New York Spring (just): Dean and Union Streets

The Gowanus Lounge has been kind enough to post a few of my pictures. Here's one I took yesterday on Dean Street on my way to hell, I mean Circuit City.

Also on Dean I found a clematis growing along the bottom of a black railing.


And a  a black locust. Black locusts have rot-resistant wood, so we ought to be building decks out of them, not rain forest wood. Anyway, I dislike the rough bark of both honey (it has long thorns) and black locusts. Click here for quite a funny discussion about how to tell the woods apart. The trees' best feature is this two-three week period in May. They smell lemony, sweet, lovely.

And today, on a Memorial Day meander, I met the boyfriend of the gardener who made the sweet garden at the Gowanus Canal. He was watering it, she was awol for a few minutes. I told him how it was my favourite garden in New York, period, and he said she's shy about it. I hope to see more of them. The humans, I mean. I was too self conscious to start snapping away, but I will, I will. I confessed that photographs of the garden had traveled to South Africa and been part of a New York garden talk. I also visited the cherry in a square planter on the far side of the canal, nearer the Rottweiler lot, and the cherry was loaded with green fruit. They will be ripe late next month, I think.

Armed with a baguette and a saucisson from Stinky I walked down the block of Union Street between Smith and Hoyt, where the remnants of old gardens tell of days when people loved their small pieces of land. There is a particular rose, with black in its red petals, that repeats itself five or six times down the block. Also the tiny little dog rose that is so Hamptons-ish. Two men were digging out a massive bed of daylilies, in front of one of the rambling red roses and I was rather sad. The orange lilies look amazing in front of that deep crimson backdrop. I was tempted to tell them that they could, yes! eat daylilies in salads, or steamed (the buds) and like potatoes (the tubers), but after two seconds' consideration and a look at their faces thought...ah...nope.