Roosevelt Island Garden Community
  • Home
    • About RIGC
    • FAQs
  • How to Join
  • Garden Blog
  • Local News
    • Garden Photos
    • News Archive
  • Outdoors on R Island
  • Resources
    • Weeds & Invasives to Remove
    • Healthy Soil
    • General Gardening Tips
    • Go Green!

RIGC Community Service 2021 begins with #EarthLove

4/24/2021

 
Picture
Yesterday, April 24th, turned into a wonderful busy day. 

RIOC Special Events invited Island Kids families, RI Youth Center teens and staff, and Girl Scouts to the gardens to join us in service. They all showed up fairly early in steady numbers to help place compost in former tree pits near the Octagon tennis courts, nearby Pony field and further south on Main Street, too.  These tree spots will soon be filled with pollinator plantings to become butterfly beds/pocket meadows in June.


RIGC invited 12 high school students from UNIS who helped out all morning for service in the gardens. Four of these students along with Outreach Associate, Laura Laderman, completely handled the table for free seed planting on Meditation Lawn from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. They worked in between plogging/recycling with Christina Delfico of iDig2Learn and a book exchange with Nicole Izsak and daughter. RIGC also took some worms and decomposers to Haki compost for kids of all ages who came by with food scraps to explore.

Both our community gardens and other parts of our Island were buzzing with beautification, time outside in the sunshine, and some learning about nature.  


As can often be the case, composting pulled people together. Anthony and the Compost Committee's work made a big difference along with  compost from Big Reuse and RIOC. Some Island Kids families, Youth Center teens, and older Girl Scouts stayed all morning helping to sift compost and enjoying the worms.

Many RIGC gardeners came out to work on the rose garden beds, begin work on border replacement, clean paths and common areas, upgrade landscape areas, begin painting to upgrade, and to put out hoses. The UNIS students enjoyed learning, helping, and chatting with gardeners.

Collaborations and connections all around. This was RIGC's first community service day since the fall of 2019 and it turned into an important, lovely milestone for many on Roosevelt Island.

If you have more pictures and RIGC news from this day, please send them to rigardenclub@gmail.com.




Picture

Watercolor Course with artist member Peggy Roalf

4/11/2021

 
Picture
Hello Everyone,
 
If you’ve wanted to master transparent watercolor and haven’t had the time or opportunity, my six-week immersion, The Interaction of Watercolor, starts tomorrow Monday online at *Sculptors Alliance!
 
This hands-on course is designed for artists who want to understand the interaction of color without the eye-numbing science of refracted and reflected light. If you’ve tried watercolor before and given up, this course is for you! Using just six tubes of paint, the rogue nature of this fluid medium will become your collaborator as you develop confidence and aptitude. 
 
You don’t have to be a sculptor to enroll in this course—and it’s free for NYC residents thanks to the support of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. 

Information/registration for the course is here. More information about materials, and regular updates, here.

​Please reach out if I can answer any questions you might have. If you have friends who might be interested, please help spread the word, thanks!
 
All the best,
Peggy
 
 
*Sculptors Alliance, Inc. is committed to developing and encouraging community interest in the field of fine arts, with an emphasis on sculpture. The organization is devoted to fostering creativity through the promotion of sculpture as an art form in a way that makes a sustained and lasting impact on the public. It seeks to provide information and instruction on the techniques and methodologies of sculptural art in order to stimulate expression of the community’s cultural statues and heritage. Through exhibitions and presentation of works of sculpture in all mediums, Sculptors Alliance offers a means by which the cultural identity of the community may be expressed; it showcases established and unknown, but promising artists, for the cultural enrichment of the community.


Peggy Roalf
Website
Instagram
DART
Picture

Cicadas Coming Soon

4/11/2021

 
A benign invasion is coming this May (or when the soil heats up to 64 degrees), the likes of which has not been seen since 2004, and will not repeated again until 2038. The large red-eyed cicadas
are coming to New York (Central Park, the Bronx and Staten Island at least) but I am not certain
that includes Roosevelt Island? We will know for sure when we hear their 100 decibels mating
call, which will make the FDR seem quiet by comparison. We will know for sure when we see
their shredded exoskeletons lining the tree branches as if they were frozen in time from some
ancient lost world. They will be with us for about a month before they go back into hibernation. And our local birds will be able to eat up to their hearts content. Some have asked why the 17 year cycle? It could be a clever defense mechanism to avoid predators, or a way that helped them cope with the last ice age, but I think they are doing it just to remind us that nature has its own way of doing things that go beyond our understanding. go beyond our understanding. I hope to see them again in 2038.  By Neal Weissman

For more scientific information check out this KidsPost Article from the Washington Post. 
Picture

    Categories

    All
    Accessibility
    Art
    Birds
    Children
    Composting
    Education
    Gardeners
    History
    Horticulture
    Infrastructure Upkeep
    Nature
    Outreach
    Poetry
    Pollinators
    Pond
    Roses
    Safety
    Service
    Social Events
    Standards
    Sustainability
    Visitor Appreciation

    Archives by date

    March 2023
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    March 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014

    RSS Feed

Picture
Email for website submissions 
or comments: 
rigardencluboutreach@gmail.com

Email for general 
concerns:
rigardenclub@gmail.com
Write to us:
RIGC
PO Box 127
NY, NY 10044
Proudly powered by Weebly