Long post, over 3,000 words, with 15 fotos. Feel free just to check the pix.
My yard has in recent years been deeply invaded in more than one area by a botanical devil, poison ivy in its vining and shrubby forms. As a vine, it falls from neighboring properties partway down a rock wall and over an adjoining brick wall.
I have left it there as a passive, biological security system that might have some effect on people who know the expression, "Leaves of three, let it be". There is an apocryphal tale about a second use that preservative lacquer applied to temple valuables might have served, as deterrent to thieves: When the Japanese restored the gold leaf on the golden Temple in Kyoto, they painted the urushiol lacquer on it to preserve and maintain the gold. Guess you could say that you would be caught red handed if you stole it.
The name of the irritant in poison ivy (urushiol, pronounced (y)oo.rúe.shee.yòl) does come from Japanese. The English expression "red-handed", however, is thought to derive from the image of a murderer found with blood on his hands. I prefer the less gruesome image of a rash.
Four types of vines grow in this area of my yard, on or near a brick wall up to the yard behind: Virginia creeper, English ivy, wisteria, and poison ivy. The houses behind mine front on Sanford Avenue, the dividing line between Lower Vailsburg (a reference to altitude) and Upper Vailsburg. Those yards are a little higher than mine, but still in Lower Vailsburg.
In its shrubby form, the poison ivy took over a flat part of my backyard about 10 feet wide by 15 feet long. The taller stems reached some two feet off the ground, and the vining portion nearby had climbed up a tree and a fence for several feet, before I ripped it off.
I see at least two other small areas of poison ivy, widely separated, that I still need to attack. I have underutilized much of my yard, for discounting the small spaces. But given how many flowering plants grow in other small areas of the little yards on all four sides of my house, I now realize I can make very good use of this freed-up space once I decide what I want to put there.
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Urushiol is oily, so does not rinse off with plain water. It can be dissolved in rubbing alcohol or broken up by soap or detergent, but washing with mild soap may spread it around as much as destroy it. When I was a child, I was susceptible to the usual rash, which sets in, a day or two after exposure, and typically lasts 10 to 14 days but can last as long as four weeks. In my teens, I became immune. But I'm not presently immune. Still, I preferred to work with gardening gloves on but without long sleeves, in order not to risk spreading urushiol to other garments (e.g., underwear) in the washing machine, and I didn't want to run the machine just for a shirt and pants. So I've got a rash, mainly on my right forearm.
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When I was in East Orange General Hospital after my first knee surgery, a nurse (nurse's aide?) told me a trick she learned from her mother, about alleviating an itch without damaging the skin, by rubbing an itchy area with a piece of cloth rather than scratching with fingernails. It worked pretty well (tho perhaps one doesn't get the full emotional satisfaction of ripping away with fingernails — then regretting the injury that that does), so I said something like "Smart woman, your mother", by which I meant to imply "and dauter too". That was, alas, exactly the wrong thing to say to that particular young woman, who distinctly did NOT see that compliment as extending to her too. She remarked something like, "That's what she thinks too", and I didn't pursue it. You never know what will set somebody off.
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I left a small area of poison ivy undisturbed, to serve as root stock for a botanical fence. Part of the wooden fence between my yard and that of the four-family apartment house nextdoor (which is down several feet from my yard, since I'm on a slope) fell down.
There's a wide gap in my fence beyond these planter benches. You can see a standing portion on the right, which is currently held up by a rope around a tree with some poison ivy still on it, but I have looped some wisteria vines around the fence in the hope that as they grow, the woody stems will hold that fence portion in place and I can then remove the rope.
