Posts Tagged ‘Garden’

It’s the year of the corn! At the Beach 91st Street Community Garden’s Spring Plant Sale, back in May, Erin Mulholland, Native Plant Nursery Manager at RISE, stopped by and brought with her organic flint corn seeds.  Erin generously shared enough seeds for everyone. Many of our gardeners planted them, including me. And then poof! We have a maize of tall stalks popping up all over the garden. I can’t imagine a more beautiful thing; it’s corn! (flint corn). Growing corn is a first for me. To be honest, I barely planted my […]

With all the rain this past week, I’ve been noticing little patches of amber, bright green, and silver blue spreading across tree branches, old fences, cement, and forgotten rocks. At first glance, they don’t look like much, just a bit of moss. But they’re not moss at all. They’re lichens, and the more I learned about them, the more amazed I was. Lichen isn’t a single plant. It isn’t a plant at all. It’s a remarkably complex partnership between a fungus and algae, sometimes with the help of tiny photosynthetic […]

Tendrils are silky, curling little strands reaching out from vines, searching for something to hold onto. Like all of us. The moment they touch a tomato cage, a trellis, a branch, or another plant nearby, they quietly begin wrapping themselves around it. Strengthening their plant, reaching for the sun. Many plants have splendid and mysterious tendrils. Peas, the Cucurbitaceae family (melons, pumpkins, squash), grapes, passion flowers, clematis, cup and saucer, Virginia creeper, and honeysuckle, to name a few. Plants aren’t just growing; they’re sensing, responding, adapting, just like us. It’s […]

My father was recently in the hospital. I stayed with him for a bit to help while he recovered. Meals, Windexing, finding matching socks, walking the cutie-pie Angle, his dog, and with his garden. I was also working from home, from my childhood home — using the kitchen table as my desk. In the same spot where I used to struggle with my homework. My mother encouraged me to finish, with a cigarette in one hand and a yellow pencil in the other. The coffee cup lukewarm. The days at […]

The Beach 91st Street Community Garden has teamed up with Rockaway Art Room for drawing meet-ups at the garden! I can’t explain how wonderful it felt to spend an hour and a half outside on a beautiful evening, sitting with a mix of conversation and concentration. People were scattered around the picnic table under the pergola, where the wisteria had finally taken off! Garden members, friends, and their little ones stretched out on a blanket, drawing the plants that surrounded them. My neighbor Anne created lovely black and white pen sketches of those […]

For a long while, I’ve been annoyed that my backyard is shaded. The condo on 91st and Shorefront blocks almost all the sun. So much space to garden back there, but what can I really do with almost all shade? Around 9 or 10 years old, when you begin to realize that. How your body looks in the world matters (unfortunately). I noticed the size of my nose. It was so big. And I was so small and pale, and I had freckles, of course, only on my nose. The […]

Join the Beach 91st Street Community Garden crew for our annual plant sale this Sunday, May 17, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Please say a while! The weather looks perfect. Bring snacks or a full feast picnic and spend a fun, relaxed afternoon in the garden. There will be garden books to inspire your spring planting. We’ll have paper and colored pencils for the kids to draw flowers. Bring a camera and take some photographs of the growing garden. A guitar will be present!  And there will be plants for sale. Proceeds from Bellas’ […]

Breadth, strength, presence. Notice the monarchs drifting by, the sea breeze carrying a hint of lavender, and the sound of the leaves rustling. Finally, have your uncovered feet on the earth. Yoga in the Beach 91st Community Garden is happening this weekend, Sunday, Oct 5 at 11:30 a.m. Bring a mat, bring a friend, leave the stress at the gate. I met our instructor, Diana Treglia, when I was asked to present at the Belle Harbor Garden Club—such a treat. I met so many wonderful experienced gardener ladies who love […]

Back in May, I wrote in my column, “I’m Growing Peanuts!” – about the peanut plant a squirrel stored in my garden. I was so excited! I’d never grown peanuts before, and I learned they’re actually legumes, not nuts, and they grow underground; there’s no such thing as a peanut tree! Then summer rolled on, and something funny happened: I started noticing peanut plants all over 91st Street. Once I knew the look of the leaves, they were suddenly everywhere. I thought I was going nuts! Then it registered… There’s a guy […]

In May, I discovered the most wonderful surprise in my garden —a peanut sitting right on top of the soil! It was split open, and a tiny sprout was starting to grow. I tucked it into the soil with my fingers and thought, imagine? It must have come from the pile of peanuts someone leaves for the pigeons and squirrels outside the Beach 91st Street Community Garden gate, almost every morning. At our last monthly garden meeting, I went looking for the peanut plant but wasn’t exactly sure what I […]