Help Plant a Garden — and Help a Local Eagle Scout

...removed a large area of lawn, and on Friday they’ll be planting six fruit trees. It will transform the entrance to the church. Friday is supposed to be Taylor’s completion date, and there’s still a lot to do: installing headerboard (9am) composting the planting areas (morning) planting trees, flowers, vegetables (afternoon) assembling benches (all day) It’s a fun chance to work with an (exuberant) team of young scouts and to help get another sect...

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The Prints of Frances Gearhart

...Honor gift shop. Methinks we could all benefit from having more images of trees and mountains in our lives in addition to surrounding ourselves with, well, real trees and mountains. Museums should also include more work by women artists who make up just 2% of the world art market. If you’d like to see more of Gearhart’s work check out francesgearhart.com. The Minneapolis Institute of Art has an exhibition open through March that includes some of...

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Leaf Litter

...s work”. An example used to be the annual fall cleanup after our two large trees dropped their load of leaves in the back yard. Dave Jacke, author of the massive two volume permaculture guide, Edible Forest Gardens puts it this way, Simply relinquishing a need for “order” and “tidiness” in your garden will make a huge difference. . Order and tidiness by definition reduce structural diversity in ecosystems. Structural diversity provides shelter for...

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Saturday Linkages: Battling Herbicides, Solar Wall Ovens and Jaywalking

...ricas-public-transit-rout.html … LA residents: The city offers free native trees for street planting. Coast Live Oaks are approved as street trees! http://environmentla.org/pdf/2014/Theodore_Payne_Foundation_FlyerTA.pdf … Documenting the NYC snowpocalypse’s neckdowns: latent traffic calming revealed by climate and crowds: http://boingboing.net/2014/02/05/documenting-the-nyc-snowpocaly.html … Tom Vanderbilt in NYT: Jaywalking Tickets Don’t Make Str...

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Least Favorite Plant: Tree of Heaven

...new metric: the economic health of a city can be judged by the size of its trees of heaven (aka Ailanthus altissima). The higher the Ailanthus altissima, the more likely a city is to economically distressed. Tree of heaven is a super weed much reviled by gardeners and landscapers for its unstoppable ability to grow in nearly every climate in the most inhospitable conditions. In a move that will raise a lot of horticultural hackles, the Detroit Tre...

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