May 24, 2014 by C.Condello

Dreams of Paradise in Orange

“Perfect Fleabane” – Hamnett Way – Wilkinsburg, PA – Beauty in the ordinary… Hope in the gutter…

Orange glow from the buzzing street lights…
Shining through the blinds of my broken windows…
Cool air sending me off to honeysuckle dreams…
Cool air coupled with the full moons beams

My body is in paradise… But my mind resents…
Among the sleepy trees and urban spring scents…
Surrounded by the energy of those who no longer…
The ability to perceive will only make us stronger…

The pain in your mind is probably a product of me…
Close all the windows… Light a candle and see…
I am still standing… I am a ghosts from your past…
I am a green thumbed vagabond and I expect to last…

Despite your best attempts to silence all my voices…
Talking trash and stacking shit to take away my choices…
I still have a voice… I still have a mind… I still have you…
I still have what most people consider a deeply flawed view…

Reality is relative… Reality is individuality…
Reality is a fucked up place you’d have to cut out of me…
When my mind is idle I dream of the most messed up scenes…
Heroin memories in the gutter dissolve into lucid dreams…

All encompassing reflections of pure misery and pain…
When I’m down I swear needles fall from the sky like rain…
Needles always land with their point to the ground…
Every day I try to scream but can’t muster a sound…

I feel so lost… I feel alone… I feel destroyed… I am beat…
If I had a white flag I would wave it in defeat…
Memories flash through my head like brilliant bursts of light…
Realize I’ve lost my mind but at least I have my sight…

Take me to a greener land of Goldenrod and Ironweed…
Take me to your gardens grand and show me to your seeds…
Show me all the secret places that you find so grand…
A warm embrace is the only way to settle shaking hands…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

March 3, 2014 by C.Condello

A Plant A Day Till Spring – Day 74 – Calibrachoa

“Calibrachoa” – Summer 2013 – Whitney Avenue – Wilkinsburg, PA

“A Plant a Day till Spring” will highlight one plant a day, starting on the winter solstice (December 21, 2013)… And ending on the vernal equinox (March 20, 2014)… If all goes to plan I will be starting with old Snowdrop photos from 2013… And ending with new photos of Snowdrops in 2014…

I don’t often say I hate a plant… But I can honestly say I am not a fan of calibrachoa… I swear when you see it at the nursery in the spring… It is in full bloom… A lot of money has been spent breeding this plant into the multitude of colors currently available… I guess that money has to be made back somehow…

I would be willing to bet a lot of people believe these to be dwarf petunias… After all they are commonly labeled “Mini Petunia” or “Mini-Tunia”… This couldn’t be further from the truth… In my own personal experiences this plant shares none of the same characteristics as Petunias… Where a Petunia is pretty bug resistant… Calibrachoa is one of the first plants eaten… Petunias bloom year-round… While Calibrachoa has a small window at the end of the season…

That is sort of the kick in the ass about this plant… It is really an autumn-bloomer… But when you buy it in the store it is often in full bloom regardless of the season… This is just one trick nurseries often use to get us to buy plants that we would not even notice…

Plants that bloom during a specific time of the year are triggered to do so by the sun… Throughout the course of the year the hours of sunlight we experience is constantly changing,,, For many Autumn blooming flowers this is triggered by the shortening hours of daylight… This trait is called photosensitivity and is a trait shared by many plants… All the nurseryman needs to do to get late-blooming flowers to open is modify the hours of available light in the greenhouse… For many temperate climate plants the magic number is 12 hours on and 12 hours off…

“First Snowfall on Lilac” – Fall 2013 – Whitney Avenue – Wilkinsburg, PA

The one redeeming quality of Calibrachoa is the little fact that it blooms well beyond the first snowfall… In fact… It takes a relatively hard freeze to kill it… In its native range of South America it is a tender perennial… Some might even consider it a tender evergreen… Either way… If you do decide to plant it… Which I won’t be doing again… You will at least have something to photograph well after the first snowfall…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

If you want some science – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibrachoa

These “Plant a Day Till Spring” posts are simply intended to kill time until spring when I start writing more… My source (where applicable) is Wikipedia.org… The photography is all my own… And I am adding my own information…

This website and all of the information presented within is provided free by the author… Me… It is my sole opinion and is not representative of anyone other than myself… You can contact me directly with questions at – c.condello@hotmail.com

Remember to tip… My Bitcoin digital wallet address is… 1JsKwa3vYgy4LZjNk4YmPEHFJNjPt2wDJj

Get your own wallet at CoinBase.com

March 2, 2014 by C.Condello

A Plant A Day Till Spring – Day 73 – Goldenrod

“Goldenrod Pornography” – Summer 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA – The rural Goldenrod…

