My Tiny Garden

I had no idea till now that our Harlem terrace provided the cover for Lucy Anna Scott's new book, My Tiny Garden. The black diagonal lower left is the bird feeder - it got in the way of a lot of my own photos. But how sweet to see the Harlem birds and scarlet runner beans, months - it feels like years -  after that space has been taken apart.

Lucy and photographer Jon Cardwell visited the Frenchman and me last year, and stayed for dinner (above) on the terrace. Apparently the birds cooperated.

I've been lucky to have had both our New York gardens immortalized in print (the Cobble Hill terrace has featured in several books and magazines). The pleasure I take in these spaces is intense, but of course transitory, subject to the whims of real estate and New York rental life. Lots of heartbreak when they are demolished, but so much joy when we live in them.

I don't know how long we will be in our current space in Carroll Gardens, or how this garden will look at its best. I have seen it only in my head, which is where all garden dreams begin.

We shall see.

 ________________________________________

Book a Spring Forage Walk

Limbo

10 August 2015

Just before the July 4th weekend Vince greeted me at the terrace door (bottom right of both images, if you are curious). I was on the terrace, gardening.

He looked at me. I have bad news, he said. He meant it. I was very quiet. There was some silence. Then he said, Graham is not renewing our lease. I looked at him some more. You're joking, I said. 

But he wasn't.

It was a bad time.

That seems a lifetime away. Then, it was flat out panic. But we are now six weeks out, and four days from decampment.

Everyone currently in the building is moving out.

Half our belongings are sitting in an empty apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Beyond its kitchen door a wide open, empty backyard waits for us. A quiet, tree-filled street is at the front, singing with cicadas. 

The Harlem terrace is being taken apart, piece by piece. Compare top and bottom. The wooden planters have been emptied of plants. The tall jewelweed thickets have been cut down and pulled out. The herbs have been transplanted and carted to Brooklyn. In the next few days the birch pole screen will be dismantled and the beans removed.

14 July 2015

Don't tell me that change is good. Change is just change. Don't tell me that things are meant to be. Nothing is meant to be. Things just are. Because of things that came before, because of decisions that people make. Consequences.

We will make the best of it because that is what one does. And the package of what is to come is a good package, all things considered. A beautiful neighborhood, a peaceful street, no construction in the building, no drummers. (But there is a principal ballet dancer on the top floor - does he jeté across the room in the late mornings?)

We are glad to be leaving the noise and tension of this apartment. We are glad to leave the fights on this street, the screaming motorcycle gangs, the worry about the random gunshot. I will miss the friendly neighbors on the stoops, saying, Hi, how you doing? I will miss the easy compliments and banter of the neighborhood men, who manage never to be creepy. I will miss the Tuesday night gospel choir practises and the rocking Sunday services. 

I will miss the cheap quails eggs at the supermarket on Lenox Avenue (I think they will miss me too - I bought all of them!), and the friendly wine shop staff at the new store on 125th. I will miss the proximity to Central Park's North Woods  in every season, and the Conservatory Garden, and I will miss the quick subway ride to Inwood Hill park. I will not miss the summer squallor of Marcus Garvey Park's hill, its propositioning lurkers, the flasher, the gunshots and the drugs. I will not miss the casual racism on the street. I will not miss the weekend hatemongering preachers on the corner of 125th and Lenox. I will not miss the terrible sign above the church of ATLAH.

I will miss the diversity and the effortless courtesy of doors opening, and opened. I will miss being called honey by women I do not know and I will miss the song of hm, hm, hm. 

I will miss the high ceilings and tall windows of our apartment. I will not miss hysterically high electrical heating bills and the frigid winters.

I learned to bake sourdough here, to make cheese, and to blend vermouth and fizzy wild flower ferments. I last saw my cat here.  

I will not miss the terrible stove. 

I will miss the terrace and its weather. I will miss the lady yelling at me from her apartment across the way that my barbecue smells good. I will miss the cool-season, open-window belly-laughter of the Hyena Man who watches TV on a giant screen, and I will miss the virtuoso tunes of the Whistling Man, who lives nearby.

I will miss the doves, the red house finches, the single cormorant flying east every evening. I will miss the robin's song which lulled me to sleep on noisy nights.

Knowing a place takes time. Plotting the sun, reading the light, learning the birds, recognizing the voices. I like to walk a regular path. To see a shrub in all its seasons.

I have become attached, and have always resented letting go.

Close the book.

[Curiously - predictably - there is another Limbo post: October 2013, the month we moved to Harlem.]

