Today’s guest photographer Genevieve Petre says she “was on a New Years day walk and strolled upon these party animals” in Point Loma, San Diego, California. This hilarious picture has inspired me to make “post-holiday plants” the theme for this weekend’s posts.

We humans are often in a funny mood in January, suffering from a touch of too-much-fun-fatigue after all the holiday celebrations and New Year’s Eve hoopla. It’s time for a new start, according to our calendars, yet nature is still in the midst of winter dormancy; the fresh beginning of springtime is still far off.

Do plants experience any of this malaise? I personally think so. For example, this year, some plants don’t seem to know whether to act like it’s still winter or already spring, with the unseasonably warm temperatures in many parts of the world causing many plants to sprout, or even blossom, prematurely.

Also, let’s not forget the plants who, like the topiary bear-plants above, have been roped into participating in human holiday celebrations. Tune in tomorrow for more on post-holiday plants!

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Thanks to Genevieve Petre for sharing her photograph!

The photographer of today’s startling urban plant picture, titled Nature wins, is Cécile Obertop. Not surprisingly, she lives in Amsterdam, one of the most bike-centric cities in Europe. While I think it’s great that much of the population commutes by bike instead of driving, which you’d think could only mean good things for the environment and contribute to a clean, green city, talking to Cécile about this picture made me realize that the bike situation is not always a bed of roses.

Cécile says that the city is plagued with bikes like this one, left to die a slow death on the streets – or get eaten by plants.”This bike is one of many, many abandoned ‘orphan’ bikes in Amsterdam, a real problem because there are so many thousands and they clog up the official bike parking racks and the rest of the city,” says Cécile.

Why would so many people dump bikes on the street instead of fixing or selling them? “I guess when a repair starts to cost more than a ‘new’ used bike,” she explains.

Well, it sounds like these bikes are considered by many as a nuisance and an eyesore, so perhaps this voracious ivy is doing Amsterdam residents a favor by eating this particular bike for lunch. Who said most plants are strictly autotrophs?

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Thank you Cécile, for sharing your photo with us! Check out more of Cécile’s photos on Flickr and on Instagram, where she’s @cecile74.

The urban greening report from San Francisco continues! Last weekend on our walks around the Mission, we learned about two initiatives that are transforming the city’s streets and sidwalk. First, on Alabama Street at 24th in the Mission district, after eating terrific pan dulce at the La Victoria bakery, we admired a sidewalk-greening project in which residents have removed some cement on the mostly paved-over sidewalk area to create little urban gardens. A sign explained that fully paved sidewalks lead to poor drainage, while open spaces within the sidewalk are both pleasant and practical, absorbing rainwater.

Amidst this urban gardening project was a large palm tree, which obviously predated the recent planting. Among the old leaves forming its trunk, we were surprised to find a number of apples. Was this part of the garden project, or a separate goofy intervention? Hard to say, but it’s fun to look at.

Another recent phenomenon in San Francisco is the “Parklet,” a kind of mini-park made possible by Pavement to Parks. This collaboration of several city agencies is an experiment in creating more public space in a densely-built city. It grants permits to non-profits and business to take over bits of pavement, parking areas and/or sidewalks to create public hang-out areas. Here’s the first one I saw, organized by Fabric 8 art space on 22nd near Valencia:

Eric Otto’s “The Peace Keeper,” the current installation at the Fabric 8 parklet. Photo courtesy of Fabric 8.

As the Pavement to Parks website explains, “San Francisco’s streets and public rights-of-way make up fully 25% of the city’s land area, more space even than is found in all of the city’s parks. Many of our streets are excessively wide and contain large zones of wasted space, especially at intersections.” What better way to create park space in a city with no more space than by reclaiming some of this excess pavement?

Since 2010, over twenty of these parklets and interstitial parks have been installed. As you can see on this handy, illustrated Google Map of all the parks, the projects range from eye-popping, creative installations like the one above, in which neighbors gather on beanbag chairs to watch the game on an old TV (plugged via extension cord into an outlet in the gallery)…

…to fairly straightforward grabs at extra outdoor seating by restaurants,which are nevertheless appreciated by all (here, at 22nd Street - photo courtesy Pavement to Parks)…

…to larger spaces that are actually rather park-like, minus the grass, created by reclaiming larger areas (here, Guerrero Park at Guerrero and San Jose – photo courtesy Pavement to Parks).

It’s too bad I didn’t get to visit more parklets on my trip, but we can enjoy browsing vicariously on the handy map. I’ll be very curious to see how this experiment develops and what longer-term plans the city develops to turn pavement into green space! If you know of similar initiatives in other cities, do let me know so I can report on them in the future.

