As darkness gathered that October evening, it was as if he was waiting for me. A large ginger cat sat un-perturbed on the front steps of my new home, watching me dump my belongings onto the driveway in a frantic bid to get the moving van back to Penske in Pigtown. But what was that cat doing there? I scrambled up a slick verge to meet him. Was there a tag? Had the previous residents forgotten him?
He submitted to a pet, then slowly — so slowly — and with a signature swish of the tail, retreated into an azalea hedge, and thence the night.
His name, it turned out, was Tabor, after a lake in Ohio, where as a kitten he had ingratiated himself to a pair of Marylanders, who brought him home to Baltimore. But it was years later, and only by his title, that I came to …
]]>A young native garden was left largely to do its own thing during the fourth year, October 2024-2025, living on Baltimore’s Highwood Drive. Sorting through snapped images for this year’s photo essay served as a reminder of how much time since January 20th has been redirected into political activism. So pardon the weeds.
Here July coneflowers and spirea are in flower while the rounded aster and spiring Muhly grass will come into their own in late summer, early fall.
Click here to be taken to a photo essay capturing the Before-After continuum from lawn to water-harvesting native garden.
…
]]>This photo essay charts roughly the third year of work on a new garden at Highwood Drive in north Baltimore. Carried out from October 2023 through October 2024, the work started with the removal of concrete paths and the resetting of permeable ones, then moved on to the excavation of drainage channels around a back yard structure. Emerging native perennials and trees planted previous years combined with a pocketful of annual wildflower seeds ensured that there were some good plants caught at good moments. Painting the garden gates was an autumn impulse. For explanatory notes, plant identifications, and information about sources, scroll down to the bottom of images and click on the titles. Accompanying photo essays may be found here for year one, and year two.
Like water through rock, the news of Michael Campana’s death traveled slowly from where he died late last August, in his home city of Corvallis, Oregon, to where I now live, in Baltimore, Maryland. Top of the scroll in the December 2nd New Yorker, there was a quip of his that likened an RFK, Jr. scheme to save a river by bottling its water to “a church running a brothel.”
Pure Michael or, to use his water handle, pure “Aquadoc.” Long sober from Twitter, I searched Michael on the newly vibrant platform Bluesky to high five him. Look who’s in The New Yorker! No Aguadoc. Something was wrong. Amplifying good work on social media matters these days. It’s expected that working scientists be out doing “sci comm” on social media explaining their work and promoting their universities. Even before Twitter, Michael was all over it, and not just for himself, …
]]>