Good morning. It’s Friday.
Here’s a surprising thing. Did you know that, technically speaking, a tree is a perennial plant?
Yup. True story.
Now, when I think of perennials, (definition: something that lives more than two years), I think of, I don’t know, daisies. Something you grow in the garden, not a shrub and certainly not a full-blown tree.
I’ve been thinking a lot about gardens since I inherited a very large one when we bought this new house that sits on an acre of land from a woman who was an amateur master gardener.
Now there are things sprouting all over the place, and I have no idea if they’re plants or weeds. I’m basically just waiting it out…and also looking for someone who knows more than I do to show up and advise me. (Hit me up, friends with green thumbs, I am 100 percent serious and in dire need of some gardening 101).
Anyway, back to trees. The dictionary says a tree is:
“A woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.”
“In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are usable as lumber or plants above a specified height.”
There are an estimated 3.04 trillion trees across the globe – about 422 trees for every person on the planet – and somewhere between 65,000 and 73,000 different species. That seems like a lot. But trees are being lost at a rapid clip – about 15 billon of them are cut down every year.
Some of the tree loss is intentional and managed by the timber industry, and I guess to a lesser extent the Christmas tree industry. But deforestation that isn’t cultivated – occurring as a result of clear-cutting or wildfires, for example – is a big problem.
It contributes to climate change by reducing the amount of carbon sequestration and storage trees can accomplish – they’re magic like that – and contributes to biodiversity loss through negative impacts on the species that rely on disappearing trees for shelter and food.
There’s so much trees are good for that it’s really hard to overstate their importance. They provide shade and cool down urban environments, help with erosion control, and, of course, are a resource to create all manner of products.
There are any number of tree planting initiatives taking place across the nation and the globe – including in New York City. If you’ve been meaning to get around to planting one – or more – yourself – today would be a great day to get that done.
Happy Arbor Day, everyone!
We’ve got one final day of dry weather before what is shaping up to be a very soggy weekend. It will be cloudy with temperatures in the low-to-mid 60s. Tomorrow and Sunday look like rain, rain and more rain. And this trend will continue for the foreseeable future.
In the headlines…
Gov. Kathy Hochul outlined the framework of a $229 budget deal last night in the state Capitol, hours after lawmakers left the statehouse following reports there was no deal on controversial policy issues yet to be resolved.
The package will include language to remove the “least restrictive” measure so judges can set bail in violent cases; toughen laws on illegal marijuana sales and increase the minimum wage by $1 an hour starting next year, Hochul said.
The broad strokes of the “conceptual agreement” were revealed by the governor at an impromptu news conference at the State Capitol on Thursday evening; some of the details, Hochul said, were still being “fine tuned.”
Legislative leaders confirmed the deal, but rank-and-file lawmakers have left the Capitol for the weekend and aren’t expected to vote on any budget bills until next week.
Hochul had to drop some of her top priorities to get a deal – including her plan to address the mounting affordable crisis across New York.
“This is a transformative budget and I will never shy away from a fight,” Hochul said in the Red Room, promising to pick up the housing fight in the remainder of the legislative session. “You’re not always going to win.”
The state seemed poised to take the first meaningful action in decades to address its deep housing shortage. But the plans fell apart, in yet another indictment of dysfunction in Albany.
Under a proposal presented to Democratic senators earlier this week, the state would be allowed to reassign 14 so-called “zombie charters” in New York City — licenses that were awarded to privately run, publicly funded schools that have since gone dormant.
For upstate lawmakers, especially in the Capital Region, the most contentious negotiations in recent days have revolved around issues that don’t directly involve their constituents.
Attorney General Letitia James and state lawmakers want to crack down on deed theft, a crime in which con artists steal homes and real estate — often by deceiving elderly people or residents of minority neighborhoods.
State law enforcement authorities are cracking down on a type of housing fraud that they say is becoming an increasing problem amid a volatile real estate market with soaring home values.
New York City’s five district attorneys, in an abrupt about-face, released a joint statement to oppose changing a law that governs the way that case material is shared with defense lawyers.
