This week I saw my first flowers popping out of the dirt. It still looks like winter outside, but you can tell that change is imminent. There will be no better place to be in a few weeks than a botanic garden. Flowers will be blooming, birds will be chirping, and spring will be in the air. I’ll probably visit the Chicago Botanic Garden (my wife and I like it there because it’s where we got married), but those in the New York City area might want to check out the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It’s a non-profit and “an urban botanic garden that connects people to the world of plants, fostering delight and curiosity while inspiring an appreciation and sense of stewardship of the environment.”
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I swear that every kid who grows up in Connecticut goes on a field trip to Old Sturbridge Village at some point. For me it wasn’t until 10th grade (and we were on our way back from a longer trip to Boston and Plimoth Plantation), but I think most kids go earlier in their lives. If you weren’t lucky enough to grow up within a couple hour bus ride of Old Sturbridge Village (which is based in Sturbridge, MA), you should know that it’s the “largest outdoor history museum in the Northeast” and it “depicts a rural New England town of the 1830s.” It’s the perfect place for immature children to try to get the staff to fall out of character.
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Last year I got married at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I’ve never been much of a plant person, but it was truly a perfect setting. I’m just amazed that they can grow such a diverse array of beautiful plants in this climate–especially with the winter we’re having this year. If I was opening such a garden, I’d want to do so in a more moderate climate like San Francisco’s. John McLaren was the landscape gardener who was Golden Gate Park’s superintendent for 56 years. He picked a place for a future botanical garden that had “a variety of soil and exposure, sloping, dry and sunny hillsides, sheltered spots and rich, low or marshy land.” The San Francisco Botanical Garden finally got the necessary funding in 1926, and in 1954 the Strybing Arboretum Society was founded to support the garden and its programs. Today the organization is known as the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society, and it supports “55 acres of both landscaped gardens and open spaces, showcasing over 8,000 different kinds of plants from around the world.”
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We moved to a tree lined street recently, and I love it. I can walk out my door on a 90 degree day, and it still doesn’t feel oppressively hot. My car is nice and cool when I get in (though it tends to get covered in bird poop), and if it rains, it has to rain pretty hard to actually get me wet. Soon the leaves will fall off and it will get colder, and then the sun will shine through the branches and keep things a little warmer. Trees make living in a city way better. That’s the premise behind Canopy, a Palo Alto, CA based “environmental nonprofit that engages the community in the growth and care of our urban forest.” While they only focus on Palo Alto and it surrounding communities, they’re making a big difference through the power of trees.
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I have no idea how much of the Thanksgiving story that I learned in elementary school is factual. I assumed that the whole thing about Squanto teaching the Pilgrims to fertilize corn with fish was a bunch of bunk, but Wikipedia says that it’s pretty much true. We’ve come a long way from the kind of subsistence agriculture that got our country started. Farming these days is far more science than art. Crop Quest is a perfect example. They’re a Dodge City, KS based “innovation-driven leader in crop consulting and agricultural production management and solutions with a clear focus on [their] customers’ production goals and budgets.” In a weird way, they’re kind of like the modern day Squanto.
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Blogging is a great way to grow your personal brand to help you land an internship. WordPress is the best blogging platform and WP Engine is the best WordPress host out there (we use them for ODOJ and ODOI). Right now AppSumo has an unbelievable deal for a year of WP Engine hosting for $99 (usually $348, and worth it).
Yesterday I went shopping at Whole Foods. I bought a bunch of produce that I’m sure was shipped in from all over the world–they aren’t growing strawberries around here this time of year. While I love being able to eat out of season fruits and vegetables, I realize that I’m often paying more to get lower quality food. We’ve certainly seen a movement towards more locally grown food, but even a Michigan cherry has to travel 100s of miles to get to me in Chicago. What if food only had to moved downstairs to get to you at the supermarket? That’s what BrightFarms is a New York, NY based company that is trying to accomplish this. They design, finance, build, and operate “hydroponic greenhouse farms at, or near, supermarkets, eliminating time, distance and cost from the food supply chain.” They take on almost all of the risk and only require the supermarket to guarantee that they’ll buy the output.
