The next Brooklyn Wild Parrot Safari is Saturday, June 3, 2006.

The tours, guided by Steve Baldwin, start at 12 noon
at Brooklyn College‘s Hillel Gate, on Campus Road at Hillel Place, close to the last stop on the 2 train (Flatbush Avenue/Nostrand Avenue).

The photo above was taken September 29, 2005. It shows a parrot checking me out as s/he’s about to get into a fruit from our next-door neighbor’s apple tree. Their apple tree bloomed gloriously last Spring, just after we bought our house. More blooms = more bees = more apples = more parrots. This Spring the bloom was scant, so we expect fewer apples, and fewer parrots, this year than last.

[Technical update, August 21, 2006: Removed new lines between table rows to eliminate white-space preceding table, per http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help-publishing/browse_thread/thread/a2999c2c0017b5b0.]

I’m trying to select an “antique” rose or two for the heirloom garden, one which was available in 1905 or earlier. (Our house was built in 1900.) I don’t want to have to learn how roses are classified: Floribunda, Musk, Bourbon, and so on. I want a rose which will perform well in a mixed border: long-/repeat-blooming, fragrant, disease-free.

Many of the rose growers I’ve found online assume that the visitor is a rose “geek.” The only way to look at their offerings is to browse through a hierarchical listing of what’s available. They require that you already know the rose you’re looking for and how it’s classified.

Vintage Gardens provides the best online search tool I’ve found.

Our rose collection has grown to over 3500 varieties, including every rose class from the very oldest to the most modern. It is the largest collection of roses offered by any nursery in the world today. We value each variety and look on this as a preservation collection that provides a valuable resource to gardeners and helps to preserve our heritage of roses. We go to the greatest lengths to maintain correct identifications on our roses. We research and compare with collections worldwide to ensure that our information is as accurate as it can be. In our catalogue we identify the source from which our mother plant came, to assist others who are seeking a specific rose.

Vintage Gardens

Below is a table listing partial results from a search for roses introduced in the 1800s with intense scent and rapid rebloom.

I emailed the following letter to National Public Radio (NPR) in response to their broadcast, yesterday, Monday, May 29, 2006, Tending ‘Defiant Gardens’ During Wartime. Today I recorded it over the phone with them for possible broadcast on Thursday morning.

Regarding your broadcast, “Tending Defiant Gardens During Wartime,” broadcast around 7:50am EDT, May 29, 2006.
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5435131]

Thank you for this story, apt for Memorial Day. It made me think: How much “defiance” figures into my own gardening? The garden does not judge me. The insects and plants do not care if I’m angry or happy or grieving.

Gardening connects me to something bigger than me, bigger than everyone. Through gardening, I can tap into a sense of time that dwarfs the brief existence of humankind, the source of all suffering in the world. It reminds me that, whatever happens to me, to us, life prevails.

Gardening is an act of defiance because, no matter what people inflict on each other and themselves in the names of their gods, gardening demonstrates hope.

Just broadcast this morning on NPR:

From the Western Front trenches of World War I to the deserts of Iraq, soldiers have found comfort in the simple act of gardening.

Kenneth Helphand, writes about war gardens — not just victory gardens, grown in time of scarcity, but those planted on hostile fronts, including Eastern Europe’s ghettos and the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II. Helphand calls the gardens an act of defiance.

NPR : Tending ‘Defiant Gardens’ During Wartime

How much “defiance” figures into my own gardening? The garden does not judge me. The insects and plants do not care if I’m angry or happy or grieving.

Gardening connects me to something bigger than me, bigger than everyone. Through gardening, I can tap into a sense of time that dwarfs the brief existence of humankind, the source of all suffering in the world. It reminds me that, whatever happens to me, to us, life prevails.

Gardening is an act of defiance because, no matter what people inflict on each other and themselves in the names of their gods, gardening demonstrates hope.

I’m unfamiliar with the statistical analytical method of redundancy analysis used in this paper, and the charts were unintelligible to me. But the underlying thesis is intriguing, and underscores the importance of protecting and expanding biological diversity in all environments, even – perhaps especially – urban ones. It’s never too late to start making things better for living and future generations.

The unequal distribution of wealth in cities contributes to other forms of spatial, social, and biological inequities in complex, interacting, and self-reinforcing ways. … Spatial variation in urban bird communities may also reflect socioeconomic variables and cultural differences among the human population. The purpose of this paper was to examine whether socioeconomic factors (such as mean family income and ethnic diversity) also relate to the diversity and abundance of birds in Vancouver, British Columbia. … Results demonstrate that wealthier neighborhoods have more native species of birds and that these native species increase in abundance as the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood improves. With two-thirds of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2030, more and more people will grow up surrounded by a depauperate community of birds, and this could adversely affect the way people perceive, appreciate, and understand nature. Ultimately, as city birdlife diminishes and urban dwellers become dissociated from the natural diversity it represents, popular support for preserving and restoring such diversity may wane, allowing ecological conditions to further erode.

Stephanie J. Melles. Department of Zoology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G5
Urban Bird Diversity as an Indicator of Human Social Diversity and Economic Inequality in Vancouver, British Columbia
Urban Habitats, Volume 3, Number 1, Fall 2005