Posts filed under ‘Life in Brooklyn’
Wishing Everyone A Happy, Healthy, Prosperous and Green 2011
Yes, I’m still alive, although you would not know it from the activity on my blogs. I owe apologies to many friends for my unresponsiveness. I sincerely apologize for that.
I became somewhat of a recluse in 2010 but this too shall pass. It’s been a difficult and stressful year but I have learned a lot and can’t believe how fast it went by. The older you get the faster the years go by.
Medical issues have consumed much of my time. I still don’t have new knees and hope to have the first knee replacement surgery done by February. The second surgery will be about 3 months later. Yes, I’m apprehensive but know that it will help immeasurably to restore my active life.
It’s hard for me to realize that I was power walking an hour a day a little over a year ago. Now I’m prematurely a wobbly old man. I really miss power walking, street photography and visits to the city for fun instead of medical appointments.
After knee surgeries, I will need to deal with prostate cancer. It’s been detected early, appears to be localized (MRI) and I’m under the constant care of a good urologist.
Activism to promote modern methods of urban greenscaping and urban agriculture continues to drive my life. After making many mistakes, I have rebooted the plans and goals for my urban agriculture activism.
The biggest surprise of my move to NYC was to discover how out of date the horticulture community is here in supposedly sophisticated and hip New York. The local hort community is all about in-ground dirt gardening, clay pots and drain holes. These were modern methods only in the age of the early Egyptians.
Sorry to say, there is no leadership whatsoever regarding modern methods of growing food in an urban built environment. We do not have even one institution where a New Yorker can learn about modern urban container growing methods (sub-irrigation and simplified hydroponics for example). That includes the major botanic gardens in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
To fill this void, my goal is to establish the Center for Urban Greenscaping (CuGreen) as a 501(c)(3). I have two “dream locations” in mind. I plan to solicit the support of people with power to make the dreams into reality.
CuGreen will become the educational institution that is now absent but vitally needed in NYC. It will focus on greenscaping science and technology education and the creation of new green jobs and small businesses. The positive impact potential in these difficult economic times is enormous.
My Inside Urban Green blog will become a part of a new CuGreen website. Blogs are good information sources but too asymmetrical. I’ve spent most of my time recently drafting a new document that better summarizes the scope and mission of “urban greenscaping”. It is tedious work.
I’m also flirting with the idea of writing a book but well aware that writing is introverted work. Book writing will probably wait until more urgent goals are accomplished.
The priority right now is for my more extroverted sales and marketing side to step out front and center. I now have a much better understanding of who to pitch to and will use the many years of experience from my business career. It’s obviously “just do it” time!
I will also get back to blogging on a regular basis. More to come. Stay tuned.
Happy New Year!
Bob
aka Greenscaper
Happy New Year!
New Years Eve – Times Square – 2010, originally uploaded by PostMan1107.
Happy New Year everyone from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, USA, Earth.
Peace,
Brooklyn Bob aka Greenscaper
Sold out!
I just read that the NY Times sold all their paper edition copies and printed a second run. No problem here. I shot this on my screen earlier today.
A New Day has Dawned!
I can’t remember the last time being in one of these iron maiden voting machines. Living in Southern California for so long, I thought Shoup machines were long gone. Yet another trip down memory lane.
This felt like it was the most momentous voting experience of my lifetime. I’m grateful to be alive and to have participated. It is truly a new day in our country’s history. Bravo!
Civilization Arrives in Brooklyn
Count ‘em, 18 registers and there will most likely be a line at all of them. This ain’t no strip mall store. It used to be a bank. It still is. 
Click, Click
This is my new toy. It’s an Olympus SP570 Ultra Zoom with a 35 mm lens equivalency of 26-520mm. It’s the best camera I’ve ever owned for street photography.
My last camera with a long range lens is a Nikon N-70 film camera with a 300mm telephoto. It is a truck compared to this one. All my photography for the past several years has been with a Canon PowerShot point and shoot with limited range.
What a trip this camera is. I carry it everywhere using the wrist strap from my Canon instead of the more typical neck strap that came with the camera. It is very unobtrusive compared to a DSLR with telephoto zoom. It’s doubtful that I’ll ever go back to an SLR.
I’ve got a ton of pix to upload to Flickr. What a time consuming job that is. Check out this set of 3 pix of the Queen Mary 2 leaving the harbor. They were shot in the early evening at long range through the haze.
Lots more to come!
See if you can keep up with this guy. Good luck!
Blogger Burnout
While I may not be blogging here on my personal blog, I do blog every day on Inside Urban Green. Anyone who has blogged understands what blogger burnout means.
