66 Square Feet

Cape Town Mystery #2

2012-02-02T16:26:00.002+02:00

Mega Walls.

The Mystery: Who builds them? Rather, who lives inside the walls? My theory: Not Capetonians (and foreign friends, it's Cape Town, not Capetown. But it's Capetonians...end of digression).

I'd like to be proved wrong, because my sentiment is xenophobic. Or maybe just Gautengphobic? Gauteng is a province of high walled enclaves and compounds.

Mega walls are on the rise, and I don't think that it is in response to an increase in violent crime. That's not scientific, just a hunch. I do think that it may be the result of a migration south of our northern South African cousins who don't feel right with a view unobstructed by Security.

The wall above, now under construction on the hill above Kirstenbosch, is serious. It's laughable it's so high. It can't be legal. Is there legal limit in building codes? This is 12 feet, minimum. And will it be glazed with electric fencing, the icing on the mega wall cake?

The only good thing this wall does is hide the unprepossessing block of house within.

This is on Rhodes Drive, nearby. At least we got arty with the stone. Afro-Goth. My guess - 8-10 feet. Note electrified strands on top.

Are you safer inside something like this? I don't think so. Once you are over a wall like this nobody in the world will know that you are there. Except for the cameras. This one does have cameras. So who lives inside? Mystery. Big, gauche mystery.

Mega wall close to home. Electric fencing. "English Rose". The irony is deafening. Height? 10-foot range, I'd say. Electrics.

I hate to tempt fate by saying that my parents' house is altogether unwalled and crime-free. Bad things can happen anywhere, and are frightening and sometimes deadly. I understand fear. But their house, unlike these cocooned neurotics, is visible from the street, and the street is visible from the house. Very hard to pull a fast one on it. Impossible to creep up unnoticed. Then again, every window has burglar bars - often not noticed by visitors as they mimic the wooden frames of the windows.

The mega walled houses, I'd bet, have iron free glass and sophisticated electric alarms which go so well with our rolling electricity black outs.

*Note on building materials for the Americans reading this. One of the first things that stuck me in the States was that houses seemed to be built (to my eye) from planks, plastic and insulation. If you punch wall in a fit of temper chances are you'd go through it. If you did that here you'd go to hospital. While the walls above obviously cost mega bucks, it is true that - with the glaring exception of shantytowns - most housing here is built from brick, stone and cement. Dry wall on frames is a great rarity, and used exceptionally. I assume that it has to do with lower labour and materials costs here, and also with a high level of masonry skill.

Fire

2012-02-01T11:45:00.001+02:00

I pulled off the N7 late on Saturday afternoon for a couple of minutes to photograph the water tanks below. To the left lay the stripped summer wheatfields, with a haze of blue mountains behind them. To the right the white watertanks, the windmill, and the thick wall of distant smoke which I later learned was issuing from the fire beginning to rage near Wellington and the beautiful Bainskloof.

That fire has now been fought for three days with seven helicopters including two Oryx lent to the struggle by the air force. The main concern is property damage - there are people, homes and farms in the area, but I am not sure that it is a bad thing for the fynbos, which requires fire for regeneration and also for the germination of many plants. I don't know when last that area experienced a burn.

Too-frequent fires are bad; similarly, long intervals without fire cause the vegetation to senesce. Ironicallly, both conditions are caused by humans: Cigarette butts, arson, and accident on the one hand, and zealous fire fighting and -prevention on the other. Just how fynbos evolved to require fire I don't know. This is not lightning country, but perhaps it was long, long ago. Perhaps ancient hunter gatherers were careless with their sparks. Since humans and fire came from Africa, perhaps it is fitting that this country needs flames in order to renew itself.

Does this make a case for burning one's bridges?

No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat.

I wrote that in the back of my planner when I was 16. Had I read A Modern Comedy? What was chasing me? School. I hated school.

Not that I need to retreat. It's just where fire leads one.

Summer reaches fever pitch

2012-01-31T18:35:00.001+02:00

It's fig time in Cape Town, time for my only real fig fix of the year aside from my own little honeyed terrace fruit in July or August. I never find really good figs in New York. And I love them.

Next week Ellen and I head for fig central, the small town of Prince Albert, at the foot of the Swartberg Pass. And where are we staying? Why, at the fig farm, of course. Full immersion.

She arrives late-late at the end of this week and I have being wracking my brains to try and fit in everything a person who knows Cape Town wants to show a person who does not know Cape Town. It's impossible. There is too much. Too many beaches too many walks too many things to eat to climb to buy to smell and to drink, nevermind to look at. So we'll do our best. The Little Karoo trip is perhaps counter intuitive, but I wanted to show her some different country, too. There will be a big sky, the Milky Way at night, no electricity, a town where you order your bread at the bakery the day before you want it, and buy your own milk from the dairy.

Yet in Cape Town there are penguins and turquoise water and orchids and caves and views and gardens and shops and picnics and sunsets and drinks on the beach and vineyards and and and.

Somehow.

In the meantime, there is a plate of figs to eat, a rack of lamb chops to braai for supper, a drink to mix, red wine to chill (just a little), and a lot of daisies to deadhead.

The evenings down here are still long.

Die Kom

2012-01-30T19:16:00.002+02:00

Our good friends G and Y live on the Kom beside a grove of milkwood trees. Vince and I call them saucisson trees, because that is how their fruit smells. Which is good if you like saucisson. We do. The trees are protected and it is an offense to chop one down.

G cooked lunch. This was quite something. He is 83 and began to cook late last year when Y was confined to bed, and he shows every sign of being an extremely late-blooming cook. Till now Y has taken care of all things domestic, while G worked at Law. He panfried kabeljou for us, a Cape linefish now -sadly - on the unsustainable orange list. Not everyone knows that. I have not eaten Kob, as we call it, in years. It is delicious. It was cooked perfectly, too, and that is not easy. With it were steamed courgettes and boiled baby potatoes, and butter and lemon. It is easily the best fish I have eaten in as long as I can remember. Apparently G can make excellent omelettes, too. The man is talented. I promised to send him a recipe for a crumble as he would like to expand his dessert repertoir.

After lunch we walked outside to look at the aloes that grow near the water on the little bite of quiet bay where the water retreats to reveal cobbled rocks at low tide. A group of people was gathering in a seine net, from which an occasional silver fish flapped. Earlier the woman of the group had walked by with two bags heavy and damp. Mussels? I'd like to be eating at their house tonight.

I'd like to have a group of old friends who would help me gather my seine net in at the Kom, and a small boat. And a house, looking down at that water, where sometimes otters are still seen. And to have the aloes to wake me up on summer mornings, with their prickled and utter redness. This is one of the places I would choose to live if I could live anywhere, anywhere at all.

I think they are Aloe perfiolata, or jewelled aloes. Creeping aloes, native to the West Coast.

Driving to Koringberg for lunch

2012-01-29T21:02:00.004+02:00

One and a half hours after leaving home, Die Withuis, at Koringberg.

37'C in the shade.

A leisurely, lazy, lovely six hour lunch and visit.

Hard to leave. I was ready to move in.

Beautiful thing

2012-01-28T14:00:00.000+02:00

When I noticed this strange flower growing in the greenbelt near my parents house it yelled, all 6 inches of it, Weeeeeeed! An intricately arranged, lovingly designed weed. And loved by aphids. In fact, perhaps a milkweed - Asclepias*. Not one I have ever seen.

I visit that area of pine trees regularly, hoping against hope for a repeat of last year's chicken of the woods, which we found in February. I have not given up.

10.20pm - Update: Asclepias, yes. Weed, no. Then again, how are we defining a weed? To me it's an invasive exotic. Asclepias crispa is not exotic, but South African. Thank you iSpot, once again.

Jamaica Bay in Winter

2012-01-27T12:08:00.002+02:00

While I sit in a cool room on a hot day in Cape Town with the blinds drawn against a noonday glare, preparing to write an article with tips on taking a good picture (...um), may I direct you to some cool white winter images of one of my favourite places in the world: The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

The real photographer in the family (no, not the cat), hiked out there on a snowy day last week to see what he could see. And through his lens the world is wonderful. The pictures are silent and cold and austerely beautiful.

Half and Half

2012-01-26T18:38:00.001+02:00

When I am visiting my parents my cocktail repertoire expands from everything-prosecco* to include the bottles in their liquor cabinet that time forgot. Like sweet vermouth. So here is a chilled glass of half sweet vermouth, half dry - in this case Noilly Prat, unavailable in this country. Who knows why. I sometimes bring a bottle over from New York. Shake the vermouths up with ice, strain, pour, and I add a thin slice of lime - this one from the tree in the garden. Sip it in the kitchen while things happen at the stove.

Prosecco, speaking of which: My serviceberry cocktail is featured in Cocktails in the Garden on Martha Stewart's At Home in the Garden. And keep an eye out for 66 Square Feet in the March edition of Martha Stewart Living!

(And yes, I have subsequently cut my hair. Good move.)

Cape Town Mystery #1

2012-01-26T16:07:00.000+02:00

[This post has been updated to reflect Constantia Village's response (see end).]

I offer you the first in a series of Things that Puzzle Me in Cape Town.

The Constantia Village Shopping Centre is about five minutes from my parents' house. It is ground zero for grocery shopping, from high end, overpackaged Woolworths with its sterling produce and zero in-house recycling, to more day-to-day Pick 'n Pay. Both are major national retail chains which have enourmous spaces in the mall. They make New York supermarkets look really, really backward (Wholefoods excepted). Wide aisles, friendly and professional - for the most part - cashiers, excellent fresh produce, on site bakeries, wine, meat (though I have heard recent mutterings about Pick'n Pay's butchery whose standards have dropped significantly), you name it. In the rest of the mall there are clothes shops and boutiques, a book shop, coffee shops, a biltong shop, a camping supply shop, jewellers, banks, hairdressers and stationary shops. It is always busy and is surrounded by a vast parking lot to house all the cars that bring people to shop.

None of this is mysterious, though it is certainly interesting. I find mall culture fascinating, not living near one in Brooklyn, but doing my shopping the old fashioned way - butcher, baker, mango maker.

What is puzzling is the trees. Trees are planted between every nose-to tail row of cars. That's nice. Trees green and cool the bricked lots and provide shade in the very hot summers. You'd think. I mean, otherwise what's the point? Many of the trees are the karees pictured (Searsia leptodictya, formerly Rhus). Now, every single summer, around this time, just as their new growth is starting to make them look like trees again the karees are shaved. Into these weird little flat-topped, jug-headed...things. All their nice new growth is chopped and their shading ability reduced to a spot on a bonnet (that's hood in local parlance).

WHY?

For crying out loud.

Who can explain this to me? By now, decades after the centre was opened, these should be gorgeous, shady trees. What is the point of the contorted pompoms?

It is a mystery.

Unless: Has it been discovered that the karees make a fruit to which birds are very attracted? Are the trees lopped to within an inch of their lives just as they begin to produce this fruit? Was there one fatal year in which fruit was produced, when redwing starlings descended and when all hell broke loose on the windshields below?

