I left a lunchtime appointment on Fifth Avenue for Central Park...
...entering around East 79th Street.
The hawthorns have opened. Some literature describes them as "foetid". I think they smell like hawthorn blossom.
A carpet of cherry blossom petals, on Cedar Hill.
Chestnuts in blossom. Which reminds me of honey. And East Germany.
Close up:
And then I turned into the Rambles...
Just on the other side of the annoying little fences: aquilegia; white violets.
Smilacina, below, not in bloom yet. In the dripping, green, bird-songed woods.
On the path stood a man in a smart coat, and expensive shoes, bespoke suit, and hat. He stood, in the middle of the path, listening. To birds. And water dripping from a million pale green leaves. And silence. In a city of 8 million.
The woods. I come from the veld. And, after that, from the fynbos. Both are iconic landscapes. But they are not the Woods.
I don't know the Woods. I have read about them. Hemingway, Faulkner, McCarthy, Whitman(prose!)...
White violets 18" high...9/28/09 - Probably Viola canadensis, known as Tall White Violet!
Styrax - Japanese snowbells - almost past bloom, which surprized me. Caught me unawares.
Lots of these guys. Lots and lots of birds. Catbirds, my old favourites.
Near a stream: dodecatheon - shooting star. The first I've ever seen not in a book. Just before the contralto trill of a scarlet-headed, male, red-bellied woodpecker.
Out in the open, looking east.
And west.
And east again...
Clouds of white tiarella - foam flower.
I am thinking about "my" park. What to put in it.
I thought that these were crabapple petals. But it was an old, old styrax.
The biggest I have seen.
Matched by a grand old wisteria, whose perfume moved with the mist-heavy air.
The old elm walk.
Nearing Central Park South, 30 blocks south from where I started.
Looking south.
The Plaza.
Looking towards Columbus Circle.
It was the greenest, most people-free, most birdsong-accompanied, mistiest walk...It did something to restore my soul.
*sigh* So beautiful and peaceful and lush! praise to Frederick Law Olmsted and those who had the conviction to keep his vision alive.
ReplyDeleteWhat a walk! I like the many petal carpets.
ReplyDeleteYou say you don't know the woods, but wouldn't the forest around Lynn Canyon qualify as such? Or is it too specific or too rainforest?
Thank you, Marie...I needed that!
ReplyDeleteKeli'i
Very nice moments.
ReplyDeleteI realize how badly I need to explore the northern end of the park. Growing up around all this, memories of old news haunt beautiful
places.
I think though a woods is what you know to be it, apart from mythical woods, Maine woods, Minnesota woods, I've seen many woods and forests and mine is still the oak and sassafras of Long Island.
I know woods. I only know veldt and fynbos from books.
ReplyDeleteAnd why have I never been to New York? Shame my piggy bank is suffering from anorexia...
Thankyou for this.