Behold! My sea of yellow flowers! Most of what's shown here is woodland sunflower with special appearances by sunflower (standard) and maximillian sunflower.
Shaded, wet site between buildings. Four years old and four backyards long.
I planted two coral bells under a catalpa in the spring. They had a rough time with the uneven rain. Then to add insult to injury, the neighbors power cleaned the fence and covered part of the garden in paint spray 😭
But the plants will not be overcome! One of the heuchera flowered. I'm so honored and proud. Good luck, small friend.
Evening primrose establishing itself in the vacant lot
This is the first year we’ve been able to plant here and despite a few setbacks its coming together! 25 different flowers, a mix of natives and not. Hopefully next year they’ll reseed and spread and it’ll look more full.
No idea who this is or how it got here! Very pretty, very small orange lily with straight petals and a delicate dark freckle.
4yo urban garden. Shaded, wet. Also pictured are woodland sunflowers.
If you design food forests, agroforestry systems or regenerative landscapes, I invite you to try it in QGIS on a real site and share your experience.
- What makes you happy?
- What can be improved?
- Where do you still run into barriers?
A practical course is also in the making to help designers use the plugin for better design decisions.
Join the RegenGIS community to stay up to date:
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I used to live in student-housing at the end of the Highline in Manhattan when it first opened, and this is my first time going back since "noticing" plants... and being native-plant obsessed. How absolutely incredible to see this relationship in the middle of the most urban area imaginable!
There's a pedestrian median at 24th & 10th in Manhattan that I walked past every day for years. Roughly 50 square feet of compacted dirt inside a concrete curb, mostly cigarette butts and one exhausted shrub. This May it finally felt impossible not to do something about it. Now we call it our Itty Island (Ittyisland.org & ig: ittyislandnyc)
No permit process we could find except a generous and enthusiastic head nod from a fabulous community group (Chelsea Garden Club), no budget, no irrigation line. Just two of us, a bag of compost, and the assumption that nobody would stop us. Nobody has.
What's in it now: yarrow, echinacea, monarda, Russian sage, Jerusalem sage, lavender, muhly grass, lamb's ear, Japanese anemone, Verbena bonariensis, nicotiana, lady’s mantle, Joe pye weed, autumn joy sedum, etc.
The water problem is the whole ballgame. Everything else is solvable. Ours got solved by luck: the super of the building across the street adopted the thing and waters it like it's his. If you're scoping a site, find your water source before you find your plants. Hauling jugs in August will end your project faster than any city agency will.
What surprised me: the community. Day one we met a neighbor whose window overlooks it. 2 weeks later she brought a lupine from her family's meadow in the Midwest. People stop and talk. People donate. People ask for help in their own spaces. It turns out a small planted thing on a sidewalk is a social object, not just a horticultural one.
Hi, y'all! I have a two-fold question about the social network within the highly observant community. First, what is the disabled orthodox experience? Second, how do the religiously conservative interact with class divides?
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I'm ex-evangelical, high control Christianity in the southern US. That community focuses on having as many kids as possible in order to control the future, but has a notorious side of abuse, neglect, parentification, and death. My parents don't have health insurance because they work with an all-christian shared emergency fund. It was a nightmare when they needed a cancer hospital to admit my dad. The church community supported my mom for three years, including meals and yardwork and nursing and funds for luxury treats. At the same time, no one realized my sibling and I had autism. Oops.
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So my question -- what is disability care like in Chabad and other conservative jewish households? I've lived in Bedstuy for +15 years. The orthodox kiddos act like they've never seen someone like me, a young person with a cane, before. I see elderly men with canes or supported by a companion. Sometimes I see a mentally or emotionally disabled youngster. Do the disabled stay inside? Is there community care for people with high support needs?
What happens in the poor observant families? Silver and wool regalia, air conditioning, scholarship, a life of scholarship, and layers of kosher clothes are significant costs. Are there any poor observant families? Does the community pool funds? How does a young family find a multi-bedroom place to live with the cost of housing in Crown heights, Williamsburg, Bedstuy? From where I stand, which is by no means a broad view, the only visible working class folks are the spanish-speaking grocery store staff.
Of course I appreciate that someone in an all-Jewish village will have different experiences than someone in north Brooklyn, and that Chabad practices may or may not reflect the greater conservative practice. This is complicated and paradoxical stuff. To parallel, my folks associate with rural and low-income believers and get the heebie-jeebies from prosperity gospel, but they don't think America should invite refugees because "we can't afford it".
