A friend introduced me to The Italian Garden Project two summers ago, when a group of us took a tour of gardens in Morningside.  Mary Menniti of Sewickley founded the Project and has turned it into a network not just of natives of Italy who garden in the old-school ways but first-generation Italians who have continued the traditions and people like me who want to emulate them and celebrate their prodigious efficiency.

 

Now I can find out all about growing figs, and you can too.

 

“Everything you ever wanted to know about growing fig trees” classes will start in June. There will be four, each month through September. The two-hour classes are $40 and 15 people can be in each one.

 

They are the following Saturday mornings from 10.30a to 12.30p, starting at the Penguin Bookshop in Sewickley and followed by a tour of a garden:  June 29, July 27, August 24, Sept 14. Reservations are required.  Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

 

 

In “Atlantic Cities” today, Henry Grabar writes about the Treedom Project started by a man named named Rob Birdsong in New York City who saw a tree in chains and decided to free it. Then he saw another and got arborists involved.

 

We all see old bike chains, light strings and other strangulating devices eating into the skin of trees. Some trees grow over them. I've seen trees grow around the rails of iron fences. Like many people, many trees are resilient. But constriction can weaken them and shorten their lifespans, too.

 

In part, the article reads: “Since deciding to free a Japanese Zelkova choked by an old chain outside his Brooklyn home, Birdsong has assembled over a dozen targets for the mass de-girdling. “And I’m just one guy with one set of eyes,” he says. “Let’s see if we can open it up to getting feedback from other people in New York.” It’s a good question: Of the city’s 5.5 million trees, how many have been locked up for decades?"

 

Every day, I walk past trees that are being tortured by all sorts of constraints and heedless mangling.  I worry about the young saplings in the middle sidewalk strip in front of the River Vue apartments on Commonwealth Place. (One is shown in photo above.) For them,  I have a rogue fantasy of unwrapping strings of Christmas lights that have encircled the trunk and branches of each one. 

 

Not wanting to be accused of stealing Christmas lights, I called Piatt Properties at 412.434.5700 and was told the site is managed by Lincoln Eastern Management Corp. in Bethel Park, so I called and left a message at 833.2666. Unsure whether the trees are private or public property, I also left a message with city arborist Lisa Ceoffe to see if the city has the authority to exert.

 

Feel free to get behind my own “treedom” project. One after another set of eyes could save a lot of trees.

 

Food trucks can’t get much traction in the city of Pittsburgh because we have this inane rule that keeps food trucks away from bricks-and-mortar restaurants on the theory that they will compete unfairly if they are too close together. So food trucks have to get some special dispensation to be anywhere anyone would want to go to buy their food. 

 

There are food trucks at special events and throughout Oakland, but the city’s truculence about food trucks has severely limited the scene.

 

This is crazy. Every city that’s thriving with young people has a thriving food truck scene. What are our city officials not getting?

 

Anyhoo, McKees Rocks picked up on the closed-door policy in its big sister across the river and decided to have some ornery fun by welcoming any and all food trucks for a first-ever spring feast-ival.

 

It’s this Saturday, 11a to 7p, in the municipal parking lot and will include at least 15 food vendors, from food trucks to Rox’s own eateries. Live music, art displays and sales and colorful activities for the kiddies are all part of the feastivities.

 

FEASTival is brought to you, free, by the McKees Rocks Community Development Corp. 

 

Walking through Bloomfield’s business district on Liberty Avenue this morning, Dave Feehan, the new interim director of the Bloomfield Development Corp. pointed out all the things that are right with the retail corridor and the myriad things that need to be righted.

 

Anyone who knows Bloomfield knows what’s right: The neighborhood’s DNA is righteous, its mix of businesses, compared to most retail corridors, is enviable, and it has great bones.

 

But as we walked, noting vacant storefronts, harsh stone aggregate facades, big cheesy signs and plastic panels that enough people in the '60s and '70s thought looked better than turn-of-the-century brick, so it caught on. 

 

Bloomfield is one of the city’s great ‘hoods but it is plagued like so much of our tahn by busted up curbs and sidewalks, cigarette butts and other trash  and graffiti on prominent buildings, mail boxes, electrical boxes and the sides of bus shelters.

 

The bus shelter in the photo at the top, at Liberty and Ella, is covered with graffiti, and the sidewalk in front of it, shown at right, is just one low point of many.

 

Not to pick on Bloomfield. We see this everywhere. Is this a Pittsburgh thing? While we revel in our growing glowing reputation on the national radar, is this the look we want? It's definitely the look we have, and visitors notice even if we've become inured to it. 

 

Really? Trashy sidewalks, hideous signage, hideous facades, tacky, torn awnings?  Why do we have so many people who perpetrate this crap? And why do the rest of us tolerate it? 

 

“It’s the one area where Pittsburgh is behind other cities,” said Dave, who for the past few months has served as interim director of the Bloomfield Development Corp. He has an interesting ribbon of Pittsburgh running through his life and career.

 

Read more about him in an upcoming feature in the P-G.