On Oats

Joe's Oats in late October

Oatmeal for breakfast cooked at home or maybe an oatbran muffin from the local cafe. Oats as food for people and animals or straw. Oats as a covercrop or living mulch, an organic tool in the garden. There are plenty of reasons to plant oats or just to learn about how, why or where the ones you eat are grown. Joe uses them in the vegetable garden and the community garden pumpkin patch as a cover crop. This year in Brooklyn, they met with snow in late October and mild temperatures in early December. Next year? Who knows.

Oats in early December

Something to think about in December

Look at some seed heads on White Snakeroot as you pass through the park. Start thinking about seeds. Chuck some seed heads from your garden over the fence into an empty lot. Will the seeds be dispersed and germinate? Who knows. Keep thinking about seeds. Go through last year's flowers seed packages with Susan and wonder how many seeds it would take to fill an abandoned lot. But if eventually you find yourself staring at a picture you took of a Cardoon seed head at Brooklyn Botanic from last December, you should probably tell yourself that's it. It's time to stop thinking about seeds already and just start thinking about something else. It's time for dinner anyway.

Cut up the last of the beets from your garden for salad and think about how it was dark today before 5pm. Then think about how the next time somebody says to you that we are almost at the shortest day of the year, which is good because then the days will start getting longer again, you will just tell them they are delusional. You will say no, all that it really means is that we have the whole winter before us. You will say no, what it really means is it's a long time till beets out of the garden again. Wait a second. Take a breath. You know what you should do? You should probably just eat those beets slow and think about something else. You should probably just start thinking about seeds.

One of These Years

there will be room for asparagus. For now, there's just admiring it as it fades out at the season's end in my neighbor Susan's plot.

The More Things Change (take two)

Photographer: Tress, Arthur - Original Caption: Broad Channel, Marginal Land in Jamaica Bay near the JFK Airport. New York City Owns This Land and Leases It for Five Year Periods. This Renter Is Cultivating a Vegetable Garden 05/1973

It doesn't matter whether you're focusing on the past, what's happening today or trying to envision the future. The things that matter remain the same. For the Documerica Project (1971-1977), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hired freelance photographers to capture images relating to environmental problems, EPA activities, and everyday life in the 1970s. The pictures here are just a few by photographer Arthur Tress. They capture a piece of New York City's environmental history, and can be viewed along with others from the project at the National Archives' Flickr pages here.

Photographer: Tress, Arthur Original Caption: Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge

Photographer: Tress, Arthur - Original Caption: Landfill Operation Is Conducted by the City of New York on the Marshlands of Jamaica Bay. Pollution Hazards and Ecological Damage Have Called Out Strong Opposition 05/1973

Very Special

Specialness is in the eye of the beholder. I can't verify whether or not the Hennessy was in fact very special, and as far as lot litter goes, the bottle's not bad-looking and is even intact (perhaps filled with flowers it might make a nice container even), but I do think the Nectaroscordum and other bulbs we planted today are going to make one empty lot in the city a little special. It's December first and still we dig.