Maples flower. Some better than others. I have for some time come to recognize Red Maples for their subtlety.
Red Maples have a tenderness that I don't associate with any other maples. I believe this characteristic comes through in the thin bark, finer textures, softer leaves - all structures probably that develop along with it typically inhabiting wetter sites and habitats. 

I don't talk or write about The Big Trees very often. The city gardens I tend to work on often don't have the space for more than a small tree. But The Big  Trees are very much a part of the city and the worlds we share. 

I have been trying to photograph the qualities of a Red Maple in spring flower for some time. The above is the best I have done. 

The past month or so, my morning reading time has been spent primarily with two books I am now finished with. "Home: A Short History of an Idea" by Witold Rybczynski told a history of the development of home architecture, technologies, and furniture alongside the development of ideas such as intimacy and comfort. After finishing this I finally read "The Granite Garden" by Anne Whiston Spirn who's book I had seen cited more times than I can count. She writes a history of the city, its conditions, and how "landscapes" have been transformed and created to solve the health problems city wastes create. The book is written in the early 1980's and I read it with a certain nostalgia looking back on the foundations of contemporary landscape architectural thinking that were new ideas at that time. It was an interest to me in the moment as I have been trying to articulate ideas about the "Landscape as Infrastructure" of the city and why some landscape work is more essential (or of greater value) than others during this current COVID-19 "NY Pause" where the Governor has asked us to stay home and minimize public contact with others.

This morning I moved on and decided to spend a morning or two attacking the magazines I subscribe to as visual research - "Gardens Illustrated," "Martha Stewart Living," and "DWELL." I came across the above image of Martha standing in a giant pile of compost that is obviously much larger than something any one person managed with a small pitchfork. I love compost. My points of connection to it may be my own home garden, the recycling of Buffalo Horticulture garden waste, consulting homeowners and designing them compost spaces and operations, as well as - most important to me - the large scale production of compost. The small scale, home garden models of composting are a real delight, however they are something a person takes on as a life choice, "I will live this way." Home composting is not part of the "I want a low maintenance garden." It takes work and is only for some. On the other side is large scale compost production. I love to use compost as a soil amendment but my excitement is tempered drastically because around these parts large scale composting isn't produced with the imagination of a horticulturist but by those trying to process waste. I end up stubbornly rejecting the material because it is just another commodity product for sale, not a material embodying a gardener's intelligence.

At the same time, large scale compost production - as waste management - is something that came to be in this era just before Spirn's book (Although, Milorganite claims its history goes back to 1925). She spoke of a project started in the early 70's (I believe) in Washington DC mixing sewage sludge with woodchips to be used as a soil amendment on the lawns of the National Mall, a product developed and called COM-PRO. Sewage sludge is something every municipality needs to get rid of. The City of Lockport used its sludge at one point to create a compost. I know the town of Amherst made a pelletized fertilizer from their sludge once upon a time. Amherst built a compost facility in the late 80s or early 90s and has since sold it. Bulk compost from these facilities once cost half of what topsoil cost. Now compost is 25 percent more than topsoil.  For the most part it is just sold as high end topsoil. Instead of "Shredded Topsoil" now you pay five to ten dollars more and get "Organic Topsoil Supreme." There is no horticultural intelligence to it, it is just an up-sell.  

Com-PRO was shut down in 1999. It seems we are moving away from large scale public composting. I think it is important for us to recognize this is our direction. Its not good. Good waste management is part of a healthy city. This may all seem contradictory. But that's fine. 

I wrote in my notes during this morning's reading "Capitalist Compost." Of course you can't use the word "capitalism" because then your voice sounds like some radical everyone is ready to roll their eyes at. What I am trying to point to in this is just the methods and process we use to produce things. Generally speaking, we eliminate nuance, certain skills, and material intelligences, so that we can standardize a production system. It makes certain productions easier, more efficient. "Capitalist production" generally makes a lot of good things happen.

My general feelings: Capitalism isn't a problem, capitalists are. I think as Buffalo Horticulture, we deliver 'horticulture' and not 'landscaping' because horticulture is the production I am organizing and my study of economic, production, and cooperative processes (or capitalism, if you prefer) is part of what allows us to do what we do. What capitalism is failing to do is make a compost I want to use.

