Downeast

Breakfasts, these days. Or, this week. Above the rising and falling tides of coastal Maine, way up there and over to the east, and not at the cottage that hosted us almost every year since the pandemic roared into our lives in 2020. This time we needed a bigger place so that the Frenchman's mom and sister could join us—Maman-Germaine turned 89 earlier this month and this is a belated celebration. They headed south from Canada, we pointed north from New York City.

Many mornings have begun with the croissants that are baked at Tinder Hearth by people who really, really know what they are doing.

The house is large, old, beautiful, intriguing, has floors that tilt and bedroom windows that shake and rattle in the wind; complicated, interior bug screens that close via a series of hooks, door handles that do not close doors until the seventh, noisy attempt, and a superb layout, sensibility and natural light on the ground floor. This wonderful table. A big blue, enamelled cast iron pot for almost every meal.

There is beautiful glassware, there are many candles with and without shades, and a vast hearth for evening fires. The weather has roared with rain, hooted with fog horns, shone down on us with a summertime blue, and given us time to explore and to be still. 

The favorite activity is beach combing, and my mother-in-law inspires me every day with her capacity for curiosity and her spirit of independent adventure. Also her flexibility. That's 89 in the Versailles family. 

Postscript:

The view is not bad, either. 

Flowers in the house

May means peonies in buckets at bodegas and corner stores, and I dive right in. I don't drink fancy coffee to go (my Caffe Najjar in the morning is unimprovable), we seldom eat out (the food's quite good at home, too!), but we do buy peonies. 

They are luscious, voluptuous, sumptuous. (...ous, ous, ous, -sh -sh -sh, like the swishing of rich satins skirts.)

I choose them in tight bud. Watching them open their cupped and frilled petals over days before they become blowsy and loose—every step is a pleasure. 

                                  Their dropped petals might be even better.

And there will be more.

 

Here we go again

Evenings are edging permanently outdoors again and are loud with surround-sound robins. Our new mockingbirds (what happened to the old ones?) have learned to fetch their blueberries from a small dish while we have drinks outside but before the table is ready for supper. They outrage the cat, who tells us they would be lovely on toast. The birds, not the berries.

Perennials are reappearing in pots, with asters, agastache and calamintha returning as if Arctic temperatures and feet of snow never happened. Ferns have unfurled. Ramps are leafy beneath them, with foam flower and an unidentified, tiny blue violet. Meadow rue's stems are growing tall.

The wraparound laundry roof is still there, for now, but changes are already afoot. The development of a very large building has been approved, so our remaining days here are almost tangibly numbered. 

But, for now, it is spring.

Cherry blossom, indoors and out

Kanzan cherry blossoms, bought in bud from the corner store (Mr. Kiwi, a bustling hub that never closes), and now open at last. Beyond these walls and windows, the city is dripping with them, their petals chilly today after a very strange week that soared into the nineties before thundering on Friday into a storm and dropping to today's high of just below 50 degrees. 

Corner stores. Whenever we think about living somewhere else, we think of the things we don't think about. Like walking around the corner to buy milk at 9pm. Or our favorite bar soap or organic eggs. How is it to get into a car every time you need something? I mean, we have a car, and she is the only thing of value that we own, but she is reserved for Adventure. (Yes, she is a she.)

I posted some of our local ornamental cherry blossoms to Gardenista, photographed over two days. 

She who feeds the pigeons

Spring is arriving, and here I am, clearing my camera's memory stick and filing photos that began in February. 

As I walked out of Prospect Park one dark afternoon, I noticed, in the failing winter light, a flurry of pigeon activity at Grand Army Plaza. They flocked around a woman in blue, who was feeding them. She looked down tenderly at the birds when they perched on her coated arm.

Her electric Citibike rental was provisioned with various containers of seeds, and when one was was empty she'd return to her bag in its basket for more supplies. Soon, all the seed was eaten up.

I don't like to skulk around, stealing pictures of people, so before I left I walked up gently and said, They love you! She smiled shyly, hopped back on the bike, and sped away, zipping south on Prospect Park West.

Ramps bring spring

In leaf-littered deciduous woodlands, and on warm slopes, the ramps are rising. Allium tricoccum, harbinger of a native spring. Often the only green thing on the brown forest floor. 

While they can grow wall-to-wall where they are prolific, commercial over-harvesting of wild populations has threatened ramps in some locations. In the wild, I collect a small handful of bulbs, and focus instead on the leaves, a practise I began...Hm. Maybe six years ago?

And I grow them, too, in pots, where they are remarkably resilient, weathering and surviving the brutal freeze-thaw that turns many bulbs to mush.

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The tiniest garden of all

There is a block of earth in front of our building. I must measure it. I'm guessing about two feet by three feet? So that's six square feet. Neat. Its southern border is the concrete sidewalk. Some dog owners tend to let their pets linger here as they pass, where their stream of pee hits the plants on the frontline. Their leaves burn. Salt residue in winter, especially the icy one just behind us.

I began planting it years ago. It's the first thing that greets us when we come home,  between the townhouse steps and the omnipresent trash, recycling, and compost bins. You need to feel good, arriving at your doorstep.

A tiny agastache from the Gowanus Lowlands Nursery now towers by late summer and is a constant theatre of bees, mostly native. A self-sown white snakeroot (native Ageratina altissima) resembles a shrub, and does its species name proud. I have to cut it back hard to keep the steps to the basement accessible to delivery people who leave parcels there if no one answers the intercoms. It blooms in autumn, for white weeks. The agastache blooms continuously from mid summer to frost.

Sometimes there is fennel, sometimes balloon plant, that southern African milkweed. Tall and skinny, both. There should be native Asclepias verticillata, too, but it hates the dog pee the most.

But this year - last year - I planted bulbs, too. Alliums, liatris, and, in existential panic, tulips. I only plant tulips during Trump presidencies, apparently. The alliums and tulips are up, and I have now removed their sheltering fir branches, remnants of our Christmas tree. 

And I plan to squeeze in more. There is about six inches of soil depth nearest the sidewalk (the pee zone). Less towards the rear. Maybe an African basil, because it blooms constantly and bees adore it. 

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