Or is someone who signs cheques just a complete neat freak? Like the man for whom I designed a garden who got angry when it grew.

I'd like to know.

[In my quest for an answer I visited the new website for Constantia Village which now calls itself "The" Constantia Village...uh, OK. Their introductory blurb reads: "There are very few places in the world where vineyards hug every street corner..."

Yep, and Constantia isn't one of them!

Really? Every street corner. Every. Street corner? C'mon. I hadn't intended to give them a hard time, it's just the trees that bother me but...vineyards hugging every street corner? That's just bad copy. I've thought of three street corners but otherwise am coming up empty. I may have to go out and count. If you know of a vineyard-hugged street corner in Constantia please tell us where it is. If you want to help look via satellite, here's the link.

Quite unwittingly it seems I have stumbled upon Cape Town Mystery #2.]

Update: 1-25-12, 11.56am - Constantia Village responds, and the mystery is solved:

Dear Ms Viljoen

Thank you for your email. We have for a long time deliberated the benefits of shade versus security. We have strategically placed cameras that monitor the activities in the car park and the growth of the trees would render these cameras useless. We would love nothing more than to have beautiful shade-providing trees, but we are concerned that this would be at the cost of security. We have investigated alternatives regarding the placement of the cameras, but it would mean many, many more cameras, which would make monitoring even more difficult.

I trust that you understand our dilemma. Please feel free publish this response on your blog.

Kind Regards
Jani Hugo

Marketing Manager
The Constantia Village

Silvermine Amphitheatre walk

2012-01-24T21:56:00.000+02:00

I joined Lyn and more of her friends for another hike at Silvermine, starting this time on the west side of Ou Kaapse Weg.

The well known Amphitheatre hike follows the elevated rim of mountaims which form a horse shoe around the reservoir below.

Solitary and petite, Agapanthus africanus graced the path at irregular intervals, still holding some of the rain we enjoyed overnight.

On the northern side of the rim leucadendrons and pink ericas dominated the vegetation.

I don't know this erica, apparently just opening.

The Constantiaberg brooded in the background all morning - in front of us, behind us, in front of us again.

I think these are all Watsonia tabularis. As usual they occurred regularly throughout the walk.

Below, this seemed to be a secondary inflorescence unfolding fanlike from the main stem.

Watsonia borbonica, below.

The rain in the night had filled each of the irregular and frequent bowls in the sandstone - so typical of these mountains - with fresh water.

Another pink erica. One day I will learn the pink ericas.

Crassula coccinea in its ra-ra glory.

Furry-flowered Erica cerinthoides.

Below - the white highlights are Erica mammosa, and this valley was flutterig with tiny sunbirds.

Coffee and croissant break. My coffee at last resides in a decent thermos. My shoes are known as The Canaries. But they do not sing. Because they are not caged. Uh...nevermind.

Moss pockets, often, and perfect.

Low cloud came and went over a remaining stand of alien pine trees on the ridge.

A solitary vygie in a moss island on the flat ledge of sandstone.

A late Liparia splendens - mountain dahlia.

Leucaspermum bushes below, like trees in the naturally treeless fynbos.

Stunning: Gladiolus liliaceus. It opens towards evening and the colour turns lighter as its scent grows stronger for its nocturnal pollinators. I had never seen one.

This red-tinted leucaspermum with velvet-soft leaves is everywhere.

Lobelia coronopifolia.

Perhaps Lobelia seritacea.

And suddenly, rising higher on a ridge, a new view, far over Noordhoek and all the way to the lighthouse beyond Kommetjie.

A late Thereianthus bracteolatus.

Tritoniopsis parviflora*.

[Correction: This has been identified by one of my fellow hikers as Tritoniopsis unguicularis.]

The rocky southern edge of the rim.

And over the other shoulder, Fish Hoek and Simonstown, to the south east.

Below, it used to be Peucedanum ferulaceum, but I am told at iSpot that it is now classified as Notobubon ferulaceum. I thought these were seeds but eagle-eyed Tony Rebelo notes the anthers. So the little beetles may be in the act of pollination. Avert your eyes.

An Orthnithogalum. Unless it's an Albuca again.

Pelargonium cucullatum growing up through Phylica dioica.

A late Protea cynaroides.

Pretty Chironia baccifera.

And back down on the jeep track near the reservoir we look into the middle part of our horse shoe-shaped hike...

I left my fellow hikers as they were preparing for a dip in the cold waters of the fynbos water-fed reservoir.

It may be the most beautiful city. Because this really is in the middle of the city.

Happy Anniversary, dear Frenchie

2012-01-24T13:30:00.002+02:00

Four years ago, after knowing each other for four months, you and I were married here at my parents' house at 4 o' clock.

You are, without any shadow of a doubt, the best thing that ever happened to me. I am in love, and always will be.

We may not be together today, but I feel privileged, and more lucky than I can say, to miss you as much as I do.

Min dae.

(And, as is often the case, the Frenchie says it better).

Sunday in the Fairest Cape

2012-01-23T11:58:00.000+02:00

Lunch in Noordhoek at Rosie and D's airy house through which a warm breeze blew through the glass doors open to the view. Outside, a beautiful vegetable garden, fenced for shelter for when the breeze turns serious.

Kale, giant broccoli plants, Thai basil to flavour our Thai-inspired and fragrant meal. The basil makes me miss my summer terrace.

Post prandial wire chair making. All you need is a lot of sparkling wine, for materials.

Lily got serious.

Not as easy as it looks.

That's my wonky sample on the right.

I don't know when this pastime took hold, but after every lunch I have been to in Cape Town, the boules balls come out. The slope provided a challenge, but no guinea fowl were hurt in the game.

The behatted ones.

I think our next lunch invitation may have to read BYOB.

Bring your own balls.

The stalker

2012-01-22T22:16:00.003+02:00

Still lurking. Outside my bedroom window.

Lunch, with flowers (and a few chickens)

2012-01-21T19:58:00.000+02:00

Flowers in a bucket mean...

Lunch under the tree.

My mom cooked every single thing except the chocolate rolls. I took care of flowers, ice, drinks. Our ancient metal cooler used to sit between the two front seats of our pale blue, and then neon yellow "Kombis" - flowerchild-style Volkwagen buses. It was the best seat in the house on holidays. We had not heard of seatbelts.

The weather has been steamy in Cape Town and we brought in extra bags of ice. Before we moved under the green coolth of the tree I sipped a gin and tonic. There's a delicious lemon cordial sold at Melissa's - mix that with some gin and tonic, smother the glass with ice cubes, and you have something wonderful.

An under-the tree-classic: tapenade, aioli, pesto, caramelized tomato sauce, layered and eaten by dipping toast fingers into the cups.

Lots of flowers.

My mom succeeded in outdoing my last chicken effort. The dish must have weighed a ton. The baby birds were ordered from another good little shop: Gogo's (check this link for a brief overview - but they don't seem to have a website. I never understand this). They are not butchers, but purveyors of specialty meats and poultry (and eggs). They told me that they had just received their order of goat. Goat! Also a lot of interesting venison. Worth a return visit. I am really impressed by Cape Town's changing food market.

Barley and pomegranate salad from Plenty.

Always flowers.

Mushrooms a la Grecque. Make in advance, chill.

Herb roasted chickens, barley salad, tomatoes, mushrooms...

Below, luminous Graham Thomas, a gorgeous rose, if you have the space for it.

On the lawn there was a whole other party going on.

Summer fruits in their own juice. Strawberries, cherries, blueberries and Cape gooseberries.

The roulade.

Nips of chilled Cointreau.

Yee ha!

By late afternoon well-fed guests had drifted home, dogs had calmed down, undrunk wine had been returned to its cool room off the garage, and I had begun to wonder what was for dinner. Well, sort of.

Above, the rose is Sharifa - super-fragrant. Take a deep breath.

Trappieshoek

2012-01-20T14:54:00.000+02:00

Marijke suggested a nice short two hour walk. We headed for Trappieshoek, a new route for me, which starts at the Kalk Bay end of Boyes drive and rises gradually (at first!) to a saddle overlooking Sun Valley and Noordhoek (above).

Then you take sharp right and head for the mountain. Small Agapanthus africanus appeared near our path.

Erica mammosa with its deep pink tubes, close-clustered and collectively pointing down.

By now we were moving vertically, scrambling and rock climbing while I made frosty editorial remarks about "short two hour walks". This was mainly to keep my spirits up. I have a thing about edges.

We spotted an interesting and solitary erica quite at home between two high rocks on a shaded face. Above, Marijke's turn to photograph it.

Ericas are the famous heaths of Scotland, yes. The rest of Africa and Europe boast 76 erica species that occur naturally. South Africa has over 650*.

(*Source: Ericas of South Africa, Dolf Schumann, Gerhard Kirsten and EGH Oliver. Fernwood Press, 1992.)

I shall post this to iSpot, to see what the experts say. It seems unusual. A wonderful site. Thanks to Lyn MacCallum for telling me about it.

[According to the iSpotters, it is Erica annectans, and known for growing only above Kalk Bay in this specific area. It is on the Red List of South African Plants, meaning that it is threatened. I feel lucky to have seen it.]

And a wonderful view. Wow. Totally worth the scramble and the heat. Wow. The white bite of beach is Fish Hoek. Gorgeous sand and water. Great whites have eaten two people here. I swam there as a child. Shark bait.

Thanks to long-legged Marijke for the new views, interesting erica and for tearing herself away from her sweet new blue-eyed baby for a couple of hours.

Flower garden

2012-01-19T16:53:00.000+02:00

Cape Town is panting audibly, like a hot dog. In the garden every flower is panting. Small pants (fuchsia), big pants (agapant-hus), whispery pants (gaura), wheezing pants (delicious monster), hysterical pants (crocosmia), calm pants (rose), discrete pants (lilies), excited pants (dahlia). There is a lot of hot air out there. The sash windows of the house are thrown open in the late afternoons to admit the freshening breeze and are shut firmly at daybreak, the cool air still inside - with drawn curtains. The pool is mellow, the mountain a blur.

Escaping the heat wave

2012-01-18T17:13:00.000+02:00

I walked back into the mountains on the east side of Silvermine yesterday with Lyn McCallum and her friends Jenny and Andrea. I had imagined following a similar route to the one I took with Helen ten days ago, but this time I saw a new side of the peninsula, yet again. The hills within hills, valleys upon mountains, will never cease to impress me.

Happily, some cloud was blowing over the mountain from False Bay again. It would put us in a misty world many degrees cooler than the sweltering city below. I had espresso in my new flask (about to be returned to Cape Union Mart, another dud) and two raisin buns for breakfast, plus the necessary water.

Above, sticky-flowered Erica urna-viridis.

We started in early morning sunlight, climbing gently amongst the soft-eared Leucadendron bushes.

The distinctive petals of Pelargonium myrrifolium.

