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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Congratulations to Pollinator Partnership partner Mary
Gardiner, Ph.D. of The Ohio State University, featured on the front page of the
NY Times Home section!<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/garden/finding-the-potential-in-vacant-lots-in-the-garden.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=whats%20left%20behind&st=cse&scp=1">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/garden/finding-the-potential-in-vacant-lots-in-the-garden.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=whats%20left%20behind&st=cse&scp=1</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<h1><b><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:24.0pt'>Finding
the Potential in Vacant Lots<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></nyt_headline></h1>
<h6><b><font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:7.5pt'><nyt_byline>By
MICHAEL TORTORELLO<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h6>
<p><st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'></nyt_byline><nyt_text><nyt_correction_top></nyt_correction_top>CLEVELAND</span></font></st1:place></st1:City>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<h6><b><font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:7.5pt'><img
border=0 width=190 height=291 id="_x0000_i1027"
src="cid:image001.jpg@01CC5291.E373E2A0"> <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h6>
<h6 style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><b><font size=1
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>David Joseph for The New
York Times<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h6>
<p class=caption style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=1
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:8.0pt'>Scientists are studying
vacant lots to document their ecological benefits and recast them as community
assets rather than urban blight. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>THIS city
contains 20,000 vacant lots, more or less. Probably more. Every year,
demolition crews knock down another 1,000 houses. And the housing market being
what it is, few souls are returning. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>A vacant
lot may be a lot of things: an eyesore, a dump, a symbol of American industrial
decline. But one thing it is not is vacant. When we leave a yard behind, the
bulk of the biomass does not follow us in a U-Haul. Put another way, a
dandelion is unmoved by foreclosure. It lingers where it pleases. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And so,
on a recent Monday morning, Garrett Ormiston, 29, was taking an informal census
of the vegetation occupying an otherwise empty yard on <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address
w:st="on">East 93rd Street</st1:address></st1:Street>, just a few miles east
of downtown <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:place></st1:City>.
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“Right
here is kind of a mix of plants that probably existed as people’s
landscaping,” said Mr. Ormiston, a naturalist with the Cleveland Museum
of Natural History. “This here looks like somebody’s ornamental
rose that has just kind of persisted.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The lot,
four-tenths of an acre in size, once comprised four separate parcels.
Foreclosure records indicate that in 1991, “the unknown heirs etc. of
Willie James Smedley, a k a James Trask, deceased” lost title to part of
the lot. (They had fallen behind by $4,155.70 on property taxes.) The <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Living</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Hope</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Baptist</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Church</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>
forfeited a different chunk in 2004. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>A
concrete pad hinted where the buildings might have stood. If the pair of fawns
grazing across the street knew anything more than that, they weren’t
saying. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“This
is an old alley,” Mr. Ormiston said, pointing to a half-buried strip of
asphalt. An empty bag of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chester</st1:place></st1:City>’s
Puffcorn lay next to a heap of old roofing tile and a blue plastic tarp. A roof
will typically stop leaking after you tear down the house. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>He walked
along a row of shrubs beneath a power line. The neighborhood birds, he said,
apparently made a habit of perching here and depositing seeds (and fertilizer),
as birds will. “Whatever they bring, colonizes,” Mr. Ormiston said.