Thanks for your time and consideration <3
Hi, y'all! I have a two-fold question about the social network within the highly observant community. First, what is the disabled experience? Second, how do the orthodox interact with class divides?
---
I'm ex-evangelical, high control Christianity from the southern US. That community focuses on having as many kids as possible in order to control the future, but has a notorious side of abuse, neglect, parentification, and death. My parents don't have health insurance because they work with an all-christian shared emergency fund. It was a nightmare when they needed a cancer hospital to admit my dad. The church community supported my mom for three years, including meals and yardwork and nursing and funds for treats. At the same time, no one realized my sibling and I had autism. Oops.
---
So my question -- what is disability care like in Chabad and other Orthodox Jewish households? I've lived in Bedstuy for +15 years. The orthodox kiddos act like they've never seen someone like me, a young person with a cane, before. I see elderly men with canes or supported by a companion. Sometimes I see a mentally or emotionally disabled youngster. Do the disabled people stay inside? Is there community care for people with high support needs?
What happens in the poor observant families? Silver and wool regalia, air conditioning, scholarship, and layers of clothes are significant costs. Are there poor observant families? Does the community pool funds? How does a young family find a multi-bedroom place to live with the cost of housing in Crown heights, Williamsburg, Bedstuy? From where I stand, which is by no means a broad view, the visible working class folks are the spanish-speaking grocery store staff.
Of course I appreciate that someone in an all-Jewish village will have different experiences than someone in north Brooklyn, and that Chabad practices may or may not reflect the greater observant practice. This is complicated and paradoxical stuff. To parallel, my folks associate with rural and low-income believers and get the heebie-jeebies from prosperity gospel, but they don't think America should invite refugees because "we can't afford it".
Thanks for your time and consideration <3
Edited: terminology
The gardening isn’t going as well as planned because it’s been such a hot summer with little rain, but we did attract a pigeon family.
Meet Nazer (Pigeon Dad), Baby Carm, and an egg that’s about to hatch!
Taking suggestions from balcony gardeners for nice flowers / plants that can withstand high heat and full sun.
was randomly gifted with this and don’t want it, but would love to give it to a new home vs just throw it out since it seems like a decently well-made craft
online listing: https://rikumo.com/products/wooden-animal-red-panda?srsltid=AfmBOoqp4uiYsUT5uLRkA1bsP8ZpZnVXLzYFf\_HBfvDXNIRnLf5LZ233
if you can pick it up around Tompkins / Gates sometime this weekend it’s yours
Usually I post wide photos of my backyard. Detail photos, however, I take anywhere in my yard and three adjoining. Here's what the garden looks like around the bend in the path.
Visible here: bee balm, woodland sunflower, beans, one big sunflower, milkweed, distant rose o' sharon, azalea all the way against the retaining wall, sunchoke, volunteer squash
I've watched this patch for three or four years. Shaded, wet.
Backyard garden designed for food and minimal upkeep behind a rented apartment, 4 years old. Shaded, wet site. Brooklyn, NYC
Bee asleep on a sunflower. Hosta leaves and flowers from two angles. Woodland sunflower blooms.
I've never seen this in my site before! Scale bug on a hook from the tool storage -combo- a.c. window cage.
Coneflower that planted itself under two catalpas last year. It's between 4 and 5 feet high. Mostly woodland sunflower behind it.
Wet, shaded site
Fireflies! Lightning bugs! For the second year running I can see the little flickers at twilight that mean I get a "good grade" in gardening. Earlier today I had to disturb a bunch of brush so I feel relieved.
Photos. A bed full of blooming bee balm (monarda). One johnny-jump-up pansy doing its best. The second wave of tickseed (coreopsis). Fleabane flowers flowing. One of the sunflowers. A cluster of bird foot trefoil.
Brooklyn, NY 7B. Shaded, wet site
I’m really proud of making this tiny space into what it is. Obviously I’m a beginner. Sharing some pics from over the years!
Pollinator garden prime time. Plus a fuzzy photo of 30 minutes' worth of mulberry collection, approx. two pints
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I have gardened in the backyard of my rented NYC apartment for four years. Narrow, shaded, wet, and designed for minimal upkeep. I photographed these plants in the early morning before our 85-95° day heated up properly.
This sapling grew from seed for me four years ago. This is the first year with branches (more like twigs)! I love the bright green of the new leaves.
Given a long enough life, this tree will help stabilize the water table.
Pawpaw seedling grown in-ground in wet, shaded Brooklyn backyard.