It has begun

Just yesterday I said that our native spring is weeks away. What was I thinking? Today I saw this beautiful silver maple (Acer saccharinum) in bloom. And red maples have just begun, and I'd forgotten about an American elm tree I passed late in the afternoon, it's tenderly thready tassels shimmying in a cold breeze.

So, you see, it is here.

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Spring Walks and Picnics

Inside

On the Monday after the late February blizzard (which was Sunday the 22nd into Monday the 23rd), we walked in the woods of Prospect Park, where all the shrubs, and many trees, were bent into taught bows by the heavy, beautiful, relentless snow. Big trees were down. 

I beat slender spicebush branches free, watching them snap upright. And I noted broken branches, all around. The next day I went back, armed with sharp Felco pruners, and wading through more snow to clip the broken arms of forsythia while life was still in them. That was over two weeks ago. Now the budded branches are in bloom.

Also, weeks ahead of planted daffodils (some now in bud), corner-store flowers - at $5/bunch - add bright courage to our lives.

 Supper for a friend last night meant spring flowers on every surface.

Real, native spring, is weeks away. 

The embroidered napkins - made by a friend - seemed appropriate.

Some of supper was also yellow: a lamb shoulder, slow-cooked with saffron and cardamom and bay leaves form our tree, with turmeric rice and raisins, and an avgolemono sauce. A vegetable adobo on the side. An arugula salad singing with ginger. And baked apples for dessert.

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Spring Walks are Here

Sniff this

 The acquisition of windowsill happiness. 

Daffodils were being sold in bucketsful on 7th Avenue at Carroll Street, a 30-minute neighborhood walk north from where we live. So I bought a fat sheaf, all in tight bud, as Sunday's arriving blizzard picked up strength. They were really meant for a friends birthday, but we we couldn't get there. Non-emergency traffic was banned, and the subway was scrambled. 

So they have been opening, slowly, and are now in peak yellowness. They smell like childhood. 

Winter beach

On a winter whim we drove out to Breezy Point. A summer evening haunt. Quiet water, lots of shorebirds, a wide sky. Stars, as we walk back in the dark. Manhattan to the north, rising above the blocky mass of Sheepshead Bay.

The tide was coming in.

The sun sets much south of west, at this time of year. 

We wore down coats and I packed a hot toddy.

There were big-nosed surf scoters on the calm water. And my favorite loons, hunting in a pack of four.  A pair of nervous grebes. And many, many dead birds at the high water mark. We have never seen this. Probably avian flu. I could only identify a Canada goose and a brant, and a diving duck, maybe a scaup.

Snow on the dunes, where we sat and sipped and watched the watery world go by.

Bluebirds

As we were leaving the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey yesterday after a snowy picnic, and a distant owl sighting, and the company of a crowd of very noisy bird photographers (interested only in dramatic owl pictures but not in the other birds around them, apparently), we noticed a small flock of bluebirds beside the road. 

No one else was about, and they were hunting. So we waited, and watched.

Stuff, not much, but enough

Stuff, on a bitterly cold day. It's around minus 10 Celsius. That's the high. The central heating puffs on every hour or so, keeping up. 

Table and chairs: Sold to me as Heywood Wakefield by a couple in Alexandria, Virginia. The table turned out to be a good replica, and the chairs are real. 

Vase on table. Been with me since then, too. Junk shop in Adams Morgan, D.C. 

Jug in window: Wedgwood, a sidewalk find in Windsor Terrace, last year.

Pillows. They come and go. More keep coming.  Skinny la Minx covers. The Turkish embroidered ones are gifts from Bevan and Mustafa in Istanbul. I often pack them in layers beneath me when I work on the daybed. They squoosh down and re-fluff beautifully.

Throws and cover on daybed, both by Mungo in South Africa. Cotton, solid, and indestructible.

Schoolchair beside door, acquired in Harlem. Basket on it from a gift shop on 5th Avenue in Park Slope.

Spring flowers from corner stores nearby.

Roasted pears

I like fruit as dessert, and winter is the best time to roast apples and pears. They fill the house with positive smells. Even better ones, when you add fir sugar and citrus to their cavities.

 The whys and hows are in my story for Gardenista:

Winter Comfort: Roasted Pears with Fir Sugar