Gary Winogrand on Sunday

After the noted implosion of neighborly relations and a threat of bedbugs, I went to the Met. The Met has a restorative power about it. It's big, it's renowned, it's cheap; guards don't stop you from photographing the art (but protip, don't try it in the current Goya exhibit, sorry I have no pix of this); you can stock up on satisfying little pencils with rainbow lead; and DAMN it I just realized I forgot to go to the rooftop installation while I was there, I'll go back with anyone who wants to go. 

I'm actually exhausted and lying almost completely prostrate while I type but wanted to put up a few shots from the Garry Winogrand show which is great and exactly what I was craving: a reminder of a few things to love about this city, and how many people have lived and loved here. It's sometimes pretty brutal to live here and the Met helps. 

Caption THIS. Also there I am in the middle of the picture, oops.

What about this is so alarming? Reminds me a bit of David Levinthal.

Probably one of my favorite images ever.

A date to the zoo, maybe ends badly.

Coney Island. This image is now all over my fridge & phone
background. #basic. Not sorry.

I swooned over the Dutch Masters paintings and noted that Anthropologie sells what are ostensibly replicas of glassware from a few of those stunning flower-dead bird-goblet-oyster still lifes. This bums me out, actually. More accurately, I almost bought one of these replica cups in a moment of 5th-avenue-after-5 weakness. Never shop on an empty stomach, and for god's sake, never on the way home from work. 

After I left the Met I walked down Madison to the bottom of the park. I went to Clyde's and Ladurée. That was just the kind of day I wanted to have. 

Walking in such a historic district after seeing Winogrand's NY photos made me fancy myself a great capturer of candid moments on film. I took these two pictures with my phone. 

I know, pretty compelling stuff. 

These turtles on something. Maybe just on each other.

Thanks for the pick-me-up, NY. In other news, my air conditioner is crackling? Any tips? Will it soon explode? 

Longwood Gardens

This Wednesday, a day usually reserved for group projects among the interns at BBG, we piled into a white van and headed to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA. On the way we quizzed each other on botanical names for our herbaceous ID exam the next day, dozed, ate sesame sticks, and tried not to get carsick. It was exactly like summer camp.

We were given a behind-the-scenes tour of the horticulture facilities, which were SHOCKINGLY advanced. Since Longwood was originally the creative outlet for Pierre DuPont, ("Better Living through Chemistry"), it has an unimaginable endowment and can do whatever it wants. As a display garden (as opposed to a botanic garden, whose mission is to educate), aesthetics are of peak importance, and LITCHRALLY not a leaf was out of place. They use a computer to create perfectly proportioned soil mixtures. They have piano concerts on a Steinway in the conservatory like, every 2 hours. Every 2 years, 20 new people are accepted into their professional gardening program, which is fully funded by the garden and includes a stipend and - excuse me while I catch my breath here - housing on Longwood's grounds.

I'll let that sink in and then we can proceed with the photo onslaught.

Ready?

The bell tower whence toll the bells.

In the Witch Hazel family, which gets tri-color fall foliage.

B&W because this reminded me so much of one of those tree-free
photos of new buildings from the early 20th century. There are 4 acres
under glass at Longwood's conservatories.

Nothing but the grass and the vines is permanent. Here, and in many other
parts of the conservatory, the plants are switched out as often as
every few weeks, especially around holidays. Imagine the labor!

The green wall, designed by the illustrious Kim Wilkie.

The Meadow Garden is the new public expansion into some of
Longwood's thousand total acres of privately-owned land. In the
distance you can barely make out a little restored stone house,
original to the property, which now houses a gallery of ecological
garden design practices. The house is reached by a long, winding
meadow boardwalk. Dreamy.

At Christmas, the trees in this allee are filled with white lights.

It was a really fantastic visit. Upon my triumphant return to Brooklyn, a bestie texted "Look at the sky right now!!!" and this was the view from my window:

Goodnight, Brooklyn! Goodnight, sunset-aware BFFs. What a lucky, happy day.

like swimming in the air

For anyone in the Northeast four hours ago, I would have recommended a cold splash of water to the face every hour and an abandonment of all vanity: the humidity was incredible, like a steam bath, making an overcast 78º feel totally debilitating. I was the embodiment of sticky. Sarah gave me a lesson on tying climbing roses and while we gathered rose canes atop two small ladders we chatted about how alone is too alone for a private person to handle. I love being able to surpass formalities and speak easily with people about what really matters to them. If ever you have an unbearable burden to unload, some kind of heartwrenching or mindbending issue to mull over aloud, there is nothing that gives me greater pleasure!

