On the way back from Caffe Europa, where Jessica and I sat with a gaggle of old Italian men and watched a bit of the Germany-Turkey soccer match, we noticed these freshly cut and planted tree pits on Wyckoff and Starr. They’re in an odd spot — up close to the property line, to avoid the metal grates from the subway, but we thought it was even odder that there were three in a row, with hardly any pavement left between them. Each pit is also very wide. It’s just a strange configuration.

After the butchery of last year’s Glorious Knotweed Reconquista, I have once again unleashed horrors upon the unwanted inhabitants of my back yard. A tree service came on Friday to finish off the two sickly ghetto trees (ailanthus altissima) that blotted out so much light without the benefit of significant greenery…or attractiveness. The grinning chainsaw-wielding professional scooted up the 40-foot trees and began wildly hacking at the brittle limbs. Tree parts crashed to the ground and shattered, sending pieces into my neighbor’s impeccably manicured yard. When it was done, literal tons of wood lie in a huge pile. I paid my mercs and they left me to survey the battlefield.

It was Sunday before it was nice enough out to begin sorting and stacking the wood. I have a pile each of kindling and small logs for my neighbor’s pizza oven. I made two piles of trunk logs — one for various pieces of furniture, and another for garden borders. I could have had the wood taken away, but it would have been double the cost. To have the stumps ground would have been quadruple, but I don’t mind them — they’ll look good with some planted pots on top.

I was only trying to level the ground between the two stumps yesterday, but the rake kept snagging half-rotten linens. In 10 minutes I filled a trash bag full of curtains and sheets, in addition to the tens of diapers. I can confirm absolutely that diapers, at least old ones, do not biodegrade.

The striving mulberry growing in the shadow of the now-vanquished monsters has emerged as the proud, orange-barked centerpiece of the yard. We’re now rushing to clean up so I can plant stuff and enjoy the yard this summer. We decided most of the trash will remain underground — we dug down for six feet in one spot and the soil was still not clean, so it seemed pointless. We’ll have a pretty veneer of garden over the strata of garbage. I’m sure that’s a metaphor for something, but I’ll leave that to you to dig up.

Well I think it’s finally curtains for my sad little tree. It couldn’t cut it in Bushwick’s mean streets. I told myself as each branch was snapped over the past year that it was fine, the central branches would just grow that much taller. So finally someone who couldn’t stand to see something small survive finally snapped it right in half — they even took the top half with them.

If the mugger class thinks it’s won, I got some news. I will just get a bigger tree to put in. And I will not wait two years for the lumbering city bureaucracy to put it in for me, I am going to do it myself. And I will put a fence around the tons of fragile flowers I will plant come spring, so that thieving old ladies and little monster school children do not steal and stomp on them. Their acts of destruction — the pathetic throes of Bushwick’s fading anti-civilization — will result in even more of the beauty and cleanliness and greening that the thug culture hates. Then I and the rest of my decent neighbors will win.

It was 3am on the morning of Christmas Eve, when I woke up to the screech of a car speeding away. Normally I would have just gone back to sleep, but I had a weird, delirious feeling that it wasn’t the screeching that had actually waken me. I peeked out the window and saw no evidence of the crash my subconscious was swearing to me it heard. I called myself an idiot and got back into bed.

That morning at a normal hour, a housemate and I met my next-door neighbor out front to go to brunch. It was then that I realized that the screeching car jumped the curb near the corner, took out a street tree and a metal street sign, shedding pieces of itself as it went. It continued down the sidewalk, past my house — damaging nothing of mine — then curved back toward the street, running over my neighbor’s tree pit and nicking his tree, and then running over the final street tree on the block before presumably running the light and hurtling down Central.

A similar fate befell the tree in front of my house just days before we moved in. No wonder so many of the trees on this side of Bushwick are so small — they keep getting run over. Needless to say, the splintered trees and sign lay where they fell. I assume it will be years before someone decides to have new trees planted.

Two Bushwick institutions were awarded “Best of NYC” in the Village Voice this week:

Goodbye Blue Monday for “Best Place To See Great Up-and-Coming Bands Before They Embrace Their Own Hype”

Trees Not Trash for “Best Reason To Take Up Gardening”

Congrats to both winners and here’s hoping that next year’s awards features even more Bushwick businesses (which will hopefully be open by then).

Something I didn’t know: the neighborhood beautification organization Trees Not Trash is responsible for getting planted all of the street trees except one (probably that huge one at the corner of Bogart and Seigel) in the part of the East Williamsburg industrial area considered to be inside the Bushwick orbit. Gothamist got TNT founder Kate Gilliam to talk about how she started, her admiration for Bette Midler’s community garden activism, and ways to clean up your neighborhood.

TNT is having a benefit show this Saturday: so check it out!

I don’t know what vintners would think of Bushwick back yards as far as terroir, but if they were in a pinch, they could definitely plant grapes here and craft some crappy grappa.

Our story begins a few months ago — well, scratch that, it starts decades ago, I’m sure, when the Garofalo family likely planted the vines. But the story as it relates to me began when I noticed these vines twirling up out of the rubble and muck between the two big ghetto weed trees (excuse me, I don’t know the Latin name). They had little green balls on them, but like the other weed vines strangling the half-dead ghetto trees, I figured they were just some more ugly ass seed pods.

Fast forward to last weekend, and I had some friends over for a BBQ. I pick a bunch of the balls and realized that they resembled grapes. Jen said, “they do look like grapes!” My neighbor Lolo said “they are grapes.” They are? “Yes, of course.” Then he pointed to the tree at the back of his yard — it’s dead, but the entire thing is covered in grapes.

I was so thrilled to have something from Italian Bushwick survive Puerto Rican Bushwick, that I started reading up on training and pruning. I have no idea how they’ll taste when they’re ripe, but the novelty is enough for me.
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Every time I walk by an empty lot with tons of bluestone, I make a mental note. It’s heavy stuff, and a lot of it needs to be dug out, so if I don’t have a definite project for it I’m not going to beg a ride in my friend’s truck to go harvest it. But this weekend I needed bricks, so I went around the corner with my orange bucket and fished about 50 bricks out to finish a small area for my grill. While I was deep in the ruins, I discovered some decrepit old blue hatch doors, and even though I have no idea what to do with them, I grabbed them anyhow.

I have them propped up to screen the part of the yard that’s still trash and weeds from the more finished section, but I think it looks half-ass. Any suggestions for these things?

The battlefield.

The Brooklyn blogosphere is filled with many tales of woe, of homeland lost to marauding invaders. The occupiers are called many names: that weird bamboo stuff, that gross reddish-green alien-lookin weed; but their true name is Japanese Knotweed, and they are a cruel master. Nobody quite knows why they came: there’s even a rumor that they were invited as mercenaries to keep the wanderlustful soil from running away. Some claim they were first brought here for their exotic beauty. more »

I have the patio I set out to build mostly complete…I think. The whole process has been very organic, changing as I went along. It’s hard to get a project like this done with only sporadic access to a vehicle. Even so, it’s only been about three weeks since I started. I’m just waiting to be able to get more junipers for the stair “risers,” and the thyme for the cracks in the brick. More views: more »