The Urban Pantheist

An errand brought us back to where Brookline meets Mission Hill. Notice the MATEP tower, seen from the opposite side than I usually photograph it. As long as we're in the neighborhood...

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Garden of Art, a small open space on Parker Street on Mission Hill. It's directly across the street from the tiny Franciscan monastery. There's very little information about the Garden online, but it appears to be maintained by cooperating groups including local colleges, elementary schools, and Shawmut Springs Church.





It looks like it would be a wonderfully lively place in the non-winter months; I'll have to pay a return visit.

Mullein rosette. I found it in the Back of the Hill Urban Wilds, continuing my Urban Wilds project.

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Apropos of not much, Alexis and I went to Flann's for brunch last Sunday.
She surprised me by ordering herself a very photogenic beer.
She's not so bad herself. :)
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Parking at the Mission Hill Stop & Shop to go have lunch at Flann's.

Sunrise at the zoo. Something I'll get used to, I imagine.

( then mission hill for some reason )

This Sunday I'll be leading an Urban Nature Walk up Mission Hill. This is a very meaningful event for me, because Mission Hill is the first neighborhood I lived in when I moved to Boston 20 years ago. It's where I became an urban person, and where I first developed an appreciation of urban nature. It was on Mission Hill that I had encounters with leopard slugs and Ailanthus trees that led me to make The Urban Pantheist zine, which eventually became this journal.

Behind the cut is a timeline of the history of Mission Hill, from European settlement to the 20th century. I like how the timeline dovetails with the one I wrote for the Stony Brook Reservation walk. I wish I knew a little more about what happened there before 1630 (how did the Natives use the hill?) and in prehistory (how did the hill come to be? most sources call it a drumlin, but it's a solid rock hill).

( here's the timeline )

By the way, my icon is a picture taken from Mission Hill with the skyline behind me.
It's good to be researching and planning a walk again. Life intrudes too much on my life.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Beggarticks. (Don't worry, it's a plant--probably one you recognize, too.)

Stop & Shop parking lot, Mission Hill.