We had a sprinkling of snow overnight. In the dark I could see cat paw prints on the table like an expensive mosaic.
Soon after I post this, there will be a snowdrop expedition. Vince's Quixotic quest for open water pictures has been delayed. I know of a patch of the flowers in Prospect Park (above and below) and am hoping there is till snow around them. I photographed these snowdrops in 2011, in March, just about when I was becoming outraged about the litter in the woods of Prospect Park. But there have already been snowdrop sightings in the city: reports from Strawberry Fields in Central Park, from Kensington and from Prospect Heights, both in Brooklyn...
I returned to the woods a couple of weeks ago, and it is as though we had never been there, cleaning for a year. The litter is back, the condoms are back, the men patrolling for sex are back. This part of the park is freshly abandoned, cut loose. The storms of last year have also destroyed many more trees in the woods. Several tall specimens in a cluster were missing their crowns; their trunks, ending abruptly in mid air, at about 30 feet, were spiraled and frayed as though a giant hand had come down and twisted them off.
In happier news, I was alerted to the presence of Meyer lemons at Trader Joe's. So last night I took a big breath, held my nose and plunged into the Saturday shopping crowd in the emporium that still makes me want to hyperventilate. Utter chaos. Shoppers three deep in the aisles, nobody moving, everybody oblivious to traffic flow. How do they drive? I know. I'm a grump. I can't bear bear stagnation and I like to move fast, or at less with awareness. Chinatown is hard that way too. But when I got the line, at Trader Joe's, anyway, it moved very fast. Relief.
I now have many little sacks of the thin-skinned very perfumed Meyer lemons, two tall cylinders of Baleine coarse salt and will preserve one jarful of the lemons and make limoncello with the rest. Thank you, Clare Hambly, for the inspiration - she is a fellow South African whom I met for a drink yesterday evening, and she told me about the lemons and was talking preserved-in-salt.
That's all it takes, really.
Hmmm, The Park. I was thinking how my favorite part of the park is in the woods, along the lullwater, west side. BUT, it is bedraggled, like so much woods. But soon we can skate, if I skoot. I do not skoot.
ReplyDeleteI stared at our jar of baleine yesterday, reading the 'not supply the necessary nutrient iodide' and wondered if we'll be the generation that brings back the goiter.
Trader Joes -I finally went to one -last summer in Portland, Me on our way up camping. Poo poo me please, because I shopped in a super Walmart when in Florida, and each and every one of us regretted it. It seems the cheaper goods are the more maddening the shopping -like everyone's on a tear to grab the last cheap jar of herdez.
It seems wide open spaces, even in the grocer, are a luxury of the country.
Thank you for the snowdrops! There are very few up here, and much later. Seeing them always reminds me of childhood winters, the two or three I actually spent in England. Thank you for all the blog posts - your writing and photography is a daily treat. So looking forward to the book!
ReplyDeleteMMM, must go get some of those Meyer lemons. Save one for this!
ReplyDeletehttp://food52.com/recipes/16573-meyer-lemon-focaccia
Lisa