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.

Lisa and Elizabeth's Excellent Adventure/Long Island

In the early 1950's the artist  James Lewicki decided to build a house on the north shore of Long Island. I've written about him before. Anyway, his daughter Lisa and I have the house in Centerport in common...not to mention the woods.

Yesterday Lisa said that there was a new trail in the woods surveyed (sort of) by the Boy Scouts.

We set off behind the Suydam House all neatly painted and tended....

into the woods

where we discovered tree-strangling vines

ferns, dead leaves

vines as thick as a python strangling you

moss

a lovely bed of lily of the valley (was there a cottage here once?)

and signs of a bulldozer.

Then we came upon a gorge with mud and sticks and all the sorts of things you would expect

and branches fallen, and no way to get across.

The stream led from Greenlawn to the twin ponds but in all our combined years living there we'd never forded it.

How deep was the mud? How steep the banks? No boots of course but cameras and bags.

We decide to clamber over it anyway

and eventually come to the pond.

to be continued

Cherry Blossom Festival,Sakura Matsuri,at Brooklyn Botanical Garden

A beautiful sunny Saturday

so we set out for Brooklyn along with large numbers of others lured by the thoughts of

cherry blossom

and people dressed up in costumes

all playing under the shadowy trees.

People of all ages....families

lots of elegant young ladies

all greeting the season.

A reflection - but really too crowded to reflect much

but fun to look for fishes

and floating blossoms

and moments of peace......