{"id":96,"date":"2006-06-21T13:44:47","date_gmt":"2006-06-21T20:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/?p=95"},"modified":"2006-06-21T13:44:47","modified_gmt":"2006-06-21T20:44:47","slug":"concrete-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/?p=96","title":{"rendered":"concrete island"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"fawn\" <\/p>\n

cuteness itself<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\"fawn\" <\/p>\n

concrete island<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n \n<\/div>\n

It’s early summer on the rainforest island where I live and the undergrowth is rustling with intensely kawaii, <\/a>little black-tailed deer fawns. This one is hiding in one of my bamboo groves. <\/p>\n

But I am off to do some work on another island, the *Concrete Island*<\/a>, which is a ruderal<\/a> botanical garden on display at the World Urban Festival<\/a> in Vancouver. People on site can call 1-888-648-0506 with their cellphones to get information about the plants now busy re-colonizing the patch of waste ground that is isolated within the island’s concrete barrier. *Concrete Island* will be the first in a series of cell phone guided botanical tours that I am putting together, to help people navigate through interstitial ecologies of disturbance. It seems no matter how severely we trash the landscape, nature somehow finds a way to reassert itself—in ways that are often surprising.
\nWhile I was installing labels on the plants in the *Concrete Island’s* toxic, post-industrial, pit, I was visited by a tiny white-crowned sparrow<\/a>, which flew down and landed on a Scotch broom branch in front of me.<\/p>\n

\n\"sparrow\" <\/p>\n

keep your eye on the sparrow<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

After that, I started noticing insects in motion all around me: ladybugs, honeybees, bumble bees, parasitic wasps and some tiny thrip-like insect I couldn’t quite identify. They were pollinating and crawling all over the Himalayan blackberry flowers.<\/a> Since I first visited the *Concrete Island* site back in May, several new plants have arrived, including: tansy, linear-leaf plantain, wild lettuce and fireweed; all brought to the site by wind, or in the droppings of birds. I was amazed at how much the biodiversity has increased in such a short time. In a way, the recolonization process of the *Concrete Island* is similar to what one would see on a newly formed volcanic island, in the middle of the ocean. The only difference is that, instead of water, the *Concrete Island* is surrounded by an ocean of asphalt. I am keeping records of all the new species I see arriving and I will publish a preliminary inventory soon on oliverk.org<\/a>. Maybe I can get *Concrete Island* designated as Vancouver’s smallest park!<\/p>\n

\n \n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

cuteness itself concrete island   It’s early summer on the rainforest island where I live and the undergrowth is rustling with intensely kawaii, little black-tailed deer fawns. This one is hiding in one of my bamboo groves. But I am off to do some work on another island, the *Concrete Island*, which is a ruderal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}