Since 2017, I have been on a mission to beautify the outside of our New York City building and change negative behaviors like vandalism, litter and dog owners ‘ misbehaviors. I have written about my work on my website, rutas-rules.com. THe most recent blog is Signs of the Beautiful -Celebrating Hope
Aside from creating beautiful gardens with our small building staff, I also made unusual curb your dog signs. Sometimes I use quotes and allow them to inspire my own writing.
My blog, Curb Your Dog Signs – Signs of the Beautiful, explains my research about the psychology and neuroscience of behaviors addressed in this project. You might read that first. The sign project expanded to include messages about the environment, animism, the benefits of trees and plants in the urban environment, and a call to help the world. In recent years, I adopted various new additional themes. In 2023, it was Hope.
I arrived at the Hope theme when I found myself feeling everyone’s hopelessness about climate change. Despite our recycling and pro-earth changes, it seemed that we were getting nowhere. Larger forces like government (or lack of one) and big corporations seemed to hold all the cards. I knew, however, that if we gave up hope, change would be impossible.
Dealing with the Impossible
It is not easy to manage seven urban 10-foot x 5-foot tree beds for every season. The spirit-matter divide causes a disorder in Western culture. The divide can be a useful scientific tool, but permeating our culture, it has made us feel separate from everything around us. People act as if their actions on the semi-public-space sidewalks doesn’t effect themselves. One of my first signs challenging this divide was:
Meeting the Challenges of the Urban Gardener
We are still dealing with oblivious dog walkers who don’t curb, the few dead rats, a drunk who slept the night in one bed while his friend vomited in the next, a fraternity after-party ripping out mums and throwing them in the street, and the occasional plant thievery.
A couple of years ago, a lady walking through the neighborhood picked our red Holiday berries, arranging them in a bouquet as if our gardens were a store. She didn’t have enough, so she returned the next day. My husband ran after her as she went to the bus stop but stopped himself short. He was afraid she would hand them back to him and he would have to touch them. As a scientist, he knew of the plethora of pathogens in animal waste, human vomit and decaying rats. [1] I half jokingly wanted to make a sign that warned people that if they wanted to steal our plants, they should at least visit their doctor and get gamma globulin and tetanus shots. LOLBut enough of the negative. I keep going with our project because it gives me hope.
Someone once told me that you can’t define hope. Perhaps that is true.
Undefinable – maybe. Understandable- totally. We know hope when we feel it in our hearts.
So please find our signs celebrating hope. Sorry for the blurriness. They are seen outside quite clearly, but it is hard to photograph them. The glaring sun creates distortion on the laminate or shadows. For your convenience, I have repeated the sayings in the captions.
Signs of the Beautiful -Celebrating Hope
Footnotes:
[1] Since COVID, the number of feral cats has increased. Someone in the building next door takes care of one of them. This has made a great difference to the last flower bed near the garbage bins. Rats used to tunnel under that bed and disrupt roots. They would eat certain flowers. Thanks to “Kitty,” we no longer have that problem.
See also related blogs:
Beauty Heals in Troubled Times – Signs of the Beautiful
Making Curb Your Dog Signs- Signs of the Beautiful
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