in the spring.

I was busy with many things yesterday, including posting an article about Open Doors, a program for people struggling with addiction. They do many things, but they are currently working on a new community garden. When Paul, a program director there, contacted me I was happy to write about them. This is the kind of thing I want to do more in my column of because it unites gardening with city living. Their current project is only a short drive from where I work so when they finish I would like to go out there and photograph it as a follow-up for my readers.

I like things like this and the City Hall garden as I hope that it encourages people to see the potential of their yards. Now, even though I live in a rowhouse I’m lucky enough to have grass and dirt in the back yard. I’ve struggled, though; with the all-cement yard at other places I’ve lived. When Paul talked about needing sledgehammers to remove old building foundations I remembered one garden I had. There was a rosebush surrounded by a broken cement wall, but it was mostly buried in garbage. It was next to a small, odd building (also full of garbage) that my neighbors told me was once an outhouse. It took me a long time, but I cleaned it up, tamed the rosebush, and planted some fabulous zinnias and celosia. Whatever was out there for years must have improved the soil because one year the celosia was almost as tall as I was! You never know what kind of good stuff is under all of that garbage.

That Elusive Delmarva Fox Squirrel

I’m sure I’m going to tell you lots of squirrel stories as I write this blog. In my neighborhood we are blessed/cursed with the common gray squirrel, which is cute but can be destructive. I am more enamored with the Delmarva fox squirrel, which my friend and I have had brushes with on the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.

The first time I went there I read about this squirrel in the visitor’s center. Oh, they are shy, retiring, hard to spot and endangered. People we knew had been coming to Chincoteague for years never saw one. Well, yes, we saw one, on that very trip. As we made one last trip through the wildlife loop before driving back to Baltimore, there he was! The elusive Delmarva Fox squirrel was sitting on the side of the road and sunning himself. Well, since we were leaving the cameras were packed and by the time we finished our fumbling he was gone.

This squirrel, though shy and retiring, likes to sit by the road and taunt passers by. We saw them on subsequent trips, but they always ran just out of camera range. In fact, most of my pictures of them show them streaking away. But, one day last fall this squirrel decided to pose for me, and in range of my zoom lens.

So, that is what prompted me to write “Types of squirrels found in Maryland”. I was just curious about the Delmarva Fox Squirrel in particular. It was also interesting to see that we have gray, red and flying squirrels in Maryland as well.

Next, I’m going to write an article about deterring them as pests, which is less romantic but more practical.

Daffodils, English Ivy, and New Writing Projects

This morning I went to put out the recycling and when I was doing my garden check I saw a spot of yellow. It was this daffodil! You see, our neighbor has a garage that borders our yard, and that has English ivy growing all over it. The ivy is a pain, but I only trim it enough to keep it from invading my garden beds. I like to keep it otherwise because our birds shelter in it.

Well, large hunks of that ivy fell over in the February snow storm slumped over my one flower bed. I ignored it, thinking that it wasn’t doing any harm but today I did a little prune and rescue for the plants underneath. The daffodil stem was broken so I cut it and put it in a vase in my kitchen. I also found some pansies that survived (the ones in front of the house didn’t). I had a few Brussels sprouts seedlings in last fall and now one has survived to be about six inches tall. I also have some Red Russian kale about that size, too. It has been so wintery until just now that I forgot to plan any serious garden clean-up, but I will do that soon.

I wrote another article on the 2010 Maryland Home and Garden show. I got some nice attention from the last one I did, but it took me a long time to do all of the photos. Plus, I had a bit of a headache during the show and didn’t take great notes so I had to go back and carefully look at all of the signs and ribbons in my pictures.

I have a March “What’s blooming in Baltimore?” in the works and now that I have the daffodil I actually have enough photos for a slide show. I have some sort of clover themed article for St. Patrick ’s Day, but beyond that I’m looking forward to brainstorming a new set of fresh article topics. It is spring, and my fingers are worn out from typing “2010 Maryland Home and Garden Show” so much for the last series. I’m bad at clever titles and often make them too long, so that didn’t help.

This past week I’ve just been thrilled to be back outside, getting my own photos of flowers again. I like stock.xchng for what I don’t have because I can find photos that match my style, but I’d rather use my own stuff.

Searching for snowdrops

This morning I impulsively started this blog because I felt the need to journal not only about my personal gardening experiences, but about my garden writing. I write a column for Examiner and I try to stick by the “no first person” rule because I feel that it makes me look more professional. However, I do have a lot of photography/writing adventures and sometimes travel to gardens outside of the city. This morning I was inspired yet again by May Dreams Gardens, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

For example, I’ve been trying to find snowdrops for a month. My photos from last year are dated early February and I know that I found them out at Lake Roland, along that path that is up the hill, beyond the pumping station. But, searches at that time this year yielded nothing and then the big snows came. On Monday a friend and I walked back there for the first time since before the February storms. There is still plenty of snow, muck, and ice out there so it took forever to walk a short way, but I eventually found the snowdrops. I wanted to do a “What’s blooming in Baltimore?” article for March but not much is out and I wanted my snowdrops.

Since I found these, snowdrops seem to be everywhere. When I was running yesterday morning I found some naturalized along Evan's Chapel Road. On my way to work I found another small grouping near the small playground near the old Hampden police station.

Ironically I just found a daffodil in my own garden, but that story will be in my next post.