painting of the month

The Passage -- Kay Sage, 1956

urban gardening

Here are some excerpts from an interesting piece in the July 1925 issue of The Century, a magazine which seems to have been read by many intelligentsia of the day. "The Wildness of New York" is by Lewis S. Gannett, who seems to have been one of those same intelligentsia of his day and who lived from 1891-1966. And along the way he had a backyard garden, "literally within a stone's-throw of Brooklyn Bridge."

In his Wildness essay, Gannett was noting how despite all the brick and concrete, he could still spot plenty of birds, butterflies, grasshoppers and even bats around his 15 foot "square of grass," with a paper mulberry tree that "seems to enjoy the daily deposit of soot from the neighboring chocolate-factory." His house and yard too were formerly a "medicine factory" back around 1900, leaving his soil full of heaps of broken tonic and iodine bottles and brick shards. (Not much environmental concern during the Robber Baron era.) Vegetables were hard to keep going in the sooty earth, and only after a couple years of failure did petunias begin to thrive.

Weeds did well as they always do, and so did "asters and goldenrod, both indifferent to clouds of dust and soot," like they once bloomed in a "whole hillside...behind the old Tiffany Building to greet the New York Central tracks." Exceptionally pretty or unique plants tended to be stolen by the Gannett's neighbors. Some things never change.

Pictured: Meadow Flowers (Goldenrod and Wild Aster) -- John Henry Twachtman, 1893 @ The Brooklyn Museum