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!

Food from my Garden CONTEST

My garden has been supplying enough dino and red russian kale for three families a week and plenty of spicy radishes I finally figured out how to use, I've been slicing them up thin and putting them in quesadillas and omelets. I've been waiting and watching two broccoli heads develop and they are pretty close.  Any ideas of good recipes to use them in? Leave a comment with a recipe idea and get put in a drawing for a free 8 x 10 print from the garden!

Food from the Farms

After the great farm dinner I placed my order from Harvest Local Foods, selecting from a list of weekly offerings that has grown very large, including dry goods, fresh fruit and veggies, jams, jellies, chocolate, coffee, meats, prepared foods, cookbooks, milk, yogurt, and much more.

Here's my cooler of food delivered by Carly from Harvest Local Foods for the week:

Boylan's birch beer, Hillacres Pride Horseradish cheddar cheese, potatoes from an African-American growers alliance in North Carolina, scrapple from High View Farm (where the dinner was held), Shady Lane Farm eggs,  yellow squash, turnips, apples, carrots, cucumbers, Kauffman's apple snitz (dried apples snack), garlic scapes.

It's so nice to come home after work and have fresh local farm food food sitting in the

entryway of your house waiting for you!

I made omelets with the scapes, turnips, potatoes, apples this week.

Farm Dinner Today, Harvest Local Foods

Sunday June 5, 2011

I spent the day at High View Farm meeting all of the animals : guinea fowl, chickens, goats, sheep, horses, kittens, then feasting on great local foods and brews under the trees and hearing more about Harvest Local Foods, where I order lots of my local food from.

Pam and Mary Ann, the owners of HLF were nice enough to give me and a friend a ride to the farm dinner, a celebration of local food growers and their company's 5 year birthday.

Harvest Local Foods, buylocal@harvestlocalfoods.com, 484-461-7884

High View Farms,166 Monmouth Road, North Hanover, NJ 08562

Strawberry Rhubarb Muffins