Season's Greetings

A volunteer pumkin that grew from the seeds of one that went squishy on the stoop.
Photo courtesy of Claudia Schmid.



Has anyone ever actually read Walter Scott? I think I ought to have done.
He seems quite pleased with himself in Central Park.



And who is this strange figure striding through the twilight?



He looks up at the bare overarching branches.



Happy Halloween!

Two Good Things

Impossible to find anything bad to say about bicycles.
Eco-friendly, good for your health.
Blah blah.
This one is more than utilitarian; it is stylish.



This dog is also stylish. I'm not quite sure what it is exactly.
I think one of the new hybrid poodle- somethings who have hair instead of fur.
He/she was sitting on the window sill at either doggy day-care or the dog beauty salon looking about him or her.



I liked him.
Then he (I'll call him/her/it he for the purposes of brevity) stood up so I could get another picture.
Then a very polite young woman came out and asked me not to take pictures.
Perhaps she thought I was planning to dognap him.
Don't think I wasn't tempted.

Outrageous Lighting or Bloggers Evening Out/ABC

This blogger rarely goes out in the evening.
But when she is invited to join Alexa and Lori and Ming in welcoming Eric, of Paris Daily Photo, to New York, she manages to take the bus up 23rd Street to Broadway.



Pipa, on 19th Street, has an amazing number of chandeliers - you can buy them or merely enjoy them.
Ming has a much better picture.



The affects of light are very pretty.
The sangria delicious.
The company delightful.
We talked about healthcare and politics.........and Paris.



On the way out, I look back into the restaurant.
Always rather fun - being outside gazing in.



The first very cold, wet, windy night.
I give up and take a taxi home.

Still Lives

Wet weather this morning.

The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:

From Robert Browning's Porphyria's Lover a super Halloweenish poem in which a loon decides that even the weather has it in for him........



Windowsill, basil, rosemary, pumpkin, seashells.
Plate from Zagora. Embroidery from the East.



Fiesta squash, winesap apples, bowl from Marrakesh, English ironstone plate.
I have borrowed a camera which can do close-ups.
Now I'm really looking forward to Christmas.

Sunday in the Park with .........Everyone

After a wet and blustery Saturday, Sunday dawned fine.
So we went to the park - along with almost everyone else in town.



The young man just learning to walk.....



And the young woman taking photographs.........



The architectural bits are very picture -skew as one of our children used to say.



I don't think the swan was very impressed by these two young girls and their dogs.



The park is a good place to read the paper.......



.............or play music........



..........but most people wandered about.........



.........and eventually had to go home.

ps. this entry goes against my usual principles. I try to keep them to 5 pictures or fewer.
Since I have the attention span of a flea, I get tired reading long, long posts.
Once someone posted a list of 100 things she intended to do........I lasted about 15.....
Obviously, blogs are utterly personal and we all have very different tastes.
Thoughts?

Shadow Shot Sunday/

This almost Halloweeny image was shot in an uncleaned-up doorway in the nowadays rather upmarket Meatpacking district.
I'm not quite sure what it is.



No one looks cheerful on the cross town bus - even though there are charming reflections on the ceiling.


I honestly can't remember where this is probably somewhere between 7th and 6th Avenue - but it could be anywhere on a sunny morning.



The sun hits an entryway and casts a purple tinge on the floor.

An Almost Retro Friday

For some reason, when I got home yesterday and looked at my photos I discovered a sort of melancholy yellowish-gray tinge to them.
Here a building on 18th Street and 7th Avenue that was probably built in the 30's of the last century.



A nice bulky truck - the very apotheosis of truckness.



It is always nice to have lunch here.
The Union Square Cafe gets it exactly right.
It's very understated.



When I next go there, I will wear this dress from Anthropologie in these very weird colors.



For some reason Tudor-revival small paned windows make me feel slightly sad. They are redolent of teashops in the 1950's.
A musty odor of violets.

Mental Indigestion

The difference between the eye and the camera is that the latter is a machine.
We don't get thrown for quite such a loop by reflections in real life since our brain only processes one thing at the time - thank goodness.



On the corner of 8th Avenue and 22nd Street, a pretty awful welfare hotel is being refurbished as the swanky 'Gem'.
Two thoughts: where are the poor denziens of the Allerton being shipped off to?
Is this the right moment to open a new hotel?
Hmm..........
This is a view into the window of the florist where the two bold black cats live.



Not sure what will be in this spacious retail space. We have about a zillion nail parlors and drug stores already.
Nice bright sunny day for photos. The Empire State Building is flying through the air in the upper right.



I like the colors of building materials.



It's lucky one can't think of more than one thing at a time.
Economic down turn.
S.Palin's shopping.
It's enough to make one's head spin.

ACB Wednesday N for NATURE

I've been a bit absent from Mrs.Nesbitt's ABC Wednesday -though I've often gone to visit.
Today I saw Reader Wil's super NATURE pictures so decided to be a copy cat.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.



Yesterday we went to Long Island.
Here the old boat house of Coindre Hall.



I would be quite happy living in the middle of the harbor.



I could have an extremely small boat and tie it under a tree.



This is the same swan from yesterday - but now he's busy cleaning himself.

Blue and Tan

Some calm after the excitement of the Halloween party.
I think it was Leslie who first alerted me to the delights of blue and tan.
When I was looking for some sort of theme for today's post, I decided they were linked by color. Better than being utterly random.
This first an enviable house in the west Village. The sort of house that makes me drool........



Looking into a shop front on 7th Avenue at 24th Street. This had been a sort of down-at-heels linens shop that had had a going-out-of-business sale for about six years. The usual attractions of shabby-chic or palimpsest.(Something, usually a document or parchment, with lots and lots of layers.)



An autumnal hydrangea bush in Cold Spring Harbor.



Little boats in Huntington harbor.



A swan off Gold Star Battalion Beach. The water so calm and pellucid.
Dictionary day: File under P.



Looking across the harbor to Lloyd Neck.

Obama Everywhere

New York is an Obama town.
Perhaps because it's full of arugala eating elitists.
I think that elitist is a code word for 'educated'.
Anyway, at Union Square, that hotbed of pinko-commie unionists and the like, they do not even bother to try to sell things with the the other one's image.



At ABC Carpet, that heaven of stunning design and astronomically priced ethnic stuff, they have a whole section devoted to Obama.
The Omaba upholstery is slightly odd. The fabric design is reminiscent of old Chinese posters or rising suns or something.
Oh! I get it.......



You can get "Ban the Bomb" bumper stickers too. But what would I put them on since I don't have a car?



The baskets in the background look mighty enticing.
A thought on the debate from a washed up old peace and love activist: wouldn't it be lovely if they did spread the wealth around a bit?

Sunny Weather

Sunny afternoon - too good to waste inside.
How many more of these glorious days will we get?
Walked down towards 11th Avenue.
All sorts of gasp-making construction.



Who will live and work in these palaces?
I admit to thinking they are rather wonderful and inventive.



The Richard Meier Building is, indeed, glorious and grows on one.



The reflections are an integral part of the experience and very subtle.
Robert is being like Waldo.



The first pictures are rather bloodless.
In the morning, I spotted these future bloggers at Union Square green market.
Someone had given them little green cameras.
Someone else put grapes on one young man's head.
I bet their blogs would make good reading.