A mystery solved. I have been confusing Pelargonium longifolium and P. pinnatum (the latter above and below). I had looked to the flowers for the distinction, but obviously the key is the leaf. Pinnate leaves = pinnatum. Longifolium rarely has leaves this time of year.

Just as the eastern sun was beginning to be a bother to this hatless person (I hate hats), the mist met us head on. Phew.

We walked through a valley swept by a fire and found blackened Leucadendrons and a wonderful pioneer mix of flowers. Here are Watsonia tabularis and Aristea macrocarpa, both typical of this time of year, though the Aristea blooms earlier...

Everywhere we found pretty little Roella triflora, especially where larger growth had yet to appear after the fire. This clump grew in the middle of the path.

The three ladies screeched to a halt here: Toothbrush fern! they announced. I had never seen it before. Schizaea pectinata.

The little Aristea africana were everywhere, again.

All these plants grow in what appears to be pure sand. It is weathered quarzite and very acidic, for the most part. Plant your fynbos garden in lush compost and it may keel over dead.

More fire, more new growth. Fynbos needs fire. Just not too often. Cape Town now has a cigarette butt hotline to rat on anyone who tosses their burning butts out of moving cars or into any wild areas.

We started to climb to our first water stop and headed for some gorgeous rock formations.

Tiny hairs on this Leucaspermum caught the minsicule water droplets in the mist. The water accumulates until it runs down the stems to the ground, to provide essential summer moisture in this winter rainfall region.

Bertie's Balcony ahead. A perfect hide out and shelter, probably used by humans for millennia.

The view from beneath the rock overhang.

The weathered rocks are home to lichens and moss, and the moss provides footholds for wind dispersed seed.

A "buchu" - is it an Agathosma? Highly, penetratingly fragrant leaves. I am going to start experimenting in the kitchen.

We cleared the top of our low peak and could now see right over to the southern side of the peninsula.

Erica cerinthoides, thickly furred.

Erica mammosa, the white version.

Hm. Help?

A deep fuchsia Erica abietina subsp. atrorosea. I love it (Thanks to Tony Rebelo on iSpot for the subspecies).

By now, the mist was chasing us.

We turned our backs on it and explored some deep crevasses and a tree famous for its situation at the bottom of one. The sand in which it was rooted was damp from run off.

Here is the tree from above, where it emerges in the light.

Viewed from the other side, it lies flat in the direction of the prevailing wind and is festooned with lichen.

We headed for our breakfast point. I was starving. Perennially lagging behind with my camera I had been doing a lot of trotting to keep up. My gym-stressed Achilles tendons protested.

Below, you can see Table Mountain and Devil's Peak to its right in the distance.

Our view to the left, with Noordhoek and Long Beach in the middle, Chapman's Peak to the right..

Our view straight ahead, with Ou Kaapse Weg winding through it - the quickest route from the city to the southern parts of the peninsula.

And to the right, the way we had come.

After breakfast we turned and headed back down.

Agapanthus africanus, small and perfect. Still unaffected by the terrible agapanthus borer wreaking havoc on garden cultivars down below.

Watsonia tabularis. They are so frequent you are in danger of no longer noticing them.

Night-scented Struthiola ciliata (I'm beginning to have doubts about this one too. Could it be striata?).

A footpath garden of Mesembryanthemums and Aristea.

Not good with vygie (common name) ID's.

Roella ciliata, a larger version of the R. triflora we saw earlier.

Beautiful mounds of Serruria villosa started to appear in the next valley.

Someone suggested that this is a Rhus, but the leaves look wrong. Ideas? The berries were pleasantly tart, like tamarind. I tasted then spat, in a ladylike, delicate yet accurate manner, giving offence to no one.

The pretty but numerous and inbred family Fabacaea. Aspalanthus somethingorotherus.

A big black bee on the fragrant Agathosma we saw on our previous hike.

Still heading down, and more Leucaspermum bushes appeared.

Lachnaea grandifora.

Olea capensis, with a deliciously sweet scent.

Ornithogalum fragrans.

Tall Roella amplexicaulis.

Gardens of slender Hermas villosa and Watsonia tabularis.

Below: Men! We passed two groups of tanned and leathery hikers. The first lot asked, Are you perhaps the Fynbos Fillies?

We were not. But Andrea thought we might be the Meandering Mares.

A lingering pincushion flower on the Leucaspermum.

Protea nitida.

And the answer to the strange, empty, willowy stalks I have often seen rising a meter above the rest of the fynbos: Othonna quinqedentata.

Back on the boring jeep track, the final stretch, down which we hurried as fast as possible to get it over with, we passed flat mats of Carpobrotus edulis, the sour figs. A Cape delicacy often sold in piles at the side of the road. I tasted this one. Gah! Salty sticky stuff. It is frequently made into jam. Jenny, however, taught me to eat it the right way. About which more later.

And then I headed home again. Out of the mist, and back into the sweltering flatlands.

Forest orchid

2012-01-17T22:27:00.000+02:00

Forest orchid, Chinese ground orchid - Bletilla striata***, growing in pots beneath my mother's indigenous Buddliea auriculata. (Shrub. Large shrub. Small tree. Whatever.)

You forget about these beautiful plants until they bloom and then, Oh! A common garden plant in Japan, here in Cape Town it is something of an exotic oddity.

*** 1-18-12: I am wrong. This is not Bletilla striata.

So what is it??

***! 1-20-12 - Bamboo orchid! Arundina...

Shooting from the seat

2012-01-16T11:09:00.004+02:00

So we drove out of Cape Town in the early morning and headed towards the hot town of Paarl, turning left before its mountain, to go riding with my father's friend and colleague, Alan. Alan still keeps his own horse for riding through his vineyards, and for pulling a wedding carriage (that's another story) but we hired two trail horses to be our mounts - the other horses on his farm are now all happy, lucky retirees. My horse, just arrived in a horsebox from a neighbouring farm, was Shimmer. I soon fell in love, despite the fact that Shimmer has a dread of cows (I mean, who doesn't, right?). My dad was on Poncho. Both horses were lively and responsive, seasoned trail animals - and appear in movies, too.

A hot day. Dust in the air from the hooves.

Cinsault vines, below.

Halfway through the ride the dogs from the family house escaped and followed us so we had to turn back and return them home, or they would have been pooped in the heat.

Our second leg took us up a hill still covered in Renosterveld, the most threatened biome within the Cape Floral Kingdom. It has been lost to agricultural and urban development.

On a dirt road running behind the farms.

Oh dear. Cows. They must have sensed something because they started to follow us. Lets spook the horse. The horse was not amused.

Alan and my dad, who turned 79 last November.

We turned back onto the farm - I asked about these vines, below. They belong to New Beginnings: the land was given to the farm workers some years years ago, and initially yielded good results and wines. Money was made. But interest flagged, and the vines now look terribly neglected. These are Pinotage grapes.

I snagged a small bunch on passing and nibbled. Sweet! If I could do it all again, I'd like to make wine.

Three hours later we collapsed our stiff bodies into wide chairs in Alan's cool voorkamer and tasted some New Zealand and local wines before heading to the cellar to pick up three cases of the estate'sv '04 Shiraz - the Frenchie's favourite wine by far. I received, very happily, a gift of noble rot dessert wine - I'd promised Alan I'd help with a little landscaping project he needs at an entrance where some huge bluegum trees were taken down, below. I'm thinking aloes. This is dry country in summertime.

And then we headed home, the mountains hot and blue.

Chocolate roulade

2012-01-15T13:11:00.006+02:00

There is some super-duper, roly-poly chocolate deliciousness over at 66 Square Feet (the Food). If you have access to fresh cherries or raspberries, or perhaps even sour cherry jelly or jam, make it.

Adirondack

2012-01-14T12:52:00.000+02:00

a woman walking from her mailbox

on a country road

near the frayed railway crossing

sees the trees

beneath bands of paling cloud

the swampwater pooling

where red osiers light the way

she reads the letter down the years

she looks up

in the emptiness of leftover light

as our train passes on its way south

towards the first, pale season

Fruit

2012-01-13T14:39:00.003+02:00

Johan van Zyl asked me the other day what food I miss from South Africa. Surprisingly, I could not come up with a very long list. But this may have less to do with what I love when I am here, and the missing, than it has to do with an unconscious immersion in wherever I am at a given moment. So yes, I miss braaivleis and boerewors, I miss mountains and fynbos. I miss lamb. I miss the moist brown bread. But what I do, really, miss, is fruit.

Yet what can beat a yellow freestone peach dripping with bloodwarm juice in a Brooklyn July, you might ask? Or concord grapes bursting from their skins in September at union Square? Not much. I know.

What I miss are bowlsful of litchis or grenadilllas (passion fruit) that are ubiquitous in season and affordable. I miss mountains of small, perfumed, golden pineapples, luscious pink pawpaws (papaya), baskets of ripe prickly pears (cactus pears), musky, late summer hanepoot grapes.

I love fruit, and always find myself searching for some after dinner. If I ever did have a restaurant - highly unlikely: I am under no illusions as to the lifestyle it would force upon someone who is perhaps naturally indolent; but if I did, fruit would be on the dessert menu. It would arrive on pretty plate, a perfect plum, a ripe peach, a tiny, sweet pineapple, or bowl of grenadillas, scenting the whole room. A sharp knife, perhaps a spoon, and a fresh napkin.

Chameleon days

2012-01-12T08:07:00.000+02:00

Cape dwarf chameleon. Not in the garden, this time, but in a Kiggelaria africana (wild peach), site of the mass chameleon sightings last year.

Look at the mosaic around the mouth. I'd like an outdoor shower like that. In amongst the cool leafed delicious monsters in my courtyard garden in the Bo Kaap. Or Muizenberg. For instance.

I've always wanted a courtyard garden. And to sleep on a roof, under African stars.

Karen's Party

2012-01-11T19:40:00.000+02:00

...had everything: Beautiful tables under the trees.

The biggest hydrangeas in Constantia.

The greenest soup.

The most interesting people...

Freshly slaughtered guinea pigs. OK fine: they're alive. The freshest blackberries, then; from the garden.

Boules-playing Brooklyn Hipsters.

Yo-yo swinging artists.

And the dustiest, most delicious bottle of Jenever (dankie, Fanie).

And thank you, Karen!

Silvermine and Kalk Bay Peak

2012-01-10T18:58:00.001+02:00

Heading for the mountains - a quarter hour drive from home - at 6.15 in the morning, it became clear that we'd be hiking in some mist. In my backpack on the seat beside me I had water, coffee in a useless thermos (don't you hate it when your espresso and hot milk are luke warm?), biscuits that I'd made the night before, with some butter and apricot jam, and a jersey, even though the predicted temperature for the day was 30'C. In one of my cargo pant pockets I had my small Canon SD95, in the other, pepper spray.

Welcome to the mountains.

After the troops had gathered and everyone had kvetched about the weather (which is famously changeable in Cape Town: blue sunny sky on one side of the peninsula, rain on the other), we set off.

