From Tony’s Garden
June 2, 2006 7:49 am
6/2/06
more poppies, and columbines
May 31, 2006 6:01 amThese poppies are from the truly magnificent gardens of the legendary Yuri and Leo. This rustic garden gate opens onto their garden, which runs along Boylston Street.
These are some columbines from my garden, a gift from my neighbor Tony late last year. Columbines, or Aquilegias, are unusual flowers. I think they look like sea creatures–or those things from The Matrix. There’s something a little sinister about these:
5/31/06
EVEN MORE big, fabulous, gay flowers
May 29, 2006 7:06 amMy neighbor Rob’s poppies have all popped now (top pic):
That lone poppy above is Tony’s. He’s my neighbor on the Boylston side. We had a little Memorial Day picnic in his garden yesterday, and as twilight approached I noticed that just as the party was starting in the Fens, his poppy was zipping up for the night.
His variety’s different from Rob’s, as you can see. Tony’s poppy has far fewer petals, but bigger bits (reminds me of that old Aubrey Beardsley cartoon).
Tony’s also got a lovely climatis:
My tree peony is finished for the season:
But I’ve got other peonies about ready to pop sometime probably late next week, so more peony porn to come! Stay tuned!
5/29/06
MORE Big, Fabulous, Gay Flowers!
May 24, 2006 6:27 amSome critter came and gnawed off one of my poppies, just as it was about to pop. But that’s part of the heartbreak of gardening, particularly in the public gardens. Of course, there are always critters to contend with. When I was gardening out in suburbia I had rabbits. I don’t even want to know what kind of critters are partying in my plot here when I’m not around.
My neighbor’s poppies have started to bloom, though, and I’ve got a nice view of them:
5/24/06
Big, Fabulous, Gay Flowers!
May 20, 2006 4:37 pmI got to my garden this morning after yet MORE rain, and found that my tree peony, a gift from my dear friend and former roomie, Chuck, was OUT and in full bloom:
Now, I have to admit, I am a fool for peonies. They look like big, slutty, drunken, over-the-hill roses. They have none of your typical rose’s pretensions. They don’t act all dainty and demure. They don’t pretend to have too much class. They’re like your fun, crazy aunt. The one who spiked your drinks at holiday parties when you were twelve.
And the ones in my garden are as big as your head. They’re freakishly huge for the size of the plant itself. It’s a tree peony, so eventually the tree will catch up to the size of the blossom, but for now it has to be spiked. It’s got two more big blossoms about to pop, and the limbs aren’t yet big enough or strong enough to support the weight.
Talk about big-headed and acting all demure. All my neighbor’s poppies, and the ones that have sneaked under the fence, are doing their best to pretend like they aren’t about to burst into absolute fabulousness any minute now:
They look humble here, but they’re just pretending. You’ll see.
The Fenway was buzzing with activity this morning. Everyone was out taking care of business. In the last two weeks I think I’ve had maybe two opportunities to get out and garden. The good news is that aside from some scattered thunderstorms tomorrow it looks like next week is going to be gorgeous.
5/20/06
Copley Square yesterday
May 18, 2006 7:37 amA little off-topic here, but that’s never stopped me. Although I didn’t have time to check on the garden, I did have some time for a stroll in the Back Bay yesterday around noon.
The John Hancock was dazzling against a dramatic backdrop:
I have to admit, for many years I took the Hancock tower for granted, and I still think when viewed from the northeast or southwest it’s inelegant. Too squat from those angles. But when viewed from the square, from the northwest, it’s lovely. At times, arresting. It’s simple, is the thing. No gimmicks, like that wretched little jumped-up 111 Huntington Ave., with its pretentious tiara. It looks like a retarded midget in a bike helmet. It’s ruined the stark, sparing skyline of the Back Bay with its unflattering shape and cheap glitz. I like the Prudential, precisely because it lacks pretension. If you ever get a chance to see the 4th of July fireworks reflected off of its face–you’ll appreciate it. Look at pictures of it before the skyline started getting too cluttered, and you can really see what it’s about. It’s really lost its dramatic impact with 111 Huntington butting in, while the latter has not enhanced the area at all, in my opinion.
I’m glad we don’t have a gigantic gherkin in the Back Bay, is all I can say. But maybe not for long. Apparently that’s what Mayor Menino wants for his new skyscraper.
