The pink plastic flamingo was designed by Don Featherstone in 1957.

The Dogwood tree (Cornus florida) was first cultivated in 1731 (Dirr 1998)

Don Featherstone conceived the plastic flamingo while working for Union Products. His original designs were modeled from National Geographic photographs of the curious birds. In his own words from an interview in 1996 – “You can’t go locally and buy a flamingo, so I got some books, and one that had some good shots was National Geographic. I made the silhouette, then put on the clay and that’s how it all started.”

American flamingos have an expected lifespan of 40 years, one of the longest among birds.

Dogwood trees have an expected lifespan of  40 years, a fairly limited life among ornamental trees.

Plastic pink flamingos were in production for fifty years from 1957 until November 1, 2006.  Nearly 250,000 plastic birds were made each year.  Union products stopped the production in 2006 due to rising electricity and plastic resin costs. Public demand for plastic flamingos has soared since the closing.  While many imitations have been produced all have lacked the quality and attention to detail of the originals.

Returning flamingos…  In early 2007, HMC International LLC purchased the molds and copyright to the Featherstone flamingos.  Just as the originals, the new birds are available in pairs, one with it’s head up and the other with it’s head curved toward the ground.

Returning dogwoods… the American dogwoods have just started blooming this week at the National Arboretum – many are pink.

“I loved what I did, it’s all happy things. You have to figure, my creations were not things people needed in life, we had to make them want them. Things I did made people happy, and that’s what life is all about”

-Don Featherstone

buy pink flamingos

see pink flamingos

visit the National Arboretum

Or so the sign by the side of the road says. Upon reaching the redneck riviera and entering St. George Island Florida, one is greeted with these words of advice.

Leaving the sea oats in place is of course a very wise (and apparently lawful) course of action. This dune binder is a native, perennial, semitropical, rhizomatus wonder grass. Yummy to the oldfield mouse, Perdido Key beach mouse, marsh rabbits, and songbirds such as sparrows and red-winged blackbirds, this grass helps build and maintain dunes along the eastern shore from Washington DC south to Florida and west into Texas.

I don’t know what it tastes like with raisins but it looks laid back in my front garden and even calmer on the beaches of St. George Island.

Plant it porchside and watch the seedheads bow to the lawful soul.

The American Chestnut blight was first noticed on trees in the Bronx Zoo in 1904.

Seven years later it was conservatively estimated to have done $25,000,000 worth of damage.

There are currently fewer than 100 American Chestnut trees over 24″ in diameter in its former native range.

3 billion trees. gone.

Strange how things can fade out so quickly. As the Starbucks, Countrywides, Bear Stearns, and other American institutions crumble I propose we infill them with Chestnut Parks. Slivers of land with an f.a.r. of 1. One layer of native plants reaching crookedly parallel to glass curtain walls, up concrete retaining walls, and inside the decommissioned dirt of failed commerce; places to watch the sun traipse between the cities sight lines and spill pieces of shade on unadvertised surfaces.

When the Chestnut tree comes back it will come back recomposed. When plants come back to the city, they will come back recomposed.

I have been to Chestnut Park in Philadelphia twice and once it was closed. I know nothing about it except what I have read on the plaque and seen on those two occasions. I nonetheless find it to be one of the more elusively beautiful places I have ever been and wish that everyone in every city had a place like this to read, eat, watch, daydream, listen, write, do nothing in.

Of course there are other plants on Heritage and Kingman Islands (just east of RFK stadium shown below) and on the day that Josh, Lisa and I were there we came across plenty of Poison Ivy Toxicodendron radicans, Silver Maple Acer saccharinum, and Josh’s favorite invasive exotic, Porcelainberry Ampelopsis brevipendunculata (which admittedly does have one of the most beautiful berries I have ever seen).

Since the US Army Corps of Engineers created the islands in 1916 they have been a collection point for the destitute and the dumped. Left to grow largely wild, the result, now open to the public (I think) is a thicket of 100 year old weeds. Perhaps even more impressive and beautiful is the re-establishment of many wetland species along the coasts. The last time I had explored the islands, the mud and geese looked like they might overcome the efforts at regenerating the wetlands. However, beyond my surprise that the islands were open was the view from the footbridge across the Anacostia…

the plants seem to be doing quite well and are reclaiming a fair percentage of land.

