Happy National Farmer Appreciation Day, UESiders!!
And do we ever appreciate the great folks who bring such wonderful fruit, vegs, flowers, eggs, lamb/chicken/duck/meat and more to our markets every week!!
(We love you and your fabulous seafood, too, Warren!!)
Let’s dive right in:
Today/Friday/June 24th: Deadline to Apply for the Municipal Arts Livable Neighborhoods Program
Apologies for last minuteness, but we just learned about this great Municipal Arts program ourselves (thanks to reader Judy Charles!!):
And we quote, “Be educated and engage neighbors in the basics of land use, build capacity for community-based planning, and enhance familiarity with the technical tools and the review processes that shape the built environment in New York City.” Free. For more and to apply…
Every Friday: 96th & Lex Compost Drop-Off
96th Street & Lexington, 7:30-11:30am
The May totals are:
5/6 – 200 Drop-offs, 6 Bins, 1,258 lbs.; 5/13 – 375 Drop-offs, 6 Bins; 1,318 lbs.; 5/20 – 220 Drop-offs, 6 Bins, 1,352 lbs.; 5/27 – 200 Drop-Offs, 6 Bins, 1,156 lbs. =
May Grand Totals: 995 Drop-Offs; 24 Total Bins; 5,084 lbs.
Saturday, June 25th: 82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket
82 Street between First & York Avenues, 9am-2pm
Rain or shine with us will be American Pride Seafood, Bread Alone, Ballard’s Honey, Sikking Flowers, Hudson Valley Duck and Haywood’s Fresh, Samascott, Cherry Lane, Ole Mother Hubbert, Valley Shepherd, Hawthorne Valley and Gajeski Farms!!
As ever more summertime produce appears on those tables… Come on, tomatoes!! We’re waiting, corn!!
Saturday, June 25th: East 86th Street Clean Team Returns
Meet in front of Shake Shack, 154 East 86th Street, 11am
And we quote, “Join us this Saturday at 11am as we set forth with neighbors to clean East 86th Street and the surrounding neighborhood. Also, for the first time, we are fully equipped to remove graffiti and repaint lampposts, mailboxes, traffic control boxes- you name it- we have every color!!” To be followed by a Shake Shack treat!! To RSVP...
Saturday, June 25th: 53rd Street Library Branch Plant Swap
18 West 53rd Street, 1-3pm
Ready… Set… Bring your own over-populated greenery and take home some wonderful flora!! For further details..
Every Sunday: Asphalt Green Compost Drop-Off
91st & York, 7:30-12:30
And AG’s (provisional) May totals are:
5/1 – 150 Drop-offs; 4 Bins; 1,001 lbs.; 5/8 – 200 Drop-offs; 5 Bins; 1,270 lbs.; 5/15 – 170 Drop-Offs; 5 Bins; 1,159 lbs.; 5/29 – 145 Drop-offs; 1,077 lbs., 4 bins =
(Yes, 5/22’s missing so provisional)
May Provisional Grand Totals – 665 Drop-offs; 18 Bins; 4,509 lbs.
Sunday, June 26th: 92nd Street Greenmarket
First Avenue at 92nd Street , 9am-3pm
With tables presided over by Ole Mother Hubbert, American Pride Seafood, Grandpa’s Farm, Halal Pastures, Meredith’s Country Bakery, Norwich Meadows and Phillips Farms
Fragrant, beautiful basil… Tiny, colorful cauliflower… American Seafood in their time-honored place… Halal Pastures’ amazing ground beef… A great, new-to-our-market manager… UESide life!!
But this year, no… No Kimchee Harvest!!