Solidago… Common name “Goldenrod”… Did you know there are around 200 varieties… I had no clue… In fact… When I woke up this morning and started putting this post together… I realized I knew very little about this plant… In fact… I really only noticed it was because I saw it growing alongside Blue Asters in a ditch next to a road… It was seeing this combination of colors that made me take note… Last year I brought some Solidago Canadensis into my front yard garden… It is now alongside my New England Blue Aster…

“Solidago Canadensis” – Summer 2013 – Center Street – Wilkinsburg, PA – The urban Goldenrod…

Given the fact that I don’t know much about this plant… I have spent the majority of this morning digging through websites… And honestly… I will probably spend the rest of the day doing this… So I am going to provide a few links I would recommend… After the links I will provide some personal experience with transplant and first year cultivation…

– Solidago – A general Wiki on Goldenrods (Solidago)

– Solidago Canadensis – Specific to my photographs

– Solidago Canadensis – USDA

– Solidago Canadensis – USDA Forest Service – Extremely Detailed!

– Solidago Canadensis – Bucknell University – A Must Read!

So here is what I can tell you… When you pop a goldenrod out of the ground it will wilt almost immediately… The goal is to get it in the ground and watered as fast as possible… Once it is planted it will appear to die… Especially if you planted it in full sunlight… Don’t worry… The plant recovers in a week… This can be facilitated by cutting the plant down to 6″ stubs immediately after planting… This stops the plants desire to grow tall and focuses energy back into root production…

If your Goldenrod manages to recover in time to bloom the first year… Don’t expect much… Transplanting seems to set the flowering back a few weeks later than the plants that have not been disturbed… Again… This is not a big deal and the plant will recover and resume normal timing the following year…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

If you want some science – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidago_canadensis

Remember to tip… My Bitcoin digital wallet address is… 1JsKwa3vYgy4LZjNk4YmPEHFJNjPt2wDJj

Get your own wallet at CoinBase.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

March 1, 2014 by C.Condello

A Plant A Day Till Spring – Day 72 – Jewelweed

“Jewelweed” – Summer 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA

Impatiens capensis… But much more commonly called “Orange Jewelweed”… Also less commonly known as “Common Jewelweed”, “Spotted Jewelweed”, “Spotted Touch-me-not”,or “Orange Balsam”… Is an annual native to North America… The common name “Touch-Me-Not” is a result of the seed pods which explode when touched…

Jewelweed was one of the first plants I attempted to use medicinally… I grew up in a small community called South Park, PA… For those wondering… It is directly South of North Park… The community is largely wooded and as a result I spent a large amount of time among the trees… We were a motley crew that lived a high impact lifestyle of building forts and tree-houses… As a result we got hurt a lot… A friend had learned of this plants use as a rash treatment in Boy Scouts… Because of this we applied Jewelweed to every wound and burn we got…

So imagine my disappointment a few years ago when I returned to this plant… As is typical I can spend a large amount of time digging for info… Sadly… One thing is pretty clear to me… The medicinal qualities of this plant can not be confirmed… In fact… Most professionals agree that the effects are most likely placebo… But as far as I am concerned… If a plant works for you… Then who cares what modern medicine says…

Last summer I noticed massive patches of Jewelweed dying in Frick Park… This makes me question whether or not this plant is affected by the “Impatiens Downy Mildew” that is currently ravaging my region… Making growing Impatiens all but impossible the last two years…

——————————————————————————

So… I have a huge announcement coming next week… Literally… It is coming in the mail and should be here early next week… Made possible by a donation from a fellow blogger who will be thanked properly in the near future… Either way… I have a game changer on the way… Stay tuned…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

If you want some science – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impatiens_capensis

Remember to tip… My Bitcoin digital wallet address is… 1JsKwa3vYgy4LZjNk4YmPEHFJNjPt2wDJj

Get your own wallet at CoinBase.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

February 15, 2014 by C.Condello

A Plant A Day Till Spring – Day 58 – Centaurea

“Centaurea triumfettii – ???” – Spring 2013 – Whitney Avenue/Hamnett Way/Jeanette Street – Wilkinsburg, PA

Mountain Bluet… Cornflower… Loggerhead… That’s just a tiny sampling of some of the common names associated with this genus… Centaurea is only found north of the equator… It is considered an invasive weed in many locations…

Centaurea is a popular trap-crop… It secretes a sticky-sweet goo that attracts all sorts of pests… Planting a “beetle-bank” alongside crops will not only help reduce the amount of insect damage to your other plants… The rather large size of the plant creates habitat for all sorts of other insects and animals that when combined create a pretty intense effect… The photograph above is under one of my apple trees…