If we couldn't have blue sky we could have Aristea africana. They were everywhere.

Below, a paler variation.

Beside the red gravel road, Serruria villosa.

Bubblegum pink Saltera sarcocolla.

Everywhere the sculptural vestiges of Dilatris pilansii.

Up close.

The image of the mountain dahlia, Liparia splendens, already seen in a previous post, but it captures the mood of the walk so well: what a pleasure to walk with people who are happy to stop and look at flowers.

I love these pelargoniums: P. longifolium, very variable in colour - from pale blushed faces...

...to spicy salmon to plain pink, each meticulously etched with carmine.

The cloud was soft and not very cold at all. I have walked here in sunlight in summer and have shivered till my teeth rattled.

Watsonia tabularis dots the fynbos regularly at this time of year.

We turned to climb Kalk Bay Peak.

And found at the top an erica I have never seen in bloom. I don't know what it is.

[* Update: An email from Kaartman himself (that would be Peter Slingsby, who made the wonderful maps we use when hiking) tells me that this is Erica lutea. Follow the link to his blog, Maps for Afrika. Wonderful reading.]

You will see a different plant, and then see a lot more, as micro conditions are conducive to its particular growth needs.

Another erica, this time E. mammosa.

Around us everything dripped. Mountain fynbos in action, waiting for the winter rains, gathering its summer moisture from the fine cloud.

On the peak, everlastings, Syncarpha vestita, tight shut. No sun? No play.

Tiny hairs on the shrubby Leucaspermum bushes collected water drops. Water ran down their woody trunks. Our hair turned to damp rats tails.

Our national flower, the king protea - Protea cynaroides.

More watsonias with Hermas villosa.

In a burned area a stunning, statuesque Aristea macrocarpa grew through a shrub's blackened skeleton.

Heading back down...

At the bottom, at the round path marker you can barely see, we had to consult our Slingsby map again. A path seemed to be missing. We opted for a rocky scramble and later found that the old path had been closed to recover from erosion.

More Aristea macrocarpa.

And some Hermas villosa pompoms.

Below, Gnidia tomentosa.

Tiny, damp Gnidia pinifolia...

Muraltia...maybe? Low, compact shrubs filled with tiny confetti-like flowers. Or is it a buchu?

We had breakfast under a huge rock.

Heading back on our loop we started to see lots of Roella triflora.

Microdon dubius...

Thereianthus bracteolatus.

Corymbium africanum.

Below. No clue.

Below, possibly an Agathosma, another buchu - highly fragrant.

Pretty grasses.

And at last we came out of the cloud.

Leucospermum...How do your remember the difference between Leucospermum and Leucadendron? asked someone. Well, said, Helen, Leucospermum look like..sperm.

Easy.

Peucedanum galbanum, the notorious blister bush. I don't think everyone is susceptible to its blistering ( I know I touched it as a teenager and nothing happened) but it's not worth taking a chance. The leaves look disarmingly like celery.

Micranthus alopecuroides, one of those wonderful blues again, ready for its close up.

Forageables!

Sour fig, the fruit of Carprobrotus edulis. It belongs here but is an invasive pest in California. I suggest y'all eat them, like we do. This is its flower, below.

Below - Athanasia crithmifolia. And friends.

The sad and mysterious Pelargonium triste. And a few steps later, we were back in the car park. About 5 hours and countless species after we had set out.

I drove down Ou Kaapseweg and snapped two pictures of the weather out there.Table Mountain and a hot city below.

While from Silvermine the cloud still tumbled.

And the day had only just begun.

[And this is the new record holder for the most pictures in one post. Phew.]

Books used for ID:

Wildflowers of Table Mountain Park, Terry Trinder-Smith. Mary Maytham Kidd and Fay Anderson, illustrations. Botanical Society of South Africa, 2006.

Cape Peninsula, South African Wild Flower Guide 3, Mary Maytham Kidd. Oxford University Press, 1983.

Here is Helen's post, for another point of view of our walk.

Walkers in the mist

2012-01-09T18:19:00.002+02:00

The walk on top of Silvermine (above Muizenberg) started at about 6.30 in the morning on Sunday (that's a 5am wake up call, gasp). Clouds were pouring over the mountain from the sea.

Behind us, to the southwest, bits of blue showed that the rest of Cape Town was having a very different, 30'C day.

Higher up we walked in the cloud with smaller wisps skating past us like ghosts. Every minute furry leaf was wet with moisture.

With no view to contemplate, our eyes were drawn down to find flowers.

Delphi, Claudia, Brenda and Helen and Liparia splendens - mountain dahlia.

Secret footprints in the clean sandy path ahead of us. Perhaps mongoose.

Blue Aristea africana on the sandy mountain top.

We paused under a wonderful rock to have breakfast, and I photographed the moss and lichen composition below.

Almost better than clear blue sky, I think.

After the walk, a couple of minutes of driving and the sun shone from a blue, hot sky. That's Cape Town.

It was only 11am, and I had a lunch to go to.

The flower (and lunch) post will follow. Still sorting.

Intermission

2012-01-08T20:18:00.000+02:00

While you look at pictures from a day in the garden I'll be diving back into the flower books, old friends from a year ago - reacquainting myself with names not considered for many months. Hermas villosa, Aristea africana, Thereianthus bracteolatus, and many more. A long early morning walk in the mist that poured over the mountains above Muizenberg provided me with lots and lots of pictures. Now I need some time to edit and identify.

The second chameleon sighting in the garden. He puffed himself up and curled his tail! A chameleon with attitude.

Gardenia thunbergii opens in the late afternoons and has faded by morning.

Gooseberries ripening.

And the private security company on patrol.

And always, the mountain.

Eating the weeds: oxalis

2012-01-07T11:29:00.000+02:00

While I was weeding my mother's succulent garden I was delighted to find several long-stemmed oxalis plants growing in it. Large leaves, pink flowers. I don't know which oxalis it is; many are native to the winter rainfall regions in South Africa. In Afrikaans oxalis is called suring, or ''souring", and the yellow-flowered kind, Oxalis pes-caprae, or Cape sorrel, blooms in abundance in spring and is a traditional flavouring for bredies. The stems and leaves are very sour - oxys is Greek for acid, or sharp. If stock over graze on oxalis they become sick, and so would we, if we ate bucket loads: oxalic acid (also in broccoli, spinach, knotweed and sorrel). I nibbled the stems of the leaves in the succulent garden and yes, very tart.

I picked a small bunch and added it to the the lamb chop and green bean bredie already on the stove. After an hour they had melted away into juices of the stew, which was delicious. If you like such things. And I do.

Cape Town time

2012-01-06T10:34:00.000+02:00

At night you dream of hunting mushrooms along an Austrian stream where ice tinkles; in a summer street in New York a ballet director asks you out to dinner and wishes you were his. You don't know any ballet directors. Awake and after coffee in the early morning your feet sink into the soft green lawn and are wet with dew. At midday all the leaves in the garden are glittering mirrors. You walk inside and the dark rooms are a pale blue. At 4 o'clock you want tea. At 6 you crush mint for a drink, and squeeze limes from the tree near the washing line. At 7.30 pm every long evening the coucal - rainbird - calls from the dense shrubs at the bottom of the garden, its descending scale like liquid chocolate in the evening. In the day the poplars in the wind are water, rushing. At dusk they settle in profound silence. Hadedas fly in clarion battalions over the house to their roosting. When the moon fattens the wood owls begin to call.

Manhattan's waterside

2012-01-05T22:04:00.003+02:00

Photo: Vincent Mounier

Some beautiful New York images over on the Frenchie's website. A beach...on the East River. Who knew?

Foraged infusions

2012-01-05T13:24:00.002+02:00

Here is my story about alcoholic and innocent infusions, for Edible Manhattan (also available in print):

Sipping through Winter

Come and get your red hot lamb chop!

2012-01-04T15:11:00.000+02:00

Still smokin', over at 66 Square Feet (the Food).

Gifts

2012-01-04T11:01:00.002+02:00

...that tell stories. Ginger from Karen's garden, complete with rhizome, to be planted. Pepper from Istanbul, which Lily left in tears. Salt from France when Johannes got an unexpected visa approval, plum pudding from the Lake District, paprika from Hungary. Olives from Koringberg, made in two different ways, and honey from African bees who don't like builders. Not pictured, some truly wonderful wine, chilling for an imminent garden lunch.

Flowers in the house

2012-01-03T22:41:00.001+02:00

There is something self consciously South African about the enameled tin receptacles. But knowing that makes them no less dear to me. Into them are stuffed flowers from the garden: roses, fuschsia, agapanthus, allium, coreopsis, catmint, crocosmia, soapwort, daisy, dahlia, delphinium, heliotrope, honeysuckle and fennel; and store-bought chinkerinchees - bought in endless bunches, this South African bulb that fills fields in the springtime.

Pictures from a party

2012-01-03T00:21:00.002+02:00

Flowers I used to take for granted I now can't get enough of. This Fuchsia magellanica* and its delicate pendant drops of hot pink and purple grows in three spots in the garden, and I visited them again and again, snaring more slender branches for some blowsy flower arrangements. My mother had already filled two enameled tin jugs for the lunch table, and I interfered by pushing more fuchsia and honeysuckle into them and adding flowers to every surface I could find. Convinced it would continue raining I thought we'd have to dress up the carport, with its wood pile, bags of compost and antique, gleaming jaguar (car, not cat). But the rain held off, big clouds billowing high above us and the green plane tree.

This fuchsia is apparently hardy in the States down to zones 7-6. Loses all leaves in winter but emerges again. I think I may start rooting some cuttings.

My mom, Donovan, Johannes, Anjo-Mari, Rosie, Peter...somewhere off screen, Marijke, Karen, Fanie.

A bit of Johan, Marlene, my dad...

Peter, and more of Johan. These two lovely men brought with them from their garden plot in Koringberg: a pot of their own bees' honey, four jars of olives, and several bottles of wine. In fact everyone brought wonderful goodies - better than a birthday. Late in the evening - and everyone only left well after 6pm, to my delight - I had some poached eggs on toast for an unnecessary supper, sprinkled with Lily's gift of hot red pepper, fresh from Istanbul.

The fennel was tossed with raw sliced lemon as well as salt-preserved lemon rind.

Red pepper mousse.

Herby chickens cooked in verjus.

My first crumble!

And at the end of it all, a cork, a gift, the flowers on the patio table.

Cape Dwarf Chameleon

2012-01-01T17:38:00.002+02:00

This one's for you, Vince. Or perhaps from you?

My mother rushed in from the garden, where she'd been picking flowers for tomorrow's lunch table: Chameleon! Chameleon!

And we all rushed back out to look. There s/he was, a vertical party, pressed against a dahlia stalk.

I am afraid we caused some nervousness, as the chameleon took off, slinging its rainbowed self between stalks.

A good omen, we have decided, at the beginning of this new year.