With that said, I’m going to give it a go again. While I most likely won’t blog here every day, my goal is to post 2 or 3 times per week. We’ll see how it goes.
Thanks for coming back.
Breakfast on the Pier
If you’ve been back here to see what’s up with me you might think I left the building. I’m still here but have other fish to fry. Boo!
With the heat wave we’re having I switched my daily walk from the evening to 6 a.m. One of my neighbors caught his breakfast off the Bay Ridge 69th street pier this morning. Striper saute coming up!
Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow
Click photos to enlarge
The view looking out my window this morning when I woke up. The view inside my window all day. These are refugees from the EFMS science lab that rode home with me on the subway in an insulated picnic bag.
You can bet that there will be more of these shelves in the future…and better organized too. Note that there are both desert and sub-tropical plants. Every city home with windows could have at least one of these display shelves. They’re like an aquarium for plants and probably a lot easier to maintain. Using modern methods there’s nothing to it and they’re good for the soul.
Incidentally, If you remember the lyrics to this song, you’re older than I thought you were.
My Part Time Job
Click photos to enlarge
This is the neighborhood of my part time job as a treeage triage technician. We had a little problem with the Inside Plants Science Lab a while ago. A major number of the plants dehydrated and defoliated. The science lab became an ICU. It’s a long story and I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say there are a lot of coulda, woulda, shoulda’s involved. Since I am not certified by the board of education for access during the school day, I care for the plants from 3 to 5 pm and some Saturdays. I’m now the only one that touches them.
Revival of these plants will be a testimony to the modern sub-irrigation methods used. It has also taken every bit of knowledge I have from over 30 years of experience with sub-tropical plants. Some of the plants are already compost but there are now signs of new growth on most of the desktop Ficus trees. I’m grateful that they didn’t all die. It looked rather grim for a while. Ten years of work almost went down the drain.
When the weather is warmer (probably April), I’m going to rent yet another U-Haul truck, hire Sambou and Jesse and move the plants to my apartment. The racks and fluorescent lights are already here. I will then have a demonstration location for prospective donation recipients. I’ve learned much from this experience and my mistakes.
The photo above shows the Ebbets Field Middle School across the street from the rather ugly apartment complex that replaced the demolished Ebbets Field. In the foreground, we have the well-known fast food emporium for the school kids. How convenient. I guess it’s better than a liquor store, but not by much.
Imagine a vegetable garden here – This area is on school property between the MacDonald’s and the school. Wouldn’t it be neat if there was a vegetable garden here during the spring and summer? No, there’s no need for access to the earth. Have a look at this sub-irrigated container garden at McGill University in Montreal. The 73 slides are truly inspiring. It was a cooperative effort between McGill students and the Rooftop Garden Project. There is absolutely no reason why this concept couldn’t be used in this play area. There is also no reason why this couldn’t be done all over the city. The only obstacle is lack of knowledge. We met the enemy and its name is ignorance.
Tornado ally – I’ve been walking by this row of apartments on my walk to and from the subway not realizing that the repair work going on is a result of the unusual tornado that ripped through Bay Ridge on August 8, 2007. This is just a few blocks from my apartment. I had no idea that a tornado could touch down in this part of the country.
Cobweb vines – Brooklyn Botanic Garden is one of the venerable botanic gardens of the world. Unfortunately, they have not kept up with the modern age. BBG publishes many books, not one of them covers the subject of sub-irrigated container plants for food production or decoration. There isn’t one class that teaches anything about the subject. I audited a class about houseplant care a couple of weeks ago. The information was as current as the Middle Ages and poorly presented. It was flat earth stuff.
The garden is stuck in a prior century. It’s painful when I walk by here so close to the Ebbets Field Middle School to know that the garden administration completely ignored my attempts to reach them about the plant science lab donation. I got a turned back and a deaf ear. The disaster that occurred might have been avoided had they a sensitive ear to a legitimate plea for help.
I was standing on a corner near the school and was startled to see this big sightseeing bus. I grabbed the camera from my coat pocket and shot. One click and this is what I got. It’s one of my favorite street shots. I like the juxtaposition of the tourists, the rockettes and the woman walking by oblivious to what’s going on. She’s got her music and her Nathan’s drink. What more does she need? And what are all those people shooting up there? Have a look at the original size photo.
After standing on my aching knees for a couple of hours doing triage on the plants, there’s the long ride home on the subway. Hey, it’s better than being stuck in car traffic. Besides, I get to do one of my favorite things in New York and that’s people watching.
