The Push to Procreate

During this late summer, transitioning into early autumn period, Friday was in the 80s with a touch of humidity - tomato weather...

Green tomatoes on one of the five stray plants in the blueberry planter - buffeted by the winds, competing for light and space and nutrients. Initially it seemed that there would be only one little fertilized blossom, but looks like there is a little green cluster; they WANT to bear fruit and set seed, despite the odds.

... and then overnight it rained (hooray! Celebration for any little drops we can get!), and a cold front set in, and this morning it felt positively like Fall.  It was still cloudy, a bit damp, hard to get out of bed weather.  The type of weather that, even after one rolls out of bed and manages to get to the sofa, one feels the need to draw up the throw and take naps while watching television.  And I gave in and did just that.

But after catching up and trying to make up for the sleep deficit, the sun had come out, and a survey of the garden showed the plants were hydrated - but so were the weeds, trying to survive and leave their mark.



Little Japanese maple, with four pretty established leaves now, surrounded by clown violets of varying shades.  But tucked in between them all are weeds, strong, overcoming one of the weaker clown violets.  The rain seems to have reinvigorated the weeds, or it's the cooler weather.  Couldn't let them get to another generation.

Is it noticeable?  The patchy, barer areas where the weeds got yanked?  They were pretty succulent and grassy, fresh-smelling.

Yanked and gathered into a container.  I cut them up...

... and then, in the method of mulching in place, sprinkled the cut weeds back into the planter where they had grown.  Hopefully, they were too mutilated to re-root with whatever roots might still have been intact.

And then there is the shiso - pervasive.  I am attempting to keep it in control for next Spring.  Actually, this year's crop was not so bad.  The shiso were relatively contained to their pots.  I think that was owing to the constant early harvests - weeding and eating while they were still young.  Nonetheless, I decided now that it is Fall, and they are in full flower for the Fall mass seed production, a little birth control might be in order.  So, the flowers of the curly purple shisos growing errantly in the pot with the straight shisos got snipped, and the reverse in the pot dominated by the curly shisos - the straight flowers got snipped.  We'll see whether there will be any success to that strategy....

Before - pot with predominantly straight-leaved shiso, full buds.

After - same pot, note missing flowers from the curly-leaved shiso.  Barely notice, you say?  Well, look closer - flowers are gone.

Snipped shiso buds gathered in plastic container.  The buds snipped went into the pot containing the matching predominant strain.  Hopefully they'll just compost in place.  No attempts at exotic flavored ice cream this year.  My shiso bud ice cream from a few years back wasn't half bad.  But I just can't be eating that much ice cream, and I don't really have the freezer space.  So composting in place is this year's strategy.

Close-up of the process of de-nuding the shisos of their flowers.

The buds of this bi-color shiso (green dominant leaf with purple underside) got to stay.  Marmy indicated she didn't have any come back, so it's probably a variety I'll want to re-seed.  It's currently growing in with the curlies, but I'll have to see if I can isolate the seeds and get them into a separate pot.  There are some empty pots available....

The little struggling hibiscus transplant continues to cling on.

The little bud is still green and alive.

I decided to experiment and prune down the portion that was clearly dead.  Maybe I should have pruned down to where the little green bud is.  But maybe this will still be enough to channel the energy to the little green bud.  We shall see.

And then there are the ripe little tomatoes - trying their darnedest to set seed.  The wind made me think better of leaving them out there on the vine.  When I eat them, I'll save the seeds.

Round ones at the top are the Patio Tomatoes.  The others are the sweet grape tomatoes grown from seed saved from last year.

The Fall means my eating season, what of it there was, is drawing to a close.  Not an epic eating season, but not too bad.

Personal, Civic, and Professional Duties

End of another weekend, and I am left grasping for achievements.  On the one hand, I accomplished a few items on my To Do list; on the other, not anywhere even remotely close to what I had aspired to on Friday evening.  It feels, sometimes, like an endless struggle that I am forever losing - I am neither good at what I do at work, nor am I good at my homelife, just constantly behind in both.  And forever trying to seek that elusive, mythical balance.  I am not sure such a thing exists.  And I have only my little lonesome to take care of!  How I would ever manage with another human being I am not sure - and I think I want that?!