A few pages later in Martha Stewart there was a nice layout on magnolias and their different forms. Their images and examples came from Wave Hill (a garden in the Bronx) and the first example given is "This Saucer Magnolia (they didn't capitalize the plant name in their text) was planted...in New York City about 70 years ago." This converged for me in this image, that "someone's grandparent planted this" but in the spirit of our moment right now where we are only tending to what is essential. I just put a design together early this week where I stated my intention to move an existing, small, Star Magnolia from a foundation planting out into an open space in the front lawn. There it will spend years developing, its maturity reached well after the life of the home's current tenant, but still, between now and then, each season - although people don't assign such a weight to these things as I do - at just about this time of year in the middle of spring, the Magnolia will be one of the first trees to flower in the city's landscape. The event might pass by one hundred times without anyone giving it too much of a thought, but it will always be noticed, maybe even spoken of once in a while; "Oh. Look. The Magnolia is flowering." It will always have a romantic feeling that time when it blooms and as the flowers fade and fall, marking the close of this years window, this to will be noticed. But none of this will receive weight. Most certainly, when there is a late frost, and the flowers fall to soon or never bloom at all, it will be noticed but with no measure of what has been lost.

I have been trying to find way of communicating this idea that the "Landscape is Infrastructure." Right now the only work we can do is "essential services," a very ambiguous concept that has been clarified by saying "no cosmetic work." Magnolias are "cosmetic work."

This is my morning coffee and the 15 minutes between page 62 and 97.
***The use of the word "capitalism" is not endorsed by Buffalo Horticulture and only reflects the language of the author.   
​

Claire Takacs is thought of as one of the world's best garden photographers. I came to know of her work last summer as I had the opportunity to do a workshop with her at Chanticleer garden outside Philadelphia. If nothing else, she is prolific - especially of late, she shares her work daily on Instagram and you see the gardens she is always working in.

This morning I saw her post from Great Dixter. The tulip collection caught my eye and I looked down to read her inscription below; 'The Peacock Garden at Great Dixter this morning."

As I have watched her posts the past few days I have imagined she is isolated in her house sharing from her vast archives. But of course not.

Moments in the garden and landscape last minutes as the sun moves across the sky. A few cloudy days and the image's possibility and potential disappears forever. These Tulips, at their peak in the image, will be gone late next week, and the next window to photograph them gone for another year.

I point to this mainly to add to the conversation of valuing what is essential in garden and landscape care. Garden care makes its interventions at very specific points in a seasonal and biological cycle of plant and soil life. The windows are narrow. Important management and care windows, once they pass by are gone forever.   

The "Landscape as Infrastructure" imagination
Recognizes the city and its people's wastes and pollution
Needs to be cleaned, digested, returned.

It does so with soils and their affiliated life species
Plants and microorganisms.

It does this matter of factly
Without that "eyes glazed over" state of worship for nature
That comes with the ideology.

The infrastructure is built to harbor the essential forces and activities of biological life
Labor we extract with unconsidered ethics and privilege. 

This is my morning's coffee today.
:)

​

Our present situation during the COVID-19 Pandemic offers the opportunity to think about things in a new way as we work to reorganize the production of everyday life to limit contact points for the spread of the virus. Questioning what are the minimum and essential practices right now drive my thinking.

Under The State's current criteria of essential service
Is the spraying of herbicides (round-up) 
"...application of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and minerals..."
Yet mulching has been pointed out specifically as
"Not essential. You will be shut down if you mulch."

This is the four hundred year history of the capitalization of the trades.
The skills and practices of craftspeople and tradespersons
are transferred into technologies -
Transformed into machines that save human work.

Mulch and mulching is a horticultural practice
that covers bare soil and prevents weed germination.

However, now, as the dominant forms of practice have shifted from gardening to landscaping over the past 50 to 75 years
Mulch at this moment is interpreted as "cosmetic practice"
And the spraying of Round-Up
"...pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and minerals..."
Is considered "essential practice."

In my work 
the application of mulch is done as weed control
and the personal work and craft of its application
is the aesthetic.

