Rails to park: New York's High Line

A meandering walk to the Hudson River brought us to Gansevoort Street, the beginning of the High Line, one of New York City's newest parks. Alas, I was without my notebook and camera, so have no detailed observations or photographs to share with you, except to note that the positive reviews of the park are warranted.

Here is a short list of reviews I've enjoyed:

getting high in NYC at Garden Bytes from the Big Apple

City Portraits - The High Line, Chelsea at New York Portraits

and Nicolai Ouroussoff's On High, a Fresh Outlook at the New York Times

Autumn botanical tour in Turkey

Autumn crocus in Turkey courtesy of Holly Chase

Join Holly Chase for an autumn botanical tour in Turkey! Ms. Chase's spring tour in Turkey was attended and blogged about by former NPR broadcaster Ketzel Levine.

Here's what I know of the tour courtesy of Ms. Chase:

• Southwestern Turkey, with optional extension to Cappadocia
• date: October 11 -22, 2009
• tour leader: English-speaking Turkish professor with expertise in Mediterranean & Anatolian flora
• sites: Istanbul, Buldan, Dalyan and more
• a $200 deposit with early sign-up
• full payment is due 45 days before departure (approximately the second half of August)

Intrigued? Contact Holly Chase via phone (941.330.8738 & 860.536.2540), email (holly@hollychase.com), or the Web (http://hollychase.com) for more information.

On tour: Kitchen garden in the side yard

This side yard kitchen garden was part of an entire yard-garden on Pomona Avenue in Albany, California featured on this year's Bringing Back the Natives garden tour. A clever re-use of a former driveway. My tour mate commented on the flexible design of the kitchen garden. It can be removed easily if the current owner or future owner would like to use the space for parking. Also, the raised beds provide easy access for garden duties and eliminate worries about soil contamination.

Other interesting elements of the Pomona yard-garden are the three redbuds with an understory of wildflowers in the sidewalk planting strip and the Fremontia (Fremontodendron californicum) in the backyard.

Also in the backyard were two species of dogwood I had not seen before: blackfruit and creek dogwoods.

Blackfruit dogwood (Cornus sessilis)

Creek dogwood (C. sericea)