Central Park is just a hop and a skip away from where we live now, in Harlem. From Cobble Hill, it had been a 40 minute subway ride. For Saturday's walk in the Ramble I hoofed it from home across to the C train on 125th and then rode south for about ten minutes, exiting beneath the American Museum of Natural History, on West 81st.
The park was in spring swing.
Our group entered the Ramble, and wandered in a large circle for the next two hours, picking up a lost member of the party on the way, who had waited in vain for us to gather on East 81st Street.
There was a lot to see. Violets and greenbriar (below, being inspected by writer and forager Frank Hyman), pokeweed and knotweed, jumpweed and forsythia (edible!), trout lilies, Trillium and blackberries, serviceberries and winter honeysuckle and a Cooper's hawk breakfasting on a squirrel.
Beautiful ostrich fern fiddleheads, observed but not touched.
Boaters basked.
And exercised.
And we paused for a snack of field garlic bread and butter.
Then we parted ways in the park, or meandered to the subway together, where the C train took me and a leopard all the way home.
My next walks are in Dead Horse Bay on May 10th, and in Inwood on the 17th.
Maybe I'll bring the leopard (it's a vegetarian).
And it looks like you had a wonderful day, weather-wise, and I envy those who had the pleasure of attending your "wild edible" hike in the "people's park."
ReplyDeleteJust returned to Virginia today (via LGA) from a memorial ceremony in Andover, MA, and while all the trees around our farm here are in riotous bloom (especially the dog woods), barren, gray branches were still the norm on the campus of Phillips Academy.
I'm still in NZ where I see that young fern fronds are the current finishing touch in cuisine.I shall experiment when I get home!(PS so glad Le Chat is OK)
ReplyDeleteSnacking on field garlic! How appropriate.
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