Eagles, Beavers, and Sea Turtles - Oh My!

The return of some non-human native New Yorkers.

My most vivid Nat Geo moment in this crazy metropolis of ours unfolded some years ago when I stopped mid-run at dusk in Carl Schurz Park to watch a huge bird, clearly a raptor (probably a red tailed hawk), perched in a tree, and then, at the base of the branch on which it was resting, some sort of movement.  It flapped its wings and flew off, and in the waning light, the shadowy silhouettes made it all clear - a wriggling rodent grasped in its talons ... the original New York City takeout order.

Since then, I've seen our large feathered friend again (or its relations) in the park (that photo above), as have others.

And they aren't the only non-humans coming back to city life.  The City has been trying to clean up for decades - about as long as I've been here - and the seeds planted and nurtured are bearing fruit, and the creatures are coming back to partake!

My love of this city runs deep, but all of the cold hard concrete and sterile steel can just leave us sentient beings feeling bereft of that natural life force.  The urban jungle can be a harsh place, but the jungle also provides refuge.  And I have always believed there is the possibility, the necessity, of balance, of cohabitation, of nature existing with the structures and things we humans need for a comfortable existence.  We just have to be more thoughtful about designing and going about our journey of coexistence.  Not a zero sum game - there's room for all of us.

[Edited October 29, 2021.]

Accepting Autumn: Surrendering to Mother Nature

Honey bee hospice care.

I saw this little guy earlier this week - on a paver, which in and of itself is unusual, of course. Buzzing about, flitting from bloom to bloom is what we like to see.

He seemed almost drunk, stumbling on the ground - but there were no pollen sacks. He seemed to be dragging a leg, or limping. And then he would somehow lose balance and land on his back, legs flailing in the air.

So I thought I should help him out and flip him over with the stem of a fallen leaf. This happened a few times before I even started to record the footage here.  Something seemed off.

And so after the footage, it seemed my aid was just prolonging something inevitable. I righted him, and then walked away to take care of other gardening tasks.

And when I came back a bit later, he was on his back, and still. I scooped him up with the leaf and deposited him into a planter to return to the earth.

Sobering to bear witness to another being letting go of life. There is a solemnity about it, to surrendering to Mother Nature - but a peace. And Autumn is full of those little moments.

[Contrast to the excruciating guilt of carrying out the mandate to kill any spotted lanternflies I might see. My count is up to 7. It still feels awful. And awful to realize that my method for getting the job done has become somewhat routinized. It goes against every instinct I have. All of their little corpses are under a large rock in the planter with the maple trio.😔]

[Edited October 28, 2021.]

Accepting Autumn: Fall Flora+ Fashions.

Autumn flowers, foliage, and more.

Some of the plants in the Jardin have started to change and acquire their autumnal looks.

The mop head hydrangea that was once white with hints of lime has gone pink….

…The lilac leaves have gone toward a yellow rimmed burgundy….

… The green shiso has become pale yellow; the purple shiso a faded pink….

…The ring hydrangea leaves have also picked up a burgundy shade….

…While the blueberry ones have cast themselves in a bright red with orange undertones.

And across the way, at the right time of day, one of the buildings nearby is bedazzled in sequin-reminiscent light reflections, portending the showers of falling leaves in the days to come.

Stealing time this past weekend to absorb the seasonal changes.

Accepting Autumn: Sun Salutation - Adieu

Letting go of Summer as Autumn's shadows creep in.

Autumn on the terrace means longer shadows, a very discernible loss of sunlight. Par for the course with a north-facing outdoor space, but not really any less gloom inducing, despite being able to articulate the scientific reasons and appreciate that it is but one temporary part of the larger cycle of things.

Where at the height of summer and solar angle, there was almost unbearable brightness and heat along a good part of the length of the north parapet (interrupted by the shadow of the building’s chiller unit), nowadays there is a limited period of direct light, and only in the northeast corner.

In past years I kept everything where it was. But with all the plants still in flux from earlier this year with the building’s terrace membrane replacement, it felt easier to shift things around… the bench on the east parapet of the Main Terrace moved to the north shadowy parapet, making room for sun lovers; hopefully the bit of extra sun gives them a boost for next year. But the junipers and hydrangea are fending for themselves, still by the northern parapet, in the shadows (together with some volunteer tomatoes that sprang up in a hydrangea planter - we’ll see how those fare, still green at the moment). 

