Spider Plant Nostalgia Trip

Well, this has been a quiet winter for me over at Examiner.com. The site redesigns over the past few months have been difficult to deal with. The site is problematic to navigate and I'm not comfortable with the types of ads around my work. Even though I don’t get paid much there I wanted it as a place to direct people to when they want to see samples of my work. But, I can’t do that in good faith until it looks a little more professional.

So, this winter I planned to do a series on house plants but only posted “Caring for spider plants” and “How to grow spider plants from cuttings.” When I was growing up there was always a massive spider plant around the house with a million babies. I always wanted to “save” them and ended up with jars full of water and little plants in my room. Surprisingly, I don’t have any spider plants now. Even though I like them a lot I think they will just happen, like kittens. Plus, it is like getting sour dough starter…it starts out innocently enough but then you’ve got a lot of it on your hands.

So, since I don’t have a real spider plant around the house I used this photo by marmit of stock.xchng.

I Love Zinnias

Yes, I do and I try to grow them every summer. I usually have a mini variety in pots and semi-doubles in the main flowerbed. This year I tried some new types but they didn’t quite make it. I find that mysterious, as zinnias are the one flower that will grow for me anywhere. In fact, they were the first flower I grew in the all cement yard next to the outhouse.

Well, as you can see some of them are recovering from the drought and heat of early summer and beginning to bloom. I believe this is a Candy Cane mix. I also have them in white with pink streaks, and pink with white streaks. They add a lot of splash and I will certainly grow them again next year. Last year one of my neighbors had a great bed of cactus type zinnias in their front yard. I want them next year but I’m afraid they’d look too crazy in with the candy canes.

And yes, I wrote an article about zinnias. Actually, I wrote this last winter but deleted it a few months ago and re-wrote it for summer. I had planned to introduce a “flower of the month” thing to my column but it seemed hokey so I dropped it. I wanted a winter series but I’ve since come up with better ideas. I also liked the photos in that article, but since Examiner is migrating to a new style we don’t have control over our layout and things look wonky unless they are super simple.

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.

Squirrel Flophouse

It has been hot here. Well, that is an understatement. It is more like an unrelenting summer of 90+ degree days with no relief. At least it has rained here and there so I don’t have to worry about my garden being dry anymore. The grass in front is growing again but the back is a disaster. First, most of the grass died. Then, we had heavy rain that flooded the back lawn. Now when I go out barefoot I feel the weird texture of the crunchy grass that has been pounded into the ground by the rain.

Aside from the heat, my big activity has been squirrel watching. This little guy (we call him the “squirrely squirrel” because he is a little nuts) is often sleeping on our porch, rolling around in different positions like a little kid. Yesterday he flopped into one of my potted plants. I usually keep seashells on top of the soil of my potted plants to deter squirrels from digging. Well, we found him sleeping on top of the shells.

As for Examiner I’ve pulled back from them a bit in favor of things that pay more money. I did write a little heat series earlier this month, beginning with an article on preventing heat stress in plants. Next I did a story on facts about brown grass as it seemed to be a bit of a fascination at the time. One of the TV stations (I believe channel 11?) was running a “worst lawn contest” and everybody I knew seemed to be talking about their brown grass. An easy offshoot of these topics was “Five heat tolerant plants”. No wonder there is so much bamboo in North Baltimore. Them, yesterday I wrote about larkspur simply because I am tired of writing about heat.

I just noticed a large ad with music that took over the heat tolerant plant article page when I went to it. They are on other pages, too. I believe these ads, which begin as an intrusive band at the bottom of the page, are new. If you accidentally move your mouse over them they tell you they will “…expand in 3…2…1….” Thanks, now my readers will be motivated to click away quickly. No wonder Examiner is not getting the page views it used to. I could complain about them a lot, but I do like the body of work I have on the site and I should just diversify a little more. Once this busy summer calms down I’m going to explore some new angles to my writing (for other places).

Coneflowers

Coneflowers are everywhere these days. I should have done a Wordless Wednesday with them yesterday but I had to go to work early. These are down by the Inner Harbor. I used a photo from the same session to accompany my events article this week.