After admiring the Hancock, I strolled around the Old South Church, a lovely example of Northern Italian Gothic built in the 1870s…
…and had a closer look at some of the stonework on the Eastern facade, while teenagers just out of school hanging out on the T structure on the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth there shouted mean things at me for no reason (I don’t think I was walking around in my bicycle helmit, as I sometimes do, so I don’t know what they were laughing about):
The stonework is thick with critters like this. I’d never noticed it before.
5/18/06
after the flood
May 16, 2006 7:05 pm
I stopped by the garden yesterday afternoon. It had not yet cleared up, but the rain had dissipated to a drizzle. The plants that are in bloom have definitely taken a beating, but all those yet to bloom are going great guns.
Unfortunately, thanks to the deluge, I have not been able to enjoy my lilacs at all, and the blooms are fading now. But my bleeding hearts have just started dripping off their vines. My neighbor’s were out two weeks ago–either his were early, or mine are…well, let’s say they’re right on time.
My poppies (which have happily migrated from my neighbor’s plot) are plump and look about ready to pop:
And the grass is coming in nicely, if still a bit spotty at this point. Here’s three views of the part of the plot that’s been seeded:
I’m very pleased, though there’s a lot to be done yet. The thing you have to realize is that the plot looked like this when I got it around this time last year:
So, I think I’ve come a ways.
5/16/06
rainy day musings
May 12, 2006 10:23 am
Well, they say the rain’s going to continue right through the weekend and maybe up until next weekend. Be careful what you wish for, eh?
I guess it’s as good a time as any to talk a little bit about the Fens, where my garden is. I’ve been meaning to give a little background on it, anyway.
To me the Fenway Victory Gardens is the ultimate community garden. And a slice of history, to boot. it’s the only remaining “victory garden” from WWII, established by FDR as a response to wartime rationing, to encourage Americans on the home-front to grow their own vegetables. Even before that, the Fenway was a part of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace, a ring of parks and public spaces that together form a sort of greenbelt for Boston:
Olmsted’s original vision has been sadly compromised, and history has not been particularly kind to the Fenway neighborhood, in my opinion. Yes, it has its charms, but the grand boulevard that once led to it and connected it to the rest of the Back Bay was long ago sacrificed to traffic expediencies. The damage the Mass Pike, the highways, overpasses, underpasses, shortcuts and expressways, have done to the neighborhoods of Boston is incalculable. Like a lot of American cities, it has sacrificed its neighborhoods to the automobile, so that, as Richard Sennett says in Flesh & Stone, which I’ve quoted elsewhere, “we now measure urban spaces in terms of how easy it is to drive through them, to get out of them.” Not so great for those who live in them, but too bad, right?
I mean, take a look at these two photographs from the same perspective, the first from 1926 and the second from ‘91:
This area was once a European-style boulevard that integrated human-scale buildings and pedestrian-maneuverable walks with wide, automobile-accommodating streets. What you notice about the first picture is that Commonwealth Ave., which is pictured, is not only a throughway. It is a place to be in itself. In the picture at right it’s not. The overpass there is a formidable barrier now delineating neighborhoods in the city. Homeless people live under it now, as well. It has become a sort of no-man’s land.
The fracturing of Boston in this way–the dead-ends and empty, unusable spaces–can be found not only here, of course, but all over. And there is almost always a big, ugly barrier dividing one side of the tracks or the highway from the other. A small part of the impetus for the Big Dig was the recognition that the North End, and the Harbor, had been completely cut off from the rest of the city, for the sake of the automobile, for the sake of those who want to get through the city quickly, to the detriment of those who actually live in it.
This is part of modernization, of course, and we have to live with choices made before our time due to visions of what our city should be that we may not share today. But there are still fragments of older visions, too, and the Back bay Fens is a part of what remains of one of those, and a noble and worthy one, at that.
5/12/06
baby grass update #3
May 9, 2006 5:12 am5/9/06
It’s getting downright lush down there…
more garden porn
May 8, 2006 6:14 pm5/8/06
None of the tulips coming up in my garden are mine. I mean, I took over the plot mid-summer last year, and, while I had the best of intentions as for planting bulbs, the garden itself was a jungle when I took it over, and a mudpit when I got finioshed with it last fall, and I still hadn’t quite worked out the lay-out to my satisfaction. So it would have been a headache to deal with bulbs I’d planted in random spots coming up everywhere in the spring, when I wanted to get the hardscaping sorted.
So the ones popping up now are all little surprises. Colorwise, they’re not my favorites–I prefer something a little more delicate, but I’ll take ‘em anyway. Here’s a little garden porn for a cloudy Monday…
