Category: Green

Winter Trees, Again

TwilitTreesIn reflecting on this, my dear friend Kitty (sweet town mouse and brilliant list-maker) tells me what should perhaps be obvious to us (lest we be blinded by the plumage of Autumn in some May-December leaf romance), that trees laid bare are at their most beautiful in the winter because then you can see their true structure, like sculptures, or like drawing nudes. They show you their bones, their secret tight blossoms, their adorning nests, the passage of the moon. Which, in turn, brings to mind this spare verse from William Carlos Williams:

Winter Trees

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

Found: Deer Bed!

KatherineWolkoffDeerBedI fell in love with this incredible Katherine Wolkoff photograph of a deer bed after seeing it in Abbey Nova’s house tour (loving, lurking), and actually went so far as to contact her gallery and inquire after prices (as they say, if you have to ask…). The whole series of photographs is stunning, but it’s the idea of the deer beds themselves that I find so compelling. To make their beds the deer press down tall grasses to create a little room, grass walls shield them from predators, grass-over-brush makes a soft place to curl up. Something from nothing, softness and sleep. Imagine my joy when on walkabout the other day in the backyard, trying to figure out where to start digging for the firepit, I noticed my very own deer bed amidst the grasses being kept long for winter, to be turned under when spring comes*, but in the meantime, satin sheets for sweet does.DeerBed

*also when spring comes, and this deer bed comes with a “free continental breakfast from my tender garden shoots” I’ll probably change my tune as to how sweet these does are, but for the time being, they are welcome to lay their winter bones here.

Where the garden will go

GardenSpotSweetheart got me THREE big, thick, gorgeous books on starting a vegetable garden, so the day after the Christmas snows, I went out to walk the land. I’ve been thinking about this garden for years. Thinking big. rows of fruit trees and berries and tender lettuces and cucumbers and new potatoes and strange roots. I want them. And, I’ve decided: this is where it will go. This huge swath of gently sloping earth that gets full sun all summer and has enough funny nooks and tree-lines to the sides for any guys that like shade. This knobby, untended, johnson-grassed stretch of impermeable Albemarle Clay. I’m pretty sure it’s a good plan? Hmm.SnowyGround

I don’t really know what I’m doing in the garden. But, it’s in my blood. My grandfather used to cultivate flowers from cuttings and would eat a warm tomato off the bush like an apple. My mother lines her beds with precious Poet’s Laurel and twisty Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick and knows about blossom end rot and how to kill slugs (answer: with beer) and a thousand other secret earthy mysteries. Me? I’ve just stuck as many plants into whatever containers I can find, cross my heart, and know I can shake my fist at Brooklyn if it fails. Not so, this year. Perhaps it’s too much. To go from herbs planted in coffee cans to almost a full acre of possibilities? Oh. Man. BUT. We are not ones to be thwarted, we will get our hands dirty, we will grow. And- the books, with their maps and charts and diagrams, are ready to be devoured and the seed catalogs arrive next week. So now, in the time honored traditions of anyone working the land, we thank our lucky stars we have the rest of the winter to get it all together.

Christmas Nest

XmasTreesSo, in the golden hour, Mama and I drove out into the sun in search of the mythical, the soft-needle Christmas Tree, a bushy varietal of great white pine that in New York City might as well be the great white whale. Miniature Forests pop up on every street corner there, but every last one of them only offers sharp needled balsam firs. We drove into the sun out to an old nursery up Afton that, despite rumors to the contrary, apparently no longer sells pumpkins or turkeys or wreaths or trees (pointy OR soft) or any other assorted holiday ephemera but is actually now a mushroom farm. Ok. Luckily, sweetly, the young stoned mushroom farmer came out and told us that there was a place right down the road that sold trees. “I don’t know if they sell the soft ones, but they sure are nice”. We traced our steps back and around and right, lo, by the side of the road were gorgeous orderly rows of fat soft trees growing, ready to be tagged and cut.ChristmasTreeRowsThe wonderful proprietor, who lives in a big, pretty farmhouse with a circular drive right behind the trees, told us to go pick the one we wanted and he’d be down to help us cut and pack it. We walked up and down the long rows, weighing the merits of each tree like Old Hat, New Hat (too leafy, too lumpy, too beefy, too bumpy, too Charlie Browny, too pointy, too townie), until we came upon the one. The slightly skinnier, somewhat awry, quite jaunty, gloriously fluffy, and perfectly soft one. The one that had the birds nest in it. Petit à petit l’oiseau fait son nid, Feather by Feather the bird builds its nest. We’ll take it, this is the one for home.Nest

Basil

In anticipation of the frost, we pulled up all of our flourishing basil and made a huuuuuuge batch of pesto. We’ve now got at least 15 summer-bombs in our freezer to make it through the long winter. I continue to be wowed by the perseverance and successes of our little backyard garden. The last basil plant I kept in the city committed herbicide by jumping out of our 6th floor window and landing, crime scene style, at the bottom of the airshaft. I bet it’s still down there. Are my snack-sized frozen zip-locs a glorious root cellar full of pickles and preserves? Not quite, but, hey, baby steps. Have a wonderful weekend!

Butterflies

Couldn’t get enough of this bush literally coated in butterflies. I thought it was a bushy butterfly bush, but Lucy told me it was salvia. Add to my “must plant in eventual dream garden” list (which is getting quite long).

Happy Trails

Just got back from an absolutely incredible Jubilee! hiking trip out west with my Mama… we averaged 8 miles a day, hiking along misty river rainbowed canyon edges, skirting glacial freezing mirrored lakes, and counting infinite wildflowers along the trails. What a time… I’ll share more pictures tomorrow. Lovelove!

Lil’ Harvest

Our little garden is chugging along—presiding over the (spotty) new lawn our landlord insisted on planting on the hottest day of the year—and weathering the stifling New York City heat (made even more mouth-breathingly hot by the hundreds of AC butts panting out the back of everyone’s brownstone, pointed at our zucchinis) surprisingly well. We pulled this ‘lil harvest on Sunday- two sweet knobby cukes, one lone, long red basque sweet pepper, two small banana peppers, and a mess of basil. Our eyes are trained on our one reddish tomato (one!), and anticipate its ripeness by the end of the week. Three meals worth of bounty isn’t too much- but it’s pretty darn good.

Off The Map

When Sweetheart and I went down to Puerto Rico for his dear friend’s wedding to a native Puertorriqueña, we made the good choice to hang around for a few days after. Fortified with strange savory pastries dusted with powdered sugar and strong dark coffee on our way out of San Juan, we headed to the interior. Trekking into El Yunque rainforest to spend the night off the grid in a cabin perched atop a mile high mountain that used to be a tropical fruit farm=good plan. Upon our arrival, we each got a crooked walking stick and hiked up the jungle switchbacks, stopping along the way to pick camandula seeds (which the native Taina ladies used to string as necklaces) arriving at our cabin—tin roofed and on stilts—as the sun was setting. Our host- a sort of Apocalypse-Now-Roger-Sterling- showed us the machete (labeled “guest machete”), gave us this map, and melted into the underbrush. We made fire, cooked meat, peppers and rice, drank rum, played backgammon by candlelight, slept in hammocks, took rainforest rainwater showers and, when the nighttime thunderstorms broke into dawn, we followed the map to the Cubuy River falls. Not all those who wander are lost, but it helps if you have a map.