Centaurea tends to get a little floppy come mid-season… This is one of its only downsides… I have found around the end of June/early July the entire plant can be cut to the ground with minimal long-term effect… It will take a few days for growth to resume… But once it does the plant will flower at a much smaller size than before the pruning… And it will prevent you from having to deal with a bare-centered plant…

I highly recommend the Wikipedia link below… It is one of the best plant-related Wiki’s I have read in a long time…

——————————————————————————-

In other news… It is snowing… Again… I was actually planning to have put shovels to the earth over at the Urban Farm I am starting this year… I need to hand-cut 8 6’x40′ rows… And I need to plant a dozen trees… Just waiting on the winter to give up already…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

If you want some science – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurea

Link specific to plant photographed – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurea_triumfettii

Remember to tip… My Bitcoin digital wallet address is… 1JsKwa3vYgy4LZjNk4YmPEHFJNjPt2wDJj

Get your own wallet at CoinBase.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

February 14, 2014 by C.Condello

A Plant A Day Till Spring – Day 57 – Shasta Daisy

“Blue Morning” – Summer 2013 – Mill Street – Wilkinsburg, PA

Today I am guest hosting an online Q&A on #groundchat… This is happening at 2PM EST… Joining is simple… Simply search #groundchat on the Twitter… If you want to ask a question just make sure you include #groundchat in your tweet…

————————————————————————————–

Happy Valentines Day… My girlfriends favorite flower is the Daisy… I know right… Have you seen the flowers in my photographs… And she picks Daisy… We can be in the middle of a field surrounded in colorful wildflowers… And there she is… Picking Daisy’s… I can’t really complain though… At least she likes flowers…

Writing this series has taught me a few things… One of the big lessons I have learned is when writing about flowers… The more common the flower is the harder it is to write about… As is the case with the Shasta Daisy… I mean… Botanists have been all up in the daisy’s business for hundreds of years… My ability to improve on that information is limited… As is the case with all of my posts… They are intended to be the spark that ultimately starts a fire… Get your info from a variety of sources… Then consolidate it…

“Composition on Black Locust” – Summer 2013 – Whitney Avenue/Hamnett Way – Wilkinsburg, PA

Shasta Daisy has a particular odor that many people find unpleasant… Myself included… This is a rarity in the flower world… This odor also makes it a good candidate for use as a repellant…

Shasta Daisy is a perennial that can develop into sizeable colonies… This can be controlled through regular division… A little secret… This plant can get cut to the ground… By say… A lawnmower… And it will keep coming back… In fact… It will bloom again after two weeks…

Well… I have a busy day… I am going to have to skimp on this post a little to get it all done… So…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

If you want some science – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucanthemum_%C3%97_superbum

Remember to tip… My Bitcoin digital wallet address is… 1JsKwa3vYgy4LZjNk4YmPEHFJNjPt2wDJj

Get your own wallet at CoinBase.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

February 13, 2014 by C.Condello

A Plant A Day Till Spring – Day 56 – Queen Anne’s Lace

“Trail Side – Setting Sun” – Summer 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA – I love this photo… It just came out right… Take note of the tiny black flower in the middle of the cluster… I talk about it below…

My last few posts have been of wildflowers… I’m sorry… My head has been in the woods… I wasn’t expecting a snow pack this winter… Our last few Winters were mild and although I was predicting a nasty winter… I was not expecting this… I was photographing Skunk Cabbage blossoms at this time last year… This year we have had snow on the ground for what seems like weeks… And snow is predicted every day for the next week…

I want to hike… I want to go fly fishing… But I need to work in my garden… I am starting to consider busting out the Torpedo Heater and thaw out the backyard manually… I wonder if that would work?..

Trail Side – Trail Fade” – Summer 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA

Queen Anne’s Lace is what I consider a “borderline” plant… Meaning… Although this plant is considered a beneficial to many people because of its beneficial attracting/pest repelling qualities… It is also considered an invasive/noxious weed to others… QAL is in fact banned in many states… Not only does it create hundreds… If not thousands of viable seeds… These seeds often persist for years sprouting long after you thing you have eliminated the last one…

On the other end of the spectrum… This member of the carrot family is a highly beneficial plant worthy of any plant guild… QAL has long been considered an essential companion to tomatoes… I have sat and observed wasps first visit QAL… Then zip over to the tomatoes to feast on some white flies…

Last summer I had a bit of an issue with an alley cat… I noticed it would walk all through my garden beds… Well… It did more than just walk through them… Anyway… It avoided the QAL… Often going out of its way to avoid coming anywhere close to the plant… These are just preliminary findings… And believe me I intend to experiment further this summer… But I will go as far as saying QAL is a candidate to be considered one of my cat repellant plants…

“Trail Side – Sun by my Side” – Summer 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA – All of the photographs from this post were shot on a single walk in the park… It was one of those days… Every shot I took was a keeper…