Unfortunately the archaic is captured in the opposite view and we are quickly reminded of the very visible hand of destruction. Five fingers, nails stained black from the making of progress.

bumble bees be buzzing around. strolling through the gardens of the boss on a conservative afternoon in the middle of a strange political future. and it seems to me that butter doesn’t fly but certainly enjoys a drink of mountain mint now and again. and the younger of us head to the club where they put leaves in our cocktails (and now its me thats looking backward to Ms. Sullivan drinking leafy concoctions in Venezia).  squint your eyes. Strange how it is snow in the middle of summer. The bees and butterflies love Pycanthemum muticum. Please do touch the leaves… come to our house in Washington DC and crush them between your fingers. Leave more than footsteps and take more than pictures. Pictures are worth only a thousand words, and mountain mint tea is certainly worth more. It will grow in full sun or light shade and especially enjoys the edges of our dwindling woodlands. There is a purity to the green and an ancient to the silver. The plant seems to be at once just born and a century old. The wisdom of my garden is but 3 weeks, but it is rumored that this minty addition will repel mosquitos. Drinks for me and none for them.

I felt very at home in that set of plants and critters and it made me think of the cultural geographer Yi Fu Tuan and his description of comfort in the American southwest. And while the beauty of the prairie is in plants such as Purple Coneflower Echinacea purpurea, the power of the prairie is up to twelve feet deep where roots are storing water, carbon and nutrients necessary for survival. Hence, of course, the fertility of midwest soil and the ongoing growth of corn for cars and cattle.

The unfortunate reality of our historical cultivation is that we released more carbon expunging expanses of prairie than we will ever release from all the cars in United States combined. According to the Nature Conservancy, less than 4% of the original tallgrass prairie remains.

We have crossed a cliff where conservation will not be enough. Conservationists cannot do enough. It is time for regenerationists. Regenerationists will have to recognize that humans are part of the current ecology (and will be for the foreseeable future, but if not…) and must intertwine human action with ecological balance. Prairie museums will not be enough. Prairies are going to have to take over front lawns, rooftops, building facades, and highway medians. Their regeneration must be aggressive and stealth; beautiful and functional.

In my dreams I was picking ripe persimmons and bowling ball size pommegranites from trees along a shaded street. The persimmons were somehow more orange and tasted like sunrise. In my day life, I have been lunching on mulberries Morus rubra and serviceberries Amelanchier arborea, both now ripe in and around the dc area. The looks I get as I pick fruit from trees and pop them in my mouth are those of confusion and disbelief. It seems that we have grown accepting of pesticide bathed, individually wrapped, laboratory grown and cross-continent shipped fruits and vegetables but aghast by the thought that these thing once grew on a tree or in the ground. Under fluorescent lights, with a *SALE* nametag we notice and respect these things but beneath the cover of green they fail to catch our eye.

ChemLawn and the movement of beauty

While I was eating mulberries from the tree in the photograph above I was thinking about ChemLawn. Imagine a company being called ChemLawn; that’s what was plastered on the trucks and yard stakes that would decorate the street and lawn I grew up on. I was remembering that logo and thinking about beauty and how fluid it is. Of course, great efforts are still made in the pursuit of monocultural lawns of neon grass, but cultural eyes seem to be awakening to the toxicity of the pursuit. The word chemical is in a dive. As beauty is re-defined it will be interesting to note its dripline. Will well placed weeds and edible berries overtake chemical fertilizers and relentless lawns? Can landscape logic and ethical aesthetics prevail? Without a sure answer, I continue spending my days influencing the flow of beauty towards something less ridiculous…

(Quoted from the Chemlawn website) TruGreen ChemLawn is now TruGreen, because one word is all you need for a great lawn. We have shortened our name to make it easier for you to remember that we are the experts of lawn care. While we are known as “TruGreen”, the name ChemLawn will always be a part of our Company. The two companies merged in 1992 and we kept both names for the last 15 years because ChemLawn was a respected and trusted name in lawn care.

