The Norris Square Neighborhood Project www.myneighborhoodproject.org

is hosting some amazing events for the community this month and next.

Gardens Gone Wild

Sometimes a cultivated community garden plot or park space goes to seed and you're left with something like this:

John Collins Park on Olmstead's Birthday

At lunchtime the park a popular place for downtown workers to take a break.

Mayor Nutter discusses the impact of Landscape Architects and the goal to build more pocket parks

Vegetarian Food Truck at Temple

$5.50 for all of these wonderful veggies (in a large,very hot bowl of noodles and broth), and you can add a drink and dessert for under $10, (the vegan chocolate cupcakes are killer).  I think everything was vegan, but you can check when you go.  Right up the street from Temple's Bell Tower on 13th street, above Polett Walk on the right.  Only open mid-day M-F.

Philadelphia Flower Show Temple Ambler Wins Best In Show

Today was the first day of the Flower Show for the general public and I worked the first shift at the Temple Ambler display, Aloha Aina: A Return to Life with the Land

 I was excited to see the display after watching the students build the displays and grow the plants, forcing the trees to flower in the green house and packing all the supplies in the box truck to bring to the show, not to mention building the display at the Convention Center for a week.

So I was really proud to see they won Best in Show Academic Education and Best Acheivement: Incorporating Food, Water, Shelter and Food into a Natural Landscape.

Two Dishes in One: Curried Cauliflower and White Bean and Cauliflower Dip

 I've been getting a free subscription to Everyday Food with my points from Recyclebank (where recycling gets you points you can use for discounts at restaurants, for free items, for points to donate money to greening programs at schools, etc.) and though I don't love all the advertising, I do love the issues like this one showing easy ways to save money by wasting less food, buying in bulk and cooking in batches.  They have a feature where they give you a menu for a week that shows how you can use the leftovers to make new dishes.

 I saw this curry chickpea recipe had cauliflower in it, and so did the white bean dip from the previous issue, so I made them both in one night.

What Makes a Neighborhood

Great local color and history

 My design class has been focusing on one neighborhood in Philadelphia and researching the neighborhood's history, the current uses, the projects planned for the space and the community members and their opinions on what is and could be happening there. We're reading Image of the City by Kevin Lynch at the same time, where three cities, Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles (circa 1960) are examined for their successes and failures of imagability and what people who live there think of the cities, remember and love. It's an interesting thing to think about what makes a neighborhood great and what makes it miss the mark.

 

Historic details and architecture

Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education Bird Count and Hiking

Last weekend I attended my first Bird Count at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education.  We joined a group in progress, in charge of one quadrant of the nature space, we had to keep our eyes peeled for any flickering in the trees or shrubs and our expert birder helped us identify and keep track of what and how many we found. There was a surprising variety of species for the middle of Winter in Philadelphia, but he said this was the southern migration location for many Northern birds.

Birding guide helps our group spot species in the meadow

My sister in her new owl hat

Etsy Nest Furniture for the Kitchen and Living Room

I came across some really amazing furniture lately so I wanted to share some recent favorites for the home:

Kitchen:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/53380453/pair-of-midcentury-modern-chairs-in

http://www.etsy.com/listing/85881960/white-1960s-small-saarinen-style-table

http://www.etsy.com/listing/80935893/kitchen-lighting-with-custom-fabric-drum

New Cookbooks for the New Year!

I just found out I have a cousin who works at Powell's Books in Portland and I was so excited I asked for a gift card from there for the holidays. While most of the books are going to be for school, yesterday I ordered tons of cookbooks!  I found one great new book on making jams, pickles, sauces and crackers, then I browsed all the low priced used cookbooks and found book after book under $1:

Landscape Architecture Blog

I'm taking on some new interests by pursuing a degree in Landscape Architecture, with a concentration in Environmental Restoration, and in my first semester we started blogs for a landscape history class:

http://formsandlandscapes.wordpress.com/

The classes include drawing, native plant id, design, engineering, drafting and work outdoors, so it combines alot of my interests and I get to keep photographing and exploring (more excuses to travel!). Looking at the work of Frederick Law Olmstead makes me want to visit NYC in the near future to check out Central Park and Prospect Park with a new focus on design, as well as some of his parks in the Pacific Northwest and Louisville, KY.

Here is a basic graphics drawing assignment, actually one of the
short projects we did this semester, from start to finish:

Website Launch and New Collectors Photos for a Year

The NEW website!

Delicious New French Cafe

Great Front Stoop Gardens and City Planters

 Reclaimed wood planter,  Girard Ave.

 Raised bed vegetable garden, West Philly

Fabulous Fashion: Handmade

Click on each image to see the shop of each designer:

Bikes of Philly Photo Contest

Leave a comment under your favorite bike photo on my flickr site and get entered for a chance to win a free bike photo!  

Chocolate Tart Recipe

I spotted this recipe in Food Magazine and loved the look of it, but the taste is even better. The cocoa in the recipe makes all the difference and the organic cocoa I found at Whole Foods is amazing.  I made this tart the first time for a 4th of July dinner, not with pears as the recipe suggests, but with strawberries and rhubarb I was saving in the freezer.  It was delicious, but the berries gave it a shorter shelf life. The second time I tried the pears when I made it for my garden's summer potluck. It dissapeared pretty quick.  Today I'm going for broke with fresh peaches.  Really almost any fruit would work.

The recipe also calls for almond flour or making your own in a food processor, which I substituted with wheat flour without any problem. 

Happy Garden Cards to Die For

I found a set of these cards in a high school classroom I was visiting and had to have them, so I searched Etsy, only finding partial sets until I spotted this one at Bright Wall Studios.  These awesome retro cards has plants and tips on growing them but the surprise is all of the gardening advice from canning, pickling, making terrariums, designing medicinal herb beds and Ready Made-style building projects from outdoor tables, benches, window boxes and kids garden projects. The indoor gardens section is a trip back in time to when folks filled their houses with plants and had stands with grow lights and incorporated plants into their interior designs. It's amazing how relevant the whole set is and how much more plant saturated people's lives were back in the day. I'm in OCD Garden heaven.

Screenprinting at Bartram's Gardens

I scored some great new t-shirts, hand printed by artists on the lawn at Bartram's Gardens this weekend. I heard about the Art in the Open program through the Print Center's email newsletters, and stopped by the Buffalo Exchange for some cheap t-shirts to print and decided to layer the designs over each other.

While I was there I wandered around and checked out the trees, flower gardens, some cool raised beds with pitcher plants and hand twisted vine trellises and the boardwalks to the waterfront.  They are having a membership sale for $25 till the end of June and you get all kinds of free passes and discounts.  I picked up some unusual tomatoes and peppers while I was there, they have on sale for $3 each, pretty good for good sized plants and varieties like Czech Black and Bishop's Hat you won't ever find at Home Depot.

Four Worlds Bakery and Coffee

I finally made it over to Four Worlds Bakery to grab a coffee and pastry on my way to Bartram's Gardens this weekend.  The new storefront is anchoring development on Woodland Ave. where the Tool Library, Woodland Lumber, University Green, a tea house, solar homes, a new child care center and soon a tacoria are reviving the street's business district. You can catch the 36 trolley right to the door at 47th and Woodland Ave. Like an old school bakery you want to get there early to get the good stuff!