Harlem nights

In summer the Harlem terrace is deserted from midday till late afternoon, while the sun blazes down. By 5 o' clock the shade has arrived, cast by the tall building to our west, and I emerge to water the pots, often with a drink in hand.

While we are packing for our move I am consolidating all of my foraged infusions and cordials, so last night's drink took shape from a collection of crimson dregs: wild black cherry cordial (fizzy, with a hint of bitterness), sloe gin, and my second vermouth blend, Northeast #2, as it is known in these parts - lots of botanicals, including local bayberry, spicebush, sumac and super-invasive but essential mugwort (yep, Artemisia is an important ingredient in Noilly Prat!). So, those, with loads of ice, a twist of Thai basil from the terrace and a squirt of tonic water. Good.

I picked the hostas, as the flowers may be damaged in the move. They smell wonderful (the cultivar is 'Royal Standard'). The salad is figs, local tomatoes and quick-pickled Persian cucumber slices with pea sprouts and terrace basil. The vinegar is wisteria blossom, the last of the 2014 batch.

I bought some local beef short ribs from Harlem Shambles as a treat, and grilled them over coals after marinating in black soy sauce, lime juice and some mugwort leaves. After they had rested we sliced them from the bones and wrapped each bite in either a shiso leaf (terrace), or American burnweed leaf (Erechtites hieraciifolius, foraged, and the larger leaves on the platter). Interestingly - he is the perennial guinea pig - the Frenchman much preferred the burnweed, which has an amazing affinity for the flavours of southeastern and eastern Asia. It's a little like cross between culantro (Eryngium foetidum - also in the family Asteraceae) and  the better-known cilantro.

Lately, we eat on tin plates and drink from mismatched glasses. I am paring down the kitchen and packing it away. Soon, it will be like camping, as today I pack the cookware, and we will be down to grilling outside and one pan (cast iron, of course) if it rains and we are chased indoors.

Late summer light

Our twilight is reflected from the tall wall of the building on our terrace's eastern edge. The sinking western sun is hidden from us by more buildings, but bounces down to make the terrace a strange pink in the late August evenings.

The Nicotiana mutabilis are very tall, now, and speak unexpectedly to the pinks and apricot of the Agastache 'Acapulco,' also planted for pollinators and hummingbirds. Honey bees still besiege the calamintha, and when they leave, a single firefly blinks in the dying light.

Tomatoes are often on the menu, now. Stuffed here with rice and dill and little bits of leftover lamb (the lamb-less version is in my book). In the glasses, very cold prosecco with sliced white peaches from the tiny but excellent farmers market on Lenox and  West 118th.

We still save up stories from our days, for supper conversation. The Frenchman tells me about The Man with the Dog, The Man in the Suit, and The Tide of Construction Workers - all regular and developing themes from his Harlem-Empire State Building subway commute.

Nights are hot, but the terrace always seems cooler. While we eat we listen to the small yapping dog whose location we have never been able to pinpoint. Occasionally, in the last few weeks, there is an eruption of angry shouting from the homeless shelter across the way. It used to be very quiet, but something has changed - new management, I think. We wait for Korean Air's Airbus A380 to lumber overhead, on initial approach to JFK - its wide wings and massive tail are unmistakeable at 13,000 feet. And sometimes the American kestrel perches at the top of the homeless shelter's fire escape and scans for careless pigeons.

City life. Day in, day out.

Harlem Alpines

The Alpine strawberries keep strawberrying. Luckily, the squirrels are not interested in them, despite their strong and delicious perfume (the strawberries', not the squirrels'). If you have the space for a long row, plant them, and gather more than my twice-weekly breakfast handful from three small, six-inch pots.

Two of these tough little plants survived our last winter, and one grew from seed, from last year's dropped fruit. They were puny in April and are now plush and prolific (p-p-p-p!).

Off topic: Tomorrow is the last day to enter the giveaway of my book on Amazon (call it a goodbye Harlem, hello Brooklyn gesture). There will be two winners. If you are a US resident, head over there if you'd like to try your luck.

[Update: whoops, both prizes have been claimed - that was quick. Hopefully I can do another in the fall.]

No plant left behind

One of the herbs planted in the built-in wooden boxes on the edge of the Harlem terrace is Calamintha nepeta.  It has been planted in my city gardens ever since I learned how long-blooming it is: few perennials will flower from June till frost.

Honey bees and other insects love the tiny white flowers.

