The Rivanna Rambler

September 11, 2008

 

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This show originally aired in September 11, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net

Last night after a meeting at UVA’s Newcomb Hall, I strolled across Emmet Street to The Dell for a quiet moment on the water. At the end of the hot day, the air temperature was falling as the undersides of clouds darkened with gray. From a bench across the pond I could see blue and orange shirts and shorts moving on the basketball court. The pool before me reflected the action in segments clipped by a row of young arbor vitae planted along the edge of the court. Above me, bats streaked through darkening air, criss-crossing over the water partaking of misquotes. The sound of Emmet Street traffic was constant, but the longer I sat, the more it started to blend with a new sound – one of flowing water from somewhere beyond a large English boxwood leftover from a former landscape.

I was sitting by a section of Meadow Creek that has been rehabilitated and restored, brought to the surface after being contained in the 1950’s.

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August 14, 2008

 

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This show originally aired in August 14, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net

You know something is not right when you walk up to the edge of MeadowCreek behind Kmart off Hydraulic Road. The bank drops down vertically to the stream bottom where a small flow trickles over the rocks. You are not sure how close you can get because looking upstream, you can see places where high water flow from storms has tunneled into the bank leaving just a flap of grass, hinged and drooping over the edge like the unruly bangs of a boy overdue for a haircut.

And you’ve seen this kinds of washed-out bank everywhere in the watershed, and especially as you walk along the Rivanna Trails encircling Charlottesville. For years, you may have said to yourself, this can’t be right, all this dirt eroding away, headed downstream in a brown muddy mess.

But how do you ever go about fixing something like this? And can it even BE fixed?

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This show originally aired on February 28, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net.

 

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February 28, 2007

I am a reluctant gardener. The seasons conspire against me here in Central Virginia. In the winter, when I should be planning the vegetable garden, pruning shrubs, and tidying the lawn, I crave the quiet of indoors where I hibernate, in between bursts of outdoor activities that take me into the woods or by the river or to the tops of the ridges. Much the same happens to me in the springtime rush, a time of not enough time – when I am called by the waters to paddle rivers bursting with green while the weather is still tolerable. For sure, when spring emerges, I do spend a few days tethered to lawn and plants – affirming my environmental responsibility to this City acre and my good fortune for having land at all. Summer, when vegetables want thinning and harvesting and weeds go to seed, I’m retreating to any place removed from heaviness of the humidity. By the time fall rolls around, I vainly try to make up for lost time, tidying and raking in anticipation of the winter.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I have not yet done anything about the invasive plants in my yard

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