winter flower

reeds

i love the reeds that are growing all along the river walk. i see them on pier 84 at 44th street by the spiral fountain, and by the water park at jane street and down at battery park city. they make the city feel light and breezy.

june twenty eighth

i grew up in a corner house on a suburban street. the house was surrounded by trees. there were olive, plum, mountain ash, crabapple, pine, poplar and birch. every june they shaded the beautiful tiger lilies that bloomed all around the foundation. i remember waking on early summer mornings and running outside to say hello to their happy orange faces.

flora on the high line

morning tea and more flowers on a drizzly day

my friend and i met for tea this morning at one of my favorite cafes, west 11th street cafe. (it's a favorite because they make good mochas and aren't a chain store. i am very weary of chain stores these days). actually, we had strawberry lemonade which made me feel cold so i'm having my tea now. we're supposed to head uptown to the museum of the city of new york for a field trip another friend put together. there was supposed to be a picnic beforehand, but the weather has scared us off. it's supposed to be grey and rainy all weekend. i have a friend who is going camping in new jersey. she bought plenty of raingear to take along. we were sure all those rainboots and coats and hats would deter any drops wanting to come from the sky . . but maybe not? c is also determined to see the cherry blossom festival at the brooklyn botanic garden (it's the one crowd scene i usually manage to tolerate). hmmmm, it will be interesting to see what the clouds bring, and to see how i deal with my life this weekend.

in the bronx at the garden

i had my second visit to the new york botanical garden today. after eating our sandwiches at the cafe by the conifer arboretum (we ran out of the house so fast we hadn't eaten breakfast, but m. made all our sandwiches, and even one for her friend who came with us) we all took the tram to the rose garden. it was warm and sunny and just beautiful out. and i could hear so many birds singing in the trees: a lot of red winged black birds. i love the sound of their call. i hear them often in connecticut and out on montauk too. the girls had fun rolling down a hill just north of the garden. they started playing screaming cheetahs and a young boy joined them. i warned them about being loud, knowing a security guard would just be itching to tell them to stop having fun, but the young boy didn't heed the warning. his cheetah call could be heard across to the other side of the rose garden and sure enough a guard came by. oh well. they got some good runs in!
the roses were very mature and lovely. and some were so wonderfully fragrant. i have to admit that my favorite rose garden is at the brooklyn botanic garden. there they have some wild and wooly shrubs! and one rose bush has a particular earthy and peppery scent that i love.
i was supposed to return for a tai chi class but i just couldn't leave. i love the gardens in the evening when closing time happens. the air is a little cooler and the energy a little quieter. the girls ran around the himalayan pine tree while i sat and knitted. then we drove to dinner at my friend's mother's house where she has been staying for the week. it's a lovely old house. it has a yew tree in front, and in the back is a mulberry tree and two fig trees. the mulberries were delicious! inside i sat and talked with her mom a little and got to see old family pictures. of course the pictures of my friend when she was little were adorable, but what i really enjoyed seeing were the sepia toned photos of her mom and dad when they were young. they were beautiful photos, and it was nice to sit there and imagine her mom's voice coming from the young woman in the album on my lap. after a delicious dinner of beet salad and broccoli and sausage and the best smoked mozzarella i've ever had, my friend did my tai chi form with me, so i'm happy that i still had my "class!" and we practiced it in their wildly overgrown and comely garden. that was special. i think maggie (my tai chi teacher) would have thought so too.