The leaves are intensely minty, and the cut stems last well in water. The plant tolerates some drought, and loathes to have wet feet. Here, it receives only four hours of direct sun, and it has grown huge. The specimen above traveled with us from Brooklyn in late 2013, and it is now going...all the way back (we just signed a lease on a garden apartment in Carroll Gardens). I have transplanted it and another into a galvanized bucket. Calamintha, on the move.

So - there is the same wooden planter, empty of perennials ( we are still eating the parsley), and there are the two calaminthas on the deck, waiting for moving day. The bees do not mind the change in elevation. But in a week or two they will be buzzing hungrily.

How we move those tall Nicotiana mutabilis without snapping them is another story. Tears before bedtime.

The buckets. Why? They are quite cheap, and they are light. And I find them inoffensive aesthetically, once the stickers are off. Much better than plastic, and lighter and cheaper than terra cotta. I am worried about moving-weight for the big terra cotta pots. In our new place we may want to house plants for a while in their containers while we settle in, and I won't mind looking at galvanized metal.

There's a hole in my bucket, dear... All the buckets need to keep plants happy is a drainage hole. Easily achieved with a hammer and a pointy thing. This unscrewable hammer with smaller screwdriver heads within the handle is the kind of tool that makes real craftspeople wince. But I've used this one for about 15 years and I refuse to be shamed. The smallest screwdriver head makes the hole and the larger ones wiggle it wider.

I'd have made an excellent caveperson. As long as people let me stay in my cave until I was ready to leave.

Changeable

I did not know, in May, when I ordered statuesque annuals whose growth peaks in late summer, that we would have to move in August. Lock, stock, and smoking terra cotta.

After last winter killed off all our boxwoods and a blueberry I decided to fill their big pots with annuals, this year. Less expensive. But I wanted height, a presence. Last year's purchased (Seedman) Nicotiana mutabilis seed's enjoyed a 100% germination failure rate, and this year I found these, from Annie's Annuals. A garden design client had asked about ordering plants online and I - a devotee of local garden shops and growers - was disparaging about quality, before I thought I should investigate further. So I guinea pigged myself.

These four inch pots arrived in early May, their soil still damp with Bay Area water, and held in place with ingenious covers and elastic bands and cardboard separators. 

A few of the large, fragile leaves were broken, but I repotted the plants right away, watered them well, and within a couple of weeks they had doubled in size. Their lowest leaves are now over two feet in length, and the most advanced plant is taller than I am. Internet plants get the green light. At least, these do.

The buds open white.

A pale blush begins in the flower.

...and after another day there is rose. 

I had fallen in love with this nicotiana after seeing a clump of them in my mother's Cape Town garden, backlit in the dawn light of a jetlagged morning and subsequently at the BBG.

The subsidiary flower stems grow longer, and cantilever over the broad leaves below.

At night they are lightly scented.

Apart from their vertical interest and fat tropical stricture on the Harlem terrace they are also meant to lure hummingbirds. Like the jewelweed, the agastache, the blablabla.

The smaller, green Nicotiana langsdorfii seeded freely from last year's planting, but - curiously - not a single N. sylvestris came up. Many seeds must have been shed last summer, despite my deadheading.

For now, the tall tobacco plants behave as they did in my spring dreams.

Tall, delicate. Magnets for large bees.

Subject to change.

Reverse

Leaning out and extending an arm I can take a side view picture of the bean screen.  The gloriosa lilies (Gloriosa superbum) planted in late spring at the base of the birch poles rocketed straight up and over the top, and have been in bloom for three long weeks. They are natural ramblers, indigenous to the understoreys of the southeastern coast of South Africa and parts farther north.

Above: this was how it looked in May, with emerging seedlings and shoots hidden under pots from the digging squirrel.

In previous years I lost the long gloriosa tubers to the rot caused by the freeze-thaw cycle. So late last fall I dug them up and they overwintered with some forbidden peatmoss in unzipped ziplock bags in our cold (c-c-c-c-cold) bedroom, near a leaky window (extra c-c-c-cold). (The real lilies - Lilium formosanum, and 'Silk Road' overwintered in the crisper drawer in the fridge.)

The gloriosas must be unearthed soon, in their prime, for our move. I will have to repot them in something portable, and very awkwardly, given their size. They need to keep growing for the leaves to feed the tubers for next season's performance. The frustrating thing is that they will be making new tubers, too, and I think the upheaval will mean that all this activity turns to toast.

