Rebuilding south florida by learning

In an ideal world, like school, I’d have an answer for every question whirling about in my head right now. Instead, what feels like a million vague answers to these questions about how to rebuild after Hurricane Ian float about. My heart aches for my hometown of Fort Myers. This past week I have been debating about how to express my heartache, my desire…

Home Garden

While at home I had a much larger garden to plan and a series of projects inside and outside the house, my second home doesn’t need quite as much work. Having left my apartment in March I knew that coming back in August one thing would certainly need work: my garden. The before was just too sad to photograph but the after is quite…

Sally Week: Urban Hopes

PhillyEarth: https://phillyearth.org/ Village of Arts and Humanities: http://villagearts.org/ Phildelphia Orchard Project: https://www.phillyorchards.org/ Day five was unexpected. I knew we would be focusing on more city systems but wasn’t ready for what we came into contact with. I found the work being done in the North Philadelphia around Germantown and Temple University area really meaningful. It was inspiring to hear the stories of the area…

Sally Week: A Bird’s Farm Song

Rushton Preserve: https://wctrust.org/rushtonwoodspreserve/ Day four was delightful. The class traveled to Rushton Preserve to observe both the catching and banding of birds and a tidy urban farm nestled into habitat and research. The process of catching, tagging and releasing the birds was something I had never seen before. The bird nets were so light I couldn’t believe that they held such vigorous birds. But…

Sally Week: A Snake’s Tale

Day three was long only due to the soreness from Day Two’s hike. We went many places this day of which I will only discuss two. I cannot discuss the wonderful things we saw and learned about the wildlife in this area to protect them from others. As such no photographs will be included or linked to this post. The first trail through the…

Sally Week: A Day of Revitalization

The Lehigh Gap Nature Center: http://lgnc.org/ Day two was a day of difficult terrain. The class traveresed up the mountainside of a superfund site. This location, once barren, had been brought back to life and is now a thriving parkland with many trails. Of these trails the one up over the ridge is quite spectacular but physically draining. The superfund site, ie the Lehigh…

Sally Week: Day on the Water

  ReTURN The Favor: http://returnthefavornj.org/ Day one focused on shorelines and water-based ecosystems. We were scheduled to visit three locations. The first a farm protected by dams and dikes built all around it. The second a shoreline protected for the variety of species it is home to. The third a unique area, a mix between commerce and parkland centered around crabbing and shellfish. The…

LARPERS: Winterthur

Winterthur: https://www.winterthur.org/ Winterthur, originally a private estate, is now a museum and garden. The grounds are extensive holding a number of different gardens and amusement spaces. While we were there a portion of the grounds were being set up for some sort of summer fair. To give a sense of scale, the fairground activity could not be detected from the gardens we visited. I…

Petty’s Island Cleanup

Petty’s Island: https://nj.gov/dep/njnlt/pettysisland.htm Camden County Historical Society: https://www.cchsnj.org/ A well spent Saturday morning was recently dedicated to joining a clean up effort on Petty’s Island with a studio friend Miriam. This island is located between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Pennsauken, New Jersey. It is also positioned just across from our most recent studio design site. The cleanup lasted 2 hours with a team of roughly…

LARPERS Spring Outing

Halka Nurseries: https://www.halkanursery.com/our-trees/ The weather is finally turning around and the LARPERS are getting restless. As the sun stays out longer and the temperatures get warmer the syllabus reflects the change and field trips start popping up in the schedule. Tuesdays are getting exciting. First field trip of the semester we went to Halka Nurseries. This was a unique trip as we were able…