The mandevillas that were stuck inside all year begunning during the construction are out enjoying some unfiltered light at last - better late than never. 

The blueberry (sharing space with shiso, clown violets, beets - only the last planting planned) is in a limited sunny corner of the South Wraparound, not yet elevated to optimize light catching - on the never-ending To Do list. 

And then there’s the interior perpetually dark corner (ever since a certain private girls’ school constructed a taller than expected building that cut off my view and the morning light) of the North Wraparound - home to a hydrangea that still seems to flower, beets (started in sun on the roof), Malabar spinach, cardinal vine. I will need to experiment and see what else can tolerate those conditions - hoping for peas, but that may be a pipe pea dream.

Self Care

"There is no such thing as too much ice cream."

Acts of self-preservation amid the chaos.

These past few weeks have been rough at work, and the feeling of hitting the end of each day without even starting that day’s To Do list because of all of the unanticipated fires is just draining. Having others take their stress out in my direction because they are experiencing similar is no fun either.

And so amid all of that, this past weekend’s self care in the form of a day excursion with one of my most enduring, dearest friends - an outing long-planned before Congress started throwing monkey wrenches at the tax code - was potentially in jeopardy.  She flew into Long Island, and with juggling, lots of juggling, keeping that commitment and taking an afternoon off to wander through a designer show house and furniture stores out East (even if there were intermittent interruptions from work calls and emails), getting a pedicure while waiting for a dinner reservation, having some fantastic food prepared at Blu Mar in Southampton with fun company, was just enough of the prescription to keep insanity at bay.

It was only an afternoon, after all.  Then a bit of a morning with the parentals, before heading back to the city to try to keep a lid on things, was the next part of the balancing act.  Though choosing to have a meal out with Sissy upon returning, and finally, finally, getting to try neighborhood spots Gray Hawk Grill and Anita Gelato, both of which opened during the pandemic - it all felt almost like normal times again.

Balancing all of that with tackling deferred gardening tasks and side gig work, and all the decadent eating out with some relatively healthy cooking in - refining the chickpea pancake into an improved chickpea crepe, utilizing the still abundant (even in early Autumn!) fresh harvested squash blossoms and kitchen scrap scallions - felt like an accomplishment to make up for all the things not yet done at work.  Discovering I have gotten back to my 2001 weight (give or take a couple of pounds) - without any real effort, other than, you know, surviving a global pandemic - was a morale bonus, too.

Balance of time.  Balance of food.  Balance of efforts and energy.  Different perspective.  Much needed recentering - like a chiropractic adjustment (so I've heard; no experience firsthand).  Truly overdue self care.  But then it becomes a craving - why can't I have it more often, or all the time?

9/11/2021

Reassessing choices on the twentieth anniversary of September 11th.

In 2001, I was on a plane, over the middle of the Pacific, returning from a month of adventures in Asia on my post-Bar trip, heading back toward New York City for what I knew (from having worked before as a legal assistant at a BigLaw firm) was going to be an intensely demanding job. After a days-long detour to Vancouver, by myself, away from everyone that I loved, and able only to see home weepingly through the relentless news footage alone in a hotel room, battling jetlag, I resumed my trip on September 14th when American airspace reopened.  

Weeks later, I finally began that first BigLaw job as an attorney on October 1st.  I came prepared with rubber soled flat loafers that I kept under my desk - just in case I needed to run up or down stairs and walk miles toward home (and I used them two years later during the blackout of 2003) - and a piece from a newspaper, probably the New York Times, written in the days after 9/11, that I had clipped and hung on my office bulletin board - one of those pieces searching for meaning in it all and reminding its readers to take and make time for the important things and people, and not take life for granted.

Over these two decades, I would give myself a C, at best, maybe only a C-, at heeding that advice. The hamster wheel is really hard to get off of once you start running it.

I considered having a somber day on the 11th, and, superstitiously, not scheduling anything risky; I considered just tackling the backlog of work now ever near with remote office technology.  Instead, I watched the ceremonies in the morning, went out to look for the Tribute in Light in the evening, and in between went zip lining for the first time, with a friend, and saw Mama Hen and Papa Rooster en route home, and retrieved a bunch of my plant babies from their yard to repopulate the Jardin (now cleared for use after the summer’s building-mandated construction project). 

