Park Avenue at East 117th Street
Three pictures from a walk I took yesterday to find a nursery ten blocks away. I found it in the gloom of the overhead Metro North tracks. The Urban Garden Center was darker than I expected, with the boom of the train drowning transactions periodically. But they had very nice organic potting soil for $7 per large bag.
To get there I headed east, first, but it's something I'll probably avoid in future. East feels marginal, and I tire of walking tough and watching my back. Better to head to broader and more appealing Lenox Avenue (just west) and then south and east again, than south on Park, which up here is split not by broad medians of Upper East Side cherries, crabapples and rotating beds of tulips, begonias and chrysanthemums, but by those railtracks that have emerged from Grand Central, creating dark and cheap rental space in their shadows beneath - occupied mainly by chainlinked parking, and this nursery.
West 116th Street
Having ordered my soil, for a rather pricey ten-block delivery (I can't believe I'm missing the unromantic and hardnosed hardware store, Bruno's, on Court Street, but which delivered soil for free) I headed back west on 116th, passing the Sea and Sea Fish Market, to which I must return - its fascinating fish and food-ordering routine baffled me when Vince and I bought fried fish sandwiches there last Sunday, and I must figure out how it works...do you eat your steamed-to-order vegetables and fish there, or carry them home for the family?? - and then hooked a right up Lenox, and home.
Lenox Avenue a.k.a. Malcom X Boulevard
And now I head into the woods. We had a little rain last week, after a very long dry spell, and you never know how the fruiting bodies of mushrooms may react, erupting from those unseen masses of mycelia...
On the stove, Terence Hill's beans, for supper. The January chapter of the book.
Maybe I should write to him, to say thank you. Does he really live in Connecticut?
I should be gasping with envy at organic potting soil for 7 dollars for a large bag but I'm gasping with envy at the kites the man on the bicycle has. I miss kite-flying, I used to be good at it.
ReplyDeleteMarie, did you by any chance notice the recycled pallet planters on the Urban Garden Center web site? About the third item down. They looked interesting and rather attractive.
ReplyDeleteNancy Mc
You see stores under metro platforms in some parts of Paris and Rome too. Good use of urban space! I checked out the website...looks like they have a lot of cool stuff, bulbs and recycled planters and pots....nice that it is close to home.
ReplyDelete