Sunday, May 31, 2015

Sunday in rainy Harlem, with occasional thunder


Sunday evening's soundtrack in Harlem: Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall (Ella Fitzgerald and The Inkspots).

It is raining, and it is wonderful.


It has been a dry month.


Water runs and splashes and cleans and is used and lost.


In the wooden boxes that line the terrace's edge the herbs are growing fatter.


Tonight we eat the cilantro (about to bloom) with spicy leafwraps. 


Above: last week my rash purchase arrived. Five Nicotiana mutabilis plants from Annie's Annuals (California - eek), packed incredibly well. I can find no good seed for it online, and I want the height, tiny flowers and changing pinks on this year's summer terrace.


Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) - growing statuesque (which is good). The three seedlings from last year have produced dozens of offspring.


Indoors, in the 127th Street window. FDNY action outside.


And later, paging through Kobus van der Merwe's Strandveldfood cookbook, while sampling the quails eggs I did not have time to peel last night (for a foragers' drinks party) dipped in mugwort salt - somehow I had missed this lovely double page picture of Kobus and Rupert Koopman; like having them in the house, suddenly.

And now it's to those leaf wraps. Time to pick the cilantro (I don't have basil, yet) and quick-pickle some carrot-slivers. The meaty filling (beef, lemon grass, ginger, lime juice, tamarind, fish sauce) has been bubbling since 5pm.

Good luck with Monday. It's going to be a doozy.

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Thursday, May 28, 2015

The tentative terrace


The late May air has become muggy prematurely. Dusk lingers, and by 8pm neither the candles nor the solar jars have been lit.

The terrace is getting going, in terms of growth. The climbing beans are heading straight up, and by late June will form their leafy screen. The black raspberry has set fruit (green right now). The two clumps of favas are looking fine. We have been eating the leaves once a week in a huge salad. The herbs (cilantro, parsley, thyme, oregano, mint, sage, self sown fennel, calamintha, agastache, nasturtium, and rose scented and lemon pelargonium) are all very happy. There are  jewelweed volunteers all over - one can eat the young greens, but I also keep them as handy poison ivy antidotes and hummingbird attractors.

The long darkness of winter, the longing for the light, seems far behind us.

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Monday, May 25, 2015

The green islands of the big city


Perhaps heading to Pelham Bay Park, on the Bronx side of the Long Island Sound on the first warm weather holiday weekend of the year was not the brightest idea we've ever had.

Usually we're here in April, for the giant, unsprayed stands of Japanese knotweed, now too tall and tough to collect. Still - for me, the plant lover, I knew that new discoveries lay ahead. The crowd-averse Frenchman was less optimistic.


There were boom boxes, there was salsa, there were unclad bodies of every proportion. There were sprawling picnics emerging from plastic bags and foil trays and there were dozens of portable barbecues. Fully dressed, with backpacks and long lenses, we stalked through the shiny masses, pale aliens from the planet of observation.


And into the green. The salsa brass still shimmering behind us.


This was helpful. The little flowers above belonged to a Smilax vine, but looking at them later I was able to tell the difference between Smilax rotundfolia, above and below...


...and Smilax herbacea (below), which has starburst flowers. The young, growing tips of Smilax are edible and taste (without the cobwebs) a little like grape tendrils, but are more succulent and less astringent.


The last of some native pinxter azaleas were in bloom - Rhododendron canescens.


While the woods here are plagued - dominated - by noxious invasives (a USDA classification) like Japanese knotweed, day lilies, vinca, garlic mustard, mugwort, and field garlic (all high on my Eat List) there are still wonderful, if threatened, patches of indigenous wildflowers.


Common cinquefoil, above (cinque = 5 = the number of leaflets), is Potentilla simplex, masquerading often as the barren strawberry.


Lovely and new, last seen one April when its leaves were red: This is wood betony, above, Pedicularis canadensis. It carpeted the forest floor in just one area for a couple of dozen feet.


Inbetween the wood betony plants grew these dainty flowers - yellow star grass, geophytes whose tiny hairs are indicated in the species name: Hypoxis hirsuta.


There were pathside clouds of Geranium maculatum.


Tall and pretty and invasive dame's rocket - Hesperis matronalis. While it behaves and looks a little like Phlox, its four petals indicate that it belongs to the big mustard - Brassicaceae - family. So, yup, edible.


And growing in sheets down to the water, Aristalochia clematitis. Responsible, apparently, for kidney failure and urinary tract cancers down the ages, in those who consumed it as a medicinal herb. It contains aristalochic acid. It is European in origin and has taken over one side of a small island, here.


We made our usual pilgrimage to our picnic spot.


And were rewarded with the sight of two American oyster catchers on another rocky island.


Two sandwiches, and one all-American beer. We developed a fondness for Miller on a Namibian camping trip, and drink it for the fumes of nostalgia.


I baked a sour cherry sourdough loaf on Saturday morning, and the sandwiches were smeared with beach plum chutney before being stuffed with cheese and arugula.