I choose life, and love, because I can - when those were robbed of so many others.  And I will try to rededicate myself to making that choice more regularly - work myself toward a B, maybe someday an A.  There really isn’t a reason or a meaning all those lives were lost, or for the collateral damage since.  But while we are here, we get to make certain choices, and to choose to support others when we see them opting toward life and love, rather than fear and anger.  And I hope my choices in that direction will be supported, and, if not, that I will nonetheless have the courage to forge ahead in that direction anyway.

Alien Invader

Lifelong city girl finds herself making a report to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation about the invasive spotted lanternfly. 

Well, here's a predicament I didn't expect: I saw these two, separately, on the terrace today.  The first one's pretty, right?  It was stuck in the crevice between the pavers on the terrace this morning, and dead, so I decided it should have dignity in its demise and deposited it into one of the planters. Then, this afternoon, I saw the second guy, and took photos.  I used Google Lens (the most convenient tool for learning the names of unfamiliar plants and animals) to try to identify it.

Turns out the two are the same thing - the spotted lanternfly - native to, among other regions, Vietnam (coincidence? I certainly hope that's all it is).  And it's been causing a bit of havoc in New Jersey - it is the subject of a vehicle inspection and quarantine campaign so that it doesn't spread farther. Under the New York guidelines, I am supposed to destroy it, then report it 😬😮. YIKES!!  So I tried to capture it, and true to the description of its characteristics on the interwebs (it is reported not to fly so much as hop, despite possessing wings), it hopped - over the railing of the parapet - and either dropped thirteen stories, or flew off.

Well, I have now reported my sighting to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. You might note that New York/Manhattan was not one of the counties under an alert on the New York site - till now? 😳😬 (So now I am harboring the body of a dead fugitive, possibly the first one in Manhattan.)

[Oh, by the way: You know how you have friends who, if you committed murder, would help you hide the body?  I AM NOT ONE OF THEM - PLEASE DO NOT CONFESS TO ME.  I will defend your reputation, I will help post bail, I will do everything in my power to get you the best defense attorney available, I will listen to why you did it and hold you and likely cry and torture myself that I could not help you before the deed was done.  But please do not ask me to help you hide the body, and feel horrible for the victim and horrible for you and horrible about me and my limited capabilities for being a friend; I won't be able to and will feel like I need to report the death to the authorities - as I reported the spotted lanternfly.  Just please keep me in the dark till it all comes out.]

Alien "invaders,"  like this spotted lanternfly, are entirely distinguishable from refugees ... like the Afghan translators and civilian workers and other helpful, on the ground allies and friends of the United States during the last two decades of war, to whom we owe a moral obligation to provide a home here, in our country.  But whom we are, shamefully, about to leave in limbo as their country collapses around them to a brutal regime, because we somehow did not get it together to airlift them out over the last seven months.  How, how, could we not have learned from Vietnam?  How?  Beyond, beyond upsetting.  The reports have set off some anxiety in me; even without firsthand memories, and only a life of stories of fleeing as a long ago capital fell, heard as I eavesdropped on adult conversations at an age when I was far too young to contextualize, but old enough to understand fear and sadness and uncertainty and trepidation, a refugee child never outgrows the unease and sense of moving amid danger.  So I have written to all of my elected representatives imploring them to accelerate the evacuation process.  

I checked in with my friend who lived and worked in Afghanistan most of the last decade; he has been furiously writing letters of recommendation in support of special immigrant visas.  He is a good one, a truly good one.  Heartbreaking, for all of his, and others', work to go down the drain in a disorderly departure, for individuals who helped him, and their families, to be left in danger.

Postscript: In the time it took to edit and add links, Kabul fell.  Just this morning I was still urging people to write their elected officials to accelerate the evacuation.  I thought there might be days.  There were barely even hours.  The Good One (formerly "NF") thinks it might not be so bad.  A mutual friend, a woman with whom I once worked as a legal assistant, who married a man who runs an NGO for which the Good One worked for a while, also thinks it might not be so bad.  I very much hope that is the case.  (The Good One volunteered to go back in.  At least with such a rapid fall, I hope there will be no need for him to do so.  It's already bad enough that he is in a COVID hot zone helping the Rohingya.  But he will do what he does - "GO" is an apt acronym for him; that is what he does - he cannot stay put.  The realization I could never have convinced him makes friendship easier; it wasn't me, it was him all along.  Admirable, truly.  But untenable for a relationship.)

[Edited August 15, 2021.]