So I am in the process of writing my spring resolution… Given the fact that I am not really big on the actual New Years holiday… I decided it would be more appropriate to do my resolution on the first day of spring… After all… I am a gardener… And I think it will be a great way for me to start the spring off right…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

If you want some science – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daucus_carota

Remember to tip… My Bitcoin digital wallet address is… 1JsKwa3vYgy4LZjNk4YmPEHFJNjPt2wDJj

Get your own wallet at CoinBase.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

December 30, 2013 by C.Condello

A Plant A Day Till Spring – Day 10 – Dutchman’s Breeches

“Dutchman’s Breeches” – Spring 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA

Seven Days of Spring Wildflowers

Another Dicentra… I know… But possibly my favorite… Dicentra cuculluaria is more commonly known by the common name “Dutchman’s Breeches”… A reference to the fact that the flowers look just like a pair of upside down pants… Dutchman’s pants… Or as I like to think of them… “MC Hammer Breeches”… Although I have specimens in my backyard garden… I thought you would appreciate seeing it in the wild… As I prefer them…

Dutchman’s Breeches is a herbaceous perennial native to the woodlands of the east coast… The root is a cluster of small pink to white bulblets… Flowers are white… And are born in spring on small flower stalks…

Dutchman’s breeches is one of many plants whose seeds are spread by ants… A process called myrmecochory… The seeds have a fleshy organ called an elaiosome that attracts ants… The ants take the seeds to their nest where they eat the elaiosomes… They then put the seeds in their nest debris where they are protected until they germinate… They also get the added bonus of growing in a medium made richer by the ant nest debris…

The western populations have sometimes been separated as Dicentra occidentalis on the basis of often somewhat coarser growth, but do not differ from many eastern plants in the Appalachian mountains…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

New To writing and never had to site sources before… These “Plant a Day Till Spring” posts are simply intended to kill time until spring… My source is Wikipedia.org… The photography is all my own… And I am adding my own information… But much of this is just related from the web…

This website and all of the information presented within is provided free by the author… Me… It is my sole opinion and is not representative of anyone other than myself… Although this website is free… I sell prints of my photography here – www.society6.com/chriscondello – or you can contact me directly with questions at – c.condello@hotmail.com – Although it isn’t a requirement… It helps…

Remember to tip… My Bitcoin digital wallet address is – 1JsKwa3vYgy4LZjNk4YmPEHFJNjPt2wDJj

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Gallery July 4, 2013 by C.Condello

Frick Park Fireworks

This gallery contains 8 photos.

I now have prints available to purchase online… You can find them here – http://www.society6.com/chriscondello – This site… And all the photographs and information presented within… Are provided free by the author… Me… At one time I had considered asking for donations… But that’s not me… So I have decided to sell prints of some of […]

May 9, 2013 by C.Condello

One Week In May

“Swimmers” – © chriscondello 2013 – Wilkinsburg, PA – Dyed puddle, bleeding hearts and reflection – I have shot bleeding hearts from every angle imaginable… This has been my favorite angle so far…

“Cornflower” – © chriscondello 2013 – Wilkinsburg, PA – I was trying to take an out-of-focus photograph of Jeanette Street… But this damn in-focus flower kept getting in the way… Had to settle…

“Forget Me” – © chriscondello 2013 – Wilkinsburg, PA – Private Garden – Underneath a pine tree… Between two flagstones… Grows a tiny little alpine forget-me-not… Waiting for me to weed around it… I had to clean up before her close-up…

“Garlic Watcher” – © chriscondello 2013 – Wilkinsburg, PA – Sculpture of stone – How do you see a pile of rocks?.. It just depends how you stack them…

“Red Trillium” – © chriscondello 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA – Trillium erectum – These plants stink like rotting meat because they are pollinated by flies…

“White – Red Trillium” – © chriscondello 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA – Trillium erectum var. Alba – Same flower as above but with a different morphology…

“Stretched” – © chriscondello 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA – I saw this log laying on the ground broken… So I stood it up… I attempted to add a stone head… But the structure was very rotten…

“Paper White Photo Bomb” – Wilkinsburg, PA – Campbell Street – I shot this photo in a sketchy neighborhood… I was kind of in a hurry to avoid coming into direct contact with a group of teens… After the photo… I quickly moved to the other side of the street… Then… The scary group waved at me… And I realized I knew half of them… Personally…

“Askew” – © chriscondello 2013 – Wilkinsburg, PA – I was trying to take photos of dandelions… But my eyes kept getting drawn down the path… I couldn’t immediately figure out why… So I sat… And observed… Then I squinted… And I realized what I was seeing… This photo is as close as I could get…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.