Certainly we only make this critique as an opening to understand our own cultural history and development.
The critique isn't aimed at The State
But our culture as a whole
Whose discourse and practices have been subsumed into McDonald's like ways of thinking.

Above are "Around the Home and Office" images. Been indoors a lot. A good time for some domestic ethnography. The Aldi (commodity) flowers just keep going and going.
Of note: I use the word "commodity" in a critical theory sense that refers to produced objects. However in recent reading I have seen "commodity" used to express "comfort."

I have been isolating very well. I think I have to follow good honest safety practices if I am to honestly continue to meet and consult others (at safe distances). I have an extended  quarantine space that includes two people. In the field, we are each working with our own separate tools, wear latex gloves all day, maintain distance, and disinfect the controls in the trucks.

We applied and were granted "essential business" status after listing out a series of practices that were seasonally specific such as rejuvenation pruning and transplanting. Our application also listed out specific weeds and invasives such as Lesser Celandine and Buckthorn as species that will colonize and naturalize if not controlled. A few hours after we received out status to continue work, The Department of Ag and Markets declared all horticulture and landscape care work as essential so we are operating at full speed right now.  

Clockwise starting at top left: Hellebore just emerging. Work at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Clean Hellebore leaf. What I believe to be Japanese Beetle grubs.

I have been more committed than ever before to collecting some branches to force. With early flowering woody plant species, you can cut a branch, bring it indoors, put it water, and in a short time the buds will start to open. This week I collected branches of VanHouteii Spiraea, Magnolia, Quince, Forsythia, Crabapple, and Amelanchier. 

Well, honestly, its not much of a project. I just made a post last week about how I had bought some flowers at Aldi for $3.99 (x2), and that I generally think their flowers are awful (but at $3.99, what do you want?). But. Part of designing is figuring out how to use the materials available and at $3.99 I want to find a way to use them. Right now I would call them a bit of color amongst a number of other plants and branches I have around. Maybe they work in well in a situation where they aren't the main focus.
Point - I trimmed the bottom inch of stems off a few days ago and changed the water. I want to see how long they last. I'm on pace to get two or three weeks out of them.
Further...oftentime...I have so many friends that are Aldi shoppers and buy themselves flowers there as a little self-care item. Perfect. That is what they are for. But. If I could recommend, cut the stems down a third to a half the length they come in, and put them in a stubbier vessel. Flowers with long stems just thrown in a vase at home, uncultured, often aren't finding their full potential. Explore "arranging," its an art.

Indoor plants. I try. I think I have enough basic skills to keep my plants alive. I have some kind of wooly scale thing I have been mechanically managing on a plant for some time. Watering - well, I think less is better than too much but it limits a plants growth. Different kinds of containers, humidity, light - all things and details that have led me to only grow Peace Lillies and English Ivy in hanging containers (not really).
Of interest, something I have noticed or am suspicious of, is the character of my relation to the plants I imagine growing. I have had a lot of failures but I try and am engaged. I have a relationship with my plants. I talk to them (not really). There is an empathy. I'm listening. I'm trying to grow them, allow them to be healthy, thrive. When a plant doesn't do well, I feel I have failed. Most importantly, I imagine having the plant forever.
I suspect this is different from many. It seems now one is able to buy a $200 plant at Home Depot for $9. It is brought into the home as decor, maybe watered, and then after a few months, probably not more than 24, the plant is thrown in the garbage, disposable. They don't even get planted, they just stay in their black plastic container and placed in an ornamental pot, deployed as furniture.
This is all fine. Only, it is just a way of saying, "this is a different practice."

I vary rarely finish a book. I don't really read from beginning to end. Books are things I think with and when I am sorting through something I explore books to help. So, if I list out the week's books, it doesn't mean I sat down and read them, it just means they are being carried around in my bag and I am actively using them as a tool.

Home: A Story Story of an Idea. Rybczynski, Witold. Pocket Books, New York, 1997.
This is morning reading. A nice history of the relationship of architecture, design, and home objects to ideas and senses of intimacy, privacy, and comfort.
The Vocation Lectures. Weber, Max. Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, 2004.
Not morning reading. I saw these lectures referred to in another essay and I thought I might find some nuggets in here to help think about another study on "anti-intellectualism."
Landscape Journal: Design, Planning, and Management of the Land. University of Wisconsin Press. Volume 37 Number 2 2018.
For all of time I have been searching for scholarly/University journals that engage in what I see my work as - there must be "a literature" somewhere. 

