Black cats

Who is this handsome boy, with a big bite out of his left ear? (Thanks to a very zealous neutering program.) He is Peanut, of course. In South Africa, Black Cat Peanut Butter is a national icon, in terms of name recognition and inclusion in many pantries, be they vast or bare.

He is my aunt's cat, and when I went to look for him in her large, rambling garden, he came when I called, mewing as he moved invisibly through a thicket of nasturtiums. 

A stocky, strong boy. I wonder what Pirelli would make of him? They have a lot in common, except that Peanut is allowed to roam. Both street cats, both boys, both fierce and tender. 

False Bay

The 6.48pm light in Kalk Bay. This deck enjoys warming sunlight in the morning, but when the sun dips under the mountains behind us, the shadow begins up here, on the slope, while surfers and seals still bask in the waves and on the breakwater below.

It is a good place to sit, and the poppies have been enjoying the view.

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Aloft

 Furry balloons? Green balloons, or hairy...?

This graceful plant needs more respect.

Its air-filled seed capsules will form until frost, slowly dry, split, and release puffs of gossamer-borne seeds.

Puffs in the woods

The Frenchman, posing with perfect puffs (young giant puffballs, Calvatia gigantea) that we discovered on a walk in the woods. 

We left most of of the surprise patch and alerted other foragers to their location - too delicious not to share. 

These mushrooms are one of my favorites, with a surprisingly strong mushroom aroma and a texture like very delicate tofu, although also...not quite.

At home, I skinned one and cut it squeakily into into snowy white cubes that were added to last night's butter chicken. Very delicious.

Left alone, these puffballs can grow huge. But I love this small, neat stage, and anyway, there they were, despite only a whisper of rain in the last week.

Tiny, tiny white orbs an inch or two in diameter might be the so-called eggs of Amanita species, and potentially exceptionally toxic. So don't collect puffs unless you absolutely know how to tell the difference. Cutting those Amanita eggs in half (they have very different texture) reveals the silhouette of a mushroom inside - you most definitely do not want to eat that. Giant puffballs are pure white, and firmly spongy (unless old, in which case they turn yellow and more mushy.

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Fall Walks and Picnics

A Hummingbird Evening

The lablab beans are looking very good. Lablab purpureus, beautiful and edible. 

And yesterday evening, after six, we were treated to fifteen minutes of enchantment as a tiny ruby throated hummingbird came to feed on their flowers. We have spotted several in the previous days, but none has stayed this long, taking breaks to sit on the trellis, on the milkweed, on the vine, even on the African basil stems. 

Low light, and I have not developed these images, other than re-sizing them - the Frenchman's will be much better. But that exquisite little creature was not further from us than a terrace's width. And we standing inside the door, so...six feet.

How these tiny little birds fly so far, with so many obstacles, I don't know. They are heading south now, all three inches of each of them. And tonight, as last night, the powerful beams of the 9/11 memorial will attract and disorient thousands of migrating birds.

I do know that lablab flowers are not native to the hummers' range, but I also can't help wondering about the long-term effects (if any) of feeding these little birds sugar water, from feeders. Aside from the actual sugar and the water (and quality of the water), there is the risk of disease-transmission. Please sterilize those feeders daily.

I have wondered whether the hummers also visit the agastache we have planted for them. Possibly. We have not caught them in the act.

Look at the little feets!

Nkwe Pirelli says this would be a very nice snack. Which is why Nkwe Pirelli does not go outside, unsupervised. Mr Tuxedo cares little for conservation. 

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New Fall Walks

Early autumn on the terrace

Funny that it takes a whole growing season for things to fill out this much. The moonflower vines are rampant, the African basil is a forest, and the lablab beans and South African milkweed have reached the arm-waving stage, tall flowering stems tilting in any breeze.

At the lower end of the terrace is an eccentric leafy collection. It includes Thai lime, calamansi, bergamot citrus and a spicebush tree grown from seed that someone gathered on a plant walk with me, then germinated, and later gifted to me before she moved to Germany. Beside the trees are galangal and myoga ginger (producing edible buds through these fall months), ferns, ramps (now dormant, having set seed), sand ginger and asters. Natives of the Northeast, of Southeast Asia, and of East Asia.

Both annual vines take a long time to take off, but they are worth the wait. Moonflowers open every evening, and now, in the newly cool mornings, they remain open to greet us before folding up and withering by 10am.

September's edges

The edges of the terrace, with the dignified and aging skylights of Arrow Linen beyond. 

African blue basil is a seedless basil hybrid that popped up once upon a time in a bed at Companion Plants Ohio, who then propagated it and sent it out into the horticultural world (you may know that, if you read my Gardenista story about it). And the beautiful lablab vine. Also called hyacinth bean. Possibly Aast African in origin, possibly South Asian. An ancient crop. 