Menu for a Summer Lunch

2011-12-31T12:27:00.000+02:00

Our menu for our Tweede Nuwe Jaar lunch under the tree is taking shape. January 2nd, "Second New Year", is the traditional day when the Cape Minstrels take to the streets to parade in Mardi Gras-like colours and garb, playing and singing in the New Year. Perhaps I can get out the gramophone for our own musical tribute. All it needs is cranking. Except that rain threatens. If it's wet we'll make a plan, but it will be Interesting.

So lunch is looking like this, based on what my early morning shopping turned up:

Tweede Nuwe Jaar Menu

Chilled Bing Cherry and Buttermilk Soup with Sparkling Rosé

-x-

Red Pepper Mousse

Burrata with Cherry Tomatoes and Purple Basil

-x-

Baby Chickens Roasted with Garden Herb Stuffing

Fennel, Fig, Goat Cheese and Preserved Lemon Salad with Fresh Lemon Dressing

Nectarine and Basil Salad with Shallot Dressing

Marinated Vegetables

-x-

Warm Blackberry Crumble with Thick Cream

Grenadilla Crunchy-Sugar Pavlova

(Or should I make a delicate black chocolate tart instead? Or an almond and chocolate tart? Help!)

Gooseberries

2011-12-30T19:18:00.003+02:00

There were gooseberries in the garden I grew up in, in Bloemfontein. A big bush, hung with little lanterns. There are always gooseberries in plastic clamshells at Woolworths, in Cape Town.

My mother has always loved them. I have not. Tart. Puckery.

Then I discovered two leggy gooseberry bushes growing in pots next to the swimming pool here at No. 9, and I could not resist picking a handful of white papery husks, indicators of the ripe fruit. I ate one. It was big and plump and deep orange. And sweet. Not even a hint of acidity. Big surprise.

So now I want my own gooseberry bush. To join the miscellany of edible plants amongst the satellite dishes on the Brooklyn rooftop. Because I have seen the light.

Mimi update

2011-12-30T07:58:00.002+02:00

Mimi. Photo: Chris Arnade

Last week Chris emailed me to let me know that when he went back to visit Mimi the young lady cat and Jamie (aka Dragon) at their home under the expressway in the Bronx, no one, and nothing, had been there. No Mimi, no Jamie, no gang of friend (below), no bedding, no camp. All gone. Bad news.

Turns out that they had been cleared out by the Department of Sanitation. Then, a few days later, they were all back, including Mimi, and fairly mum about the details of what had happened. Apparently that is part of life on the street. Such a home as you may create, might suddenly disappear.

Homeless in the Bronx. Photo: Chris Arnade

So Mimi is back on schedule to be spayed, probably next Wednesday, if all goes well and everyone stays put.

Chris is collecting blankets to take with him, as all the blankets disappeared, too, and did not reappear after the removal. If you can get blankets to Brooklyn, please leave a note in the comments...

Testing

2011-12-29T21:24:00.002+02:00

Testing my new, Christmas present 50mm lens from Vince. Be very careful about what you say around the Frenchman. If you admire the shirt he is wearing he is liable to take it off and give it to you (it would smell perfectly nice, too). So when I oohed at the photos he had taken with this little lens, the lens suddenly was mine. And I like it.

This was a small lunch for three under the tree. On Monday it will be a lunch for fourteen, and I'm still figuring out what to feed everyone. We are flooded with good fruit: white nectarines, bing cherries, perfect blackberries, perfumed grenadillas (passion fruit). The house is piled high with Cape lemons and the garden is full of herbs. But I am searching for real tomatoes.

My father, coaxed to pose with a bottle of local bubbly - Pierre Jourdin brut rose. The man is in his 80th year. Actually, he's never been camera shy. That would be my mother and me.

The hand holding the neck of the bottle barely shows the only injury he sustained in a bad car wreck a few weeks ago. The car he and a colleague were traveling in, colleague driving, was totaled. My father walked away with an injured finger, nothing more. My aunt and uncle were in a serious smash more recently, rear ended. And of course they lost their grand daughter Jessica, my cousin, two years ago this Sunday, New Year, to a car accident. We all fear flying but it's our driving that claims the most lives.

So, drink bubbly, take pictures, drive safely. Not in that order.

Pizza

2011-12-29T10:02:00.000+02:00

Long promised, only now delivered, there is a pizza recipe over at 66 Square Feet (the Food).

Summer's drink

2011-12-28T17:00:00.000+02:00

Summer in Cape Town, that is. Still one of the best drinks there is. In this case muddled sugar and garden mint, white rum, fresh lime juice, ice, soda water. And I'm about to have me one:

Today I set foot in a gym for the first time in, oh (mumblemumbleinaudible) years. To give you an idea, the last time I was a member there, at the erstwhile Constantia Health and Racquet Club, now one of a zillion Virgin Active clubs scattered across this country, I think there were only a couple of faces that were not white. That was an Indian family. Today, my instructor, whose services were complementary with the basic membership, was black. And he laughed as I sweated. After weighing me, measuring my body fat and taking my blood pressure, he put me through my paces. I thought I would hate being at the gym, but considered it a necessary evil - or the lesser of two weevils - I always put on weight in South Africa. Back, way back, in the day, I was a regular and in superb shape. Now...gasp, I have a long way to go. But I liked it. Hard to believe. It's a very sophisticated fitness place, filled with natural light and sweating, suffering people, all on two levels around a pool in the middle, where sleek bodies swim laps. I huffed and puffed on my circuit - a series of numbered machines around an aerobics station, and something American gyms seem never to have heard of - and wondered if a gym is a good enough reason to cross an ocean.

Must be those happy exercise hormones talking.

Now, about that drink...

What to do with apricots

2011-12-27T21:58:00.001+02:00

I bought beautiful apricots - plump, sweet, pink-blushed. On a whim I mixed a batter of butter, sugar, eggs and self raising flour, folded in the sliced fruit and baked it in a spring form pan to make a rustic cake to eat after our trout supper. I sprinkled castor sugar on it while it was still warm.

Good.

A walk in the garden

2011-12-27T08:54:00.003+02:00

Day 1 in my mother's garden, soon after coffee, and I point the camera at flowers. Agapanthus in great abundance, as well as variety. This flower is ubiquitous in the Western Cape, a municipal cliche, a mass of blue bloom in the summer months, and now available in cultivars that make acquiring more impossible to resist. There is a problem, though, and I think it may be a big one. More about that later, when I have amassed pictures and information. A moth, a caterpillar, and a long dark tunnel to destruction.

Below, Dietes grandiflora, each bloom luminous for a day, and also used often in 'landscaping'. Drought tolerant and low maintenance, like the agapanthus.

More natives - Cotyledon orbiculata is a sunbird favourite.

I have never seen sunflowers in this garden. Something new.

I noticed this huge scabiosa in the fridge at Seaport Flowers on Henry Street a few weeks ago, and here it is, 8,000 miles away - Scabiosa "Fama Blue". The seed came from Chilterns, UK.

Always pretty, shasta daisies - "Montawk" in the Northeast.

Yesterday the spider lilies in pots in the shade began to open - Hymenocallis festalis, known as Peruvian daffodils.

Not to eat but to bloom - artichokes.

A plant from my childhood summers beside the Indian Ocean - Fuchsia magellanica. This shrub on the patio grows in a pot and is about 6 feet tall.

Rosa mutabilis is 7 feet high and at least as many wide.

The tree tomato, Cyphomandra betacea, has lots of new green fruit, and I have already eaten a plateful of the remaining ripe ones - cut in half, scooped out with a teaspoon.

This is Charlie, the pin tailed whydah (Vidua macroura). He is a small, officious bird with a fancy tail and he patrols the feeding area, dive bombing all comers, who ignore him. Charlie has Issues. And OCD. Perhaps the loss of his long feathers out of breeding season gives him a perpetual sense of midlife crisis. If he were a man, he'd drive a red Mustang.

A Cape turtle dove (Streptopelia capicola) sunning itself.

An olive thrush, Turdus olivaceus, and a white eye - Zosterops lateralis, breakfasting on banana.

Below, Mrs Charlie, with her therapist.

Right now the mountain is covered in a huge blanket of cloud, and upcountry it is raining. I have not ventured beyond the borders of the garden in two days and will travel farther today, sniffing out seasonal menu possibilities for a blogging lunch under the tree on the 2nd of January, known here in the Cape as Tweede Nuwe Jaar, or second new year.

I'm still adapting to the switch from cool weather greens and root vegetables to abundant fresh green herbs, berries and apricots. There are worse problems.

Christmas at No. 9

2011-12-26T16:24:00.000+02:00

Christmas dinner - my mom made pretty little cakes which were packed up and sent off as doggy bags, later. A starter of smoked Norwegian salmon was silky and creamy with caper berries and shaved fennel and lemon salad - raw lemon meat and preserved lemon rind. Then my carrot and buttermilk soup, cold, and then roast lamb leg, rather overdone - I need more lamb leg practise - with thin crispy potatoes that cooked in its drippings. Dessert a very good pavlova made by my brother, Francois.

Home

2011-12-25T13:02:00.001+02:00

A long, long journey, but at last I saw familiar landscape far below our wings. In Dubai, in the waiting area near our flight's gate, South African voices had eased me into the homecoming. Strangers from every corner of the globe, gathered here at this hub, compared notes on favourite rusk recipes, the merits of rooibos tea versus coffee for dunking, the best sort of biltong, and when they would enjoy their first braai.

Outside my bedroom window, the garden in bloom.

My welcome lunch under the tree. Ham, salad with sweet pineapple, the small, golden kind I can never find in New York, delicious bubbly, cherries that my brother picked in Ceres earlier in the week. After lunch I passed out for fours and was woken for supper: braaied lamb chops and wors, a bottle of Nelson Estate shiraz, 2004, opened in honour of the Missing Frenchman, whose absence is keenly felt.

Christmas breakfast this morning on the patio table, accompanied by many birds. My mom had made our traditional Christmas bread stuffed with candied fruit and nuts. Later I walked the garden, sniffing flowers and taking pictures. So familiar, so very different.

It's good to be home.

Alley Pond Park wetlands

2011-12-22T19:41:00.000+02:00

A park, in parting. The next post will be from the southern hemisphere.

I had wanted to visit Alley Pond Park for a while. I surf over New York on Google Earth, looking for patches of green, and this one was large, on the northern edge of Queens, right up against the Long Island Sound, complete with wetland and woods. The NYC Parks website looked promising. Different sources recommend different ways of getting there, and I chose the most simple: Long Island Railroad to Douglaston, $12 roundtrip, off peak, departing Penn Station, then a half-ish mile walk. We headed out last Saturday, the coldest day we've had so far, with temperatures just below freezing. The view above was stunning, south over the wetlands, from a pretty little bridge.

We checked in at the Alley Pond Environmental Center to pick up a map and I asked about the new-looking waterworks built nearby: Vince had asked me as we arrived, What's that? Looks like a sewage plant, I answered. And that's precisely what it was, though the lady with red nails at reception spoke delicately and vaguely about a filtration plant for 'runoff'. A sign at the end of newly constructed boardwalk made it clear, though.