The first branches I've brought in this winter are from a Quince I planted in the back garden three seasons ago for just this purpose. To me, Quince are the most Cherished and sentimental to the woody florals for forcing. It only took three days before life activity became apparent as the buds started to swell but it was probably two and a half to three weeks before they bloomed. The blooms have given me a solid week of peak performance but are in decline now and will soon be sent to the compost pile. I will try to find some VanHouteii Spiraea nearby to take a few branches from and maybe a Forsythia (boring) or Crabapple.

Following a similar path as the branch forcing, I have also expanded slowly into bring in non-flowering woody branches so that I can spend some time with them. I say "spend time with them" as I need to practice my winter branch identification. Winter branch identification is part of the core identity of a hort geek. Twenty years ago I was a star with it but as I just learned at a recent conference, my skills have declined. I am not really worried about it; "In The Field" I feel quite confident I will identity pretty much any ornamental plant you put 100 feet in front of me - I think I identify mostly by form, texture, and structure at this point (how I engage them in the field as a designer) and not so much by scale patterns, leaf scars, and bud location. But. My street cred must be maintained.

Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism. Penguin, NYC, 2002
Spirn, Anne Whiston. The Language of Landscape. Yale, New Haven, 1998
Gay, Roxanne. Bad Feminist. Corsair, 2014

Roxanne has become the voice I spend my early morning with as I drink my coffee. I have written about this in my other blog project, but her work has very much influenced my own voice as a writer.
Sprin, I am just beginning this book. I take it to be part of the canon in landscape Architecture. It is worthwhile in small bits and pieces, I don't like to sit down with it for long durations - Just, I think I want to read a voice that feels more like Roxanne Gay's at this point. Spirn's work I take to be much like my own in that it is informed by Critical and Literary Theory. Spirn is writing about the "poetics of landscape."
The Weber is an old classic. I grabbed it along with a more contemporary essay that questions the traditional translation of "The Iron Cage" of capitalist rationalization - argues a better rendering is "The Steel Casing." The metaphor of the human encased in a steel casing, one that is the animating force of the body's meat...sometimes one just needs to go and review texts to help their imagination.

I am always fascinated by the concept of Aldi as a garden and floral supplier. I imagine in another month they will be rolling out the seasonal supply of bare root Roses and #2 container Japanese Maples. It is so curious to me that I always find myself wanting to experiment.
Their flowers tend to be the worst. However, very inexpensive, which always makes for a soft spot in my heart and so I want to "find a way" we can work together. For months, warm colors have been everything to me, so these yellow and gold collections of mums caught me.
I don't want to write an entire critique of commodity flowers here, but...the Primary Yellow is fascinating. And...the branches are so perfectly straight that when you put them in a vessel, they're just, straight. It is striking to me as I know plants from the garden and from "nature" and these very orderly units are so confusing to everything I know.
But they were $3.99 and they'll probably NEVER DIE.
I'll keep working.

There isn't enough winter, at least in our business. I took a break for 5 weeks and did a fellowship in Toronto. I was back in the office, with Alyssa, January 21st. I spend a week reordering my living space, tearing down and reassembling the office and studio, and sorted through all our 20 year deep archives to clear out everything everywhere that wasn't needed. I needed to get lighter. The 2019 books and insurances were self audited and the sent out to the accountants and all the "2019s" were archived. I review, revise, meet, and present plans and budgets for 2020 with our major maintenance accounts and supporters, and then start visiting and writing our 2020 care plans for our residential clients. I have been putting a collaborative construction project together with friends at Olsen Design involving a fence, driveway, and garden. I have a list of five or six projects that last year agreed to make 2020 projects to still get up on the drafting table and now I have had two new clients call me this week to help them get design and build projects going. Its easy, in a sense, its just all this space you anticipate in the winter to allow you to get things done - well, March starts tomorrow; space over.