Friday, March 17, 2023
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
Nkwe Pirelli, Five Weeks In...
Nkwe Pirelli, King of String (and PrrrP) in one of his favorite spots. Plenty of live bird-action out there...
Sometimes we address him as Pirelli, especially when he pulls a "crazy Pirelli"- suddenly thundering down the passage with his tail cocked like a monkey's (the reference is from the movie Hunt for Red October, when a Russian submarine captain - Sean Connery - pulls a crazy Ivan). I have never known such a thundering cat. Even when he walks you can hear his tough little pads (Pirellis, of course) on the wooden floor. And yes, I have asked our downstairs neighbor, also a cat owner, to let us know if it's ever a problem...
And sometimes we call him Nkwe, more as an endearment. (Nkwe means leopard in Tswana and Sotho, and he has the compact, lethal muscles of a leopard, as well as the tooth-and-claw, piercing talents...still plenty of street-swipe in him).
And no, he doesn't eat flowers. But he cannot be left alone with string, even for a few seconds.
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Monday, March 13, 2023
How to grow ramps - and why
What is that green shoot? It has four friends, too. They are all - well, cough, all five - ramps, just up in a pot on our terrace after a curious winter (deep freezes in December, thaws, record-high February temperatures, more freezes, and a lot of rain).
When you have seen a mountainside green with ramps, five plants in a pot might not seem like much. But when you have seen a forest where ramps used to grow, and that is now bereft of their green leaves in early spring... those five cultivated ramps are a big deal.
Ramps are a wild onion - Allium tricoccum and A. tricoccum var burdickii, and they are a beloved wild, native, edible plant; so loved that they are being harvested into oblivion in some US states, and in Canada.
But they are not hard to cultivate. Love ramps? Have some land or a pot or a garden?
Find how to grow them in my Ramp 101 story for Gardenista. At least, that was the original title - it has been modified. I do harvest wild ramps in a place where they are abundant - leaves only.
And that is my mantra: #rampleavesonly
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Friday, March 3, 2023
Let it bloom
Thursday, March 2, 2023
Tulips: week in, week out
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Book: My NYBG class, 4 March 2023
Monday, February 27, 2023
Witnessed:
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Choose field garlic
It's field garlic season, where we live, and perhaps where you are, too. This chive-like wild onion (Allium vineale) is a winter-through-spring weed in North America, but a very tasty one. And infinitely more sustainable than ramps (Allium tricoccum).
Eggs deviled, and destined for a picnic. Their yolky stuffing is laced with fresh field garlic, mustard, and mayonnaise.
And a deeply soothing soup. You'll find its recipe in my story about field garlic for Gardenista (and yes, you can substitute chives, or scallion greens).
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Classes:
4 March, Winter Foraging at the NYBG
11 March, Sugar Moon in Inwood Hill Park
20 March, Vernal Equinox Social, Prospect Park
25 March, Bud-Break at Historic Green-Wood
Monday, February 20, 2023
Nkwe Pirelli - a tale told in parts
Meet Nkwe Pirelli, King of String. King of Prrp. King of Peep. And the cat-formerly-known-as-Percy. Also Inky.
It's complicated.
I met him about four weeks ago at my friend Serena's house, where I was delivering duck soup to nourish her new knee after surgery. Last summer I spent some time visiting her two cats - black-and-white Susie, and tabby Tiger - to entertain them while she traveled, and to water her garden during New York's months-long drought. During the soup visit, I thought that the kitty at my feet was Susie, at first glance. Black and white. Then I looked again. About twice Susie's size. "This is Percy," Serena said, "Susie's kitten! He's two!" I sat down, and Percy jumped onto my lap, where he began purring. I made appreciative noises. He made air buns. "You should have him!" said Serena. I ignored her, assuming her pain medication was talking.