In these early evenings, muffled by a quickening dusk, the flowers glow briefly before the sun submerges behind New Jersey.

I plant the lablab for the flowers, which hummingbirds also visit (we have seen two, so far), but also for the bean crop. 

And the third African on the terrace, the southern African milkweed that is not classified as Asclepias, but as Gomphocarpus. Balloon plant. Hairy balls. Tall and willowy, delightful to insects, and generous with its late-season, green balloons. 

The bay tree, recently root pruned and replanted it in the same pot, with a good, slow drink of water.

We did not see the chimney swifts this evening. Surely they have not left already. We did see three nighthawks, flying west, in unison. 

Birds, birds, birds

One of our escapes within the city is Breezy Point tip, a spit of sand that is part of a federal park, the National Gateway Recreation Area. We see very few people, mostly fishers, as well as boats and sea fleas (jet skis) and occasional yachts out in the channel, where the Atlantic Ocean flows in and out of Jamaica Bay. This tip faces west, and part of our horizon includes Coney Island, New York Harbor, and Staten Island, far across the water. 

Over these last two weekends of August we have spent a Sunday (the first pictures) and a Friday evening on the sand, sipping our drinks, picnicking quietly, and watching and photographing a collection of shorebirds foraging at the water's edge. It is migration season, and the birds are becoming more diverse. We find their lives riveting, and can watch for hours as willets (the long legs, long beaks) rush in and out along with the little sanderlings.

The calm water here makes for good feeding. Passing boats' wakes send more waves curling onto the sand.

It's good to see seagulls being proper sea birds, and not land vultures snapping up bits of pizza. Bad day for the crab.

Out on the water loons cruise. They should overwinter further north and I'm not sure why they stay. Perhaps there is enough food here.

There is a channel buoy not far offshore that clangs in the swell, a remote and lonely sound on the water.

A black bellied plover stands alone among the sanderlings.

And a ruddy turnstone inspects a slipper snail (I think).

Until this year we have never seen willets here before, but there seems to be a regular group of five at the moment. 

I don't know whom the tracks belong to. I hope rangers, but it's hard to say. I despise vehicles on beaches. Birds breed here and the dunes are fenced off. 

On Friday, seeking solace, we headed out to Breezy Point again. On the way, we passed a tree with not one, not two, but six osprey in it. So they migrate, too. At the beach, we found open skies and sun, a very low tide, and flocks of these plovers outnumbering the sanderlings.
 

This poor bird had only one leg, and he hopped strongly on it, fending for himself.

A visiting merganzer stretched and fluffed its feathers.

The willets were still there, and less skittish than before. 

And out in the channel the big loons still cruised, calling to one another when they reunited after hunting far apart. 

It is the end of summer. And of other things, too. Many things. But I am inexpressibly grateful that we both enjoy watching these other lives, and that we are able to see them right at the edge of the teeming human city.

Moonflowers

The moonflowers began opening in earnest the day Don died. The night of the day. But, in South African time, the morning after the night of the day he died. Sensitive listening devices, trained skywards, scenting the terrace, calling a moth or a bat or nocturnal hummingbird. Would he say, No such thing? (Is there?)

I told Don's bereft Rosie today, I keep seeing Don in everything, even where I usually might not. Would he approve of the moonflowers? He liked perfumed flowers. And not just the indigenous and the imperiled, but the old fashioned and the scented and the garden-grown. He bought a vast bunch of flowers and herbs to supper in Kalk Bay the last time we saw each other. Part of the conversation was about the dignity and indignity of death. How it was important to him and Rosie to live somewhere where you could choose the time and manner of your death, should you wish to, and be able to. 

And then he fell off a cliff while hunting for an endangered species.

But maybe that is the same thing.

Ipomoea vines are very invasive in Cape Town.

Don was visiting a small population of critically Penaea formosa. Formosa means beautiful. One idiot news outlet said it is an orchid. Sloppy Google search. That would have driven Don nuts. A symptom of the larger problem. Plant blindness. 

These moonflowers will open for weeks, until the first cold snap. Then their sappy, jungle green leaves will blacken. And I may be very sorry I planted them at all, back when spring's nights turned warm enough for the tropical vines' fat seeds to germinate.

But for now, under a waxing moon, more and more of the delicate flowers open each longer and longer evening. From spiraled bud to fullblown in an hour. 

Far away, in the Cape Town that exists as a concept for me, of home and friendship, there is a growing emptiness I do not know how to fill. Like more and more stars winking out in the black sky—unknown, unknowable, unstoppable. 

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In Memoriam

Milkweed, fennel and lablab beans - late summer's compensation

Very, very late summer and the tall things are bending in the breeze. The South African milkweed and the fennel are irresistible to pollinating insects. So many bees, iridescent hover flies, wasps and hornets visit them. The creatures with stings don't bother us, so we don't mind them. It's good to see their free, flying life while the wider world's confusion and collapse press on us.

