Deck the Halls...

Well, actually no holly here though the holly trees round here are full of berries.
At the green market however...

there are wreaths galore

and garlands

and berries

bows offered if needed.

There is a strange pale sort of lavender

and  the hellebores - also called Lenten or Christmas roses...

 and skinny trees  - the kind I like better than fat ones.

Last of all a wreath made entirely of herbs.

So pretty

So practical.

Things Seen

Imagine what it must

 be like if you have to earn money

 doing something you hate or only like a little bit.

 

On a more cheerful note, consider the lilies

and other good midsummer stuff at the green market.

The strawberries are the proper size: ie small

I never use sage in cooking. It goes beautifully with liver

fegato alla salvia

My family would have a fit (except the dog)

 so I just look at it instead.

 

Dazzle

In the depths of winter the green market at Union Square

 is subdued with left-over apples, 

a few potatoes, and

absurdly expensive little bits of mesclun salad.

Now zinnias blaze.

In midsummer there are wild traffic-light, traffic-stopping stalks.

Of what. Rhubarb? Salady stuff?

Someone will tell me.

(They did. Swiss Chard. Sue was the first!)

There is a nice friendly bee on the sunflower.

Are bees coming back? I do hope they are.

There are peaches that taste like peaches instead of those odd,

hard, fuzzy lumps they sell in the supermarket.

Fancy sunflowers.....

... plums for plum crumble.

Geranium leaves fall on the black-eyes susies.

There are snapdragons which long to be carried

 by a flower girl at a summer wedding...

...and good snacks to be had.

Who knew that tea-cosies could be WILD?

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Green Market for the 4th

The green market at Union Square was lovely yesterday.

Then I discovered I had left my camera at home 

so into the breech steps celebrity guest photographer

Adam Powell with his trusty cell phone.

Hydrangeas.

Ripe tomatoes.

Strawberries galore.........

and some daikon

(many thanks to those who identified them!)

Here's hoping you and yours have blues skies

good food and good company.

HAPPY 4th

Monday Morning

Something cheery for the beginning of the week.
Photographed at the Green Market at Union Square on Saturday.
There were lots of bees buzzing around attracted to the stunning yellow.



We took white lilies and peaches home. The flowers are almost overwhelmingly sweet smelling.
Sadly, the peaches look better than they taste. Sob, sob: they are not Moroccan peaches which were so tasty and wonderful you could buy kilos of them and stew them and make peach crumble and enjoy the juice dripping over your fingers as you worked with them. Oh well.



It seems to be artichoke and new potato season.
We didn't get artichokes because R. said it was too much work eating them for what you got.
I should have insisted.
I will get them next week...........

Green New York

Of course New York is a lot about buildings - how could it not be?
But if one is determined there are all sorts of places where green creeps in. One place is the Green Market in Union Square.
Needless to say, you have to go there early before it is totally swamped by crunchy-granola - Birkenstock foodies and their dogs and strollers etc etc.
Looking at culinary herbs always makes me ambitious.......basil and rosemary are staples.....



Sweet peas only have a very brief window - but they do smell gorgeous.


I envy people who can plant perennials in the city. Oh for delphiniums. Odd that blue is a color your really have to work to get in a garden.
Yellow and pink arrive almost by themselves.



Walking home down 24th Street, I admire a rather unusual hydrangea. There is a wonderful shade garden there, obviously planted by someone who knew what he/she was doing.



At home the usual urge to make still lives.......though the bananas and lemons didn't come from the green market itself but have been imported from somewhere.

Shadow Shot Sunday

Back in New York at last!
These pictures are for Hey Harriet's Shadow Shot Sunday - but I haven't got too many shadows in New York.
This first shot is of the unending escalator at the 42nd Street bus terminal that we use when getting a bus to go to visit our son. We are resolutely car-free in Manhattan and make some efforts to be 'green'.
For example living in an apartment with one boiler for 70 units is much more eco-friendly than 70 individual boilers.
Preach, preach.
How dull.



From a building on 13th Street where I have my hair cut, you can see the red brick of Chelsea Market - the huge old Nabisco factory on 15th Street.



Here schoolgirls have their lunch sitting on stone benches.............



..............and you can buy real Italian food and all sorts of "Imports from Marrakech".
We went to the newish "T-Salon" the other day - very swanky and stylish - but the iced tea wasn't cold and the breakfast tea wasn't hot. So we have crossed them off our list.



This last picture hasn't anything to do with shadows at all. Just a shot of Saturday morning in New York.
The paper, peonies and herbs from the green market in Union Square.
Real strawberries - small and sweet - which rival or even exceed the ones in Morocco.

Last Saturday

The bus heads up 23rd St towards 5th Avenue.



At 6th Avenue an ambulance turns in front of us.



I walk along Broadway past ABC Carpet to the Green Market in Union Square.
The day is very cold and the sun feeble.



But I run into the owner of one of Skippy's first friends in the city. Her current two dogs are happy to pose for me.



After all this bleakness and grayness it is lovely to come home with two miniature cyclymen and some Winesap apples.
My cousin Dani later arrives with tulips.