Another troop of picnickers arrived, three families and four strollers strong, with their barbecue. 


On the way out through the phragmites - also very invasive - I nibbled the pale and tender tips of young stalks that slip easily from the middle of the giant grass cylinder. Tastes like cucumber!


And then it was back out again.


And through the good-smelling smoke of the hundreds of barbecuing partiers with their boom boxes camped beside the giant parking lot.


...onto our bus, driving past pretty pink horse chestnut (Aesculus x carnea) and  back to the 6 train and Harlem.

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Thursday, May 21, 2015

Shopping for dinner


Union Square is green at last.


The fiddleheads of ostrich ferns (Mateuccia struthiopteris) are still at the market, driven down from Vermont twice a week, where the season is well behind ours. Although I think they are delicious, I am curious about the impact that harvesting has on natural populations of the fern. 


And I was pleased, and also amused (despite myself), to see lambs quarters (Chenopodium album) for sale. I bought almost half pound. Ouch. Yes folks, your 'weeds' are selling in New York City for $6 a quarter pound. Eat up! Lambs quarters are closely related to quinoa, and are very nutritious. I am growing my own planterful on the Harlem terrace. Personally, I think they blow spinach out of the water, once cooked.


And another green in the foraging vein, but cultivated, in this case: a skinny-leafed species of plantain, Plantago coronopus


Also known as erba stella, and minutina.


So, supper, with a dessert of the first strawberries I have tasted this year, was: a risotto with the fiddleheads (cooked for a minute, first), and asparagus tips. The Frenchman scraped the pot.


Tonight? Lamb's quarter phyllo triangles with feta and sumac, and the salad of the minutina.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Analog design


My plant loving mind likes this part, a lot.


Pyrex, paper, plants, and paint.


A garden-to-be, on a Manhattan rooftop.

Monday, May 18, 2015

What to plant in semi-shade, urban-style


The Harlem terrace has begun to grow. A lot died this winter: three beautiful boxwoods, and every rose. The pots froze, of course, then were buried in feet of snow, and then the tops melted in our overhead noonday sun, and the roots sat in water while the bottom of the pots remained iceblocks, unable to drain. I think they just drowned. 

So my semi shade is not horticulture's semi shade. It is complicated. We have the shadow cast by tall buildings that sandwich each side of our townhouse. It lasts till about noon (at this time of year), when a few hours of intense overhead direct sun begin. Then more shade. Choosing a plant to cope with that kind of stress is not simple; most semi shade plants evolved in woodlands, and like gentle sun, or filtered sunlight. Under high noon they wilt. And I've realized that some full sun lovers can survive here, but others not - in early spring and late fall the sun cannot clear the building to our south. So it's always an experiment. Welcome to 2015.


Japanese forest grass - Hakonechloa macra 'Aurea' (now that the kitty is no longer around it will be able to grow full without having its ends nibbled off - I miss him very much) - a good foil for: Cimicifuga  'Hillside Black Beauty,' a very dark-leafed bugbane cultivar bred in Connecticut and grown by Jim Glover on the North Fork of Long Island. Cimicifuga - now classified as Actaea - is native to the eastern US. I am hoping that it will be happy and reach its 4'- 5' height. And last, very exciting - to me - a foxglove: Digitalis 'Gold Crest.' Reputed not only to re-bloom but to attract hummingbirds. Sold. I have planted three in various spots.


In Brooklyn a week ago I picked up two specimens, from GRDN, the wonderful little garden shop on Hoyt Street, of Corydalis lutea, an exceptionally long-blooming perennial (most flower for between 1-3 weeks, and this Corydalis keeps going till cold weather). It used to grow in the gravel on the floor of our Brooklyn terrace - it does not need a lot of space.


Jim Glover also grows these white Corydalis, and when a friend offered to bring me some plants, I jumped. Yes, please. Corydalis ochroleuca. I think it is gorgeous.


Below - after seeing it in bloom in high forest shade in Central Park, I have wanted to grow swamp milkweed - Asclepias incarnata subs. pulchra. I considered  A. syriaca (common milkweed, which I like to eat), but I think it would need more sun. Maybe some monarch butterflies will find my plant. If you can, grow some milkweeds for the butterflies - their larvae depend on it.


Also spotted at GRDN, this lovely little Heuchera, a cultivar called 'Snow Queen.' I think she's a bit hot. I may have to shuffle pots around again. Heucheras are troopers, and there are dozens to choose from.


The fava beans I have not mown down for salad leaves are in bloom. They handle the light situation very well.


The lilies are up, with annual, self-seeded jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) to keep them company. Along the edges in the wooden planters the herbs are herbing. All the herbs I like - except chives - do well here, which has surprised me. There are also a million volunteering seedlings, from last year. It is fun sorting out the Verbena bonariensis from the quickweed, from the lambs quarters (I am farming the last two in their own pot), from the thyme, from the Nicotiana...


And the empty jar? It is a solar lamp - I bought three in South Africa and we love them.

Light for the nights to come.

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