Let the Feasting Begin!

The shiso is coming up gangbusters.  So the culling and consuming begins in earnest, lest there be another forest of shiso this year.

And despite the cull, this barely made a dent - much, much more eating to be done.

Trickle Down

Glimpses from the 2020 Park Avenue Tulip Dig.

Made it just in time this year to catch the tail end, on the last day right before Memorial Day weekend.  The pickings were a bit slim.  Though, truth be told, procrastinator that I am, I never have arrived "early" or even midway through (work impeded that this year), so I don't know what the bulb selection is like when the pickings aren't slim - for all I know, it's exactly like this.  Beggars can't be choosers.

The fearless, not at all shy American robin that hopped around watching me dig up bulbs at one of the median beds.  I think it was waiting to see if any bugs would come up in the process - easy lunch, smart fellow.

It is sort of mind boggling that every year the Fund for Park Avenue just gets rid of these high quality bulbs, pulls them up for the compost pile (and then replaces them with brand new annuals every year).  Granted, the blooms weaken each year, and the tulip medians ARE a visual calling card for Park Avenue, but still, it seems such a waste.  That they have the means to just put in new bulbs each year, while elsewhere in the city there is just concrete or empty, compacted dirt pits - very much a metaphor for the wealth disparity in New York City these days.  Sigh.

That said, thankful the fancy folks of Park Avenue provide an opportunity for sharing and for the bulbs to live on.  The paradigmatic Reaganomic trickle down.  I suppose there's some economic and social balancing in that - when it works properly.  The bulb redistribution sort mostly lives up to the theory.  This year, my goal was to gather enough for the adopted tree pits in my neighborhood, Yorkville.  One of the pits is on York Avenue.  Maybe with some beautification, there will be more foot traffic, and some economic benefit to the shops on that block.  The other sidewalk tree pits are on residential streets - maybe home values will trickle down from Park Avenue to York Avenue too - ha! I shouldn't be so dismissive; there may be some minimal effect.

The process.  Bulbs didn't seem to be dug in so deep this year.  No need for the shovel that I brought along.  Though I did damage the handle of a trowel trying to lever out a bulb.  Oh well.

The haul.  Not yet counted.  I had wanted to try for more, but hadn't had lunch, and all the digging and looking down, up, down, up started to make me lightheaded.  Plus, I had a Zoom call scheduled to catch up with high school acquaintances that late afternoon.  Turns out it got postponed... ups and downs of trying to fit in gardening and socializing into an off Friday.

When I am asked where I live, I have become careful to specify Yorkville, rather than the broader "Upper Eastside."  The latter encompasses Lenox Hill and Carnegie Hill and Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue.  Those are very different addresses from the more middle class Yorkville, which back in the day was a German and Hungarian immigrant working class area, with breweries and some of the first tenement alternatives for the laboring masses.

Two personal anecdotes: First, from seventh grade.  I was fortunate enough to test into Hunter College High School, which was my and my family's introduction to the New York City system of selective schools - the ticket out of the workable, but not stellar, schools we would have been zoned for in our working and middle class central Queens neighborhood.  To get to Hunter, back in the rough and tumble 80s, I commuted by car with my dad in the mornings to his job in East Harlem.  And in the afternoons, not wanting their firstborn daughter on the big, scary subways, my parents had me on a private student van to Queens.  The only other girl on it was AS.  The first day of school, she was the last to get on, and eyeing the boys, plopped down next to me.  Her first words were a brag apology, "Sorry I was late getting on.  I was talking to JS over there.  HE lives on Park Avenue, so he's walking home."  Now, I had had a pretty typical, sheltered childhood, revolving around my family and my central Queens community, where we were probably squarely in the middle of the pack economically by the time I was in sixth grade - we had a used car, took maybe a "big" vacation once a year or every other year that required flying and hotels, sometimes got name brand clothing (Reeboks) that we wore to death; I knew of an outside world because we had been refugees, but had not traveled internationally other than car trips to Canada to see Niagara Falls.  I had a sense of where I stacked relative to the kids in elementary school - the little fish pond.  I didn't know about Manhattan lifestyles at all in that pre-internet existence.  But as soon as AS got on that van that first day of seventh grade and talked about JS, her tone told me everything I needed to know about what it meant to have a Park Avenue address.

