Mulderbosch pink

One of South Africa's nicest wine makers. This is a Cabernet sauvignon rose...2008. Bought at Bowery Wines, just under $13.

Looking forward...

As I write, on this Brooklyn evening at 7.44pm, I hear a robin singing. And singing and singing. Sitting at the very top of a tree across the way. Soon I might hear...yes, just did. The cardinals. It is their song time, before they go to bed.

It is still light out, and the trees are new and chartreuse. There is a vague white hum from the BQE. A very distant siren. A jet far away, on final approach. And the robin, above all, singing, singing, singing.

Guess what I'm doing this weekend?

Yeah yeah, looking for a bigger terrace. No. Planting new things. In new pots. With our SoHo rooftop purchases came some for me, too:

Nicotiana 'Limelight' from the Union Square Farmers' Market this morning.

Neutered chives from Jim Glover. Our client felt they might be too stinky.

These special-ordered, as I've wanted them ever since I used them in gardens last year.

Extra nip for the Don, and for its beautiful blue flowers.


A different calamintha: on the SoHo terrace this morning our client gave me her mom's recipe: tea from the steeped mint leaves, cooled, add half the amount apple juice, squeeze of lemon, lots of ice.


The beautiful Corydalis "China Blue". Blooms till the middle of summer, then disappears.

I must order some new pots from Tony's Hardware. And there's something wrong with my boxwood. White, papery spots on some leaves. Leaf burn from water droplets? I know. Take a picture.

Pots too small?

We start planting Median perennials today...They arrived in a big fragrant truck.. The geraniums and agastache like anise and lemon.

Combat swine flu: eat a pig

After my vegetable dinner I needed something to chew. I love gnawing on ribs. I love slightly burned bits.

So, a small rack of baby back ribs

A lemon (as usual)

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced (I know...same old same old)

2 tablespoons dark Turkish pepper flakes. Ha!

Can't help you there. This might sound mad, but I still have jar, airtight, of the pepper flakes I brought back in bulk from Istanbul in...2006? And they're fine! Not stale at all - very salty, slightly smoky, not very hot, a little sweet. The only substitute I can think of is a dried Mexican pepper, like a poblano (ancho, when dried), soaked, chopped; but it will still be different. But good...

One day ahead I squeezed the juice over the ribs and sliced the garlic over them, covered and put in fridge. Evening of, I fired up the broiler and sprinkled on salt, and the Turkish chile mix. At a raging temperature the ribs cooked for about 12 minutes on each side. Then I just left them in there to rest for about 20 minutes, heat off. Sliced. Gnawed.

To drink: very good sippin' Tequila, Cointreau, dash of, a whole lemon's juice (I swear I support an entire orchard in Florida), stirred, over ice.

Begone Swine Flu!

Soo-wee!

Fifth Ave at 10th Street

A vegetable love

Feta, Persian cucumbers, perhaps not from Israel, radishes, chunks of watermelon. A spritz of sherry vinegar, black pepper, some EV olive oil.

Couscous with a lot of finely chopped parsley and mint (from terrace!), lemon zest and raw onion. It needed dried apricots. Fat artichoke with lemon and garlic butter.

Something's burning

So what was the black smoke about? Something burned for a couple of hours while we were planting a garden on a SoHo rooftop. Seemed under control and then flared again. The pink building is the Julian Schnabel, pseudo-Venetian palazzo in the far West Village, where we designed a party garden (not a garden party) last year. And then there's the Hudson. Was it in Jersey? Did the Hudson ignite?

Terrace sky

Whad's wrong with this picture?

Today in New York

...spring sprang.

Bleecker between Mercer and La Guardia Place.

This was not a subtle spring. No dog tooth violets here...

These tulips were planted by The Garden Shop at NYU. That's what the sign said.

They were bright.

This was the first time I'd seen these crabapples in bloom, in the huge courtyard on La Guardia Place between Bleecker and West 3rd.

I sat here one summer and had strawberries pelted at me from a high floor. I heeded the sign.

The beginnings of blossom snow.

Washington Square Park, below.

Redbud - in a fibreglass planter on West 16th Street.

Union Square trees leafing out.

The lilac on Congress Street opened from tight buds on Friday.

Home, almost. Crabapples...

Gardener's tattoo

Viki, who has just started gardening for us, is an artist - photographer, floral designer, stylist - in her own right. I noticed her tattoo on Friday, when she rolled her sleeves up to dig the Median: it is an impeccable magnolia. "Elizabeth", in fact, she said. She sketched it after her favourite neighbourhood magnolia, four storeys high, was sawn down on Warren Street, when the brownstone's facade was renovated.

It lives on, on her right bicep.

The work was done at the Fine Line Tattoo on 1st Ave just north of East 1st Street.

Shopping in the 'hood

On Saturday I stocked up on small things that make me happy.

Fava beans from Pacific Green, artichokes from New Green Pea; mulberry juice, little cucumbers, French feta, Lingon berry jam from Sahadi's, since I am tired of eating my over-sweet plum jam: must decide what to do with it. The apricot jam and raspberry/red currant are finished and will have to wait for the new crops. Finn Crisps, the best crackers, and an avocado with an outrageous, $1.99 price tag. But I really wanted one to go with the delicious new chives on the terrace. Goat brie, roasted almonds; two shortbreads for afternoon tea. Tonight's salad will be radish, cucumer and feta. Chickpea curry in the packages - the only packaged food I eat, and it is delicous: $3. Can't be beat. The other Pride of India curries are not nearly as good.

