Local Ecologist

Brushstroke Group (Roy Lichtenstein), West side of 17th North of Chestnut, Philadelphia, Penn. I did not realize I had seen a Roy Lichtenstein until I went web searching for the name of this piece. Struck by the whimsy and colors, I photographed the sculpture during a personal trip to Philadelphia several years ago. Read more about the sculpture and the Rittenhouse Square Tour here . Kraus Campo (Mel Bochner and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh), Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Penn. Here, again, I was struck by bold colors. The garden-sculpture-garden is tucked out of sight; I visited it in on a walk with family familiar with the campus. I was surprised to learn that the landscape architect is Michael Van Valkenburgh who I associate with more "naturalized" landscape design. For example, Teardrop Park in NYC, Wellesley College Master Plan, and Allegheny Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh. However, as I write this, I realize that the Kraus Campo is similar

Empty nest: I checked the hummingbird nest on Wednesday, Feburary 25, 2009, around 6 p.m. It's been empty for a few days but I confirmed it on Feb. 25. The exterior of the nest was lined with lichen as shown below. Also, note the seamless integration of the nest with the fork between the branches.

Image: Armour Square Pool, Chicago, 1909, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 21(4), 2002 A web search of this Chicago pool yielded a link to Jeff Wiltse's book "Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America" (a limited preview is available at Google Book Search). Like urban park and playground movements of the nineteenth century, pools were seen to have a positive moral effect on immigrants and other urban poor: By promoting the "bathing habit" among the urban poor and instilling them with middle-class values, reformers and public officials assumed that municipal pools would help counteract the rising rates disease, crime, and pauperism that accompanied urban growth during the mid- to late nineteenth century (2007, 9). Not surprisingly, I guess, these *public* pools were segregated. Wiltse makes two distinctions: in more southern cities, pools were formally segregated while in northern cities, white swimmers "enforce" segre

Waiting on my boolean query to run on 20 plus years of newsletters from a Bay Area urban forestry nonprofit, I compiled a science reading list. I was tagged reading bootstrap analysis's meme . Instructions: Imagine: YOU are asked to assign a half-dozen-or-so books as required reading for ALL science majors at a college as part of their 4-year degree; NOT technical or text books, but other works, old or new, touching upon the nature of science, philosophy, thought, or methodology in a way that a practicing scientist might gain from. The List: Drawing a Tree - Bruno Munari Ways of Seeing - John Berger Anything by John McPhee Books by David Quammen (I like "The Flight of the Iguana") Stephen Jay Gould is a well known science philosopher

Sky Window (Kati Casida), Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley, Calif. Read more about the restoration of Sky Window here .

Community garden and golf course at Leisure World, a retirement community in Laguna Hills, California. Photograph courtesy of D. Ruggeri. Since the taking of the photograph, Leisure World (Laguna Hills) has changed its name to Laguna Woods Village . The community garden in the photograph is one of two Garden Centers in which residents can grow flowers, food, or trees.

An exposed nesting site: in the crotch of a spindly plum tree on a neighborhood street that intersects with a major road in Berkeley. Luckily, the ground floor of the adjacent building is unoccupied. Also, the tree is located in the set-back planting strip of said building. It also helps that the nest is disguised; it does not look like a "typical" nest of twigs, feathers, grass, &c. I've been watching this nest and its inhabitants for a few weeks. I've seen the adult and the chicks. How do they all fit into such a tiny house?! I cannot identify the species - Anna's or Allen's? But the nest is called a cup (not house) and is described by Roger Tory Peterson as "a tiny lichen-covered cup in bush, tree" (A Field Guide to Western Birds 1961, 133). This nest description is applied to Anna's, Allen's and several other species. By contrast, the Blue-throated Hummingbird's nest is "a feltlike cup fastened to slender (vertical)

Ten minutes after it began on Friday, the heavy hail stopped. Ten minutes later, there were only a few stones left on the ground. Coincidentally, not long after, I received an email from the U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station's Urban Natural Resources Institute (UNRI) about a webcast on ice storms . "Trees and Ice Storms: Developing Ice Storm Resistant Urban Tree Populations" is scheduled for Wednesday, February 18 at 11 a.m. EST. The webcast: Richard Hauer, Ph.D., from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, who will introduce the issue of making urban forests less susceptible to the damage from ice storms and winter weather events. Along with fires and wind, ice storms are a frequent and major natural disturbance factor in many areas of the country. Likewise ice storms are responsible for deaths and injuries of people and cause dramatic damage and tree loss to urban forests. Ice storms annually result in millions of dollars in loss, and potentia

At approximately 10:05 a.m. PST there was hail in Berkeley:

My first experience with a known parking lot to park conversion was Halcyon Commons here in Berkeley. The community-initiated park was designed over the course of four years and was led by the Halcyon Neighborhood Association. City funding, sweat equity, and contributions from local businesses transformed the 28-space parking lot into a 0.2-acre municipal park (with stewardship by the neighborhood association) with "a tire swing, a community bulletin board, a community herb and flower garden, a wisteria-covered arbor, a grass field, and many trees and flowering bushes." Check out the the new gate . Image: Schenley Plaza across from Schenley Park circa 1920s Across the country, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Schenley Plaza was recently restored from a parking lot to its former status as a 5-acre public park. The restoration was spearheaded by the Pittsburgh Park Conservancy , a nonprofit conservancy that manages Pittsburgh's four large parks: Schenley, Frick, Highland,

