Here we go again

Evenings are edging permanently outdoors again and are loud with surround-sound robins. Our new mockingbirds (what happened to the old ones?) have learned to fetch their blueberries from a small dish while we have drinks outside but before the table is ready for supper. They outrage the cat, who tells us they would be lovely on toast. The birds, not the berries.

Perennials are reappearing in pots, with asters, agastache and calamintha returning as if Arctic temperatures and feet of snow never happened. Ferns have unfurled. Ramps are leafy beneath them, with foam flower and an unidentified, tiny blue violet. Meadow rue's stems are growing tall.

The wraparound laundry roof is still there, for now, but changes are already afoot. The development of a very large building has been approved, so our remaining days here are almost tangibly numbered. 

But, for now, it is spring.

Cherry blossom, indoors and out

Kanzan cherry blossoms, bought in bud from the corner store (Mr. Kiwi, a bustling hub that never closes), and now open at last. Beyond these walls and windows, the city is dripping with them, their petals chilly today after a very strange week that soared into the nineties before thundering on Friday into a storm and dropping to today's high of just below 50 degrees. 

Corner stores. Whenever we think about living somewhere else, we think of the things we don't think about. Like walking around the corner to buy milk at 9pm. Or our favorite bar soap or organic eggs. How is it to get into a car every time you need something? I mean, we have a car, and she is the only thing of value that we own, but she is reserved for Adventure. (Yes, she is a she.)

I posted some of our local ornamental cherry blossoms to Gardenista, photographed over two days. 

Ramps bring spring

In leaf-littered deciduous woodlands, and on warm slopes, the ramps are rising. Allium tricoccum, harbinger of a native spring. Often the only green thing on the brown forest floor. 

While they can grow wall-to-wall where they are prolific, commercial over-harvesting of wild populations has threatened ramps in some locations. In the wild, I collect a small handful of bulbs, and focus instead on the leaves, a practise I began...Hm. Maybe six years ago?

And I grow them, too, in pots, where they are remarkably resilient, weathering and surviving the brutal freeze-thaw that turns many bulbs to mush.

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It has begun

Just yesterday I said that our native spring is weeks away. What was I thinking? Today I saw this beautiful silver maple (Acer saccharinum) in bloom. And red maples have just begun, and I'd forgotten about an American elm tree I passed late in the afternoon, it's tenderly thready tassels shimmying in a cold breeze.

So, you see, it is here.

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Spring Walks and Picnics

Inside

On the Monday after the late February blizzard (which was Sunday the 22nd into Monday the 23rd), we walked in the woods of Prospect Park, where all the shrubs, and many trees, were bent into taught bows by the heavy, beautiful, relentless snow. Big trees were down. 

I beat slender spicebush branches free, watching them snap upright. And I noted broken branches, all around. The next day I went back, armed with sharp Felco pruners, and wading through more snow to clip the broken arms of forsythia while life was still in them. That was over two weeks ago. Now the budded branches are in bloom.

Also, weeks ahead of planted daffodils (some now in bud), corner-store flowers - at $5/bunch - add bright courage to our lives.

 Supper for a friend last night meant spring flowers on every surface.

Real, native spring, is weeks away. 

The embroidered napkins - made by a friend - seemed appropriate.

Some of supper was also yellow: a lamb shoulder, slow-cooked with saffron and cardamom and bay leaves form our tree, with turmeric rice and raisins, and an avgolemono sauce. A vegetable adobo on the side. An arugula salad singing with ginger. And baked apples for dessert.

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Spring Walks are Here

Morse

Meet Morse Jones. They're a groundhog (he/she, we don't know). Morse, for obvious reasons, and Jones, because since the pandemic's worst days, when Green-Wood's side gates first opened permanently to the community, we have been calling a family of groundhogs that emanates from a burrow nearby The Joneses. 

Morse is very pleased with the grass situation, currently. Nice and tender.

Morse has been sending SOS's into the ether, but we're not sure any help is coming.