Blood-dimmed tide

Or rosy glow...

I found it. The original colour. Perfect match. The bright pink is no more. The semi gloss is gone. I bought the paint at American Hardware on Court Street, where the garden section is dominated by Miracle Gro, Moss Killer and Roundup. The counter help, with food between all its teeth, leered at me when I asked about organic products and soil. I took my Benjamin Moore Roseate and ran.

I painted all four walls, covering the orange and the remaining cream, and, reaching between the vicious little prickles of the New Dawn, was nipped, bit, pierced, torn, scratched, lanced, sliced, ripped, gouged, hooked, slashed and cut. I looked rather like a chainsaw massacre victim - I was painting in a bikini and dripping with sweat in our weird little high summer today, but most of it was just paint. It's in my hair.

Estorbo spent most of today flat on the floor inside in disbelief, looking for the zipper to his fur suit. But as soon as the terrce was put to rights again he was out there, and seemed to approve. I like it too. This pink has more gravitas.

I bought this juice at Sahadi's. I'm not a juice person. But it was mulberry juice, which I'd never seen, and it was just over $3, which is really cheap. And I adore mulberries, mostly as a memory. I used to pick them from Mrs Du Toit's tree next door in Bloemfontein - a whole bowlful, for dessert after lunch with cream. The juice bottle said product of PRC, which I had to look up, as I imagined it had come from Middle Eastern fruit, or ex East Bloc. Nope: People's Republic of China. Hm. Silkworm food?

OK, so the juice was doctored. It was 6 o'clock juice with a squeeze of lemon and shot of vodka and lots of ice. Fat smile. It was a hot day.

Then I shelled some fava beans for supper with artichokes, and considered the week ahead.

Busy week: finally the planting of the rest of a SoHo garden that has been years in the making. Not a huge job by HWV standards, but with many twists and turns. Mostly perennials being bought tomorrow and planted Tuesday: lots of Iris ensata, calamintha, gaura, geraniums, veronica, nepeta, interesting alliums, pennisetum, Japanese ribbon grass, and a little lawn; and roses and boxwood. Trees - maples, magnolia, lilac and cherries - were hoisted last year and planted, though the magnolia's colour is apparently not what was expected...so we'll see.

A couple of new designs to start thinking about, too, and then on Thursday, the Median!

Cooling off

If you are a regular visitor to the blog you will notice that we have taken our clothes off: left. It's a seasonal thing.

Record-breaking 90'F in New York, on this 26th of April 2009, which is just wrong. So the least I could do was get nekkid. Vince took the picture of me last year on the granite boulder beach populated by penguins, just past Simonstown on the Cape Peninsula. The tourists all mass along the boardwalks one beach down, at Boulders, not knowing really about this little cove, Foxy Beach, where you are allowed to swim and sun yourself along with the gentle little black 'n whites.

The picture of Vince I took this February, on Dune 45 in Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert. No penguins there, but very pleasant barking geckos.

The Median

On a perfect spring day, we started to dig. At last it was time for the neglected, ugly East Houston Street median to be dressed in the new clothes I'd designed for it. What better than flowers, for bees, for butterflies, for all of us green-derived Noo Yorkers?

The crew - Viki, above - had been working for a while before I arrived. So I tried to dig extra fast.

Spontaneous volunteer Ricky, from the 'hood. He found a real earthworm. The combination of digging teenager plus earthworm was a happy one.

Das Boot. Sort of. These are my serious action boots: gardening, mud-sliding in Lynn Canyon, and horse riding on long sandy, wet beaches.

Looking better and better.

I think we'll put the cones in the street when we plant next Thursday. I swear I felt a side mirror shaving my jeans as I bent over.

There were the predictable Hoo baby catcalls: we had three girls on the crew - very hard working girls...but many of the comments from cars and trucks surprised me: good job! what are you planting! thank you! can you plant sunflowers? It felt good. They felt good.

The UPS guy said, Someone's getting their money's worth...

One lady stole our soil, scooping it up furtively into a little bag as we worked the other end.

You're stealing our dirt! I yelled at her: Why???

Because I don't have my own, she said...

What could I say to that.

Then she said she had 6 cats , 1 hyacinth and was dying of AIDS. I told her to help us plant next week. She said she would.

We took off several inches of soil and bagged it to allow for the added soil from the 400 perennials we'll be planting. Kim, one of the gardeners, asked if she could have the bagged soil, and said she knew a guy who could take it to their community garden in Bushwick.

Below, Kim and the "guy": who turned out to be Rodrigo Gonzalez, who paints murals and makes beautiful art.

Off goes the extra topsoil. I warned them that it might be salty, from winter roads, but right now they are contending with lead-tainted soil and consider this an improvement.

Then we added some organic Vermont compost.

At last. Soft and fluffy soil the way I like it. Greenstreets will one day live up to its name. It has been brownstreets for too long.

It's going to feel good to lie flat tonight.

So this is Phase One.

9/12/09 Update: for follow-up and Things Growing try here, here, here aaaaaand here!