Rather than try to put the fallen sections or a replacement fence up, I'm going to use some of the dozens of rose of Sharon saplings in the yard, closely-spaced, to create a formidable hedge, and twine poison ivy along the property line as well. The ivy might spread on the ground and climb the roses of Sharon as well. That may seem hostile to the neighbors, but someone stole my patio table last year (the year before? in any case, the third year it was on the patio) after part of the fence fell, so people could see that that $200 metal-mesh table was just resting on the concrete pad that serves as my patio (padio? — the floor of a one-time pigeon coop that was demolished long ago), without a chain or bolts into the concrete. I suspect workers who were doing roofing nextdoor, or guests of residents, rather than my neighbors themselves. In any case, I'll create a flowering hedge reinforced by poison ivy. Good fences make good neighbors. And good neighbors won't get red hands.
This is one of the fallen fence sections, with poison ivy growing up between the slats. This is close to where the fence gap is, so I can trail the poison ivy vine along the fenceline from here, or simply transplant entirely. I suspect that this hardy weed doesn't need to be handled delicately in transplantation.
I initially left a bit of vining poison ivy on the front of this tree, tho I removed it from the back, but I don't think I need it for the botanical fence so will remove it.
Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) is a treelike shrub that in my yard has already reached perhaps 13 feet in height and produces bell-shaped flowers some 3 inches wide and deep. The bulk of the flowers in my yard are purple, but I've seen some white ones as well, in the neighborhood if not in my own yard. I would check the yard now except that the shrubs don't begin to bloom till later this month. I see from Wikipedia that the flowers are edible! I should check out recipes for these flowers, as well as for other things that grow wild in my yard, such as dandelion (leaves and flowers) and green onions. Given the state of the economy and how little Social Security pays, this could work out.
It's hard for two-dimensional cameras to distinguish among things at different depths, so it may not be clear from this foto where the roses of Sharons that flank the back gate to my car end and the trees beyond begin, but there are two r.o.S. treelike shrubs in this foto, about 13 or 14 feet tall. There are also dozens of rose of Sharon saplings and some pre-bloom 'weedflowers' in the foreground.
Last year (year before?) I also placed two rose of Sharon saplings at the curb. One died, and someone (presumably kids) stripped the leaves and ripped the top off the other. It hasn't fully recovered.
Here's the surviving r.o.S. at my curb. Note the sudden, dead end of the center stem/trunk, where someone broke it off. The sidewalk, by the way, is slate, not cement, and the plant is about 3 or 3½ feet tall at present. I want to plant at least one more r.o.S, at points where the doors of cars parked at the curb would not swing into them. Most houses in this neighborhood have their own driveway and a tree out front, but there is still room for at least one rose of Sharon as well.
I intend to replace the r.o.S. that died, leave the one that is recovering, and perhaps use a third to replace the yellow-flowering tree at the curb that died, if the City does not itself replace street trees but would let me cut down that dead tree and substitute a rose of Sharon. I don't know what these trees are, but you can see one in bloom in the foto below, across the street from my dead one. A rose of Sharon would be as tall as the dead tree.
I have so many rose of Sharon seedlings of varying heights that if the neighbors wanted to put them at the curb between the trees to give a uniform flowering look to the entire block, they could. And each throws hundreds of seeds a year. I've got the seedlings if they've got the will to plant. Indeed, there's a house around the corner on 18th Avenue that has a white-flowering r.o.S. (with deep pink interior). The owner probably also has dozens of seedlings coming up that he doesn't have room for, so we could alternate white and purple-flowering roses of Sharon, and cross-pollination might thereafter produce interesting variations in seeds that could be planted elsewhere all over the city. Rose of Sharon is practically a weed, so hardy is it, and at 13 feet is tall enuf to hide ugly industrial sites behind greenery and huge, gorgeous flowers thru the whole of mid- to late summer. We could line every street in Newark with treelike flowering shrubs that produce purple, pink, or white flowers, with contrasting colors around the stamen, in less than 10 years.
Canopy of my nextdoor neighbors' tree (I don't know if the whole of this very long block (1,000 feet) has these yellow-flowering trees, but my portion of the block does), seen from my third-floor window. I think yellow-flowering trees are fairly unusual, and trees that flower after they have thrown leaves are also unusual, so whatever they are, they may be doubly unusual.
