Category Archives: PRACTICE

Catalogue of Sins Summer Sloth Series

PASSION, PRACTICE, PUNCHY

Sloth Wears Pajamas

With regard to gardeners’ sins, I would like to put in a good word for Sloth.  In particular, I think that there is something to say for Pajama Gardening. Does everyone do it, or just the members of my extended family? I know that in England there is a Nude Gardening Day, but that is only one day per year. One can garden in some variation of pajamas almost any time of year,  especially in the summer, when morning and birdsong begin early. What could be more pleasurable than wearing one’s nightie, carrying a cup of coffee and plucking the spent daylily flowers?

coffee cup:column

 

Watch for future posts…we have a lot to say about Sloth.

Summer Sloth Series Upside of a Messy Park

POLLINATION, PRACTICE

Sloth: The Upside of a Messy Park 

Sometimes what looks like sloth is not. How a park should look is really about what a park should be and who it is for. Banish the uptight model of golf-course neatness and nature-friendly things begin to happen. This summer several deliberately ‘messy’ areas in Forest Hill Park have been filled with bees, butterflies, birds — and teenage kids.

The bees, butterflies and birds are there because both Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland have adopted a few pollinator-friendly maintenance strategies (based basically on sloth) in a few specific areas that have been set aside for pollinators.

Continue reading Summer Sloth Series Upside of a Messy Park →

Tree Lawn Conversation

PERTINENT, POLLINATION, PRACTICE

I like to think of my tree lawn as chatting in a neighborly fashion with Jane’s, across the street.  Hers is wild and wooly, grown from seed, self-seeding. a haven for pollinators.  Mine is a bit more conventional, with plants native and otherwise, flowering and edible–aiming for eye-candy in all seasons. We are both a bit rebellious, the only ones on our block to have  transformed our tree lawns, so really we are more alike than different; different enough, though, to have a lively dialogue (see below for Eutrochium purpureum (Joe-Pye Weed)/Asclepias Incarnata  and Rudbeckia Maxima/Echinacea Paradoxa color correspondences)

jane and catherine pink jane and catherine yellow 2 

Did you know that it is only in Cleveland that the term “tree lawn” is used? In other cities  they may be called “hell strips,” or “devil strips.”  I like our term because it evokes some pleasant possibilities for greater greenery, bloomery, and a kind of reckless cheerfulness. Continue reading Tree Lawn Conversation →

Tree Lawn Conversation-Ann McCulloh Responds

PERTINENT, PRACTICE
GRASSY TREE LAWN
I see my treelawn as neighbor space. It doesn’t enhance the wildlife ecology or aesthetics of the street in ways that please me. (I try hard to accomplish that in the rest of my landscape.) But I live in a neighborhood where people love their dogs, walk their dogs, and, bless them, pick up after them. An important part of that happens on that little strip of grass under the shade tree in the tree lawn.
I have dozens of wonderful neighbors whom I’ve only met because they walk their dogs on my street and stop to say hello, or comment on my garden. I meet others because they need on-street parking, and appreciate a shaded, mowed area when they get out of their cars. Do I love the look of my conventional treelawn? Not really. But it’s a little sacrifice I offer in the name of community and sociability. And that’s a kind of ecology too.

“The Soil Will Save Us” by Kristin Ohlson

PERMACULTURE, PERTINENT, PRACTICE


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Muddy pages: an occasional book review

The Soil Will Save Us

Author: Kristin Ohlson, published by Rodale Press, 2014, 241 pp.

The title speaks volumes for this entertaining, passionate, very well-researched book by a sometime Cleveland gardener. Kristin Ohlson delves into a misunderstood (and unglamorous) substance, emerging with engrossing stories about some fascinating people, their advocacy for the life underground and the real and potential miracles performed in partnership with “the incredible life in the soil.”

Continue reading “The Soil Will Save Us” by Kristin Ohlson →