Wednesday, June 29th: MV4NY’s Family Summer Serenade at Ruppert Park
Second Avenue at 92nd, 5-6:30pm
Another evening of music under NYC stars made possible by Ruppert Park stewards, the Moslem Volunteers4NY… And free, of course:
Coming soon:
Friday, July 8th: Bat Walk at the Ridgewood Reservoir
Meet at 58-2 Vermont Place, Queens, 8-9:30pm
Join NYC environmental great Gabriel WIllow as he enlightens Bat Walkers as to which of the 1,400 bat species inhabit the reservoir!! Organized by the great NYC H20 Free. For more and to register…
As ever, some primo virtual events:
Wednesday, June 29th, 7-8pm: Sen. Krueger’s 2022 Legislative Recap via Zoom or Facebook
Senator Liz Krueger’s gives her post-session report about the 2022 New York State Legislative session, and her legislative priorities for 2023!! To register…
Thursday, June 30th, 2-4pm: AM Seawright’s Weekly Virtual Knitting Social on Zoom
UES neighbors… Shared community interests… The quiet click of knitting needles… Perfecto!! Just RSVP…
Wednesday, July 27th, 12-1pm: Soil Health Basics with NYC Parks Greenthumb via a webinar
Parks Workshops and Education Coordinator Mara Gittleman shares the basics of soil care and its effects on plants of every kind… Free. Just register and scroll down…
And activism of course:
If you think the Kroger supermarket chain should stop selling food on which glyphosate and other pollinator-toxic pesticides have been used (Just leave a message after 6pm)…
And if you also believe that hormone disrupting chemical should be banned from our food…
Time for some of those diverting diversions:
Roundup on its last legs (hurrah!!)… Looks like Juul, too… And the USPS is reviewing its present non-electric vehicle plans… Then there’s the Penn Station “plan“… 7 years later in the life of a Nissan Leaf… Got some paint that needs recycling… NYS DEC Forest Rangers’ week in review… The root beer origin story… NYS’s new microbiology lab… The 2022 NYS Beginners Birding Challenge… Grow your own clothes… Philosophy of weeding… The Roosevelt Island Green Map… How to clean that flat TV screen… Our summer guide to Central Park… Cookout essentials… A new NYC park for disabled kids (our UES needs one!)… 45 ways to waste less at home…
Second to last stop… The Hudson River Almanac:
5/28 – Poughkeepsie: This spring we have had a pair of red shouldered hawks incubating eggs and tending to nestlings. This morning we learned that there are three nestlings. – Shirley Freitas
5/29 – Saugerties: We have been getting several reports of a seal in Esopus Creek by visitors to the Saugerties Lighthouse. I’m hoping to catch sight of the seal to see if it is the four-year-old male harbor seal, flipper-tagged 246. – Patrick Landewe
[We last saw the seal (246) on New Year’s Day. That marked day 878 of this marine mammal’s amazing affinity for this freshwater habitat. We had hopes that he might show up as spring arrived and Esopus Creek filled with river herring in from the sea to spawn. – Tom Lake]
6/3 – Manhattan: The Randall’s Island Park Alliance Staff Natural Areas Team went seining today. We began in mid-morning at the Little Hell Gate Salt Marsh on the Harlem River. In three hauls of our net, we caught mummichog, Atlantic silverside, Atlantic tomcod, a small, young-of-year (YOY) winter founder, blue crabs (15-60 millimeters (mm)), 45 grass shrimp, and 146 mud snails. The mud snails were of two size classes: a peanut M&M and a sweet corn kernel. The water temperature was 65 degrees F, dissolved oxygen was 5.65 ppm, and the salinity was 25 ppt.