Beyond their airy stems, the lablab bean is in bloom. Yesterday we saw a hummingbird buzz its flowers. It's usually sold as an ornamental, as hyacinth bean or hyacinth vine, with occasional and vexingly ignorant warnings of toxicity. This is an ancient crop, hailing either from East Africa or South Asia (so far, its very early domestication has made its origin hard to pinpoint). 

I can't wait to have enough pods to make the two early fall bean dishes I've come to anticipate: a Southeast Asian-style curry made form from the sliced young pods, and a spicy and addictively good dish laced with berbere (an Eritrean and Ethiopean spice mix). 

You'll find both those recipes, and more about lablab beans, via the Gardenista story below.

Lablab Beans: An Ancient Crop and Stunning Vine

A tall, cool drink

Mugwort-raspberry hooch, cut with cold tonic water and piled with ice. In a pretty glass given to me by a Frenchwoman. 

I have cut back the Agastache, and the terrace-bees are cross, searching for what is missing (it's OK - they have plenty of basil, mint, fennel flowers, roses and citrus blossom to feast on). 

I'm hoping that it will flush again with fresh flowers in about three weeks. Mid-September. I'm not sure how summer disappeared, but it's on its way. Nights are noticeably longer and when we eat outdoors, the string lights come on.

(The luscious hooch is in the mugwort chapter of Forage, Harvest, Feast if you're curious.)

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Forage, Harvest, Feast - A Wild-Inspired Cuisine

Moonflower

6.37pm.

The first moonflower opened on our terrace. It will be a few days before the rest of the buds catch up. But the harbinger is beautiful.

I planted the seeds in May with some feelings of guilt. The guilt doesn't take, though, and they climb and twine and now bloom at the end of summer. The guilt is from Cape Town, where morning glory vines wreak havoc, climbing and scrambling and toppling tree limbs. 

But this is cold weather country. For now.  And the seeds of Ipomea alba drop harmlessly. For now.

For now. It all changes so fast. Or is that age? Or is it age plus, this-is-all-changing-so-fast? 

7.59pm.

The bud is open, and listening. 

 Listening, listening.

Scent beginning to fall into the small space, to call moths, and hold off despair.

For now.

Goldfinches to the rescue

A hot, dry walk yesterday in search of hummingbirds - we did see one - was rescued at the last minute by a small flock of goldfinches feeding on woodland sunflowers (Helianthus divaricatus) in a meadow atop Lookout Hill, in nearby Prospect Park.

The day before, a different and rather disappointing outing (so dry, so many crisp and dead plants) was also revived by goldfinches doing exactly the same on Governor's Island, their beaks busy with the seeds of spent echinacea flowers.

I hereby co-name the recent full moon (the Sturgeon Moon for Native American fishing tribes) as the Goldfinch Moon.

The cat's tale

Nkwe Pirelli, two years and six months after being kidnapped from the streets of Bed Stuy and hustled south across Brooklyn to Windsor Terrace. Or South Slope. Depending on the New York map you ask.

He was really kidnapped from Serena Bass's kitchen. She had coaxed him in off the streets weeks or months before, with meals. He would come for food when she whistled and she'd let him back out when he asked, every evening. She said he slept under a tarp in an empty lot. But then he started sleeping on her bed. I fell in love with him when I visited: First, he bit me, then he jumped on my lap and curled into a ball. Smitten. I had been wanting a cat again for a long, long time, and had been waiting for one to find me. Here he was.

The day we came to fetch him, Serena tried hard (and failed) to suppress her amusement as the Frenchman and I scooted about her kitchen on all fours for over an hour, trying to coax this handsome but very streetwise cat into a carrier. The cute little soft carrier I had bought online wasn't going to cut it. Like trying to pack a ball of electric eels into a very snug purse. She wanted us to wrap him in a towel and sausage him inside. We didn't want to traumatize him. Snicker. The Frenchman disappeared for a while and returned with a giant carrier, large-dog sized, froma neighborhood pet shop. We put treats in the back of it. Serena snorted and went to put on lipstick. She was going out. Stay as long as you like, she said. She left, wearing a magnificent, oversized, voluminous white puffer jacket, snickering audibly and wishing us luck.

In the end, her gentleman-cat Tiger helped us out, taking pity on us, or perhaps recognizing that we were trying to remove this interloper from his kingdom. Tiger strode into the giant carrier and ate the treats, purposefully. Percy - that was Serena's name for him - followed. Smart Tiger exited. I leapt, the Frenchman pounced, we slammed the door shut a little loudly and the poor cat was trapped. He rolled madly like an otter spinning in water, but was stuck. We had him. Half an hour later he was home, and he is now Nkwe Pirelli, King of Prrrrp.

 He likes to sleep under things. 

It is International Cat Day.

Be nice to cats.