In addition to performing as a soloist, Chertock serves as principal keyboardist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and has been a professor of piano at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
During summer months I broadcast crimson clover seed between crop rows. This beautiful plant not only fixes nitrogen in the soil – i.e., we grow our own fertilizer – it keeps weeds down and is a good cut flower.
A few miles inland, birds, plants and people find refuge from traffic, shopping malls, endless concrete and cookie-cutter rows of houses at two other oases.
Keying out the details of what remains of the plant on the stormy day on which I write of this discovery, observation points to the noveboracensis, a phenomenal New York Ironweed. I am eager for a close look during the 2019 growing season.
Among the late summer bloomers in my landscape are a fragrant heirloom phlox, Japanese anemone, Oswego tea, Russian sage and New York ironweed, all perennials.
In the absence of protective and nourishing snow and sustained freezing weather, it seems arbitrary to proceed as if there’s been winter and to accept that we are halfway to spring.
"To grow healthy food requires a vibrant diversity of plants, animals and soil life. These form the immune system of your land that together help each other to sustain the farm. The soil we work with as part of a farm organism needs our help to be healthy.”
-- Lia Babitch, seed garden manager at Turtle Tree Seed
