ADD

I feel the need to document Every Interesting Thing that has been happening and I just can't. It's bad enough as it is...getting to bed at ridiculous hours, working till it's dark, working through weekends, having wonderful conversations in the wee hours with my gorgeous Canadian courtesy of Skype.

...and then I want to write about all the little meals I make most evenings (I have an entire massive folder called Meals for Me, with pictures - I mean, who photographs all the meals they cook FOR THEMSELVES???) - but that would have to be its own blog and I can't keep up. Above: moussaka, parsley and butter lettuce salad, and my favourite Oyster Bay.

Truth is, as my mother reminds me from time to time, busy is good and the more on my plate the better. I am reinvigorated by this probable, though not signed-and-sealed multi-terrace project in SoHo, and remember at times like this how lucky I am. It doesn't feel like it's a job. I love it. I love playing with empty space and making up gardens to go there. That's not work. That's me seven years old in my mother's garden inventing rivers and forests and animals to go in the strange lands that were the flowerbeds, all on miniature scale. Of course then I used twigs and a garden hose and a lot of imagination; or I'd find tiny weeds and bits of glass to make lakes and jungles in seedtrays filled with earth.

[Ed. 10/11/07: email from brother Francois to clarify things:

"By the way it was your brother who taught you how to use twigs (dried willow twigs to be sure) to create all the little walkways and interesting "Thailandish Island Resortish" structures under the mauve and white primulas below your bedroom window. That should be a good clue as to what time of the year it was ?? Dry willow twigs, Primulas. Brings back memories."
 

Duly noted. Thank you, brother.]

Now it's tens of thousands of dollars for the serious materials needed to realize what is schemed and dreamed for these floating gardens at the very top of the food chain. A long way from sticks, and yet not so different. I'm still playing.

But lunch with Molly also reminded me of how rewarding this designing/inventing gardens is on a personal level. She actually loves plants. Her ex-lush roofgarden was reduced to nada because of leaks and is now a bare deck, more or less. After tossing some ideas back and forth over our tiny table at Prune, we started to sketch on the brown paper table top, and suddenly ideas started becoming real: a line of white birch trunks, a bed of ferns, old English roses facing each other across the top deck, a fence of espaliered apples. I can see it, smell it, taste the dinners up there, hear the leaves in breeze.

It looks like this may in fact be the basis for the pilot (more talks about talks tomorrow with Lala and David, the producers) - and that, too, is actually becoming more exciting. More me, less fake.


Then, before she left the office today, Natalie wheeled in my, her, our...my...OK fine HER bike and I was overcome with nostalgia. How I miss our trips over the bridge. My own flowers in the basket. Swearing at everybody. Smiling at everybody. Feeling French. But I had made a promise and it is now hers, and I really, really need another one. Old, sweet, no gears and brakes via the pedal.

Please ancestors...You found the Canadian. Could you send me a bike now?


Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.

I have fed Natalie some fish over the years. She is a vegetarian and only eats vegetables. Like fish.

And she looks damn good on the bike. Sigh.