Today in the Times

Today's New York Times holds a plethora of good stuff, from inspiring advice on winter-blooming shrubs and greenhousing, to a sobering outlook for New York's famed zoos and gardens, to an encouraging (if vapid) effort by PepsiCo to assess how much carbon it takes to make orange juice.

The moral of the latter story: it's nitrogen fertilizer, not transportation, that leaves the biggest footprint. Anyone have any suggestions for how PepsiCo might clean up their act? Anyone?

Good Day, Mr. President

Now that Senator Obama is President Obama, I'll set down my champagne for a moment to briefly digest his environmental past and promises.

In 2006, Obama introduced the Healthy Places Act in Congress, an effort to create accountability by helping local governments assess health impacts of new projects. His website details his new administration's "comprehensive plan to invest in alternative and renewable energy, end our addiction to foreign oil, address the global climate crisis and create millions of new jobs." He also puts some focus on sustainable urban planning.

Grist.com last month set out a review of Obama's environmental policies. Most of these are centered around changes to U.S. energy policy, but the article also includes a few quotes from Obama interviews indicating that his religious faith plays an important role in his outlook on the environment, a fact confirmed in this AP article by Amy Lorentzen.

It's also instructive to read into Obama's picks for environmental and energy policymakers. These folks are not only luminaries in their fields, but clearly bring a bias toward research-based policy, from the reality of climate change (regardless of its origins) to the potential of renewable energy sources. I'm particularly optimistic that under new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, both forest and wetland wildlife habitats will be increased.

The ASLA has been optimistic as well that a change of administration will bring a change in priorities. Their site publishes a list of initiatives, as well as proposed angles on the economic stimulus package that will help the profession and the planet.

Our new President has the opportunity — obligation, even — to reform America's farm bill, a la Michael Pollan's recommendations. A couple of weeks after Pollan's letter, Obama was interviewed by TIME and indicated that he had not only read it, but also understood the costs of an agricultural system "built on cheap oil":

"There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy. I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board."

Obviously there are plenty of pressing issues that will demand President Obama's attention. Even though he has invited our participation to an unprecedented degree, I'm under no delusion that he can (or would) reform all our bad habits with the stroke of a pen. We have sky-high expectations, for sure, and there are plenty of voices more than willing to keep our new Ecologist-In-Chief in check. But I am encouraged that those of us who love our planet now have at least a fighting chance to see some redemption.

Today is a very good day, indeed.

Pantone Color for 2009: Mimosa

Pantone, perennial tastemaker and producer of fun swatch books, has decreed that mimosa yellow is the new black.

Uh, okay.

Planting The Seed

"In 1994, Congress transformed the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday into a national day of community service to further commemorate a man who lived his life in service to others. Never has it been more important to come together in shared purpose to tackle the common challenges we face."
—USAService.org

Actually, Jan. 17-19 is a three-day weekend of service, and this handy event finder will show you plenty of opportunities in your backyard... everything from blood drives and food sharing to habitat restoration, tree planting, and parks beautification. Many of these are perfect opportunities to introduce children to the values of volunteerism and service; you'll find me and mine planting trees in Castro Valley.

Making a difference in your neighborhood, community and world is as simple as making some time to volunteer. Even if it's just an hour, won't you join me in lending a hand?

A Very Wood Day

Look, Ma, no stubs!
Yesterday I spent a lot of time in the company of wood, from pruning my scarlet oak to (finally) stacking up the firewood that used to be our old and decrepit acacia tree.

The stacking was a particularly tedious exercise, puzzling out the best match between the voids in the pile and the weird sizes and shapes of the logs. But somehow it seemed appropriate that the process should be so slow: after all, that tree took probably 30 years to grow. And it occurred to me that gardens are not for the impatient, no matter how "finished" we ever believe they are.

One of the first questions I ask a new client is, "How soon do you want the garden to be grown in?" This is a question of budget as much as time, because there's an exponential relationship between plant size and cost. But even beyond the individual plants, the garden as a whole is a dynamic system, and may not come into its own for five years or more after planting. The new trees and shrubs will create shade where none existed before; flowers can reseed; rhizomes will spread, annuals will come and go, and patterns of water and fertility will change.

All this chaos isn't for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of faith to allow a landscape to do its thing, season after season. Those with something to prove insist on perpetuating an illusion of control, with tightly clipped hedges and perfectly timed blooms. Keeping up appearances makes for a great business; just ask the Stanford Shopping Center, who keeps designer nonpareil Jackie Gray and three full-time gardeners employed to make its environment as lush as it is luxe. But for those of us who are of lesser means, or perhaps more comfortable with nature actually looking and feeling natural, we don't mind the beautiful mess — or the time it takes to evolve.