Drought, Pesticide, Urban Density and a Super Fund site

Have you wondered why no posts recently? I have a litany of reasons. These are in no particular order.

1) It has been a rough couple of months for the garden. We went from having too much rain to official moderate drought status. Indian Summer did not happen this year. September and October are often some of our prettiest months. Brown and dry pretty much sums up the garden at the moment.

2) This is the scenario that for me is the proverbial straw. The Durham department of Health and Human Services decided to apply Remoa-Tri pesticide to most of the downtown area through Ultra Low Volume fogging. Testing confirmed a high occurrence of West Nile virus in our mosquito population. The unusual amount of rain earlier in the season likely increased the mosquito population here. The "fogging" has of course freaked me out. A truck was driving around at night on each street to distribute the poison. I haven't applied any kind of poison other than diluted dish soap to my yard in two decades. This has ruined my enjoyment of the garden for now. My edibles are behind my house, but you have to believe that it was also hit by the fogging. I worry about long term effects on all of the flora and fauna and people here. This is not an organic treatment which leads me to believe that it will have a presence here for a long time. I'm thinking of synthetics versus organic elements which break down when I say that. Supposedly, the kill effect is over in about an hour. The intent was to kill a particular type of mosquito when they are in the air. This pesticide is harmful to bees and the waterways. It has not been approved for crop use yet. The company has an application in progress for crop application. We were fogged twice in October. Once for the existing mosquitos and the second application was for their progeny.

I have been waiting for some heavy rain to clear things out. The moderate drought prevented that wish until yesterday, Oct. 27th. I told myself that after some cleansing rains and a few weeks of time that I would venture into the garden again. I'm planning to do some serious garden and yard work in early November.

3)In addition to the aforementioned gripes the building of smaller homes on any spot of green continues in our neighborhood. Durham's Unified Development ordinance allows people to subdivide lots and build multiple homes on what was formerly a one house lot. This takes place under the guise of affordability. Baloney. The winners are the developers. The new builds at 1200 sq ft. each were listed at $535K. I'm sure in time that I will accept this, but it still breaks my heart. It is very hard watching the character of your mainly post WWII community move from slightly suburban to urban. Durham doesn't even require a driveway anymore, let alone a yard. It's street parking which eventuaIly will make it hard to take a walk without being in the middle of the street. We don't have sidewalks. I thought we had the ideal balance here being close to downtown (about two miles) and with green space. We've had change over time, but the current construction is happening at break neck speed. It's about twenty new houses this summer. We've already seen some super large rental units go up in the neighborhood over the past few years. They are very nice, but loom over the existing homes. I'm hopeful that the building will slow down soon. Just for context most of the existing cottages here sell for less than $535K. Larger homes do sell for more than $535K.

4)Our neighborhood crown jewel, Northgate Park (NP) is currently a Super Fund site. A well meaning team associated with Duke University did sample testing in several urban parks that were known to formerly have incinerators. They were looking for contaminants. Northgate Park was not an incinerator site, but did have some incinerator ash trucked here and buried in the 1950s. The parks that had the incinerators have tested positive for lead and other contaminants. NP has been tested for the last several months with more testing to come. So far, only one playground had multiple chemicals detected. A determination is being made about how to remedy the one playground area. My understanding is that safe levels weren't necessarily exceeded, but there is concern regarding several chemicals being in one place. Ground water and vapor barrier testing will continue this year. The good news is that soil testing hasn't yielded any dangerous levels of lead. Maybe, next Spring we can have our park again? Most of the old timers here (my self included) think we are okay. We face planted in that park mud many a time.

I'm hopeful that by 2026 our neighborhood will have found our healthy normal again. It's been crazy. The next blog post will be decidedly happier.