Peonies, two ways

On Monday I bought pink peonies in tight bud. $15 for three stems. Around the corner they are $20, and fully blown. Walking an extra 10 minutes gives me more days of flowers and money to spare. I photographed them today, Wednesday, in the evening. They have opened and smell exactly like roses.

I moved their vase to the stone table for our supper. After supper, they stay out on the terrace in the cool evening and cooler night, so they last a little longer. It's warmer indoors, and we're probably still a few weeks away - I hope - from succumbing to central air. 

Early in the month, when we had a brief heat wave, we closed all the windows and turned on that chilled air, and felt coccooned and shut off. It's better now, with open windows and doors, a through-draft, air clogged with pollen, and the singing of robins and mockingbirds, the warning of the kestrel, and the black headed gulls cracking hilarious jokes as they fly high above us, their voices beneath the jets and the choppers and the trucks and modified cars that ride like gunshots down the street.

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Outside, now

Evenings have moved outdoors, again, and if we are very lucky, Pirelli joins us. 

Beyond the terrace the horse chestnuts are in bloom, and all around us black locust* trees are dripping with scented white flowers. At flower sellers outside bodegas,  bucketsful of peonies have replaced cold-weather tulips.

Black locust is North American Robinia pseudoacacia. In New York it is a sturdy street tree, and very welcome to bees and foragers. 

Behind the cat and the man, the calamondin tree is loaded. Today, the little, aromatic and very sour fruit will be picked, halved, and laid in salt. 

Feral Goddess Dressing

A posy of garlic mustard. One of its common names in the UK is sauce alone. Which gives one ideas...

I was reminded of green goddess dressing by Winner, a local restaurant where we sometimes order a chicken dinner on nights when I have been preparing a multi-course picnic all day, for a plant walk the following day. Their rotisserie bird comes with a slew of sauce-choices, and their green goddess is one of the best. 

Adding invasive plants and handful of ramp leaves turns it feral: tingling and singing and vibrating with fresh green herbs.

You'll find my recipe here, for Gardenista: Feral Goddess Dressing - Rewilding a California Classic.

...or just pour it in a tall glass and drink it through a straw!

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My Books

The ramps have risen!

The ramps on the tiny terrace have broken their long hibernation. They made flowers last year, in summer, long after their leaves had disappeared in the heat. Several seeds formed and matured and I dug them back in. I wonder if they will germinate?

It takes around, give-or-take, roughly, approximately, more or less, seven years for a ramp grown from seed to be able to make its own flowers, and seeds. 

Don't encourage vendors to sell mountains of ramps. Do ask them to sell ramp leaves only. They can be packaged just like delicate leaves like chicories and salad. And do soak some of the rooted plants overnight before planting them in pots or in the soil where they will get spring sunlight and summer shade. They are an Eastern US native, and appreciate cold winters. Compost, leaf litter, and slightly acidic soil help, too. But mine just grow in potting soil, with some of their woodland neighbors. 

Many of my overwintered bulbs did not make it and turned to mush: lilies, alliums (the ornamental kind).  It's not the cold that bothers them, but a repeat freeze-thaw cycle, and wet feet. Ramps like wet feet, for a bit. And here they are.

Read all about how to grow ramps in this story. And what ramp habitat looks like in spot we visist every spring, in the Catskills.

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Who said clouds were lonely?

A host. A host, I tell you! 

The daffodils have opened in Prospect Park.

Seeing red?

"But why make it pink?" asked my faraway friend Bevan, crossly, via WhatsApp, after I sent him a picture of this beet hummus. "And why the sumac?" he continued. 

"It is pretty," he conceded.

Bevan is a purist.

My answer, unsent, is:"Why the hell not?" Also, he's living with a crisis in Turkey, which can make anyone short-tempered.

