The New York Botanical Garden, the largest botanical garden in any U.S. city, is bringing its plants from the garden to the dinner table this fall.

Its exhibit, the "Edible Garden," which is on display until Oct. 17 and includes several sites littered throughout the Garden’s 250-acre campus, shows visitors how growing and cooking their own food can contribute to an overall healthy lifestyle.

It’s well known that incumbent state legislators are more likely to diein office than be defeated on Election Day. Sadly, that’s still true – only two sitting lawmakers lost to primary challengers statewide.

Thankfully, one of them was Bronx State Senator Pedro Espada, Jr. The list of his alleged and actual transgressions is long. The state attorney general accused him of bilking his health care network of $14 million. He held the state legislature hostage by momentarily hopping across the aisle to the GOP and only hopped back when he was promised a leadership position. His main residence is Westchester and he flouted campaign finance rules with abandon. We could go on and on …

Despite all this, we’d probably still be calling him Senator Espada come Jan. 1 if a coalition of citizens, labor unions, and elected officials hadn’t rallied fervently and feverishly behind Espada’s young opponent, Gustavo Rivera.

The jury’s still out on Rivera of course. He lives in the district but he has not participated in community life here.

Cancer survivor Patti Murillo-Casa wants every woman to know they don’t have to go through the nightmarish battle she did.

A 48-year-old Riverdale resident, Murillo-Casa has been cancer-free for almost a year and a half, but she says she nearly didn’t make it through the brutal, exhausting treatments that saved her from cervical cancer, a form of the disease that is now almost entirely avoidable and treatable.

Onstage       The Bronx Library Center, 310 E. Kingsbridge Rd. off Fordham Road presents Echoing Voices: Silver Roots, concert, Sept. 25 at 2:30 p.m. For more information, call (718) 579-4244/46 or visit www.nypl.org. Lehman Center for the Performing Arts, located at 250 Bedford Pk. Blvd. W., presents Eddie Palmieri and Michel Camilo, two masters of Latin jazz, Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. (tickets are $35 to $50). For more information or tickets, call (718) 960-8833. Events The public is invited to an Open House and Free Carnival, Oct. 2, 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., at the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center,

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Green Cart Open House WHEDco is hosting an open house for NYC Green Cart permit holders to discuss all kinds of Green Cart-related issues on Thursday, Sept. 30, from 4 to 6 p.m. at 1330 Intervale Ave., between Freeman and Jennings streets. This for existing NYC Green Cart permit holders only. Bring copies of your NYC Green Cart documents. RSVP to WHEDco at 718-839-1183. Green Cart Application Help WHEDco is hosting workshop to help entrepeneurs apply for permits to become a NYC Green Cart vendor on Oct. 5, from 7 to 9 p.m. at 1330 Intervale Ave., between Freeman and

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Daniel Padernacht, the Kingsbridge Heights lawyer who was one of two candidates challenging incumbent State Senator Pedro Espada, Jr. in next week’s election, abruptly dropped his bid on Sunday, announcing in a statement that he would instead get behind former opponent Gustavo Rivera.

While exiting heavily-used St. James Park on a recent Sunday evening, young father, Jelani Ciria, was executed – shot in the chest at least six times – in broad daylight.

Somebody must have seen something.

Rashaad Ernesto Green, who wrote and is directing the film "Gun Hill Road" as part of his senior thesis for NYU’s Graduate Film Program, is quite familiar with the neighborhoods that encompass the street his film is named after.

Voters hitting the polls in state elections this fall won’t have any levers to pull this time. The State Board of Elections has traded in the old machines for a new voting system, debuting in New York on Sept. 14 during the Democratic primary.

In the buildup to the primary, the Board of Elections has been holding demonstrations throughout the five boroughs to teach voters how to use the new machines. Two weeks ago, the Bedford Park Senior Center on East 204th Street hosted one of these demonstrations.