So, Friday evening was an early stop night for me.  I had decided I needed to make a visit to the parental units to offer some input on the in-process kitchen renovation.  With the visit to Queens, my mother asked me to pick up a New York City-themed gift for a friend she will be visiting in England at the end of the coming week.  And since the last bus out to eastern Queens from the Financial District (the "FiDi," as the realtors have styled it) was at 7:30, to get to the souvenir store and consult with my Marmy about the appropriate purchase meant leaving the office at about 6:45 - unheard of!  Justified, but unusual, which means less was billed that day than usual.

Saturday was spent kitchen concepting and shopping.  And, while ultimately my Marmy decided against some of the space-eeking steps I suggested, I do think my and Sissy's being out there helped her to crystallize some good decisions.  So there was something accomplished.  I also managed to snag some photos of the Mother Garden for a "draft" post that has been in draft for far too long - back-up content for a time when there is no other content of note.  And, since a home improvement store was sure to be on the Saturday destination list, I had planned to pick up a new hose attachment to replace the leaky one for the terrace jungle.  Marmy gave me one she was not using instead, having found a different attachment in her stash before.  So a little something new for the plants came out of this weekend.  (A trip to Costco yielded some almonds to replenish the breakfast supply too.)

All this goes to show what low a bar was set for "accomplishment" this past weekend.  Sometimes, that's just as good as it gets.  But I had high hopes for the Sunday.

Didn't work out to be so.  I think the stress of thinking of what I should accomplish that day, the dread of picking up some of the work assignments that I had dutifully dragged to Queens in order to drag home, were a bit much.  And so I tried to salvage the weekend with a run - early evening through Carl Schurz, my usual route.

But today, as I ran on the paved river path northward, to the east of Gracie Mansion, I heard a low creaking.  Remarkably, not unlike the cliché creak in a bad horror film just as the evil tree is about to drop its branch.  And I looked up.  And in slow motion, a giant tree actually DID drop its branch.  And I saw and heard and had time to process and think whether I could outrun it, and somehow concluded that running to the edge of the path, by the fence overlooking the river (where there would have been no place to run farther) seemed the better idea.  Of course, I would have been crushed if it had fallen my way.  Fortunately, it fell inside the Gracie Mansion fence line - a quite large limb, actually.  So, I reacted, along the lines of "Holy sh-t!" and with enough of a start and jump toward the fence by the river that the man on the bench right there jumped up too and turned, and the few people nearby on the other benches turned, to witness the branch making a rustling landing behind the tall fence separating this mayor from the rest of the city.  It settled, there was no other creaking I could detect, so I resumed my run.

Tree map from the Carl Schurz Park website.

And as I ran past the security booth at the entrance to Gracie Mansion, reported the fallen branch, and suggested someone go out to check the tree.  So that was my civic accomplishment for the weekend.  And, hopefully, someone will or has.  I am not so keen on my tax dollars going to settle suits from victims of park tree branches falling - especially if reported in advance, and therefore preventable.

That was it, as much as I could manage for the weekend.  Sometimes the body and mind just want to rest.

Real Rain - Finally

I awoke this morning, early, fully intending to try to log in some more work hours to make up for the low billable counts from the prior week.  Sigh.  This is what my life's been like of late - pressed by the newly-instituted, morale-busting, weekly sit-downs on utilization - the percentage of my logged hours deemed billable and true quality, relative to what I should have were I working at 100%.  How the utilization rate is computed, no one can quite explain, because it certainly doesn't match what the time-keeping software calculates for me based on 2000 hours a year, and it doesn't give me due credit for the work I am supposed to be getting credit for - the partner work and so forth that is supposed to count the same as client billables because it raises the profile of our group, even if just within the firm - or, so said our head of group (the "HOG," as a former colleague and missed friend once cleverly put it) at a department lunch eons ago.  Unfortunately, that memo never made it to the partner I was assigned to review my utilization rate with, because he does not care about those partner hours, or the mass quantities of non-billable work I am doing, not by choice.  I mean come on - I am not doing non-billable work for my own entertainment!  Hel-LO!  Anyway, with the super-early, and, unfortunately, non-billable hours I put in yesterday morning...

Despite the federal estate and gift tax developments that were supposed to be yesterday morning's focus, when I saw the light (I am rarely up so early), I needed to capture it.  How pretty, right?  The soft sun from the east, rays just barely kissing the eastern facades.

And that soft light created the loveliest shadows and silhouettes.  The contours of the Madame Kai-Shek building (I heard she lived there once upon a time) water tower are in particularly stark relief.  The shapes of the two classic New York City water towers, too - I actually don't think I had noticed I had two of the classics so close by within view.