“You can see all of their favorites.” There was raspberry, white
mulberry, native “riverside” grape, Canada thistle (“a really
rotten invasive,” he said), a staghorn sumac and a stand of exotic Norway
maple. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>With a
chain saw and a Bobcat, a homeowner could clear this brush in an afternoon. But
no homeowner would be coming this afternoon, or this month, or this summer. To
be realistic, it’s unlikely that anyone will be coming next summer,
either. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>One
abandoned yard is a mess; 20,000 abandoned yards is an ecosystem. At this
scale, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:place></st1:City>’s
vacant land begins to look less like a sign of neglect and more like an
ecological experiment spread over some 3,600 acres. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>As it
happens, a team of local scientists has designated this accidental landscape an
Urban Long-Term Research Area — that is, Ultra. And having won a $272,000
exploratory award from the National Science Foundation, the researchers call
their project Ultra-Ex. There’s enough turf here for everybody: Ultra-Ex
scientists are studying bird and insect populations, watershed systems, soil
nematodes and <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/agriculture/urban_agriculture/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"
title="More articles about urban agriculture.">urban farms</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Along
with its sci-fi name, Ultra-Ex advances a forward-looking mission: to document
the ecological benefits that vacant lots might provide and to redefine the
land, from neighborhood blight to community asset. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>OF
course, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:place></st1:City>
has no monopoly on vacant land. Tens of thousands of vacancies blot the
residential map in major, or once major, Great Lakes cities like <st1:City
w:st="on">Youngstown</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">Ohio</st1:State>; <st1:City
w:st="on">Flint</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">Mich.</st1:State>, and <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Buffalo</st1:place></st1:City>. Some 40,000
parcels are empty in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Philadelphia</st1:place></st1:City>.
(<st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York City</st1:place></st1:City>
does not track the number of vacant lots, according to the Department of City
Planning, but 8,902 acres, or 5.8 percent, of the city’s land was vacant
in 2010.) <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And
vacancy creates more vacancy, said Bob Grossmann, 66, the director of
Philadelphia Green, a program run by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society,
which has pioneered the management of urban vacant land. “There’s a
cost to doing nothing,” he said. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Originally,
cities like <st1:City w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:City> and <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Flint</st1:place></st1:City> (and their surrounding counties)
assembled vacant tax-forfeited parcels into “land banks.” The idea
was for these public entities to guide the resale and redevelopment of the land
in a strategic fashion. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But with
the economy in a coma, private buyers haven’t approached the land banks
to draw down deposits, said Joan Nassauer, 59, a professor in the <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">School</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Natural Resources</st1:PlaceName>
and Environment at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Michigan</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Local governments
have been “left holding many, many, many properties that they would
rather not own,” she said. “But now they own them, and
they’ve got to manage them.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The plan
that the nonprofit Philadelphia Green has implemented in neighborhoods around
the city’s core is a kind of “greening and cleaning” regime:
in TV terms, an extreme makeover. Here, contractors and work crews remove
debris, deposit topsoil, plant grass and build a post-and-rail fence.
Afterward, they continue to mow the lot. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
nonprofit now maintains 5,200 lots in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Philadelphia</st1:place></st1:City>,
at a cost of approximately $800,000 a year. Another $700,000 will go into
“stabilizing” 500 more lots, in city neighborhoods that show
promise for future development. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>With city
coffers low and its land bank overflowing, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:place></st1:City> has been executing a less ambitious
plan. City workers attempt to mow the grass before it grows taller than eight
inches, at a cost of $3.3 million a year. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>For
places in straits like these, the question may not be what we can do for our vacant
lots but what our vacant lots can do for us. Ms. Nassauer encourages cities to
think of ways that open land can clean and replenish the watershed, absorb
urban heat and carbon dioxide, and create recreational opportunities. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Would the
bare lot on the east side of Cleveland seem more valuable if the neighbors knew
it supported perhaps 30 or even 50 species of pollinating bees? What if this
disorderly habitat bred a rich diversity of predatory spiders, like wolf
spiders, orb weavers, crab spiders and jumping spiders? (O.K., best not to
advertise the jumping spiders.) <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>This
summer, Mary Gardiner, 34, an assistant professor of entomology at <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Ohio</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">State</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>,