A reported state budget overhaul of discovery reform appears to have fallen apart after New York City district attorneys said it would do little to stop a deluge of dropped cases.
The state Legislature has established a small, unlicensed daycare center in the LOB to a select number of Democratic Assembly members, many of whom bring their children along when they take part in legislative meetings and other government business.
Former Vice President Mike Pence reportedly testified yesterday for more than five hours to a federal grand jury investigating the aftermath of the 2020 election and the actions of then-President Donald Trump and others.
The former vice president is a key witness to Trump’s attempts to block congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
This week’s vote by House Republicans to couple deep spending cuts with an agreement to raise the debt limit for one year has put President Biden on the defensive, forcing him to confront a series of potentially painful choices at a perilous economic moment.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy squeezed a debt ceiling increase out of reluctant House Republicans, but he will be hard-pressed to do it again when it counts.
Biden is racing to win early support from Democratic donors for his re-election bid, hoping to beat the $1 billion haul he landed in 2020 ahead of what some pundits predict will be the most expensive presidential race in US history.
Neither Biden nor Trump, the leading presidential candidates for their respective parties, seems to have any plans to participate in primary debates in 2024.
Trump said that giving his G.O.P. rivals, like Gov. Ron DeSantis, an opening on a debate stage made no sense.
Nearly a month after being indicted and a day after a woman in a courtroom accused him of rape, Trump met a more-than-receptive crowd in Manchester, New Hampshire in his first public event in the Granite State since leaving office.
American singer songwriter Don McLean joked that he was planning to sing his iconic “American Pie” with the South Korean president, after the leader entertained Biden with a karaoke rendition of the song at the White House.
South Carolina and Nebraska, two conservative states that have been pushing to ban abortion, both failed to pass new bills prohibiting the procedure, preserving wide access in those states and handing surprise victories to abortion rights advocates.
Mayor Eric Adams wants the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stop other states from shipping migrants to New York City — as the number of asylum seekers arriving in the Big Apple surged to 1,300 over a three-day stretch this week.
Adams’ latest budget proposal would “cause a lot of harm to New Yorkers in need,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said as she vowed to fight a long list of agency cuts baked into his spending blueprint.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams slammed Mayor Adams over the mayor’s attack against critics of NYPD overtime spending, saying Adams is driving “harmful narratives” with his words.
Traffic calming devices that are designed to slow down traffic will now be mandated in parts of the five boroughs where a large number of senior citizens reside as the city plans to speed up part of its response to serious — and fatal — car crashes.
Yellow cab owners can’t sue New York City after the value of their taxi medallions dropped following an expansion of ride-share apps like Uber and Lyft, according to the state’s top court.
Stores that sell guns in New York City could soon be required to post signs informing potential buyers of the potential risks that go along with owning them.
The MTA announced that it will no longer provide real-time service alerts on Twitter since the platform began charging an exorbitant price for the integral feature that allows such posts.
A peacock more than ruffled feathers while roaming wild in the Bronx — turning “very vicious” and biting a bewildered onlooker.
Joe Percoco, a top aide to ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was released from a halfway house last week, marking the end of a prison sentence that began following a 2018 fraud conviction.
Three Rensselaer County government officials including the director of operations, have been indicted on federal criminal charges alleging they used fraud and intimidation to obtain absentee ballots for primary and general elections in 2021.
Rep. Elise Stefanik wants the FBI to brief her a second time on its handling of Shahed Hussain, a longtime undercover informant for the bureau who operated the unauthorized limo business involved in the 2018 limo crash in Schoharie that killed 20 people.
With concerns that the party scene on Caroline Street is growing more violent, the Saratoga Springs City Council is considering outlawing carrying a firearm while impaired by drugs or alcohol.
Jerry Springer, who went from a somewhat outlandish political career to an almost indescribably outlandish broadcasting career with “The Jerry Springer Show,” which by the mid-1990s was setting a new standard for tawdriness on American TV, died at 79.
Stew Leonard Sr., a folkloric retailer who expanded his namesake stores into merchandising meccas replete with petting zoos and mechanical singing farm animals, died earlier this week at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 93.