... poring over the latest in federal estate tax developments to present at our monthly department CLE lunch, this morning's 5am alarm proved to be too much.  At least, for this non young'un.  I just don't have it in me anymore.  The snooze button was utilized - that's the utilization I am really good at.  So I just resigned myself to the low hours, and logged in to release last week's time entries.  

I did manage to squeeze in about an hour's billable work to marginally increase the totals, but not by much.  By the time I was done and had released (I set myself a stop time of 9am - because at some point, I had to head in for today's work, and also because the time gets tallied sometime in the morning on Wednesday by the administrator who issues the reports to the partners), it was late, and I was just going to get going and head in.  But I took a quick look out to the terrace, and there was definitely a severe case of dehydration in some of the pots.  So then I felt the need to water, and more broadly than just a handful of acute cases - I gave most of the plants a bit of something.  It seemed necessary, especially as the forecasters predicted a 90+ degree day for New York City today.  Poor plants; can't expect them to march into combat without arming them with a little something.

But then late this afternoon, sitting at my desk toiling away, I looked out my window (with its beautiful view of the New York harbor) and noticed some ominous clouds approaching.  So I took a bit of break to check my relatively-new discovery - the radar maps at Weather.com that, once one zooms in, can predict to the block where weather will appear (recall earlier discussions about New York City micro-climates).  When I checked it, it showed that heavy cells had already moved over Yorkville, although they had not, at that point, hit downtown, but then another front was going to sweep over pretty much the entire city.  Thank the heavens!  The little plants would, at long last, get a good, thirst-quenching drink.  And then the heavens opened up for a while.  Hard to tell quite how drenching the rain was.  From my 53rd floor perch, sometimes I can't tell at all because the sky blends a lot in, and then, on the other hand, at that elevation, sometimes it just looks all the more dramatic.  But, back to the micro-climates, it is different from floor 53 to the ground.  Snowflakes from on high sometimes to not hit the ground as snowflakes, I have learned.  And even on my little terrace, there is definitely a temperature differential.  But, anyhow, it looked like it had rained.

By the time I left the office (late - 9:15pm), the rain had stopped.  But there was moisture in the pavement seams.  And some of the areas of the plaza that do not drain so well were puddly.  After I got home and stepped out, just to try to see (after Sissy confirmed that, yes, indeed, it had rained), in the rather dark and lightless evening, the plants did seem refreshed, upright, leaves turgid.  And the various tubs and water catchers had caught rain.  Not a ton, but a good inch, I'd say.  So not bad at all.  

Will have to consider whether to make the most of it all and over-saturate the pots and planters with the shallower stores, so that the catches don't give in to atmospheric evaporation, or try to add them to the more substantial stores.  Is it better to save for later - for lots of shallow waterings?  But will that just encourage shallow roots that will make them more vulnerable?  Does over-saturation encourage the development of deeper roots?  But will the deeper watering stay within the vessel, or just leak out and be wasted?  Oh the questions and considerations.  I suppose I test by adding a bit and watching to see if they leak out of the bottom and stop at that point.

I'll go out in the morning, when there is actual light, to see for myself.

But rain - yay, yay, yay!!! And more in a few days, supposedly - Sunday, perhaps.  Yay!

Mystery rain (?)

Mystery of mysteries - I woke up, they predicted rain at some point during the day, but I could detect none.  Yes, I am longing for rain.  Seized the day, went for a morning run.  Came back, and, in one of my favorite fashions, stepped out to the terrace to cool off.  And dripped sweat onto the pavers.  But, on closer inspection, there seemed to be drops on some of the leaves - how?

The cracks between the pavers had that once-wet-but-now-almost-dry appearances.  But those can be deceptive; sometimes I forget the regular grey coloring and shadowing, and, especially if almost dry so that I cannot even confirm by touch, I forget the coloring, and confuse it for evaporating moisture.  But the drops on the leaves, those were real.  But from where?  If I didn't know better, I might hypothesize that water caught on the roof membrane underneath had somehow projected itself upward - but that couldn't be.  Or did the cooler disgorge its liquids again?  Who knows.

Wind Swept

Mother Nature has not thought to grace us with any moisture, sadly for the little plants.  Instead, temperatures are back in heat wave range, which just means the little flora get baked and parched.  Not in the least aided by the wind, the howling wind.

