Urbs in Horto (but please no mushroom compost)
Looking better then the Gov's Mansion.
From yesterday's NYT,
But even more than its soil-enriching, moisture-conserving utility, mulch is an organic metaphor, tying together the various pieces of Chicago's novel development strategy, praised by the Sierra Club and the Chamber of Commerce alike. By wrapping its arms and famous big shoulders around its Latin motto — Urbs in Horto (City in a Garden) — Chicago has become a global model for how a metropolis can pursue environmental goals to achieve economic success.We've used mushroom compost but it really stinks.
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The generator of Chicago's mulch is Richard M. Daley, the unorthodox and popular Democratic mayor who took office in 1989 vowing to replant the urban forest of his youth that was lost to Dutch elm disease and other blights. At the time, the pledge raised the eyebrows of supporters and critics, who chalked up the mayor's love for trees to his birth on Arbor Day in 1942.
I'm glad the City's taken down some of the trees in the Blvds too. Chicago got a little carried away there for a while and I worried truck drivers would have a hard time seeing the traffic.
Barbara and other Roti family members have been leasing trucks to the city of Chicago for decades. At least 17 companies in the city's scandal-plagued Hired Truck Program were owned by Roti relatives and associates -- including Barbara's father, wife, mother-in-law and daughter's in-laws. They were among 165 companies Daley fired in 2004, after the Sun-Times reported the city often paid for trucks that ended up doing nothing, leading to an ongoing federal investigation.Compost all over the place. That's the price we have to pay for Urbs in Horto.
9 comments:
But what do you feed mushrooms to get the compost?
Although Chicago may be planting a lot of trees and green roofs, it still remains home to two old and dirty coal-fired power plants that predate Barbie dolls, Castro in Cuba and the Beatles. Every American coal power plant built in the last quarter century has had to install “scrubbers” to reduce sulfur dioxide – a chemical that causes acid rain and deadly “particle pollution.” Those devices can remove over 90% of the pollution. These two plants STILL operate without them. Despite Mayor Daley’s efforts at vegetating the City, the two power plants here continue to pump out over 17,000 tons of lung damaging air pollution every year, causing over 40 deaths and hundreds upon hundreds of preventable asthma attacks.
The City COULD require the plants to meet much tighter air pollution limits, but it hasn’t even tried. The federal government simply looks the other way, and will let the company that owns the old plants in Chicago buy pollution credits from power plants cleaned up elsewhere. Meanwhile, the less-affluent, Latino and African-American neighborhoods adjacent to the plants on Chicago’s West Side continue to get smoked.
The scandal is that while the city pretends to be green with all this tree planting and mulching, as the Chicago Sun Times points out today, but the esteemed New York Times missed, they run a sham recycling program that really just gives money to their waste hauling friends rather than improving the environment.
Look into AL SANCHEZ, VICTOR REYES, FREDDIE BARBARA, and TIM DEGNAN and how they all are tied into ALLIED and how HDO is trying to extort private sector patronage because the public sector is gone
STILL AT COST TO THE TAXPAYER
and other sleazy and illegal deals
ALLIED
WASTE MANAGEMENT
HDO
FREDDIE BARBARA
VICTOR REYES
TIM DEGNAN
THE MOB
HISPANIC GANGS
FUN CHICAGO STYLE
Mushroom compost can turn soil to sweet -- esp. in the Chicago area where soils are already alkaline.
There are plenty of horse farms around, even in the Chicago area (esp. north, northwest and south suburbs). If they let you shovel the manure it's the best for the garden -- apply it in autumn around Thanksgiving and you're ready to go by spring. Cooler temps keep the smells and flies at bay.
Milorganite smells worst. Thanks Milwaukee.
But then you were really talking about other sorts of compost, weren't you? ;)
PS: "lungster" -- mushroom compost isn't really from mushrooms at all. It's the leftover material that mushroom farms grow their 'shrooms on. After the mushroom harvest the material is "spent" and won't grow any more mushrooms productively (a few here and there, but not enough to be worth it from the farmer's point of view).
So "mushroom" compost is really "leftover mushroom growing material" compost.
The City of Chicago will not be a model for environmental sustainability until it dumps the blue bag recycling program. I can't figure our why mainstream environmental groups like Sierra Club keep fawning over Mayor Daley. It's sickening. Just think how much pollution and wasted resources have been generated by not providing Chicago residents with real recycling opportunities. Fortunately, the Chicago Tribune, working with a few community recycling advocates, have kept the pressure on the City to begin piloting some better alternatives.
NW,
all compost is on the table with this post...
feel free to spread
To NW,
With all due respect and in good fun, and I really mean no insult, I was referring to what you start with, not what you wind up with.
Remember the little ditty:
I'm a little mushroom - they keep me in the dark and feed me male bovine excrement....
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