Water

Memorial Day. A good day for biking beside the Hudson to the very tip of Manhattan and seeing Lady Liberty...

 

or taking out a sailboat or maybe a kayak.

A good place, too, for a photo op. 

A cruise perhaps? 

I liked the crisply clad sailors buying tickets for the Circle Line.

Southstreet Seaport has such a variety of craft from the very old...

to the rather alarming Shark.

 Brooklyn Bridge echoing the furled sails of

the Clipper City

which set out with lots of French tourists on board.

Southstreet Seaport was horribly flooded during Hurricane Sandy and almost all of the shops remain closed. I was last there about a week after the hurricane when they were removing damaged goods from the businesses. I suppose most are in process of refurbishment.

Thursday

Looking South waiting for the rain to arrive.

Looking down - always a bit dizzy-making.

Planters on the roof with too much thyme and rather healthy mint.

And lots of lavender. (Such contrasts of urban and rural.)

Five minutes after I came down from the roof  - it rained and rained.

In the evening I went uptown to teach, but did not wear a charming chapeau. It was rush hour and pelting with rain and the subways were stifling and smelly, then the bus I changed to crawled...

So, on the way home, I sprang for a taxi. A mixed blessing as the driver was YELLING on this phone and the little partition wouldn't close, so I couldn't chat.

That aside, Times Square was as gloriously garish as ever.

Happy Weekend.

Excellent Dumpling/Little Italy

On Thursday, one of the first warm evenings of the year, we head down to Canal Street and Lafyette amid whispered choruses of "Rolex. Rolex.Rolex". Excellent Dumpling looks like a dump from outside 

but has a curious green charm, not to mention

the best scallion pancakes and vegetable dumplings in the world.

When we emerge from our brisk, delicious dinner the light is brilliant against tall buildings but has almost vanished from the street.

I never buy anything in Chinatown though I like looking at the shop windows.

An elephant, a dragon a happy Buddha.

Then Mulberry Street where the tables beckon outdoors

and, oddly, the first gun shop, I've ever noticed in New York City.

Today's eat - A vanilla eclair at Caffe Roma.

Happy Weekend

First Avenue and 10th Street

Quite enough wandering round in the woods - so back to the city.

It's odd how very parochial and local one gets - so the East Side seems an exotic country to me where they decorate the corners of buildngs and door frames.

Abstracy and psychedelic.

How few people make their own clothes nowadays...

Another decorated door frame. Here bits of old china and other porcelain stuff...

Here a lot of shattered plates.

Very traditional Italian pastry shop..

and other good things to eat.

Such lovely old signs.

I end up eating one of the chocolate doughnuts at Taralluci.

More About the Woods/Long Island

When I first moved to America, I was always surprised by the fact that so many woods were virgin and untended. In England woods were much neater altogether. (There was a saw mill within a mile of our house.) In fairy tales there are always woodsmen. An honorable career opportunity - if not likely to make you madly rich. In American woods there were Indians.  But lo and behold a chainsaw has been used here.

Continuing yesterday's ramble though untended woods we come nearer to civilization and see a canopy of dogwood

and the grounds Harold Harz used to mow.

Then we go back into the woods (dandelion clocks lower right)

How the vines and the sticker bushes entangle themselves! (When I lived here I always carried secateurs). You can quite see how Sleeping Beauty could be protected by briars.

Moss at the edge of the pond.

And spice bushes and skunk cabbage

Roots

and more roots.

The sky fallen into the pond (the faint dot upper left a heron)

Oak leaves fallen in water

A swan in water reflecting green

And a stick reminding me of time when a stick tripped our daughter when she was skating here.

Then back to civilization

and a garden that needs the maple trees pulled out, but, other than that, is rather cheerful.