and her graduate researcher, Caitlin Burkman, 23, have been sampling spider
populations in pitfall traps. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
spiders “kind of walk along, don’t notice and then fall in,”
Ms. Burkman said. Soapy water makes it hard to break the surface tension. Then
they drown, she said. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“We
use some very sophisticated tools,” Dr. Gardiner added. The trap is
“like a keg cup or something.” Some traps they bury in empty lots;
others go to urban farms. Dr. Gardiner’s hypothesis is that the less
“disturbed” sites (the ungroomed vacancies) may support a broader
range of beneficial predatory spiders. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And a
tidy lawn would be no place to find the herblike plant that Mr. Ormiston was
examining near the ruins of a fencepost. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“This
right here is mugwort,” he said. “It’s in the Artemisia
family.” Mugwort, which shoots up from buried rhizomes, emits a powerful
odor and irritates the skin. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“But
what’s funny is, birds actually collect this plant and weave it into
their nests,” Mr. Ormiston said. “Its scent repels insects that
might bother the nest.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Before
European settlement, some 300 years ago, this area would probably have been a
lake plain swamp forest, Mr. Ormiston said. Common trees would have been
American elm, shellbark hickory, bur oak, swamp white oak, tupelo and black
willow. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>We know
the original elms won’t be coming back. After decades of blight, the
trees have retreated from the forest canopy. The swamps and creeks that radiate
from <st1:place w:st="on">Lake Erie</st1:place> have been drained and trapped
in culverts. And the climate is getting hotter, or so rumor has it. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>In the
meantime, poor compacted soils are a welcome mat for invasive plants like
Japanese knotweed and Ailanthus. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Still,
their lease on the land is not open-ended. Once the city stops mowing (and no
one believes <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:place></st1:City>
can mow forever), “the grasses will grow tall,” Mr. Ormiston said. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“You’ll
start to get some wildflowers, things like asters,” he said. “Some
shrubs like viburnums and dogwoods. But eventually, you’ll start getting
trees pretty early on: things like cottonwoods and sumacs that colonize really
quickly, grow quickly and start paving the way for other trees.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Terry
Schwarz, 47, an Ultra-Ex affiliate who directs the Cleveland Urban Design
Collaborative at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Kent</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceName w:st="on">State</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>,
has heard the worst-case scenario for the city. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“Here
in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:place></st1:City>,”
she said, “if you ask people what’s going to happen, they’ll
say: ‘Oh, we’re going to keep losing population. And <st1:City
w:st="on">Phoenix</st1:City> and <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Atlanta</st1:place></st1:City>
are going to take our water.’ But the truth is, <st1:City w:st="on">Phoenix</st1:City>
and <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Atlanta</st1:place></st1:City>
have their own expiration date. Every city does.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Demographers
say that the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>
population may grow by 120 million in the next 40 years, Ms. Schwarz said. At
least a few people, she predicts, will want to live in a temperate central
location with an abundant supply of fresh water. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“What
happens is one of two things,” she said. “Either we reclaim the
older industrial cities and repopulate. Or we’re going to be building new
cities, probably not too far from here.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>In this
schema, vacant lots could be the parkland and home sites of tomorrow, if
they’re managed smartly. In <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Genesee
County</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">Mich.</st1:State></st1:place>, Ms.
Nassauer has developed a list of nine lot treatments to suit different land
priorities, like watershed protection and neighborhood resettlement. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>One
Ultra-Ex project being led by the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Botanical Garden</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> involves
planting a vacant lot in the Buckeye neighborhood with low-mow fescue, a
slow-growing pasture grass, and establishing a vegetative fence. Down the block
is one of six learning farms that the botanical garden runs through its Green
Corps program. With three acres under cultivation and 60 teenage workers, the
urban farms will grow and sell or give away 15,000 pounds of fresh produce this
summer, said the program’s director, Geri Unger. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
Buckeye garden includes raised beds, an herb spiral, a strawberry patch and a
hardy kiwi vine snaking up the border fence. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It’s
easy to convince the neighbors that an orderly, well-tended spot like this one
has a civic value. Loraine Ingram, 74, has lived next door for 30 years. Of the
community farm, she said, “I love it.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Ms.
Ingram, a nurse who lost her home health-care job last summer, has a powder
blue two-story house with a matching picket fence. While she stood in her
driveway, a dog growled savagely from behind a half-boarded-up basement window.