(This is why I sometimes fail at lighter interactions. I have a kind of Russian gravity about me at times that I'm beginning to suspect can be offputting.

But so what!)

Roses actually don't have the ability to climb, but their canes
can be trained, through tying, to grow up around pillars
and other supports in a tumbling, naturalistic style.

These amazing spiny hips won't ripen much further in
our Brooklyn climate.

More gorgeous hips. Don't these make you think
of fall fruits, even in mid-July?

This small insect perched in the best possible spot.

In a back room of the old Visitor's Center this afternoon, I saw a photo from the '20s of a white and a black horse drawing a plow through the rose beds to help establish the soil for the original plantings when the garden was begun. Remembering these animals' labor to lay the foundations of the garden will help me slow down and appreciate it even on the most scorching days, I suspect.

By 2:30 today, it was pouring, there'd been a flood warning issued, and the temperature had happily dropped. We got drenched in the warm rain, piled the wheelbarrows high with clippings, and Electrucked back to the garage speedyquick to wipe the dirt and dead bugs plant matter off our faces and arms. Now, by 6:30 (EGADS is it that time already? Studying be damned), hot coffee and nice soft pants are appropriate, which is really the best ever.

I'll also be doing a bit of casual research on protective spells for the home, after a pretty upsetting series of events unfolded last night with my nutso neighbors. I'll keep things mysterious for the moment and just show you this: my sadly crippled specs, missing one arm now after a tearful evening involving cops and threats and gin-breath. I had no choice but to wear them today, I hoped with the panache of a monocle. But there is actually nothing more ridiculous than emerging sweatyfaced from a rosebush with branches in your hair and your glasses dangling from one ear, I can tell you that right now.

UNLUCKILY FOR MY NEIGHBORS, I just picked up an old book on American Folklore from an outdoor market last Saturday. Hoodoo is found in the chapter on Witches, Ghosts and Strange Events, with charms to move neighbors, to overpower your enemies, and to cause "running feet." What a lifesaver.

Some things I still need to perform any of these charms:

-one guinea pepper
-a garden gate
-thirteen nails, ALL different sizes
-a "sharp onion"
-a chimney
-well water
-neighbor's shoe (1)
-hatred powder for use in hatband

It seems hoodoo can only take place in places where backyards are a thing, and neighbors are safe from hexes if they refrain from wearing fedoras.

"very satisfying"

My next rotation is another treat: I'm now in the rose garden with Sarah. Reading Amy Merrick's blog entries about (what feels like) my very own BBG rose garden, and in particular her swift dispatching of snarky rose-bashing by so many these days, was the perfect primer, and heartening; it reminded me how beautiful and whimsical roses can be, despite their prickles and the formality of the long rows of beds they're often planted in.

The Cranford Rose Garden is lush - planted almost to bursting with both once-flowering roses and repeat bloomers, and many, many perennials to help combat the diseases to which monocultures are so susceptible.

On our way to morning break, driving the little green Electruck, we discussed cottage gardens & their defining features. Sarah described them as airy, naturalistic, and usually excluding "hot" colors (oranges, yellows, reds). Watching her deftly adjusting the climbing roses, squinting a bit in the sun and never wearing gloves, reminds me of the grandmother in Swann's Way, walking her garden and loosening roses here and there with her clever, intuitive hands. 

Sarah is a baker and sometimes uses rose hips in tarts. She recommended Sahadi's for the best rose hip jam. She described the flavor as "very satisfying."

The once-flowering roses bloomed spectacularly in June, and most are now producing hips like these. How gorgeous? They look like little persimmons; very exotic.

The roses that will continue to bloom are producing hips too, but deadheading them will encourage another round of blooms, which will in turn produce more hips to last into early fall. Today we cut back the enthusiastic Catmint that's planted there, which grow healthy swaths, and deadheaded a repeat bloomer. Its hips were a velvety smooth texture, veinless and poreless.

During the afternoon I made my way up the rows of the repeat bloomers, which make up Sarah's "middle fifteen" beds. I thought about my own rose prejudice, and how trendy it is to talk smack about them - as outmoded, prim, high-maintenance, fussy; ecologically so apart from the washes of grasses and wildflowers that make up the very-in-vogue native flora palette that visionaries like Piet Oudolf have popularized. There is so much legitimate merit to native plantings, but a curtain of roses really is ecstasy. 

