Thursday, September 30, 2010

Willow Manor Ball



Well, here it is again.....Willow Manor Ball. What fun.

This is what I'll be wearing. Vintage Ossie Clark.....

So simple and elegant.


This is the ghost of my former self
who will dance with
a stunning assortment of dashing heros
like
Lord Byron


Prince Andrei
Maxim deWinter
and
Mr. Rochester

You know the usual litany of men to make women swoon
and so on and so on......

 I have thought of three splendidly sentimental songs for slow dances
Some Enchanted Evening.....from South Pacific
Elvis's Can't Help Falling in Love with You
and James Blunt's lovely sappy You're Beautiful


Wish I had more time to prepare!



Saturday, September 25, 2010

Robert Moses Beach


Probably the last visit to the beach this September.
A very misty day, but the colors of the foliage in the dunes sang.


Virginia creeper.


Beach rose leaves turning the color of fall....


and a rose-hip to knock your socks off.


I'm not quite sure what would happen if you ate the berries on the creeper.
Probably best avoided.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Michael Imperioli on The Red Carpet

Well, they put down a red carpet near my house......


...so Buster wanted his photo taken on it.....


Then the real fun started. At about five thirty all sorts of important people showed up including Michael Imperioli  --Christopher of Soprano's fame. Lots of photographers.




"Gosh, he's looking older," my daughter said when I emailed her the photo. ( She has the whole Sopranos box set in England.) We decided Adrianna would have liked the interviewer's skirt. As everyone is noting, New Jersey is flavor of the month: sausage stores and pizza parlors, McMansions, bistro sets and interesting plantings.




You never know who you'll run into wandering round in Chelsea.


Monday, September 20, 2010

Photos


This picture appeared on my other blog but I really like it for some reason and wanted to see what it looked like rather big.....It is of workers on the corner of 22nd Street and the West Side Highway. Had they still been there, the Twin Towers would have been in the upper left hand corner.



The Heckscher Museum, in Huntington, Long Island, looking like a very teeny little bit chopped off the Metropolitan Museum,  is perfect in its way.  You can see it in the upper right hand corner.
How on earth did a splendidly disturbing  George Grosz picture end up here?
Sun and clouds on a Saturday afternoon.


This turtle is so old that bits of pond weed have adhered to his shell.



Speckles of light like confetti or snowflakes.




Thursday, September 16, 2010

Turf Wars: or a Guerilla Garden Battle

When I started my little garden round the tree stump near my apartment, I never realized how attached I would become to this public, vulnerable little patch. We water it every day and observe how each particular plant is doing.....


You will notice rather a bare patch where an evil-doer has removed a plant..... actually, about eight plants have vanished over the months......usually nice bright pink or yellow ones which is why we've been putting in herbs and stuff just with leaves......


My friend Luis has a much bigger and better guerilla garden at 25th St and 9th Avenue,
and is often to be seen tending it. We chat and compare notes. 
"Oh yes," says Luis, his plants often go missing too...... 
and he knows exactly where they go. Hm.......

So I wander a little to the west and discover a wonderful garden, well tended and full of plants I recognize only too well........So we leave a note saying: "I hope you are enjoying our plants; we miss them."
 


A case in point: the coleus with orange and green leaves (top left) was in the gap in picture #1.
This is all very funny really.
"Get a life," I hear you say......."What do you expect living in the middle of the city."
But still, I do wish she'd knock it off and get her own plants......We got rather attached to ours.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Red and Yellow and Bicycles




Ha-Ha Fresh on 9th Avenue in the early morning. 
Much better to have a bike than a car in the city.


A street fair on Saturday afternoon on 8th Avenue......
with lots of food and the requisite bicycle.


One of the good things about street fairs is that you can hang around in the 
middle of the road where you would not usually be and look straight up the avenue.


For some reason this is a very red, yellow and green post.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

A Meditation on Waves and Some Seagulls

Tuesday at Robert Moses Beach.



A very bright clear day when the holiday crowds had melted away.


The water was still warm


The sand washed wonderfully clean and


the sky enormous.


For some reason the seagulls think it important to shower in fresh water.
For other views of the beach go here

My main blog is now here



Monday, September 6, 2010

Reflections, Windows and a View


A window on 22nd Street with some odd reflective surface


reveals all the U-Haul truck waiting to haul someone's stuff .....somewhere......


Such elegant, tall windows on 20th Street.


Looking out of my study window, I see a worker on his way either up or down to/from the roof.
Rather nerve-wracking if you ask me.


A bakery in Chinatown on a Saturday evening.



My main blog is now here


Thursday, September 2, 2010

All You Need for Gardening....


........is in the hall
hats to stave off the sun
a light coat to stave off the bugs.....
and boots for wet weather......




my main blog is now here