In any case, this next foto shows shows how large the yellow-flowering trees can get. Ideally, I'd like the City to replace my dead tree with a healthy specimen of the same type. But if they would charge me to cut it down, cart it away, excavate a hole, and drop a new tree in its place, I'll pass. I wonder what City department I should contact to ask about this, and if I can lawfully cut down this dead tree and replace it, on my own, with a rose of Sharon.
When I lived in Manhattan, I thought about trying to form a nonprofit organization to be called "Trees Please", that would collect self-seeded quality trees, including flowering varieties, from yards where they were in excess (I rip up dozens of maple, wild cherry, and oak seedlings every year, lest my yard be completely overgrown in forest), grow them to good size in vacant lots, then put them into treepits at the curb all around NYC, from the understanding that greenery soothes people and contributes to purifying the air and making a city more livable. I didn't get around to it then, and when I moved to Newark I saw how green it is in most places, so thought it unnecessary here. But to the extent that there are parts of Newark (or other nearby towns and cities) where trees (and large shrubs), especially of flowering varieties, are in short supply, such a project might be worthwhile even here.
And here's the view of that tree from my porch. I am so glad I didn't settle for a house without a porch. In warm weather, I can sit in the sun. Around Christmas, I can put a plastic penguin and internally-lited snowman on the porch as winter decorations.
Indeed, it occurs to me that biomass furnaces that can burn fallen leaves, twigs, and branches as much as harvested branch and trunk wood, could fuel at least major buildings that house governmental and corporate entities. Newark's land area and native soils can grow HUGE amounts of biomass for such use. How do I know? Because I have had to hack down and rip out enormous masses of unwanted plant growth to make my property — my little eighth of an acre — orderly. (By the way, I recently learned that an acre, theretofore a nearly meaningless term for me in that I have never been a farmer, is nearly the size of a football field without the end zones (91%).
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In any case, given how much rain we receive in a typical growing season, and the length of the growing season in our hardiness zone (6b), we could grow an awful lot of biomass each year for conversion to energy in the winter. So a Newark "Trees[,] Please" might be reconceptualized as a "Trees — Don't Freeze" project.
Self-seeded mimosa (?) in my backyard. It hasn't flowered yet, so maybe it's not a mimosa, but it's very pretty anyway. Unfortunately, it is growing too close to the chain-link fence and may grow thru it in time.
I have in my yard an extraordinarily fast-growing type of tree with very soft wood. Someone suggested to me that it might be ash, but I don't know for sure.
Whatever it is, it grows very, very FAST, right here in Newark. If the biomass that such extremely fast growth produces stores large quantities of heat energy that could be liberated in a biomass furnace, we might very well be able to cut energy costs in Newark's schools and other governmental installations.
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Indeed, with some "cold-frame" style greenhouses under geodesic domes/vaults (that is, with no artificial heat sources, just the sun thru clear glass or plastic), Newark might become an "urban forest" with only a redirection of water that falls onto the dome into storage containers from which to water the interior. Newark's urban forests might even in time produce quality hardwoods for furniture and other high-end uses, not just biomass for furnaces.
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Too many people view everything in "either/or" or "Them/Us" terms. Wiser, older people have learned, thru the course of their complicated and nuanced lives, to see the world in "both/and" or "Them-plus-Us" terms. It's not just Newarkers who have learned this indispensable lesson from life. The United States overall is the quintessential Land of Both/And. We have quarts of milk but liters of soda; ounces for meat in recipes but cc's for dosages in medicine. Outsiders sometimes wonder how we can possibly cope with such a dizzying array of measures — but not with the metric system, systematically. We know liters and cc's but not decaliters or square kilometers. Live here awhile, and you learn how Americans see things: different things take different measures. So, just as you don't judge a fluid by the measures of a solid, you don't quantify gems the way you dole out medication, or measure the temperature outdoors in the same way as you measure the capacity of an air-conditioner indoors. To each thing its own measure. Sounds absurd, and it is complicated. But it may well be that coping with a chaos of measures attunes us to the differentness of each distinct type of thing, which makes us more flexible mentally and more tolerant sociopolitically. Maybe.
