Weekend roundup

last child coverA bunch of odds and ends …

Richard Louv webcast. Louv, best-selling author, chairman of the Children & Nature Network, columnist, & recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal will speak on Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder as part of the Cornell Plantations lecture series, 7:30 p.m. Eastern, Sept. 24. The event is sold out, but you can watch the live webcast. I’m pretty sure that the lecture will be archived and will post a link when it’s available.

Check out this temporary park in Collegetown created by landscape architecture students. The one-day event was sponsored by The Trust for Public Land and celebrated parks by creating temporary parks in public places.

Durand Van Doren, local metal artist extraorinaire, gave a great talk at the ACNARGS meeting Saturday. Too bad the weather was so nice and attendance was sparse. He told me that he’s due to install the remaining two gates on the north and south sides of Minns Garden this fall. I’ll have pictures when he does.

west gate at Minns

Ladybug, ladybug, where have you gone? Another Ithaca Journal article about a citizen science project involving gardeners, students and others to find “the once-ubiquitous beetles entomologists call Coccinella novemnotata — or C-9, for short.” It’s our state insect here in New York, but was last collected here in 1970, having been displaced by alien ladybug species that have a penchant for coming inside over winter.

high angle sod sculptureHigh-angle pix – When I was shooting the new sod sculpture at Bluegrass Lane last week, I thought I was doing good to get a high-angle shot from a lift on the turf crew’s utility vehicle.

But while I was out there, I met Bob Chiang, the father of one of the students who did me one better when it comes to high-angle shots. Bob rigs gas-powered model airplanes with digital cameras to get really high-angle shots. But at this shoot, he was experimenting for the first time with a camera mounted on a telescoping 25-foot survey pole. Shooting blind, I think the results were quite good. If I were a professional garden photographer, I’d rush right out and get one of these so that I could get a ‘second-story shot’ from anywhere. Check out Bob’s Landmark Images photo galleries for some great shots of the area from his model airplane.

New sod sculpture at Bluegrass Lane

This afternoon, Marcia Eames-Sheavly’s Art of Horticulture class (with a big assist from turf specialist Frank Rossi) created a second sod sculpture at Cornell’s Bluegrass Lane Landscape Research Facility, adjacent to the Cornell campus and the Robert Trent Jones Golf Course.

sod sculpture

Now golfers heading down the 8th fairway are greeted by this surrealistic work just off the course grounds. (In fact, one rode over in his golf cart during the construction to find out what the heck was going on.)

sod sculpture

This piece joins last year’s spiral mound in the growing sculpture garden.

Sunday music: Porch Fest and Joe Cocker

porchfest art

Ithaca ranks second to Austin in musicians per capita. And next Sunday, many of them will be playing at the Fall Creek Porch Fest. More than 30 porches in the Fall Creek neighborhood will turn into acoustic venues from 2 to 6 p.m. for singer-songwriters, bluegrass bands, classical ensembles, jug bands and other groupings that defy labeling. The Porch Fest site will have a map up soon, or you can pick one up at several locations in town.

My brother sent me this one. Joe Cocker from Woodstock. Love the performance. But now, someone has taken time to translate the lyrics.

Garden Blogger Bloom Day Scans

A little early.  Because I have time now, and maybe not later.

Having recently posted about managing expectations with heucheras (Graham Rice blogs about some tough new introductions coming next year), I thought it might be nice to try to scan them. (There are some heucherallas in the mix, too.) I didn’t dry them off first, so there’s some harsh reflection off the water on the leaves and scanner bed.

sept bloom day scans

Warm blooms.

sept bloom day scans

Pinks and purples.

sept bloom day scans

Grasses. Tough to capture them on a little scanner bed.

sept bloom day scans