The beans are doomed. Unplanting and saving them for a yet-to-be-found garden space would be Sisyphean. They were planted in May:

The scarlet runners have made flowers but no beans yet, and the lablabs we will not see. But we have enjoyed several crops of the purple pole beans ('Trionfo Violetto,' from Botanical Interests). And I am leaving some very fat pods to save seeds for a future I can't imagine, from where I sit right now.

Below,  a quick-pickled beet Caprese with buffalo mozzarella, Persian cucumbers and straight-up pole beans.

Our upstairs neighbor, Wolfgang, will take pictures of the terrace with us on it next week, and I will ask for another one when it is empty. The contrast will be interesting. He works in black and white only, which is how I feel.  He too, has not had his lease renewed.  It has been good to share space with him. My sourdough baking was inspired by feeding his starter while he traveled, and we have lapped up a few bottles of his own olive oil, pressed in Italy from his own olive trees (they are sick, this year, and their future, too, is uncertain).

So that's the bean screen scene.

No tigers in the rain

At least the plants have no idea what's coming. They liked the sudden rain.

I am not a tropical plant person. Does anyone know what these are? They have been living indoors but I put them out for the shower.

[Thank you, Kath (comments): Maranta leuconeura, prayer plant - and they do hold their leaves upright at night. From Brazil.]

To move a garden

This morning's crops. The nasturtiums have just begun to bloom - they are growing in the built-in wooden planters, with the beans. Neither will make the move with us. The three Alpine strawberry plants are in pots, and are portable. Two came up from self-sown seed, and one survived the last, hard winter.

Soon, I must cut down the three beans (scarlet runner, lablab and purple pole - about 10 plants), planted in May, so that I can take down the birch pole screen. The lablabs have not begun to bloom yet - their peak is from late August.

This snail vine, grown from seed my mom sent from her vine, was growing in the wooden planters but I transplanted it and its friends as soon as I heard we had lost our lease. No snail vine left behind.

The gloriosa lilies will have to be unplanted very carefully. Their tubers are about 10" long and breakable, and they are at their peak of bloom. Not a good time to disturb them.

The annual jewelweed (Impatiens capensis), which has just begun to flower, and planted to attract hummingbirds, as it did last year, will not move with us. I will cut it down, soon. It is very tall now - 4', and will move poorly: the pots are very big, so I may empty the soil for easier carrying.

The lilies that share space with the jewelweed will have to be planted temporarily in smaller pots, so that their leaves can continue to feed the bulbs for next year.

The cardinal vines grown from seed will only bloom in late September and I'd like to bring one or two, so I managed to untrain them and this Roguchi clematis from their wire screen over the skylight and re-train them onto a bamboo teepee in a pot. The cardinal vines were also planted for hummingbirds (maybe we should leave a forwarding GPS coordinate for them?).

News will come in sporadic bursts. I am not brimming over with warm, fuzzy feelings.

In flux

Best friends invited themselves for dinner. Since it will perhaps be the last friends' supper on our Harlem terrace I asked our Lovely Upstairs Neighbor and The Diplomat's Son to join us. We ate knotweed and field garlic flower pickles, ginger ale ham and herby poatoes, drank Champagne, exchanged war stories and caught the unmistakeable odor of dead rat inbetween gusts of lily perfume. It seemed appropriate.

This morning I picked a handful of Alpine strawberries. They were my breakfast.

Then I gathered some Trionfo Violetto beans from the beanscreen, and began making a bamboo teepee for some climbers currently attached to the railings around the skylight. I snipped the cardinal vine clear and detached the Roguchi clematis, unplanting their room-mate rose in the process and giving it a new pot. Now, hopefully, the climbers can move with us. If we move to a space with sun. We just don't know, yet.

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   Book a Botanical Summer Walk

How it is

With a move and uncertainty in our near future, I have no garden captions to provide. I flip between optimism and panic several times a day. Nights are worse. In the evenings the Frenchman and I eat out here and I try not to talk about the garden. He works under such pressure daily that this unexpected move is actually worse for him. But we laugh sometimes, and often we hear Don Estorbo's boice joining the conbersation, from either heaven or hell, depending on where they have sent him that day (he spends a lot of time in the elevator).

Yes. It helps to be a little bit mad.

Last night we watched fire flies, and laughed every time one lit up.

The purple beans are working hard.

We'll have friends over for supper tomorrow, probably for the last time. 

And I'll be at beautiful Wave Hill at 1pm on Satuday, talking about Northeastern flavors and books. There will be a herb walk and a book signing. I hope to bring along some wild botanical cordials - if you drink them up there will be fewer to carry when we move!