The real reasons to make beet hummus include, but are not limited to: 

1. It IS pretty! We need beauty, and if we can eat it, and smile at its ephemeral pleasure, let's do that.

2. I am seeing red and I'd rather be creative about it than burst my heart. Speaking of hearts - the raw as well as cooked beets in this hummus are loaded with nitrates, which dilate blood vessels and potentially lower blood pressure and improve oxygen uptake (good for all of us, and especially athletes). Beets are heart healthy.

3. Combined with the high-fibre chickpeas in hummus, the extra fibre in the beets load this dip-spread with that essential aspect of nutrition that so many Americans lack. 

4. Antioxidants! Lots. Which means anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is has been accused of my bad health associations than I can name, here.

5. Flavor. Perhaps that's the only argument. The sweetly earthy flavor of beets is wonderful with the garlic-singing smoothness of the chickpeas.

6. Spring. Put this beet hummus on platter with petals and pretty leaves. 

7. It's quick. It's filling. It's beautiful. It's nutritious.

The recipe is up on Gardenista: A Petal Party Platter for Spring.

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Walk with Me

Forage walks for spring

New spring Plant Walks and Forage Picnics are ready. Find them and book your tickets via the link.

Pictured above? Bloodroot, and ephemeral native wildflower, doing battle with English ivy. Who are your rooting for (sorry...)?

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Bud break

 

Cloudy days, but on Saturday we went for a long walk in the park (Prospect Park). A milestone walk, because, at five miles, door to door, it was the longest stroll for me since early December, when I began to take some serious foot pain seriously and had to simply stop. Walking. I don't know what injured the plantar fascia muscles, but it's been a steep and then very long and dauntingly gradual learning curve and recovery process. I mean, I had to join a gym! For cardio exercise that didn't involve weight-bearing. 

Blablabla. So this walk, albeit not at my usual pace, which is fast, was a test. It seemed to go A-OK. No pain the day after. It's mending.

Plus, there were pre-spring blossoms. Prunus x subhirtella always startles everyone by flowering in early winter, and then again in very early spring (which is less alarming). It's the first cherry blossom of the year, always. The fat, frilly Kanzan's are still about six weeks away.

Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) blossoms are about to erupt. In September their tart red fruits will be ripe.

Native spicebush  (Lindera benzoin) has fat round buds.

Hazel (species?) - the pollen-laden male catkins with the tiny red female flower above.

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Daffodil hour

The Frenchman's birthday daffodils ablaze in the early afternoon sunlight, now bright through the skylight as that medium-size star climbs higher and higher in the pre-spring sky.

These were the first daffodils I have seen sold locally, and that means we'll have them for the next couple of months. In parks and gardens, they are already in bud, but still tightly closed.

Cherry blossoms

On the Vernal Equinox I walked in Green-Wood Cemetery under a high, racing sky and patchy cloud. In an early-blooming cherry, some house finches were very busy.

If you taste a cherry blossom, it is very bitter. But after a few seconds the flavor turns to marzipan. Perhaps finches like marzipan. Or the effects of prussic acid? How much is in a finch-sized blossom-dose?

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New Walks and Picnic

 

How to revive lilacs

Lilacs, waiting for friends to come to Friday supper. 

I bought the bunches at the Union Square farmers market on Wednesday, and, true-to-lilac-form, they wilted fast. Yesterday, to try and save my investment, I re-cut them, removed all the greenery, and submerged them entirely in a deep basin of water for about three hours. They perked up! Then, post supper-prep, I cruised the neighborhood, where the first roses have begun to open, and picked up some wonderful fruit tarts (Ladybird Bakery), an outstanding baguette (Winner NYC),  cold wine (Big Nose, Full Body), and locally-made gin (Windsor Wine Merchants).

Thank you, Brooklyn.

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@marie_viljoen

 

May Day

On May Day, when the spoiled citizens of France took to their streets to protest their president's decree that they should retire at the age of 64, and not 62, I walked in the woods at the northwestern tip of Manhattan. 

It had rained all weekend, and in the old hills, untouched by the grid that flattened so much of the island, water was running, everywhere.