Recently, we have refocused our company to be much more customer oriented. Enhanced service levels, the introduction of Lawn Quality Audits (LQAs), EASYPAY and the customer benefits of the new TruGreen.com are just a few examples of the many customer initiatives here at TruGreen.

This name change is symbolic of these fundamental customer improvements. The “new” TruGreen is dedicated to Superior Service and Visible Results by proving to you, our valued customers, that to us, Your Lawn Means More. (http://lawn-care.trugreen.com)

If you are in Washington DC and have some free time this week or this upcoming weekend, go see the Azaleas in bloom at the National Arboretum. Although the Rhododendron genus is certainly not my favorite collection of species, and Azaleas are not in my view the most interesting of plants, I must admit that their display and collection of color is fantastic (in a sort of F. Scott Fitzgerald way). Not because of any one species or even as a collection of flowering azaleas but more because of the composition and experience as a whole. Moving from the Capital Columns set in the meadow to the Azalea collection set beneath a canopy cover helps contain their song and let light in and out of the path. I found them most striking when they were able to contrast a structure of brick paths and boxwood edges. It was great to see so many people at the Arboretum and I encourage anyone to get there within the next couple weeks to see the blooms.

If i was a bird I think I would eat red berries. I think my favorite would be serviceberries. I wonder what else I would think about? Surely I would travel in search of hedgerows along century old American farmlands and seek winter warmth in coniferous hearts.

What if I was to design a landscape entirely from the perspective of a bird? Would humans appreciate it? Would they applaud its variance from other parks and plazas? Could I design a house for a human that birds would like to fly over, land on and sleep around? Could the walls of my house be houses for birds… singing the sun under the western horizon.

As a bird, would I like music? How about Bob Dylan? What is the best size wire to land on? Are my feet shaped this way to stand in a particular tree? Are my colors suited to the changing landscape. As the leaves, berries and blue skies disintegrate into a culture of consumption will my feathers match the strip mall? Will it matter anymore?

My bird’s eye view still looks for serviceberries and serviceberries are coming soon. Amelanchier sp., common name Serviceberry or Juneberry, is an understory tree that flowers in early spring (now) then produces small (1/2″) red/purple berries that are prized by 40+ species of birds and some astute humans. The fruits likely won’t be out around these parts until late June or July but the flowers that are blooming now are paving a sweet road to summer…between the white flowers, the delicious fruit and lantern fall color, the serviceberry is surely top 5.

On my family tree and the one out the window…

Growing on the sunny side of the window closest to my current desk is a beautiful Witchhazel. While I don’t know the story of Arnold’s promise, the name of this particular cultivar, I do know a thing about witches. It turns out that my sister is a witch… or shall I say that both my sister and I are descendants of a witch. We happen to be relatives of Susannah Martin, one of 19 witches hanged in Salem in 1692.

While this relation bestows many powers upon me (spells, potion mixing, broomcraft travel, etc.) it unfortunately does not provide for a fuller understanding of Hamamelis x intermedia, common name Witchhazel. If one traces the etymology of this common name it shakes out that the witch in Witchhazel is derived from the Old English word ”wice” and the Middle English ”wyche”, both of which mean pliant. Susan Post at the INHS Center for Economic Entomology explains;

The tree has also been called water-witch. The word witch comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “to bend.” The forked springy branches of witch hazel were used by early settlers, and later dowsers, as divining rods to search and detect underground water and minerals.

As someone more attune with magical mixes I find the plants homepathic uses as an astringent and lotion more valuable. Scroll down Steven Foster’s overview of Witchhazel for a tested preparation of bark and leaves and some excellent background information on this fine plant.

Looking back to the family tree, the genealogical rhizomes of the Moody’s (including Susannah Martin) have been studied and documented by my Grandmother, Dorothy Moody, and it is a gift from her that I turn to as a conclusion. She recently gave me her copy of Trees, Stars and Birds, a book of Outdoor Science, published in 1919 by Edwin Lincoln Moseley. Upon receiving it I learned that it was one of her favorite books as a child and that she often studied it in her youth. Trees, stars and birds linked in words and drawings… The mixture is very inspiring to me and I can’t help but set a sylvan scene of Witchhazel potions, sun yellow flowers and flying witches when I peek beyond the panes from the drawing on my desk.