THIS PAST THURSDAY, we received a sober reminder of how formidable the power of Mother Nature truly is. A torrential storm hit the greater Toronto area, and lightning strikes took out massive trees, including this downtown doozy at the corner of Christie & Pendrith, northwest of Bloor and Bathurst. Of course, we’re sorry for any loss of life or major damage that the storm caused. But it was an incredible experience to get drenched to the bone, and be humbled by the awesome aftermath. We can landscape all we like, but Mother Nature is the forewoman, and she has the final say!
FOR THE FIRST TIME in Green Apple history, we have two full-time teams in the field! We’ve expanded and brought two new dedicated landscapers on board. One of the GA teams is now working on a job on Manning Avenue in the downtown district, so I swung by there yesterday to take a couple of shots of the noobies. Here are the new friendly faces — welcome to the team!
HEY, WHO SAYS THAT I don’t get all filthy on the job like I used to? Since I got tapped to direct communications and ecological initiatives here at Green Apple, I hardly even break into a sweat anymore, except when I’m biking to work and back. But today I got to go out into the field and do dirty deeds. It seems that plastic pylons are prized possessions, because someone — or something — has been picking off our pylons one by one for quite a while now. To combat this phenomenon, I used a skill set that I haven’t had any real need for in the last several years, ever since I was a graffiti artist almost a decade ago. I’m obviously out of practice, because it got pretty messy out there, but at least I got the job done: I labeled the orange cones that we use to alert traffic to the presence of our heavy equipment and other building materials. Now pylon pilferers will think twice before disappearing our property, because our logo announces our presence. And when you see the two-tone GA logo around town, you’ll know who’s working the earth behind the house — your friendly neighbourhood landscapers at Green Apple.
IN OUR BLOG POST of a couple of weeks ago, Beautiful Blanc Walls, we looked at the possibility of greenifying not only the land that surrounds a building, and not even just the land that’s on top of a building, but land that’s on the sides of buildings, as well! In our blog post of last week, Chow Towers of Babel, we took a close and critical look at the way that our civilization produces most of its human food, far away from most of its humans, and far from healthy for human, animal, and plant alike. Now here in this blog post, The History of High, we will begin examining the futurist pancake-stack answer to the agricultural crisis, Vertical Farming.
GREEN APPLE JUST HIRED a brand new batch of workers in the field. About a hundred new employees are labouring away outside our offices, processing materials and preparing manure. I’m talking about a half-pound of Red Wiggler worms that were just delivered from Cathy’s Crawly Composters to help break down our compost quicker! They munch on our leftovers and turn them into castings (a fancy sounding name for worm poo), which is hyper-rich in water-soluble nutrients, making for excellent organic fertilizer for food plants. It’s a mutually beneficial working relationship, a win-win situation for all involved. Here’s wishing a wormy welcome to the Green Apple team for our vermicular colleagues!