Happy New Year! I’m sending you all my sunniest greetings for the new year, and apologies for the long silence. I escaped gray Berlin for three sunny weeks driving up and down my home state of California, meeting with my Urban Plant collaborator Sara in picturesque Napa Valley and spotting urban plants all along the way!

Most notably, a double stroke of fresh, green luck has struck the otherwise grimy doorstep of my sister’s apartment in San Francisco’s Mission district. Until lately, the stoop had been home only to various tipsy passersby and a street performer affectionately dubbed “Bum Jovi.”

Now, an unknown urban gardener has installed two immense brown clay planters, neatly nestled into the metal railings bent around each side of the stoop steps, and planted a number of flimsy-yet-upbeat green neighbors in each one. Further inspection revealed a suspiciously familiar cracked, round object at the base of several of these plants… avocado pits! Which leaves no further doubt about the situation: the landlord, or some other plant-loving neighbor, spent all his or her money on the vessels and had no more funds for the actual plants – but has a formidable avocado-consumption habit that generates plantable pits aplenty.

Whoever he or she may be, I warmly applaud the person behind these new plants, and commend the loving attention to their well-being. Doesn’t the string tied around them, holding them together in a cozy bunch, just warm your heart?

Wishing you all a great year of city life, greenery, and urban plant discovery!

Here’s a photograph made in sunny November Marseille a few weeks ago. While visiting the three fortresses near the mouth of the old harbor, Vieux Port, I noticed this window, which appears to have been added to the fortress wall rather recently. The room inside looks homey, with potted plants and framed pictures. I wonder if it’s the caretaker’s office, or living quarters? The plants are twice-confined, but look to be at peace with their lot in life.

If you are a person of patience, or need a reminder that time is cyclical, get a Christmas cactus. Like most flowering plants, it blooms but once a year. But how it blooms! In contrast to its usual compact, green, nondescript form, my plant dons so many bodacious red blossoms each December that it literally doubles in size. Thank you to Oma Uschi for giving us this plant four years ago. As you can see from this recent photo, it’s still going strong.

What about you, readers? Any of you have winter-blooming plants in your lives?

Today’s Urban Plant was photographed by one of my favorite photographers on Instagram, @akafrank. He spotted this mesmerizing street art on Felix Street in Cambridge Heath, London. Here’s the exact location on Google Maps.

We don’t know who the artist is, but perhaps someone reading this does. Please let us know by commenting below!

Every so often I post an urban representation of a plant on this blog. Since many of the actual, living urban plants are also largely the result of human efforts, of our need to ornament and decorate our environment, I feel that paper tulips in school windows, plastic potted plants and artificial Christmas trees aren’t much different than topiaries, manicured gardens, and other human-directed plant life, and they are certainly relevant to this discussion of urban flora.

What I find interesting about this artifical plant, though, is that it doesn’t look like a decorative, tame plant, under a human’s thumb. It has the wild, otherworldly feeling of the city’s giant weeds, like trees of heaven and other plants that spring up between cracks and cover up unlovely buildings. I’m sure this piece was made specifically for this bricked-up doorway in this black painted building. The chainsaw-blade flowers, pale as the moon, fit perfectly with the mood of their gloomy backdrop.

Thank you, @akafrank, for allowing us to share your photo, and I hope we will find out the artist’s name soon.

Recently, I noticed that even my houseplant is losing leaves. As fall comes to a close, it seems to be happening in my apartment as well as outside. The Christmas season has arrived here too, meaning that our potted Norfolk Pine is having its annual star turn as a Christmas tree. It may look a bit odd, but it’s nice not to have to throw out a Christmas tree in January and the pine makes an amiable roommate during the rest of the year.

Walking in the workaday neighborhood of Part Dieu on a trip to Lyon recently, on my way to the famous Les Halles food markets, I was struck by a tableaux that I had to stop and photograph.

Due to construction, the few trees demurely lining this old building, standing on tip-toe against the walls on the edge of an entirely paved and fenced-in courtyard, were temporarily subjected to yet another layer of restraints, a system of screened scaffolding covering the whole facade and screening them in. Or out, however you choose to perceive it.

The play of sun and shadow on the screen, along with the stark shadow of the ornate iron fencing on the ground, made a lovely composition, but I was horrified for the plants, boxed into their shadowy space. Maybe it’s for their own protection, or is it for ours? I took the risk and put my hands and camera through the fence to bring you these photographs.

This intrepid plant caught my eye with its bright green color as I was walking down Adalbertstraße in Kreuzberg the other day, not far from the petting zoo. Isn’t it amazing how it totally defies the gray-and-black palette of its stony and metallic surroundings with its radiant color?