Among the curious things people to do trees is improper crown reduction resulting in a crown that looks like a lion's tail. It is terribly heart breaking to see a tree, like the sweetgum above, that is not growing like a sweetgum (the difference between sidewalk and lawn habitat?). Also, this sweetgum has been raised improperly. The Forest Service recommends maintaining "live branches on at least two-thirds of a tree's total height" (USDA Forest Service publication NA-FR-01-95). The sweetgum's crown can be is described as follows: Young sweetgum have a strong excurrent growth habit and long, conical crowns that usually prune themselves readily under forest conditions. There is a wide range in branch angle from acute to almost 90' in young trees. Depending on site quality, and at a definite stage in development, sweetgum. becomes decurrent as the trees mature, and the crown becomes rounded and wide spreading. The tops of overmature trees are usually broken

Julia Morgan-designed house on Parker Street, Berkeley, Calif., with front yard veggies

John Woolley House, built in 1876, now owned by UC Berkeley

This week, Gayla of You Grow Girl blogged about the free back issues (Dec. 2005 - Nov. 2008) of Organic Gardening available at Google Book Search. The magazine has great local ecology articles and here are some of my favorites. The Bee Crisis Rain Check or how to create a beautiful, watershed friendly rain garden (read the Fresh Dirt article about rain garden designer Kristien Forness ) America's Greenest Cities - cities that might make the list next time are Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, and Las Vegas Grow Where You Are Planted (Gayla's article) Southern Revival or a Mississippi garden post-Katrina Cold Comfort or creating a "delightful" winter garden (check out the Therapeutic Landscapes Database Blog )

Update 02/13/09: Unfortunately, there will not be a part 2 to this post. Lesson learned: do not label a post "part 1" unless you have real information, i.e. notes, for "part 2." Image : Nantucket Cemetery, Charles Sumner Greene Collection, Environmental Design Archives The Environmental Design Library at UC Berkeley is a wonderful resource for designers and laypeople alike. The library's current exhibit, Fatal Design , chronicles the cemetery landscape, or "monumental landscapes, playgrounds for the picturesque, where the growing middle classes both buried their dead and took refuge from the rapidly industrializing cities." The curators are Andrew Shanken, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Waverly Lowell, Curator, Environmental Design Archives and the exhibit ends on January 16, 2009. I've had glimpses of the exhibit and in part 2, I will offer images and observations.

One of the great things about living in the San Francisco East Bay is the wealth of events and activities offered on a daily basis. Of the long list of events I know of, here are four that piqued my interest. Image : Zipper Guy covers traffic signal box, Seyed Alavi Signs of the Times Emeryville Public Art with Berkeley Path Wanderers Association February 4 , 2009 Description: "Discover the wealth of public art in Emeryville , sponsored by city’s Art in Public Places program. This walk will be flat and the pace moderate." *** Check the Path Wanderers website in the future for complete notes and the route. Geocaching on the Paths with Berkeley Path Wanderers Association February 7 , 2009 Description: "If you haven’t tried your hand at geocaching — essentially treasure hunting with a GPS unit — here’s your chance. We will share GPS units and hunt for caches on and around the paths." "Opening the Gates: A Critical Appraisal of China’s Urban Development Pract

Changing how we live and eat, one fig at a time Emma Brown, Special to The Chronicle ...Berkeley graduate student Georgia Seamans stumbled on Forage Oakland when she was surfing the Internet, looking for a recipe for nocino, an Italian liqueur made from walnuts. She left a comment: "There's a walnut tree on my block. Hopefully the squirrels will let me share in this year's bounty." Wadud wrote back offering walnuts, and in return Seamans gave her garden herbs. "We've been trading ever since. Our last trade, I gave her some end-of-season tomatoes and I got some hachiya persimmons." Read the entire article at SFgate.com . Project 010: Nature Make Your Yard Words By GOOD magazine For Project 010 we asked you to propose a GOOD Project. Georgia Seamans sent in this contribution. She would challenge people to create a landscape design that works with nature, rather than against it. She writes: I propose "Nature Make Your Yard" (or balcony or commun

Presenting a floral twist on Chocolate & Zucchini 's food-inspired monthly calendar - local ecologist's monthly calendar for your computer's desktop or your bulletin board. The camellia is the floral character of this month's calendar. Learn about camellias at the American Camellia Society website . Download the calendar as a pdf .

The February Festival of the Trees (AKA the "monthly carnival for all things arboreal") will be hosted here at local ecologist . Please send your submissions for Festival 33 to info (at) localecology (dot) org, or use the online submission form . The submission deadline is February 27, 2009. Thank you in advance for your participation. Also, see the sidebar for more details. Festival 32 is live at Ash's blog, treeblog - the blog about trees .