I was pleased to see it being treated at last before the water heads out into the Sound.

The view from the end of the boardwalk. Alley Creek, dense stands of invasive phragmites, a heron, ducks. This was as good as it got. But we didn't know that, then.

We headed back to find the trail around the wetlands and to work our way south to the largest part of the park, shown on the map on the other side of some serious freeways.

Phragmites. A pretty problem.

The first ice of the season. The path was in very poor repair and churned with mud, so we were grateful for the freeze, which kept our feet from sinking in. In the winter bareness the undergrowth was stripped, but it hinted at impenetrable and depressing tangles of invasives.

Many robins. Sometimes eating crabapples, and here with bittersweet berries. The roar of a freeway, the Cross Island Parkway, came closer, until soon we were walking feet away from it.

Winter cress, I think.

At last we found an unsignposted path up an embankment and down to several underpasses, our way, we thought, to the southern arm of the park.

I had to laugh. Now it was like the park at the end of the world, post apocalyptic, perfect for Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." The end of everything.

Hedges of tall weeds. From the Parks Department website:

In its zeal to convert the area for recreational uses and through the construction of the Long Island Expressway and Cross Island Parkway in the 1930s, Parks filled in much of the marshland. This land now is now recognized as a vital link in nature’s ecosystem. In 1974, Parks created the Wetlands Reclamation Project and began rehabilitating the natural wetlands of the park. The Alley Pond Environmental Center opened in 1976 to provide the public with an understanding of the park’s history and ecology.

Back to the freeway again, heading, according to the map, for Alley Pond itself..

This park is managed, if that is the right word, by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. I mean, is this agency now one in name only? Where is the money? Mr Mayor? Mr Mayor? (Is this thing on?)

This, and that, is Alley Pond. Fringed by weeds, populated by some happy geese, surrounded by decrepit signs warning of thin ice. Girdled by traffic. Thank you, Robert Moses.

And there we got stuck. No way on to that fabled greenness on the map. Trapped between the Long Island Expressway and a wish for access. There is no mention of this on the websites. This is not a contiguous park and if there is an effort to join the disparate parts, "the vital link in nature's ecosystem", no mention of it. No signs, terrible trails, no visible maintenance at all...To abuse JM Coetzee: Disgrace.

Back to the website:

Alley Pond Park offers glimpses into New York’s geologic past, its colonial history, and its current conservation efforts. Because of its glacier-formed moraine, the park has numerous unique natural features, like its freshwater and saltwater wetlands, tidal flats, meadows, and forests, which create a diverse ecosystem and support abundant bird life.

A pretty picture.

I learned later, after a series of emails to and from Irene Scheid, the executive director of the Alley Pond Environmental Center that:

1. The sewage works at the northen end were installed and paid for by the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, who also built the new boardwalk and paid for the wetland rehabilitation we saw at the beginning of our adventure.
2. The APEC is a small non-profit organization which maintains that northern part of the park as best it can.
3. The land the center is on is owned by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.
4. The southern part of the park, actively managed by Parks, and which we could not reach, is accessible by subway and bus, but not on foot from its northern arm. That southern part is generally known as Alley Pond Park, even though the whole park is technically Alley Pond Park.

I had hoped to come away excited by a beautiful green jewel in the city's crown. Under layers of grime and muck and neglect there is certainly something sparkly there. But you have to be looking for it, and you have to want to see it. This place needs cash. Lots of it. And a healthy does of activism. And a sprinkling of rage.

If you live near the park or have money to spare, the APEC is trying to raise $10,000, to match an amount offered by our mayor. $20,000 will help them staff their center.

It is a drop in the creek. This park needs millions. And some municipal respect.

Going home, leaving home

2011-12-20T20:49:00.000+02:00

In Cape Town I look forward to:

My mom's smile
My dad's hug
Tipsy's voice
The wriggling, grunting happiness of two corgi dogs
The fanning tail wave of an old black lab
Driving a real car (yes, that surprised me, too)
Sitting on the patio with a drink (longing, with all my heart, that Vince was beside me, gulp, and he won't be)

Perfect coffee at Melissa's - called a flat white, which might be South African karmic humour
Buying boerewors anywhere
Cashiers in supermarkets who smile and greet you and seem to mean it
Picking flowers from the garden to put on the table
African sunshine
My mother's effortless light lunches

Seeing my old cream bedroom with the long curtains
The sound of birds in the morning
Hadedas yelling as they fly over the house
Tasting the best, red-fleshed figs
Smelling the fynbos on the mountain
Buying the first, muscat-y hanepoot grapes of season

It is a bittersweet trip. I long to share it with Vince, and we just can't this time. We spent a lot of time apart when we first met, separated by this huge continent and a border, and we have been very lucky to spend three consecutive northern winters in South Africa together. So I'll just make the most of it, which is of course not hard to do, lest I sound spoiled. Hunt some stories, take a lot of pictures, and have the pleasure of introducing a friend who has never set foot on the continent to her first taste of Africa.

2011 in 66 Square Feet

2011-12-20T14:59:00.000+02:00

A good year for strawberries, a lean year for figs. A good year for potatoes and tomatoes, even if the latter were cut short (by me) ahead of the promised destruction by Irene, who fizzled out. 2011 saw the introduction of Clematis 'Etoile Violette' to the terrace and a currant to the roof farm. Peas did not work in April but are still working in December. The parsley keeps on trucking, and next year I will not grow oregano. I may grow more basil. For those tomatoes.

We had snow in October and summer in pre-winter. A hurricane or two. There was a small earthquake. There were photographers. It has been interesting.

I have put the terrace to bed (though I hear it may yet see some Christmas lights).

Thank you terrace, for a good year. For sun and rain, refuge and diversion, introductions and inspiration and, always, occupation. And the braais weren't bad, either.

See you next year.

F Train commute

2011-12-19T17:27:00.000+02:00

Going with the flow.

Broadway, Saturday afternoon

2011-12-19T02:28:00.003+02:00

Below Canal Street.

Cherries in winter, contd.

2011-12-18T16:53:00.000+02:00

This is the "Autumnalis" cherry in Columbus Park in Chinatown.Yesterday afternoon it had three others, also in bloom, and about 400 Chinese men for company, crowded around tables playing cards and dominoes and a game I could not see, the crowd was that thick. Another small group sang Christmas carols in Chinese, wearing Santa hats. Fifty feet away two old men played sliding songs on erhus and a third, even older man, sang along in a cracked voice. The park was packed, as it always is, and every activity seemed communal. Two tourists were tsk'ing at the cherries, saying angrily, But they're going to die when it freezes! They left before I could explain.

Mushroom lasagna

2011-12-18T02:31:00.004+02:00

Photo: Vincent Mounier

Happening now. Work in progress. I have always liked mushrooms, but with this year's extra mushroom hunting - hen of the woods, meadow mushrooms, Agaricus subrufescens, chicken of the woods, oysters (of course) - I have been thinking of more ways to eat them. I'm perfectly happy to eat mushrooms on toast, and perhaps have yet to be convinced that there is a better conveyance for a buttery mushroom.

The mushrooms for this lasagna are all store bought - buttons, portobellos, king oysters. Terrace thyme, labneh (a Middle Eastern cream cheese, like very thick yogurt), salt, pepper, and bechamel spiked with parmesan.

It's all in the oven now, smelling pretty good. On the radio The Prairie Home Companion is playing. Itzhak Perlman was perfect, with a wonderful radio voice.

Happy Saturday night.

Cherry blossom in December

2011-12-17T17:22:00.000+02:00

Prunus subhirtella "Autumnalis" makes its annual appearance on this blog - it excites people in winter and rewards prophets of apocalypse by confirming their worst fears. The Plants Are Confused. But this is one unconfused cherry. She blooms now, and will again in early spring. This tree was in the Bronx. There's also a stunning specimen in Columbus Park in Chinatown which I saw only in the middle of the night, in profuse bloom. Perhaps I'll go back, in sunshine.

Frank's irises

2011-12-16T18:26:00.003+02:00

Frank gave me iris buds from his side garden on Tuesday, at our last Litter Mob, and last night they started to unfurl their transparent yellow petals. And they have a scent. A very good one. Thin and high and pale and spicy.

And now I head into the South Bronx. I may meet Mimi, and I may meet Dragon.

NYC: Land of irises and dragons.

Looking

2011-12-16T16:05:00.000+02:00

At the corner of Amity Street and Clinton I looked up. No leaves, and a perfect stripe in the sky.

Charging across downtown Brooklyn to visit Betty at the hospital, I crossed a square I'd never seen...

Waiting for Vince to buy socks at the weird mall near the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush, I looked through the windows to see what was left of sundown.

Making a pizza

2011-12-15T15:16:00.000+02:00

Flour, warm water, yeast, kneading. Cover In A Warm Place. It rises, soft and supple. You press the dough out onto the pizza pan. You spread the sauce you cooked down, dot the mozzarella, scatter the sausage, bake it in a blazing oven, eat it, with sips of cold wine.

It cures nothing, delivers no one from evil, but eaten alone or with someone for company, it can help keep the boat afloat.

Litter Mob in winter

2011-12-14T21:17:00.000+02:00

The results and observations of yesterday's Mob are in, at The Prospect Park Litter Mob blog.

In December

2011-12-13T18:30:00.000+02:00

Tough times. I have scrounged all the sage that I can find. No more. The thyme remains. A few last leaves of parsley. Look at the roses, full of leaves. Still, the freezing nights have only just started. Up in our top floor nest we require no heating. The building's heat rises to warm us. So does the ground floor's pot smoke. All day. Back to the terrace: Time to tidy - the dead brown leaves on the red-leafed strawberries. The whisps of fluff on the clematis. The ragged lily stalks. The dead chives. The guys across the road in the white van started jackhammering yesterday. Dr-dr-dr-dr all day in the sidewalk. On the corner lots a new townhouse rose this year, from nothing, it is tall and now enveloped in blue tarps; beside it the beautiful big building on the corner itself was gutted and has all new windows ready for its new apartment dwellers; and right across the road, with the drill guys, a foundation is being laid. The earth has been moved and taken away. Massive I-beams have been delivered. Three new expensive houses will happen where there was nothing but open land and feral cats. I'll watch them go up as I garden in the spring roof farm. Time lapse would be nice...

Mimi needs a little help

2011-12-13T06:03:00.001+02:00

Mimi. Photo: Chris Arnade

Dragon lives under an overpass in the South Bronx. I saw his home a few weeks back when I was following Chris Arnade on one of his frequent photographic sorties. Dragon was not in, but I noticed a movement at the back of his shelter and soon the movement became a little, friendly cat. She came to investigate us, above. Later, below, Chris found out that her name is Mimi, and that she is Dragon's pet. They live between hissing lanes of traffic, but they are dry.