Late Summer Ups and Downs

Thursday before this long weekend it rained, finally.  Downtown, at least, there seemed to be quite a bit of rain.  Of course, that is never an exactly accurate indicator of what goes on up here.  I once zoomed in on the Weather Channel radar photo, and was surprised to see that the micro-systems in New York City can vary pretty dramatically - one would think the island of Manhattan, being not so big, would have one consistent weather system throughout - not so, not so.  But it seemed like it rained on Thursday, so that on Friday morning, when I took these photos, everything seemed perky and re-hydrated again generally, and progressing and growing well.

Purple buddy sawtooth - close-up.  This is part of the second wave - rain seems to have done it good.

Purple buddy sawtooth - in context.  There's another bud to the right of the opened flower, the one with the "angel's hair" cardinal vine in the background.

"Angel's hair" cardinal vine bud.

Clown violets - more blooms post-rain.  Regular violets - these are the few that remain vibrant.

Red large "salvia" - also seems to be benefitting from some moisture.  But it also seems clear this is not salvia - the little red pouches seem to be a mere envelope for the elongated flowers, not salvia-like at all.  Wondering whether any of these true flowers will get fertilized and form actual seed.

Clematis - now fully open.

Large-leaved "angel hair" cardinal vine - marching on up the trellis.

Morning glory pregnancy.

Strawberry plant #1 in trough.

Strawberry plant #2 in trough.

Magenta alyssum - continuing to flower.

Magenta "ten o'clock."

Although in the case of the hydrangea, on Thursday morning, when I was not so trusting of the weather forecast, it looked dire enough that some gentle watering seemed to be called for.  My little creamer cups hadn't all drained - the holes probably weren't large enough.  So I came up with a new system - gently streaming water from one of our salvage yogurt containers.  And that seemed to be gentle enough for absorption and minimized run-off through the worn wooden planter, and, surprisingly, I was able to control the flow pretty well.  So who knows whether it was that watering or the natural rain watering, but happy to see it happy again.

Perky hydrangea leaves.

Then there are its other formerly droopy friends that have re-perked too - a veritable hootenanny of happy plants....

"Fingernail" flowers - perked up and ready to party.

Perky basil, too - but note the little black insects... spiders? mites? ticks?

And herbs - also hydrated.

But there were also some post-rain casualties.

One of  neighbor Susan's mandavilla flowers came loose and flew over the fence.  They seem to do that often. 

And then the first of the super-sweet grape tomatoes to ripen blew right off - at least it had a soft landing.

Prize fruit - will have to taste to see if it takes after its parent.

And its brethren.

But not everything seems to be salvageable; the rain can fix only so much.

Transplanted hibiscus - the medium one, the struggling one.

But then there is the hope - new little leaves on the transplanted Japanese maple.

Little leaves, just beginning to unfurl.

And then, during the weekend, while we were scheduled to be away, Hurricane Hermine was supposed to visit, bringing rain, so I thought.  And the temperatures were to moderate, and fall-like weather was to be ushered in, so there should have been some natural watering.  But Hermine was a bit of a bust - wonderful for our getaway, not so terrific for the plants.  I came back to just a very moderate amount of water in the catchers, and some of the flora being worse for the wear.

"Fingernail" flowers - wilted.

Although some of the "fingernail" flowers seemed perfectly fine.  Maybe the different pots and planters picked up rain differently; maybe it's the soil.

Hydrangea - re-drooped.

 In my ideal week, Mondays are my gardening mornings (Tuesdays and Thursdays are the running mornings).  So, even though it's Labor Day, seemed like the right time to do some watering.

Tomato - drooping, but this seemed because the wind blew it out of the cradle of the supporting stakes.  Maybe they also ripened more and got heavier.

Not quite ripe yet here.  And some of the leaves atop clearly ARE drooping.

Super-sweet grape tomatoes - little jewels further ripening.

And a few more.

Uneven fates of our little flora friends.

Still no positive changes for the medium hibiscus transplant.

But the Japanese maple and unfurled its baby leaves.

So, speaking of planning for the week, looking ahead, some stray herbs to be harvested for a dinner.  Gotta have a plan for the meals and try to keep things manageable.

In with the geraniums.

In with the clown violets.

In with the rosemary carcass.

And sure signs that fall is approaching....

The beginning of flowers on the green shiso.

And earlier Labor Day sunsets.

The prettiest pinks and blues to the southwest.

And to the northwest.