Our next stop, nearing midday, was Water’s Edge Garden, also on the Harlem River. We made three seine hauls, one of which was disturbed by huge wakes from the Circle Line. We caught winter flounder, Atlantic tomcod, blue crabs, grass shrimp, sand shrimp, countless mud snails, and comb jellies. – Jackie Wu
6/5 – Manhattan: I was rod and reel fishing in the Harlem River in late afternoon at my usual spot off Inwood Park’s Dykeman Pier. Today, something astonishing occurred: I hooked and almost landed a horseshoe crab. I tried, but it was far too heavy and my line broke. It looked to be the size of a serving platter. My only other catch was a very chunky, foot-long white perch. – Nicola Lagonigro
A Horsehoe Crab
[The Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) is an ancient marine and brackish water arthropod of the family Limulidae and the only living member of the order Xiphosura. Despite their name, they are not true crabs or crustaceans; they are chelicerates, most closely related to arachnids, such as spiders and scorpions. Delaware Audubon (2007)]
6/8 – Manhattan: Hudson River Park’s River Project staff checked our sampling and collection gear deployed off Piers 40 and 26 in Hudson River Park. At Pier 40, our traps caught a large tautog (410 mm) as well as some mud dog whelk snails. Pier 26 was alive this day with three tautog (230-310 mm) and a YOY black sea bass (40 mm). – Zoe KimThen there’s the eerie Fish of the Week:
5/30 – Fish-of-the-Week for Week 175 is the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus), fish number 3 (of 236), on our Hudson River Watershed List of Fishes.
A Sea Lamprey
The sea lamprey is a native cartilaginous fish (no bones), much like sharks, skates, and rays. They can trace their ancestry (taxonomic order Petromyzontiformes) back hundreds of millions of years. The sea lamprey lives in saltwater but enters freshwater to spawn, a life cycle we call diadromous. They are parasitic, can grow to three-feet-long, and with a suction-disk mouth (no jaws) filled with small sharp teeth and a file-like tongue, they use their raspy “teeth,” to cut into a fishes’ body and feed on their body fluids. Sea lampreys are found along coastal North America from Labrador to Florida.
Sea lamprey have been a sea-run presence in the estuary long before any of us were here. They tend to be very ephemeral—they are in the river to spawn in springtime, but you rarely see them. When commercial fishing was allowed in the estuary (prior to 2010), especially for American shad, we would occasionally find sea lamprey parasitically attached to fish.
Sea lampreys are found in the Hudson River above tidewater. These likely migrated to the watershed via the Hudson-Champlain Canal where they have been native since the end of the last Ice Age. The proto-Lake Champlain (Champlain Sea) was connected to the north Atlantic via the Saint Lawrence watershed. They are also native to the Great Lakes where they have caused considerable damage to the trout and salmon fisheries. Great Lakes fishes reach our watershed via New York State canals.
Scientific or species names can often reveal physical or behavioral attributes. Sea lampreys, migrating in from the sea, spawn in small rocky-bottom tributaries, usually above tidewater. Males create a mostly circular nest of stone by attaching to them with their sucker-like mouth and moving them to a spot where there is a moderate current. The female then deposits her eggs.
With this behavior as inspiration, in 1758, Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish zoologist who created the modern system of binomial nomenclature (two names), or taxonomy, described the sea lamprey and named it Petromyzon marinus. Using the classical languages of Latin and Greek for species names, Linnaeus chose petro, Greek for rock, and myzon, Greek for suck, i.e., sucks rocks. For the trivial name, he chose the Latin mare, meaning sea. Altogether, the species name translates as “rock-sucker from the sea.” A fish’s type Site usually gives a good indication of where they are found. For the sea lamprey, Linnaeus’ type site was a quite vague “European Seas.” – Tom Lake
A Fish of the Week with a postscript:5/31 – Norrie Point, HRM 85: Naturalists Ben Harris and Sebastian Houser, with few expectations, tossed a small cast net (50 square feet) into the river. After some empty hauls, Sebastian’s retrieve signaled they had caught something. The catch was totally unlike anything they had ever caught. It was a fish, they believed, that no one had ever seen before at Norrie Point. It was a 25-inch-long female sea lamprey – Rebecca Houser
As for This Week’s (Controversial) Bird:
As we close out National Pollinator Week,
UGS
Eco Fact of the Week: In 1976, there was only one pair of nesting bald eagles in New York State. Since the Bald Eagle Restoration Program ended in 1989, NYS’s eagle population has continued to grow. In 2017, DEC confirmed a record-breaking number of nesting pairs of bald eagles in the state – 323 pairs!!
This Week at The Markets 