Dragon and Mimi: Photo: Chris Arnade

Now, though, Mimi is in heat. She's in the mood for looooooove, and Dragon would be happy to have her spayed. This is not a good place or time for kittens.

Does anyone know a shelter that spays for free? Chris will take her and when Mimi has recovered from her surgery he will return her to Dragon. I'll be tailing Chris again later this week. Hopefully I'll get to see Mimi...

Litter Mob, tomorrow

2011-12-13T03:03:00.002+02:00

Litter Mob time - tomorrow, the woods, 9am. Sign up, tune in, smell the crackling forest air.

Thank you, Google maps.

Directions.

Carrot City

2011-12-12T20:11:00.003+02:00

Image: Think Studio News

On the subject of green gifts (see the seeds-as-stocking-stuffers post)...if you have a friend who is into urban and edible gardening, city farming, landscape designing, architecturing, school-teaching, city planning or green-mentoring, Carrot City, by Monacelli Press might be a good choice.

I have been working my way through it and finding many of the projects it describes - from China to England to New York - very inspiring as well as eye opening. As a gardener, a person who gets her hands in actual soil to make plants grow, I am drawn to images of real gardens or microfarms with real plants, so prefer the warmth of spaces where the actual green area has been photographed (the book is heavy with computer graphics and those creepy see-through humans...). But amongst the 40 projects profiled, stand out examples of the real - rather than conceptualized - deal are (New York in the house!): Eagle Street and Brooklyn Grange, our "outer borough" rooftop farms; the stunning Gary Comer Youth Center in Chicago, designed by Hoerr Stadt Landscape Architects and John Ronan Architects; the Uncommon Ground Restaurant in Chicago; Maison Productive House (a bit of redundancy going on there?) in Montreal.

It doesn't hurt that the photos showing these spaces are superlative. There are many more, from streetscapes in the suburbs to planned vertical housing units in Wuhan, China, with individualized food production spaces.

A blooper at the end of the book shows a hanging wall full of wilted plants - not sure how that made the cut. But it is inadvertantly helpful. Just because it's vertical doesn't mean it's going to work. But that is the gardener in me.

This not a coffee table book, and while it tends to an academic dryness, it remains a rather a thoughtful examination of what is, why and what it can become: Imaging what a city can be, in terms of green productivity, how to build community through gardens, redesigning the home landscape in tightly urban settings, producing food on roofs and examining the components needed or available for this food production to work.

The varmint

2011-12-12T16:33:00.000+02:00

Dude, you need to wipe your face. Got some fluff thing goin' on there. And you owe me for those greens up on the roof. You owe me.

Two words. One of them is French, but if you concentrate you'll grasp it. Read my lips: Squirrel. Pâté

I have knife skills.

Cape Town

2011-12-11T20:20:00.001+02:00

My trip to Cape Town is suddenly on my radar. I leave in ten days. Something blackhole-ish happened to this year and I have a twinge of whiplash. Where did it go? I need more time! Does this phenomenon just get worse as you grow older? When you're seven a year is a major slice of your age - when you are...cough-cough-we-have-a-bad-connection-squee-shhhhh ....that year has decreased incrementally in relation to all those stacked up against it. Is that it?

False Bay from the air. Photo: Vincent Mounier

There will be some new things to do in the Cape. I intend mushrooming a bit more seriously than before, now that I know that summer-fruiting chickens of the woods can be found. I hope to join Helen's group of walking friends: without Vince I don't want to hike on my own. And not having him there will be a big, big sadness. But! My intrepid friend Ellen spontaneously booked a ticket to Cape Town at the end of last week, and will join me for ten days, staying in Constantia with us. That will be a lot of fun: a fellow plant and flower geek, forager, cook, and eater of lambs. I am very touched that she has the faith to fly so far, to see the land that I love.

I am hoping for a blogging friends lunch under the tree - the Voer bloggers will be in town from Pretoria and Southampton, respectively, there is Karen of Smashing Cape Town to meet, I hope The Sourcerer's Lily will be back from Turkey, and perhaps the Green Lima Beans can be pried out of Noordhoek...

If the dicey Internet connection in my parents' house holds its own I will of course post from down south. Constantia seems to reside in a kind of cyber Bermuda triangle. Connectivity comes and goes.

Enough of that. Here are some Cape Town and environs (Hermanus, Stanford, Walker Bay) pictures from our last trip. I'm having issues with Picasa - I used to like it but as a slideshow but it's just not as viewer friendly as Flickr. So here's Flickr.

Anyone else want to come? There are tickets in the realm of $1,000. Not bad for 16,000 miles, round trip. The extra bed is taken but we do have a nice tent...

GRDN for gifts

2011-12-10T17:43:00.001+02:00

I like this little shop so much that I try to stay away from it. It's very hard leave empty handed and times are tight. But I was looking for pretty seeds to send with Christmas and holiday cards and was hoping that Susanne Kongoy, GRDN's owner and a lady with an eye for creative beauty, had stocked some. She had! And exactly what I was looking for, too: Hudson Valley Seed Library seeds, gorgeously packaged. In one fell swoop one's purchase supports local artists - who design the covers - and local seed. And nobody sells seed at this time of winter. Gr. So silly: They make perfect small gifts and stocking stuffers, and in spring when they go into the soil they are the proverbial gift that goes on giving. How green can you be?

Stoically, I ignored the other things I wanted, including the tempting book below, but caved when I spotted an Ottolenghi vegetable cookbook. I don't like the layout and design of the previous book, and never bought it, but this looked gorgeous. Yes, I could have bought it on Amazon. But buying it here, from a real human who has curated a small collection that seems to appeal immediately, and from a beautiful store, is far more satisfying. And e-books are really useful if you are commuting or have a long plane ride but nothing beats the feel of a well made book in your hands. It is an object. And I like objects.

There are nice objects in GRDN, on Hoyt Street. If you can, pop in.

There are my seeds.

A Year of Foraging in the City

2011-12-09T21:07:00.001+02:00

From March to November, some of the plants and fungi I found, cooked and ate in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island and Queens. Sorry, Bronx. Next year.

To see captions, hover your mouse over the slideshow and click the chat box beside the person-icon on the left.

Up

2011-12-09T16:13:00.000+02:00

How to eat a persimmon

2011-12-08T16:12:00.000+02:00

1. Buy a persimmon. Better, buy 6.
2. Wait 2-3 weeks while the persimmons go from bright, opaque orange to a tender, bruisable dark orange.
3. Resist the urge to poke and squeeze.
4. Freeze the persimmons.
5. 45 minutes before you want them for dessert take them out of the freezer and defrost on a plate.
6. Slice in half with a saw-edged knife.
7. Eat the sorbet-like flesh with a small spoon.
8. Spare a bite for the cat, who likes persimmon.

Godspeed, Jose

2011-12-07T17:39:00.001+02:00

My friend Lisa's husband passed away early this morning. Jose Gaytan was diagnosed with myeloma - cancer - in March, after he went to see his doctor about a stomach ache.

Jose was a photographer, and intimately acquainted with his neighbourhood - their house is on a leafy street in Park Slope. But he loved the derelict Gowanus Canal, as only someone with a camera can. He walked his photographic beat every day with their beloved dogs Rudi and Lola, and missed those walks very much while he was ill. Jose was featured in a New York Times article and slideshow in 2009.

I cannot imagine Lisa's loss, but when I think of it in my own life, I taste it. If you have a moment, send your love out to Lisa - whose blog, Knithound Brooklyn, has been silent since March - and to his family.

Bredie

2011-12-07T02:31:00.001+02:00

Last night's supper is next door. Head on over of you like green beans.

Green bean bredie.

Edible Brooklyn

2011-12-06T20:06:00.001+02:00

Just in time for the longest nights, Edible Brooklyn's Alcohol Edition is out. Cover shot by Michael Harlan Turkell, the excellent departing photo editor of both Edible Brooklyn and Edible Manhattan.

And if you would like to find out more about the the high proof ferny firewater above, shot on the roof above my head, pick up a copy! I'll link to it once it's live, but that will be some weeks after the print version has been cruising the streets. I was rather pleased to have the fern-etched Woodstock glass (Cape Town glass company, circa late 1800's) to hold the sweetfern-infused gin.

The Apricot

2011-12-06T19:14:00.001+02:00

December 5th.

April 10th.

Clinton Street, Brooklyn Heights.

Fog horn

2011-12-06T05:21:00.001+02:00

A fog horn is boom booming in the night. Since sundown, late afternoon, when the mist that had retreated crept back. On the Internet I have tried to find where it might be, but no luck. Two long blasts, then a long pause. We could be in a rocky fishing town. The cat sleeps on the carpet, the electric razor buzzes from the bathroom where Vince is shaving, the keyboard taps and then the fog horn covers the night again.

My spring class at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

2011-12-05T19:44:00.001+02:00

I am excited to be giving a class about growing urban edibles at the BBG in April. It's called Edibles on the Edge

Gee, I wonder why?

Yep, growing good things to eat, with an emphasis on what works in containers. Herbs, leaves, fruit and vegetables, all tested and tasted in person at 66 Square Feet.

From early spring radishes to strawberries to lettuces to sweet cherry tomatoes to endless cucumbers to currants and blueberries to potatoes to fat eggplants to figs to mustard and kale. With a side of parsnips. I'll also talk about what to do in the kitchen with the mini or major harvests. Simple recipes, unexpected deliciousness, old favourites.

Each class is three hours long, with breaks, and we will follow the growing year from early spring to round about now, early December. If you are familiar with this blog you'll be able to guess at some of the varieties!

Every attendee will receive a delightful goody bag of seeds I've chosen from Botanical Interests, whose seed packets are almost too pretty to tear into, and we'll sow a tempting spring edible right there, in growpots to take home. Whether you want to grow a single cherry tomato, a smorgasboard of salads, or a crew of rooftop or in-ground berries, I think this class will be an inspiring way to begin the gardening year.

To register for Edibles on the Edge, visit the April 15th or April 22nd links in the Gardening section of the Adult Education segment on BBG's website. And check out some other classes: Night Gardens! Growing Food in the Shade!

Also, if you'd like to attend and would like to learn about something specific, let me know, and I'll see if I can work it into the material we cover.

New York in November

2011-12-05T15:15:00.000+02:00

This was November:

Silene capensis (native to South Africa), striped wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) and asters.
Poss. amanita, oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus sotreatus) and another amanita
Photinia villosa [thank you, Janet], white oak (Quercus alba) and Gingko biloba.
Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana), delicious date plum (Diospyros lotus) and crabapples (Malus).

Photographed in Central Park, Highbridge Park, High Rock Park, Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

The late-month mosaics are running out of flowers, and I find it hard to accept that we already nearing the end of the first week of December. My end-of-December post will be from Cape Town, if the Internet at my parents' house is cooperating, and it is quite possible that the mosaic will not accommodate half of what I find there, in the middle of the southern summer.

