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.

Food

Our local greenmarket is just a five minute walk away from where we live. On Sundays and Wednesdays trucks arrive early in the day from farms in New Jersey and New York, filled with vegetables and fruit and flowers ripe right now. The farmers or their vendors unpack and set everything up. These harvests were sown months earlier, tended, gathered, cleaned, packed, made beautiful for New York shoppers who've seen it all. At the end of the market day, back it goes, back they go. Long day, New York traffic. 

I don't know what the profit margin is or how real farmers survive. The produce is not cheap - it can't be. It's much more expensive than what you'd pay in a nearby store for similar (looking) and seasonless produce shipped hundreds or thousands of miles, and it's about double to triple what the equivalent quality would cost in markets in Europe. 

I think a lot about food. How it is grown. How to grow it. Who grows it. Who harvests it. Who eats it. How little so many people know about the food they eat. How it is eaten. Who gets to eat it. How much of it there is, in the world. How obscene it is that it is kept from people by other people, who have the power to prevent death by famine. 

This okra and these aubergines were very pretty.

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