Saipua is closed today, Friday, July 11.

Sob story of the day is that after work I tried to visit Saipua in Red Hook, with a dead phone and asking directions many times along the way, but it was closed and locked. The only sign I was in the right place was a hellebore drying on the sidewalk by the door and a faint smell of herbal soap.

Two good things happened along the way, though. The first was that I stopped in to an antiques & collectibles store in Carroll Gardens and I found these things.

I've wanted a little clock for a long time & the Muji ones seem to get pricier the smaller they get...?

This one has a nice, streamlined "pull out & turn to set time, push in & turn to set alarm" feature. Not sure what the alarm sounds like yet but assuming it's sort of classically unpleasant. It has a half-glow, which I hope is a sweet night-light, and it PLUGS IN via a long cord.

It reminds me of a grandfather.
That there behind it is a BOOK.

Next up is this tiny shaded clip-on lamp. I can't believe I found it. I have one very modern one that I bought from A.I. Friedman, which I LOVE, but the bulb died & since it's sort of a special bulb it probably means I'll never use the damn lamp again.

I've clipped it onto our spice rack in what's at once our kitchen and the hallway to our bathroom.

The second good thing I mentioned that happened was this. In our neighborhood, a block or so away, lives the owner of a very nice, shiny, cream-colored SUV (do people even say that anymore?) with a grinning orange creature airbrush-painted on the side of it, ostensibly WHIZZING through space as shown by its cometlike streak of a body. It's super odd-looking because of what a nice car it is otherwise. As I stood outside Saipua moping, I noticed in no less than shock that THERE WAS THE CAR, parked right there in front of the shop, all the way out in Red Hook. How great. It's times like this I wish I had an aerial map to see how two people went about their day to end up in the same place, knowingly or otherwise.

snow

Something in me is missing the winter today.

Here is Fulton Park on a snowy night last winter, during one of those huge snow dumps. That purple sky is unreal. The walkway under the Lindens (didn't give a thought to what they were at the time) looked so magical I never even wanted to walk down it, so that I could preserve it just as it was in my mind.

How different it feels to come home from work at 4pm - practically elementary school hours! - when it's light and warm. By the time I finish my work at BBG in December, 4pm will have a different feeling altogether, as winter comes on. There is going to be a Christmas party, which I'm pretty excited about - though work Christmas parties are usually weirder than they are fun - but this time I really do love the people I work with and it's also a little bit like Free Dress days at a school where uniforms are required. What will I wear to the ball?!

The part I'm most looking forward to is seeing the gardens change as the seasons do. Spring was such a burst of glamour and smells, every plant showing what it had been working on for months, like a school pageant, following what felt like endless fertilizing to bring in the blooms; then we mulched and mulched to protect the soil from heat in the summer months. June brought the most outrageous display of roses, which are mostly gone now, save for the "repeat bloomers," which ideally will keep coming until the first frost, and since my next rotation is with Sarah in the rose garden, I'll be systematically deadheading and cutting back dead wood. (We did the same for the lilacs a few weeks ago, which peaked in May.) For rose work, I'll definitely wear a wide-brimmed hat, since there is NO shade.

But I am most excited, oddly, about fall and winter in the gardens. In the fall we'll plant literally several hundred thousand bulbs; it's then that the evergreen specimen trees and special barks really show; not to mention the leaves turning, and quiet falling over everything a bit as the stream of visitors slows. It's during the winter that the gardeners assess the success of their work from that year, research solutions to issues they encountered, order seeds, and plan spring plantings.

What could be better than working in this kind of naturally shifting world, and having your work governed by seasons and daily weather? I'm thrilled not to observe seasons passing from a desk.

Jacob's first snow.

flashcards again

Happy actually to have a chance to make/use flashcards again. Even if we have to remember plenty of things on a daily basis, memorizing is never so pure or formal or immediately rewarded as it is when you must study for a quiz. Here are some of my botanical flashcards for my upcoming Herbaceous Plant ID exam - one step closer to being a licensed horticulturalist, whatever that means! (Note to self, find out.)

Begonia grandis, Begoniaceae fam.

Echinacea pallida, Asteraceae fam.

Asclepias syriaca, Asclepiadaceae fam.

Erigeron annuus, Asteraceae fam.

...and for a laugh, here is as far as I got drawing this
iris with a ballpoint pen. Let's call it "minimalist."
Iris versicolor, Iridaceae fam.