Second: With my middle school introduction to Manhattan neighborhoods, when it came time to choose my first post law school abode, convenience and safety were key.  My first BigLaw employer was in midtown east, so the Upper Eastside was a natural choice - safe and a single subway line away, and affordable around Lexington and to the east (when Madonna bought her adjoining townhouses east of Lexington, some society person or other made a reference to her moving to the "Far Eastside").  And when it came to buy, having been bamboozled by a broker to reach for the upper end of our price range with the first post law school apartment - but gaining a terrace in the city for the first time - I insisted upon outdoor space, and moved farther east to be able to afford that.

So, the tale of two worlds of the larger UES, and how I "downgraded" across decades from Park to York.

"Countryside" in the City

A snapshot of the state of our museums at the moment, our institutions in limbo during these COVID times, represented by this account of one exhibit currently at the Guggenheim - "Countryside, the Future."

I hadn't heard of the exhibit, but sounds like something right up my alley - and so close by, too.  Alas, given that everything is closed, does no good - sadly.  The tomato growing part of the exhibit sounds like it is intended to evoke themes of urban food sources, bringing the "country" closer to the city - all goals of my little urban terrace jungle, of course!  And now, more than ever, with restrictions on being able to just meander out to replenish produce.

Lovely that he is continuing to tend to the tomatoes - and what an enviable yield!  And feeding so many in need.  I would love to get some tips - my little tomato plants seem barely to budge, and they are due for transplantation soon.  Maybe a permanent home and more sun and fresh air will do them good.  They have come up as volunteers in years past - a few cool nights shouldn't be too harsh.

Sweet cherry tomatoes (seeds gathered from a particularly delicious supermarket batch some years back) in foremost foreground front two rows; Patio Tomatoes in third row; Russian red kale in fourth row.

I had wanted a gardening day today.  But I am punishing myself because I haven't finished a work assignment.  The heart and mind are just not focused on work - it may be pandemic trauma, it may simply be work trauma and general burnout and putting off a sabbatical for far too long....  And in the meantime, punishment notwithstanding, I still haven't made headway, and lost a whole day of possible gardening.  Sigh.  Must get past the mental blockage....  Perhaps, in addition to the Park Avenue Tulip Dig and transplanting seedlings, a walk to the Guggenheim can be my incentivizing reward for finishing that assignment.

The stick and carrot game is hard to play by oneself.

April Showers Bring May ... Snow

Maybe a polar vortex in May?  Definitive!  And with it, snow.

Snow, you say?  Yes, that’s right!  Actual, visible snow - caught on film (well, digital recording).

So the week opened on Sunday peaking at 80 degrees, and today it snowed.  I cannot recall a time it hit 80 degrees, and on a subsequent day, closer to summer, snow fell.  As it happens, this morning the building staff came in to change the filters for all the air handling units - in preparation for the switch from heat to air conditioning!  Mild concern that it should snow when I am a stone’s throw from having only cold air as an option if I turn on my units.

(The lead up to the filter change has been fraught.  Isolation has not helped the housekeeping situation one bit.  Nor has the work schedule, encroaching into my off days and beset with pressure to maintain billables at 100 percent, lest I not be protected from the looming threat of layoffs, done any favors for the housekeeping routine.  So there was some speed tidying this morning.  And then the staff had the audacity to show up nearly an hour early!  Luckily, the main tasks were done.)

Mother Nature is wacky this year.  Or she’s just fed up and reminding us who’s really in charge.  And it is not the pesky human beings.  Good for Mother Nature - offsetting some of our warming.  Of course, it’s but a single day’s data point.  But, preceding Mother’s Day, an assertion of which Mother rules the roost.  A bit of May mayhem.

Guerrilla Gardening

Extra care and investment via an assist from a neighbor fellow tree pit gardener.  The spent daffodils came from the compost she brought over, and some of the twigs.  Some of the other twigs and roots making up the circle were already there.  This tree pit used to be loved and planted, there were old roots when I dug down, past all the compaction.

Yesterday, early morning, after the overnight rains, at the start of what turned into a most gorgeous, sunny and warm day, before too many heavy-breathing other folks were out and about, was the perfect time to dig up the volunteer maple seedlings and set out to annex a few abandoned and neglected sidewalk tree pits.  (Litany of other tasks notwithstanding; sunny day, life is short, carpe diem.)

The “seven sisters” - the seedlings before the journey out.