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Long
before Green Corps moved in, Ms. Ingram recalled, a “Mr. Owens” had
lived in the house next door. His grandson would take care of him and look
after Ms. Ingram’s son too. After Mr. Owens died, the house sat empty. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Then,
“four or five years ago,” she said, “somebody set it to fire.
I came home from work one day, and it was burned.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
garden moved in last spring. “I think it’s nice,” Ms. Ingram
said. “I grew up on a farm in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Denmark</st1:country-region>,
<st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Tennessee</st1:place></st1:State>.”
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It would
be encouraging to believe that urban farms and community gardens could be part
of a comprehensive solution. Indeed, the Philadelphia Green program started in
the mid-1970s, Mr. Grossmann said, by establishing “a couple of thousand
community gardens.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But at
the same time the program was planting green spaces, other lots were falling
fallow. “People pass away or move out of the neighborhood,” he
said. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Urban
farms are labor-intensive, and the initial site cleanup costs can be
prohibitive. Ms. Unger, 55, estimates that “maybe there’s 40 to 50
acres under urban farming,” in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:place></st1:City>.
“Maybe up to 100 acres. If we could get up to 10 percent urban
farms” — some 360 acres — “I think we would be doing
really great. But that’s not going to solve the urban vacancy problem you
see.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>A
FALLBACK is to do nothing. A group of four vacant parcels on <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address
w:st="on">Union Avenue</st1:address></st1:Street>, known to Ultra-Ex researchers
as Control Site 6, offers a snapshot of the status quo. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Mobs of
thigh-high weeds (mustard green, chicory, Queen Anne’s lace) were
starting to gather in front of a tumbledown garage. The plan, it appeared, was
to wait until no one was looking and then overrun the rest of the yard. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“Last
year they were definitely mowing it more,” said Dr. Gardiner, the <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Ohio</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">State</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>
entomologist. “A lot of stuff will flower and go to seed if it
doesn’t get mowed.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Vacancy
begets vacancy. Weeds beget weeds. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>At the end
of a sloping remnant of pavement, Mr. Ormiston found a patch of mint
interspersed with comfrey. “I think this plant could very well have been
here as part of someone’s garden and gone wild after it was
abandoned,” he said. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Alvesta
McGriff, 79, a retired hospital worker, remembered a vegetable patch growing in
the yard. As the afternoon sun harried pedestrians into the shade, she sat on
the porch of the house next door, which she has occupied since 1966. Between
the hedge and the front stair lay a single Timberland boot. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>A grocer
used one of the parcels, selling produce fresh out of the ground, she
recounted. A TV repair shop with two apartments filled another part of the lot.
It belonged, she said, to a “Mr. John White,” who had rented it
out. “But he has passed and gone on,” Ms. McGriff said. And his
building with him. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“When
I moved in, this neighborhood was beautiful and clean,” she said. If
there was an ecological value to the lot next door, she didn’t see it. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>“I
hate it,” she said. “They don’t keep it up or nothing.
It’s in bad shape. This neighborhood has really gone down.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>A man
with a straw hat and a brown paper bag — Eddie Thomas, 55 — charged
across the street. “When are you going to mow that place?” he yelled,
including a few other words for emphasis. The answer, “Not today,”
appeared neither to please nor surprise him. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Mr.
Thomas lives in Ms. McGriff’s house, and Dr. Gardiner had met him in the
yard before. “The first time we came out, he was very nice,” she
said. “And every time we come back, he gets progressively more
frustrated.” For this, Dr. Gardiner blamed him not at all. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>With
Ultra-Ex researchers visiting the site every week, “there’s 40
people walking around here, looking in the air, vacuuming the leaves,”
she said. ”He’s sick of a lot of people coming up here and doing a
lot of things, except the one thing he wants done. Which is to mow the
grass.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Driving
away from Site 6 and Cleveland’s east side, you can imagine someone like
Mr. Thomas cursing the unmown grass every morning and evening, for years on
end. Until one day, he will look over from the porch and the grass will be
gone. And a wood will have taken its place. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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