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Happy Mother’s Day! While the best gift that you could possibly give your mother is for you to get a job–flowers, brunch, or a card will have to do for now (not many people get hired over the weekend). I think flowers make a pretty awesome gift, but it sucks that they are eventually going to die. Why not give your mom a flower experience instead? Take her somewhere like the Queens Botanical Garden, which is a Flushing, NY based “urban oasis where people, plants and cultures are celebrated through inspiring gardens, innovative educational programs and demonstrations of environmental stewardship.” Could there be a better place to take your mother?
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In my fiancée’s mind there is no better dessert than fresh berries and whipped cream. I’d probably add a piece of chocolate cake to that, but the biggest variable in the equation is almost always the berries. Good berries, whether they’re strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, or snozberries, taste better than candy, while bad berries often taste like dirt. Since I share Jerry Seinfeld’s feeling that fruit is a gamble, I’m not particularly brand conscious, but checking my refrigerator tells me that my most recently purchased strawberries are from Driscoll’s. They’re a Watsonville, CA based berry purveyor that has been family owned and operated for more than 100 years.
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My parents are big gardeners, so when I go home in the summer there’s always something fresh to eat. I never appreciated this as a kid (except for the wild berries in the backyard), but now I think it’s pretty awesome. Gardening is not only a great source of healthy food, but it can also be an extraordinary education tool. That’s why Urban Sprouts, which is based in San Francisco, CA, is using gardening to grow “healthy schools and communities.” It started as “a doctoral thesis project conducted at Luther Burbank Middle School during the 2003-04 school year,” but it was so successful that the school begged them to continue and expand the program.
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I don’t think I realized how much I enjoyed the gardens my parents had in our backyard until I moved to a city and lived in a high-rise. As cool as it is to be 30 stories up and see tiny people going about their business below, I’d much rather be able to open my back door and see blooms, butterflies, bees, and birds. I’ll bet that the people at the non-profit American Horticultural Society would agree with me. The AHS “is one of the oldest national gardening organizations in the country,” and since their founding in 1922 they’ve grown to more than 20,000 members. The AHS is headquartered in Alexandria, VA at a placed called River Farm, which was owned by George Washington. It includes 25 acres of landscaped lawns and gardens, so I’m sure it’s stunning.
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I used to wake up every day, look out the window, and see the Chicago skyline. In my new place, I wake up and see a whole bunch of trees. Though I know I’ll miss being able to watch the city from a few hundred feet up, it’s a nice change. Who doesn’t love trees? Well, the people at the Sacramento Tree Foundation probably love trees even more than the average person. The Sacramento Tree Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Sacramento, CA that is “working to grow healthy, livable communities in the Sacramento region by empowering people to plant, protect, and learn about trees.” They have a goal of planting 5 million trees in the area by 2025. Though they have a long way to go, they’ve already gotten off to a great start.
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I’m on Cape Cod for a wedding this weekend, so I decided to take my girlfriend over to Nantucket, MA for the day yesterday. I hadn’t been there in 9 years after going there every summer for the first 18 years of my life. It’s a wonderful island that is loaded with history. We walked around all day and made stops at the Old Gaol and the Whaling Museum, both of which are owned and operated by the Nantucket Historical Association. Both are well worth a visit, and so are all of the other NHA properties. If you want to learn about early American history, Nantucket is a great place to visit, and much of the reason is because of the work of the Nantucket Historical Association.
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Somehow my Dad and I forgot to get the proper cord to hook up my iPhone to his car speakers. That’s a big mistake when you’re doing two 13 hour drives in less than a week. We really could have used a book on tape considering that NPR is pretty much the only non-music station that comes in reliably in Northern Maine (and the CBC once we get close to the border). I know I’ll catch a lot of flack for this, but I’m not an NPR fan (it bores me to tears, and the CBC is even worse); however, there was a segment this morning that caught my attention. It was on Hamilton Farm Bureau and how they’re having trouble hiring qualified people. Considering that the company is based in Hamilton, MI and has locations across the state of Michigan, you’d think they’d be able to tap into the nearly 20% of state residents who are under or unemployed. Who knew that a cooperative that “sells fertilizer and propane gas, packages and ships eggs, and helps farmers market what they raise” would have so much trouble finding good people?