Malfatti with melted butter

2011-12-04T19:47:00.001+02:00

In Beloeil, on our last evening, I made malfatti. Gnocchi, malfatti, I am not sure that there is a difference. They are not hard to do, just time consuming, in a quiet way, and we had time. We fell fast into the rhythm of the house, where evenings are early and supper is at 6, so I started making them around 4.30, when darkness had already fallen between the window and the humped mountain that fills its view - Mont St Hilaire. Brigitte coloured in a mandala at the white table where we eat, Germaine worked out a crossword in French, sounding the clues out loud, every now and then, Brigitte answering.

A bottle of red wine was open in the kitchen where wine is not usually drunk, and sips of it kept me company as I shaped the endless little balls before rolling each lightly into its small log shape.

I doubled my usual recipe, to feed four, and as each rose to the surface of the water roiling in two pots, I scooped it gently with a perforated spoon onto a waiting, warm plate. They did not like being stacked, so if you make them, keep them in single layer, but otherwise they tasted good. The Quebec breadcrumbs were finer than the ones I use, and the enourmous amount of raw spinach was baby leaves, which made a finer leaf base, but still worked well, after the usual squeezing and wringing to remove every last drop of moisture.

Melted butter, sage, another dusting of parmesan.

The recipe is over at 66 Square Feet (the Food).

Dial-a-cloud

2011-12-04T16:24:00.000+02:00

You ask for the shapes, they send 'em.

Mushrooms in Manhattan

2011-12-04T13:50:00.000+02:00

Oyster mushrooms in Manhattan? Yes, Sirree. Read about them in Edible Manhattan.

Meals that Grow on Trees

Juniors in the holiday swing

2011-12-04T03:39:00.001+02:00

I walked home from The Brooklyn Hospital, where I had been visiting my friend Betty (who is doing better). Juniors was all lit up. I have eaten there once, kind of, when friends of Vincent's were in town from Little Cayman. Mark was adamant about going and we sat in a mirrored booth late at night after dinner elsewhere and were brought behemoth-sized wedges of cheese cake and lemon meringue. We seemed to be inhaling the Orley Whip and jello of the late 50's, and perhaps we were. Seasonal cooking means nothing inside Juniors. Querying the provenance of ingredients would raise an incredulous eyebrow. I should try and eat a meal there, taking copious notes. Tuna melt, that sort of thing.

Perhaps I like tuna melt.

Picking December salads

2011-12-03T14:58:00.000+02:00

I popped the hatch to the roof after I remembered that I had a roof farm. Sort of.

It's important to visit the roof. There is a lot to see. Clouds, sky, water, boats, birds, a blimp...

Also some surprisingly lush and tender peas shoots.

I can't wait to see the parsnips next spring. They seem very healthy right now.

I picked the kale flowers and buds, resilient Tuscan kale and as many tender pea stems as I could.

Downstairs in the kitchen I dressed them all with a mayonnaise-y vinaigrette, added some thin Pink Lady apple slices, tossed the salad, and started to chew.

Wanted: Light at the end of the tunnel

2011-12-02T18:27:00.001+02:00

Last night I was almost guilty of oversharing. I had stopped in at the butcher on a whim - I had been planning to make a pizza for supper, craving red sauce, but when I rose out of the Bergen Street subway at 6.40, back from a two hour hospital visit, I smelled roasting meat, and salivated. So I walked into Los Paisanos to buy steak. I needed red meat. My hospital friend, Betty, was felled by anaemia and her hospital dinner of thin meat in gravy had sat under its blue plastic cover ignored while she ate one of my funny little melkterts and said she would not eat supper.

Behind the glass meat counter as the young butchers were cleaning the shop and putting things away and racing to leave for the night, Pedro asked me how I was. And that was when I almost told him. Itemized. You know those people. You say, How are you? And they tell you. And it's never good.

Close call. When I heard myself still talking I pressed my lips together, and saved it for my husband. Three dark blocks and several flights of stairs away, sitting on the edge of the white bed, I freaked out, before downing his coupe of prosecco. Then I overcooked the steaks while he kept me company on the daybed. I told him to pretend we were in Argentina. I threw together a raw beet, apple and celery salad, took out the bottle of pickled mustard seeds. I made quick, loud chimichurri in the blender, the violent green of parsley and cilantro cholorphyll, the raw garlic and lime a quick and sobering slap in the face and tonic at once. Snap out of, it. Breath. You can do it. One thing at a time.

(Time...time. Therein lies the catch.)

Snakeroot and green beans

2011-12-01T21:31:00.001+02:00

Turkey tails - Trametes versicolor, in the woods of Prospect Park

Some new Litter Mob stories:

White snake root, why your cow should not eat it and what happened to Mrs Lincoln, Sr.
The mystery of the green bean casseroles.

Highbridge Park

2011-12-01T16:32:00.001+02:00

Highbridge Park forces you to really look at the island of Manhattan. Because it's way up there, where it turns skinny and veers off to the west on its eastern flank, beside the thin mapline of the Harlem River. If, like a typical New Yorker, you tend to stick to your hood and its outposts - and I am as guilty as anyone else - venturing into new territory like this carries all the thrill and fear of stepping onto a new continent.

I have been park hunting by surfing above New York on Google Earth, and this long strip of wooded green looked very promising, so I dogeared it virtually for a visit. We have seen it, too, riding out of Grand Central towards Wave Hill. The train track skirts the Harlem River through the South Bronx, and across the water in Manhattan you see this ridge of forest, and a beautiful boat house on the river. So a couple of weekends ago we packed lamb pies from the Damascus Bakery into Vince's camera bag, and caught the subway all the way up there, getting out at 181st Street, nose bleed territory for us Brooklynites and Lower Manhattan types. I know Inwood, just over to the west a little way, at the very northern tip of Manhattan, but had never explored this side in all my years of New York life.

First impressions were not happy ones. If I had been alone I would have turned around here - it just didn't feel good. Loads of litter, very similar to the woods we clean in Prospect Park - liquor bottles, cigar wrappers...a place for men to hang out. Lots of blind turns and curves. I felt a bit jumpy. The beautiful stone arches of the Washington Bridge soared above us.

It might have been OK but I just didn't know - that's the trouble with a new continent, you are not wise to its ways. And the light was horrid, which didn't help.

We soon leveled out onto a wide deserted tar path below a rock ridge, right above the FDR - except maybe the highway hugging the Harlem River is called something else, up there. It cuts the people and park neatly off from the water.

Growing at the base of the brief cliff, silene and some surprising herbs.

Mint!

Winter cress! I would have picked some right there but a big pipe was trickling an urban waterfall into the swampy ground and who knows where that came from. I may be a forager but I am not suicidal.

Vestiges of asters.

Is this dock? Rumex? It looked delicious.

Fall colour was spectacular, we had left the litter behind, but by now we were right down on top of the four lane highway. There were actual park benches down here facing...the four lane highway. Just feet away.

I found hen of the woods at the base of these trees, but they were well past their best. Good to know, though. We were looking longingly at the other side of the highway, where we could see a nice wide bikepath beside the river, and more trees. I wanted to see Swindler Cove, home of the boathouse we'd seen from the train, and we had no idea where we might be able to cross. So we did what all previously unsquashed people everywhere have done: hopped the metal barriers, hopped the concrete divide, and trotted over to the other side. There are no bridges for pedestrians, no lights, no nothing.

Safely on the other side, pointing back to the bridge. A boulevard.

We found beautiful maraschino cherry trees. People really do land on 66 Square Feet having Googled 'maraschino cherry tree', and I don't want to disappoint. Think of all the Manhattans you could mix with this one crop.

The boat house at Swindler Cove.

The plantings at the reclaimed and restored Swindler Cove, funded by Bette Midler and the New York Restoration Project. Thanks, Bette.

And when we left the enclosed Cove, which closed at 4pm (and to which I shall return), we found our highway crossing. Only one, in the whole, long length of Highridge Park.

We veered up the ridge again at an angle, passing only two teenage boys who smiled in greeting once I'd said hello, and who reeked of pot. A quiet place.

Interesting place. Good trees, though a lot of damage from that October wet-snow storm, and perhaps from Hurricanes Irene and perhaps Lee. Not much litter in these parts. No benches, nowhere to sit down up here, just this crisscrossing network of tar paths. Great promise. But missing something. An animating force. The cut of the highway severing land from river is a great obstacle, but it has been overcome on the western side of Manhattan. The again, that side's inhabitants have a lot more money.

We rose to the top of the ridge and exited the park beside some ball courts where we unpacked our lamb pies on a bench and dipped them ruminatively into some garlicky hummus. Across the road a cop leaned against a wall, watching the block.

I'll go back in spring.

(Visit the Frenchman's post about the park.)

Wrongness

2011-11-30T17:36:00.000+02:00

I am a creature of habit. I mean, who isn't? Coffee in the morning, wine at night, sun in the east, dipping west, witch hazels in February...the usual.

When you become used to something any disturbance in its accepted pattern rattles you. And when I walked past the camellia on Pacific Street yesterday and saw it in bloom behind the scarlet-leafed Japanese maple, my knees went funny. It's supposed to bloom in March. March! It is not a fall camellia.

So we had that October snowstorm. And now this week, at the end of November, the weather is balmy. The tight round green buds opened.

It's just that...I was looking forward to March, with its April grand finale.

March without the camellia.

...

What do its owners think?

Talk about signs and portents. It doesn't get much more serious than this.

I may have to leave a note.

2012 Calendar giveaway

2011-11-29T23:02:00.001+02:00

Cover Photo: Marc Dalio

Estorbo was a bit late with his drawing for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's 2012 calendar giveaway, whose results I promised for Monday, but here are his 8 choices (he stirred the hat with his paw and closed his eyes before spearing each ballot with a claw):

KarenLR, Carol, BDZler, Jane, Lyn, Donatella, Ellen and Karen. You all left comments on the calendar post, now could you please send me your snail mail addresses?

marieyviljoen at gmail dot com

For those whom the silly cat did not choose, I am very sorry I don't have more to give away. Two were held back for my mom and mom-in-law. If you would still like to purchase a calender, please visit the BBG's website for details.

Litter Mobbing in the rain

2011-11-29T22:03:00.001+02:00

Our morning's Litter Mob (the 15th to date) has already yielded two posts next door. You may choose between:

Mushrooms

and

The White Edition

I must go. The grindstone is calling.

Home again

2011-11-29T15:08:00.001+02:00

We are back in the hood, and I'll update the blog, soon. We returned late last night to a spotless apartment, a sleek cat and some very good wine. So we sat down at once, at 11pm, and drank some. Thank you, John!

But for now, I hear the siren call of the woods in Prospect Park, must pull on my rainboots, pack my camera and head in short sleeves into the unseasonably warm day. Very strange weather... I was sent some interesting pictures of a tree in the woods yesterday by someone who works there, and will report on it if it is still intact.

And if you have nothing better to do, or are avoiding a deadline, there's nothing like a little de-littering to get you motivated. Find us in the woods.

Canada

2011-11-25T22:25:00.001+02:00