Wordless Wednesday - the Baltimore City Hall Garden

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.

You're not from around here

We’ve had an unusually warm week and I had to mow my lawn again already. I use an old fashioned reel mower and a man walking down the alley said, “I haven’t seen one of those in a long time!” Clearly, he is not from Hampden where human powered mowers are the grass cutting tools of preference. Like me, many people have small yards and no sheds and keeping a reel mower in the basement is a lot safer and easier.

As you can see by my picture, it was so warm that most of my Red Russian kale bolted. (The flat leafed parsley in the background is fine.) I’m a little annoyed, but, oh, well.

I sowed a few zinnia seeds in a pot for early outdoor seedlings. In checking the weather I might get away with this. Night temperatures are expected to be just below or just above 55 degrees in the coming nights. I can move the pot indoors as needed.

In other news, my article about the DC cherry blossoms peaking has had astonishing traffic this week. I guess all the photos helped.