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I’m in St. Louis for the weekend, mostly to watch my girlfriend’s little sister’s volleyball tournament, but I’m looking for other cool things to do since it’s my first time here. Yesterday I got to visit the Saint Louis Zoo, which is fantastic. (And I promise I didn’t act like this kid.) I got to see monkeys, giraffes, zebras, lions, penguins, gorillas, elephants, somali wild asses, and a whole range of other animals that I’d never even heard of before. I even got to see the mountain nyala that makes an appearance in the zoo’s logo. I was really impressed with the Saint Louis Zoo—it has a wonderful layout and an amazing collection of animals. The best part, though, was that we got to see feeding time for the grizzly bears. It may sound barbaric, but it was nothing of the sort. We watched as two of the laziest bears that I’ve ever seen would catch oranges in their mouths and then suck out the meat while leaving behind the rind. What made the experience even better was that it was free. Saint Louis Zoo is a “free zoo,” so all you have to pay for is parking.
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I love the mountains. They are some of the most untamed and untouched pieces of land left on the face of the Earth, and I’ve come to appreciate them more and more as I’ve lived in Chicago where you can see flat, developed land to the horizon. People who live in mountain communities are extremely reliant on the ecosystems that exist above them, yet these ecosystems are some of the most sensitive known to man. The Mountain Institute is a non-profit organization that works to “develop policies, investments, and participatory approaches to enable mountain people, and the billions affected downstream, to understand, harness, and manage the interrelated and complex issues confronting the world’s mountains in the 21st century.” Their Executive Office is located in Washington, DC, while their Corporate Business Office is in Morgantown, WV. Additionally, they have program offices across Asia, North America, and South America.
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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received e-mails from readers who say something like, “I’ve always loved (company name), but I never considered the fact that I could intern for them until I read your post about them.” The reason for this is simple: most students don’t have the right mindset or approach. If you’re looking for an internship, everything that you do should relate back to the search. If you find something interesting—a product, company, idea, or anything else—you need to make a note of it and revisit it when you’re at your computer. For example, today I came across an article on Cool Hunting about Guerrilla Seed Bombs. They’re basically little nuggets that you can toss, chuck, or drop in dirt to plant seeds and improve green spaces. It’s part of the “guerrilla gardening” movement, and I think it’s a really neat idea—Johnny Appleseed for the new millennium. One of the companies behind these seed bombs is Los Angeles, CA based Commonstudio. They appear to be a two person design firm, and they’ve developed their seed grenades to be dispensed in old gum ball machines and sold under the name Green Aid (get it… grenade).
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My parents are in town for the weekend, and I’ve been thinking of fun things to do with them around Chicago. One place that came to mind is Shedd Aquarium. I don’t think that we’ll end up getting a chance to make it there this weekend, but it was certainly a good thought. And once I thought about it, I realized that they’re probably have internships. Shedd Aquarium is much like other aquariums now, but it really stood out when it was opened in the 1930s. The aquarium was founded by John G. Shedd, retired president of Marshall Field & Company, and financed by him with $3 million in gifts. The goal was to bring Chicago up to par with other “cosmopolitan” cities that had aquariums, and by the end of the project Chicago’s aquarium “housed the greatest variety of sea life under one roof.” It also happened to be “the first inland aquarium with a permanent saltwater collection,” which meant that they had to ship millions of gallons of seawater from Florida on trains to provide a proper habitat for the sea life.
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You’ve probably heard the term “heirloom,” in reference to fruits or vegetables. For the longest time I had no idea what it meant, but eventually I asked someone and the gist of the definition is “any garden plant that has a history of being passed down within a family, just like pieces of heirloom jewelry or furniture.” More often than not the plants are passed down in the form of seeds. Heirloom breeds of plants are important not only for sentimental reasons, but also because they provide genetic diversity. By maintaining old breeds of plants with their unique resistance to disease and pests, we are able to ensure the security of our food supply. Seed Savers Exchange is a Decorah, IA based non-profit that “saves and shares the heirloom seeds of our garden heritage, forming a living legacy that can be passed down through generations.”
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