I’m so busy these days. We had a big family weekend and it is also so hot. I continue to be plagued by my sore arm so I only do the writing that I have to do.

The only reason that plant diseases are good is that they give me an easy, newsy article to write. Earlier this week I found out that downy mildew is attacking local basil crops. Mildew is also a problem in my garden as I have it on the impatiens on my porch. They are in a dark corner that doesn’t get much air circulation, though. My basil is doing great, though.

City Chickens and Roosters

I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t been keeping up with my blogging. I’ve had some new writing opportunities but I don’t want to overdo computer time as my injured arm still bothers me. I’ve been slacking off just a touch on my Examiner column, but I do try to keep it current. I didn’t get to city hall while they were harvesting recently but I do have new photos and am planning to write about them again soon.

I haven’t even done photos in a while because I don’t have what I need for my articles and have been using stock photos. I wrote about urban farming in Baltimore today and I have to admit, I enjoyed using a picture of a chicken for a change. (I get into a flower rut because they are easy to photograph.) Apparently you can keep chickens, bees, and potbellied pigs in the city if you follow certain regulations. But, since chickens must be kept 25 feet from buildings, that leaves out most rowhouse dwellers.

This whole urban farming thing reminded me of the Charles village rooster. He frequented the yard of an apartment building on Charles Street, across from Hopkins. He was notorious for waking people up with his crowing but no one seemed to know who he belonged to or why he was there. After awhile he disappeared, presumably to a more suitable environment or stew pot.

For your viewing pleasure I have included a stock photo by Philip MacKenzie. He has some nice chicken and rooster photos on stock.xchng

Summer Flowers and Tomato News

The other afternoon we went to the Peabody to get tickets for an upcoming performance of the ballet Sleeping Beauty. Well, for some reason they were not sold at the box office but in the dance department. Because of that, we got to take an interesting walk through the Peabody. When we went through their courtyard to get to another building I noticed that they have a nice little variety of summer flowers out there already. Besides these, they have hollyhocks and pincushion flowers.

I’ve been a little busy this week but thankfully there were some tomato related news stories I could write about for Examiner. First, late blight was reported again this year. Also, cold damage is now plaguing home gardeners. I found out about both of these issues through the Grow It, Eat It Page on Facebook, so I am finally convinced that Facebook has some use after all.

In other Examiner news I continue to edit old articles. This seems to be like bailing out the ocean with the tin cup but I do a few every day.

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

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - April 2010

This month my blooms are almost the same as last months. I only had time for a few quick pictures, but besides these I have pansies, violets, and a lone muscari is left under my tree. I really lack spring blooming flowers, other than bulbs. This weekend I hope to get cracking on the garden and put in a few things to spice it up a bit.

I did my monthly “What’s Blooming in Baltimore?” post and was quite envious of what other local gardeners have. There are some nice iris out there and one lady near me even has a nice potted blooming azalea. I did notice that the azaleas in Sherwood Gardens are beginning to bloom as well.

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.

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.

Daffodils and a Garden Plan‏

I have not finished planning my garden this year. I know, I know, everyone else has done this already. But, there were a few things I was thinking over and waiting out. I have to reconfigure things a bit because of a new shady area. But, that is not bad because the now shady spot was once a scorchingly sunny area where my plants often dried out. This year, I'm going to have bright shade tolerant flowers in that area, like impatiens. I decided to grow mostly flowers and herbs. Last year my vegetables did not produce the way I'd like them to and I think I'm going to give that a rest for this year and only grow pleasurable things. I'm going to get seeds for tall heirloom flowers and I will also wind morning glories around my bean poles. With my square foot vegetable bed, I might reconfigure it in the a more traditional herb garden design, with some kind of round shapes.

Just after I did a lame "What's blooming in Baltimore?" post for March, flowers are suddenly out everywhere. I've seen flowering trees, iris, and am starting to see zillions of daffodils. The tulip poplars look like they are emerging. These daffodils are behind the Rotunda, up against one of those little buildings back there.