I had been scoping out candidate tree pits, back during my commuting days, before the mandatory stay at home order, with the goal to sneak plant the little maples that sprang up last year while the terrace maintenance was happening and the planters could not be watched over.  When I finally had access to the terrace again, the squatting maples were leafing and settled and I felt badly about yanking them out, so they got to stay, and tough it out over Winter.  Hardy little (and decidedly not so little) things - they all survived.  This year I can’t be quite so hospitable - the legit plants need their space and nutrients, and this year the planters have to make way for more and new edibles (COVID-19 food travails and all). The alternative would be the compost bin, and that seems a shame.  So the volunteer maples got dislodged, as gently as I could.

81st near East End, south side.

81st near York, north side.

Happily (or maybe not - considering all the blighted tree pits available), I found unplanted spaces within a three block radius, so I can go and visit them and see how the seven are doing.  Happily, we have a few days with rain in the forecast coming up soon.

York near 84th, east side.

In front of the deli on York, a lovely woman who is a volunteer gardener at Carl Schurz Park happened to walk along out of the blue, observed me, and offered a potful of compost, came back with more compost from a secret pile at the park, string to tie off the tree pit guard to discourage the dogs, and then on the third pass, water in a watering can - so grateful for her!  Turns out she is the guardian of the tree pit in front of Black Star Bakery & Cafe.  Because she invested so much in "my" little tree pit - she even said she would come by every now and then to water it, I decided to put three little seedlings in that one - so that most of her donated compost could be used where she could see it and reap the benefits.  Over time it may get crowded, but these aren't likely to get very big.  There were also other people who came along who offered encouragement and kind words, directly or indirectly - a child walked by asking her mother what "that lady is doing," and the mom said, "it looks like she's digging to plant something and make it look pretty."

84th midblock, south side.

84th near York, south side.

After the deli, the last two tiny seedlings went in by themselves into two empty tree pits on a side street.  And without the nice gardener offering assistance, and the sun stronger and hotter by then, water for the little dears was an issue.  I was going to ask the fruit stand on the corner, but I waffled, thinking about the two dirt coated plastic cups that i was going to ask to be filled, the only vessels I had, the ones that had shielded the seedling root balls as I trudged them around seeking their new homes - not exactly sanitary to take into a food purveyor, especially in COVID times, and any sink would be hidden in the back, maybe in a tight and gross little restroom, or a clean one that they would want kept clean for their employees from being sullied by a crazy guerilla gardener.  Happily, I remembered the laundromat just a bit farther down the block, and as suspected, it had a sink!  I filled the two plastic cups and sloshed back slowly, managing to keep most of the water, and gave the two babies a drink to settle them in.  The last ones were the runts, tiny, wispy things that I worry someone will step on without even seeing them.  Will have to carry water bottles on my next outing from the building so that the seedlings can drink when I visit them.

So, if you live in Yorkville, in the lower 80s within a block of York Avenue, and happen to see a partially un-compacted tree pit with a teeny maple in the middle (or three, in one case), please be gentle with it - and if it looks thirsty and you have some water from your bottle or an ice cube to spare, please give it a drink.  Thanks!

In time, I may go back and sneak drop some seeds of perennials gathered from Carl Schurz Park last year - to give the maples some floral company in their otherwise desolate tree pits - and maybe make the planting look a bit more intentional.  And my reminders of annual events are still coming in (despite cancellation of all events), including for the Park Avenue Tulip Dig - if that is still on (no notice issued yet), in a few weeks, I will head out digging for bulbs to populate the five tree pits.  Hopefully that will encourage neighborhood folks to respect the pits and make space for the little seedlings to grow up into greater maturity.  It may be a somewhat stunted, bonsai-like maturity, considering how compacted the soil is in those tree pits, but heck, better than the compost pile fate, right?

May the Fourth be with the seven sister maple seedlings! 😉

#guerillagardening #nyctreepits #mapleseedlings #carlschurzpark #containergardening #rooftopgardensnyc #rooftopgardeningnyc #nycgardening #urbanterracejungle

Instant Gratification

The pull of the easy stuff, the fun things.

Sunny Saturday, and warm, at last!!!  A gardening day.

Seedlings basked in the sun, I basked in the sun, even though there was so much more that had to be done.  But transplanting hydrangeas was easy.  Getting on Zoom calls with friends was easy.  I tend toward the easy; it is in my nature.  Maybe it’s laziness, maybe some hedonism; it’s certainly not disciplined.

But as college friend RI said during our Zoom today, the coronavirus brings into sharp focus the fact that we each have only this one life.  And what do we want to spend it doing?

More to come.