A few days later, still thinking about this confident cat, I suddenly wondered whether she really wanted a home for him. I messaged her. "Don't give him to anyone else!" The Frenchman and I had a Big Talk. I visited then-Percy again. Serena showed me videos of the little black-and-white and also grey kittens that Susie, a feral cat, had reared outside her window, in the street - Serena had fed them, and adopted Susie. She gave me what contact details she could for Patti, a cat rescuer who, she said, had spirited the kittens away for care, and who had also taken Percy for a vet visit (I wanted vet records, and was worried about feline HIV). I wasn't sure where Percy had been in the interim.
I messaged Patti, who said emphatically that no, she had not spirited away a bundle of kittens, but that she knew Percy, who was in fact not Percy, but Inky. And that she had given Inky into Sassee's care.
To be continued...
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Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Radishes - it's time
I love radishes.
They have a remarkable affinity for eggs - high on my list of Loved Things. Also, toast. (Perhaps everything has an affinity for toast?)
They were the first vegetable I ever grew, as a very small person living in Bloemfontein, in the heart of South Africa. So there is that, too.
In our Cobble Hill days (the terrace of the original 66 square feet size) I raised them on our so-called roof farm - a collection of pots where fava beans, peas, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and raspberries grew. And this year I will sow them again, this time in the windowboxes on our Windsor Terrace...terrace (the neighborhood name makes its Instagram hashtag a cinch - #thewindsorterrace).
It's been years since I grew and harvested my own radishes, so recently I spoke to two vegetable gardeners - Hemalatha Gokhale and Randi Rhoades - whose work I admire a lot, and listened to their radish-growing wisdom, for a story for Gardenista. You will find it in this link: Radishes: Early, Easy, Delicious.
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Tuesday, January 24, 2023
Gold dust - good for breakfast, if you have it
Cattail pollen. Collected in a Cape Town summer... In December I hunted down and cut cattail flowers (still green but beginning to shed pollen), sifted out their copious pollen, did some baking, and sealed most of the delicious, golden powder in a jar. Into the freezer it went to keep and to take home to Brooklyn.
Problem is, it's still there. And I am in grey Brooklyn.
That's the part I did not share in my story about edible cattail pollen for Gardenista. The rest you can read in the link, plus two fine recipes for using this truly delicious wild ingredient.
The story ends well (at least, fingers crossed). A - good, kind, generous - friend is going to collect it in Constantia, and hand it over to her brother who is making a flying visit, and who will soon land back in NYC.
So there will be cattail biscuits, blinis, crackers, and madeleines on forage picnic menus after all. And then early summer will arrive in this hemisphere, and perhaps I will have find another source of the roast-corn-flavored dust to play with.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Out
Wednesday, January 11, 2023
Once, it was summer
Wait, what, summer?
Tidying up photographs, cleaning one of the two memory sticks I use in my Canon, I find myself drawn into meals eaten, seasons lived, flowers in bloom. This was June 2021. Yup - I have a lot of tidying to do. The terrace, and what is clearly a warm weather supper. The Frenchman's T-shirted arm pouring cold Sauvignon blanc. Salad - a deconstructed salade Niçoise. Grated carrot? I know. I take liberties (it was soused in lemon juice, with some chile flakes added - try it).
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Low tide at Jones Beach
Monday, January 9, 2023
Delayed
When you transition across two hemispheres (south to north, east to west) by racing halfway across the globe in a matter of hours, you leave a part of yourself behind. While you wait for the piece that is missing and trust, that despite the sense of emptiness, it - and your luggage - will catch up, you go out on autopilot into the place that is part of you, to remember who and where you are.
Brooklyn Bridge Park on a cold Saturday was equal parts imposing and human. The usual freezing brides were posing against the buttresses and Manhattan skyline.
The day after the Wolf Moon the low tide water was slack, the East River calm.
The Manhattan Bridge was as raucous as ever, every time a subway thundered and beat over it.
And the view across New York Harbor as uplifting.
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