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Americans in general and, I hope, Newarkers in particular, do not need external justification to act. The United States is noted, among the nations of the world, for the initiative of its citizens, who spontaneously form uncountable thousands of organizations to address specific problems — local organizations for local problems, wider organizations for wider problems. And we always communicate what we have done to other people, in the hope that we might help others accomplish what we have managed to accomplish, or that we might find solutions elsewhere that have heretofore escaped us here. Urban forests? Ridiculous? Or great good sense? Edible flowers (other than broccoli, cauliflower, and other flowerheads we use as vegetables) — insane or the best of both worlds, esthetic and nutritional? In World War II, millions of Americans grew "Victory Gardens" to ease the strain on the agriculture industry in trying to supply both the troops at the front and the people back home. Now we have other challenges, such as living within our economic and environmental means. Urban gardening and urban forestry might contribute to meeting those challenges.
The mimosa (or whatever) is dwarfed by evergreen bamboo beyond, which started as one stem about 3 feet tall and its roots and has now taken over the fenced-in area in my backyard. It's probably 15 feet tall now. I am going to cut some canes to use to train vining plants elsewhere in the yard, but bamboo has many uses and grows fast. I got the one cane from a homeowner on 18th Avenue perhaps 5 years ago. Look at the stand of canes now. The dauter wanted to get rid of much more of it, but her father (who is from Puerto Rico) loves it. So she asked her son to separate a bit to give to me. That's Newark neighborliness! Some bamboos won't survive a Newark winter, but this one does, tho some leaves turn brown. You can see a stand of it in Branch Brook Park along the park drive approaching Bloomfield Avenue. I'm reminded by a Wikipedia article that bamboo shoots are a significant food source in East Asia. I don't know if the bamboo in my yard is suitable for such a purpose, but it bears investigation.
Urban farms and forests would not replace rural farms and forests, merely supplement them. In WWII, American farms did not stop producing vegetable, meat, and dairy products for the domestic market just because Victory Gardens sprang up everywhere. We are not an all-or-nothing society. We are an every-little-bit-helps society. Newark, at its current size (it needs to grow, geographically), can make an impression upon outsiders only by doing things that are striking in conception and brilliant in execution. Can we contribute, in any meaningful way, to the solution of vexing national problems of environmental devastation in an age of privation? Every vacant lot turned into a vegetable garden, biomass production station, or hardwood mini-forest is a good thing that didn't exist before. No one brick built Brick City, but Brick City exists, because many different people piled brick upon brick, higher and higher, to create the signature buildings of Newark's skyline. There IS no one solution to the biggest problems, only multiple solutions effected by the efforts of innumerable people. Some of those efforts are for pay, as an occupation. Others are hobbies. But others are selfless exertions to make a difference, not to become famous — for themselves or their city. We do what we do — not "what we can". We do what we do, for our own reasons. Cynics observe that there is no such thing as a selfless act, because we get a kick out of each "selfless" act, so get payback. OK. We can concede that. But that only takes us back to the Both/And nature of American society at its quintessential best: we work for the greater good and get a feeling of accomplishment and self-worth from it. Where's the harm?
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Almost everything that ever happened to any American place has happened to Newark. We were farmland. We were factories. We were urban unrest. We were confrontation and recrimination. We were reciprocal indignation about unfair counter-victimization, in which people who had nothing to do with the injustices of the time suffered violence, looting, and arson. We were massive white flite, and now are timid white return. Newark is college town, art gallery, performing-arts amphitheater. "Washington slept here" — he really did. And now a Frenchman who goes by the name of "AK Airways" installs enormous artworks in Rupert Ravens Contemporary gallery and hundreds of the best people in world arts discover that Newark has become a major regional and international arts hub, a place that, before long, every artist who aspires to international renown will HAVE to show in, to be taken seriously.
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Newark never was as bad as people think. Will it be as good as I would like to think? We shall see.