I visited a vast nettle patch and collected a bagful to blanch and freeze, for tarts and breads and biscuits and as-yet-uncreated mid-spring stews. Field garlic was at its fattest, too, and easy to pull from the sodden soil.

On logs obscured by fallen branches, in swathes of Japanese knotweed and emergent jewelweed, wood ears proliferated.

I saw a small handful of other people, mostly women, jogging, and walking, and the sounds that surrounded us for two hours were running water and singing birds. 

As I left a man placed his large backpack on a rock in the forest and unpacked it, possibly to spend the day in contemplation of the million shades of spring green. But as I walked down my last hill I heard from his rock the fatal sound of flat bleating. The peace was shattered by his sack of bagpipes, playing a penetrating flaccid scale, each ascending note more defeated than the last. 

My timing had been perfect.

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Saturday in the city

Summer Saturdays have a rhythm. Well, one of two: One - much faster - would be a plant walk with last-minute picnic prep. But on Saturdays when I am free, they begin with a coffee on the terrace, where I sit and look at plants. Then it's a bicycle ride to the farmers market at Grand Army Plaza. I fill my basket with more plants (the edible sort), and come home. Stash everything. Escape to a park (to see plants) with the Frenchman, and come home to think about supper, which will be informed by whatever the market yielded. (Yesterday we came home a little faster than usual because our chosen park on Staten Island was swarmed by lanternfly nymphs. It was also parched.)

Warm-evening drinks are tall and cool. This one is perfumed by candied yuzu, made late last year with the few fruit from my tree, and fresh Meyer lemon. An ounce of mezcal, a lot of tonic water, and a splash of gingerbeer (both Fever Tree). Smoky, citrussy, bittersweet.

The terrace lights come on. All the Silk Road lilies are now open. I light a fire to grill the first ears of corn we have eaten this year.

Indoors, the rest of supper is cooking. A market curry, with a base of ginger and green garlic, coconut milk, and a dash of fish sauce. To which I add a flock of tender summer squash, and dried daylily flowers (read all about those in Forage, Harvest, Feast - A Wild-Inspired Cuisine). The dried flowers plump up and become silky, thickening the gravy. I squeeze in some lemon juice and stir it in with a pinch of sugar. Just before we eat, I will add a bouquet of squash blossoms. It's a riff on my zucchini and daylily curry recipe.

It has been very dry for the last few weeks, and I worry about this summer's rain-reliant crops. Will the corn stay plump enough? Our corn fixings include (to be added in this order): butter, curry powder, Aleppo pepper, lemon for squeezing, and microplaned parmesan. As exceptionally odd as that all sounds, it works.

No, I don't eat corn with a fork. I used it for scooping cheese!

As we eat a gang of herons flies above us, high, and north. I have never seen herons in a gang. Are they dry, too? I think drought is coming.

The Chicago glasses. Bought many years ago at a thrift store in that city.

By now it is almost dark, and the curry has arrived, the squash silky and soft, the sauce reduced, the blossoms wilted across the top. We use forks and spoons, to scoop up the last drops.

After supper, I pickle the baby cucumbers that have been sitting in salt in the fridge (this makes them crisp). And eat many of the apricots I was supposed to jam. They are so sweet. I am lucky: The same seller (Williams Fruit Farms) will be at our corner greenmarket on Sunday. I can re-stock.

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Cook Wildly

Spring's best trees

Umbrella magnolia are in bloom.

Historic Green-Wood Cemetery is an accredited arboretum and home to some of the oldest and most beautiful trees in New York City. Our proximity to this beautiful, huge green space was not something we appreciated when we signed the lease on our current apartment. We lucked out. Although Prospect Park is also very close by, Green-Wood's tranquility is quite different. It is quiet, clean, and its grass is the best for lying upside-down on.

I wrote about (some of) Green-Wood's trees in spring for Gardenista. 

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June 16th, Alley Pond Park Walk