Harlem Terrace in The Times

Harlem Terrace. Photo by Pablo Enriquez, for The New York Times

In June we were visited by Anne Raver, whose gardening stories have been a fixture for so long in The New York Times. Her article about our terrace is in today's print edition, and you can read it online: A City Garden in Harlem is on the Move to Brooklyn.  (Naturally, when we learned that we had to move, the story's angle shifted, a little!)

New York Times book review, and the open road

From 66 Square Feet - A Delicious Life

I was very pleased to learn that 66 Square Feet - A Delicious Life was included in a New York Times review of holiday books today.

It's funny, I feel very protective of the book, as though it is something that has nothing to do with me. I am very glad to see it begin to stand on its own, albeit in good company.

We leave Cape Town now, for a few days, to head up the south coast, towards oysters and blue lagoons and forested hills and ditches filled with Helichrysum, whose scent brings the pale shadows of childhood memories to stand beside the road to watch us pass, so many years later.

See you on the other side...

Maitake's 15 seconds

Cultivated maitake (hen of the woods, Grifola frondosa)

On Friday my little maitake (hen of the woods) segment for Last Chance Foods aired on WNYC. Here is Joy Wang's article to accompany the show - Joy is the creator and producer of the program, hosted by Amy Eddings. I admit to being quite starry eyed whenever I walk into the WNYC studios: my little faux-retro kitchen radio is tuned to NPR all day, every day.

Wild maitake

You can also click through to my wild mushroom pizza  recipe on the WNYC website. It features my book's December chapter,  in that end-of year vegetarian menu finale.

To round it all up, is Amy's Food for Thought -  her take on the mushroomy show.

The maitake pâté recipe is just up, next door, at 66 Square Feet (the Food). 

Cherry blossom at the BBG

The main, Kanzan cherry, event is not happening yet, at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. They are in bud.

But I think their blooming coincide pretty perfectly with the scheduled cherry blossom festival - Sakura Matsuri - this weekend. That timing is a coup for the garden, as the festival is planned eons in advance and must sometimes go ahead well before or after peak bloom, which varies from year to year, and cannot be timed perfectly.

Personally, I prefer the cherries without all the people, but if you're into Entertainment with a capital E, go. It's quite something. If only to see the characters who dress up in the guise of their favourite Anime characters for a competition which is taken very seriously.

I may return next week, or try and time a visit for when the petals have all  fallen, making a pink carpet.

This week the earlier cultivars are in bloom, and are very pretty.

I was really there to look at the kitchen in the new and very impressive visitors' center. I am weighing whether to do a cooking class there in the fall. It has been presented as an option, and I have wanted to do a sort of forager's table, or farmer's market table, for quite a long time. I could even cook a menu from my book. It will be an enormous amount of prep work, and, knowing me, I will be fretting about it weeks in advance. I obsess. So I need to think about it. Fast and hard.

Here, native Mertensia virginica - Virginia bluebells - hold their own in the company of the imported, media-friendly crowd of cherries.

 It's a beautiful garden. I know it well. But it does not fail to impress.

The Terrace in House and Leisure

House and Leisure's homepage

My mother was the food editor of House and Leisure, a glossy South African magazine, in the 90's. She cooked, she styled the food, she wrote the recipes. I still have all the editions with her food inside, right here in Brooklyn. If anyone was going to write a book, it should have been she.

Anyway, House and Leisure contacted me a little while ago and asked for an interview about my gardening life in New York, and the result is now on their very good looking website. Also some new pictures - a sneak peak at the book to come, and a little bit more about 66 Square Feet, the book.

I am acutely and guiltily aware that to regular readers of this blog, some of the information 'revealed' in the interview is probably becoming rather repetitive.

"We KNOW she met her husband through her blog. We KNOW she got the damn whooping cough. We KNOW she has a darn fig tree! Bla bla bla."

(Sorry!)

But I am asked the same questions, because not everyone knows, and so I have to answer them. I will change the tune as fast as I can, I promise. I would prefer never to mention whooping cough again Really. Boring.  It's my fault for having such an...er...unusual career path.

But there is some fresh content, too, I promise, and if for nothing else, go and look at the pictures. I like them! Also surf around the House and Leisure website. South African magazines are awfully well put together in my opinion.

Here's the interview:

A New York Terrace

The Fuss about Foraging

In the linked post Brian Haliwell, the publisher of Edible Brooklyn, Edible Manhattan and Edible East End (phew!) addresses the current media storm in a mushroom bag regarding urban foraging.

The New York Times and 66 Square Feet

Randy Harris for The New York Times

While I was putting the finishing touches to supper last night (caramelized pork ribs and shiso and a spicy salad), I realized that the New York Times article about us and the terrace had gone live on their site. The article appears in print in today's edition of the newspaper.

Penelope Green wrote about two tiny New York garden spaces. She wrote about us and the cat and the garden and the book-in-progress. She wrote beautifully. Also, she wrote very generously, and very kindly. In a way holding me to a standard to which I aspire. It was humbling.

It's hard to know what else to say. Except, thank you.

Martha Stewart Blogger Gardens

Photo: Juliana Sohn

Here's a slideshow of the blogger gardens in the story that also features 66 Square Feet in Martha Stewart Living's March 2012 edition.

Martha Stewart Living and 66 Square Feet

At last I may spill the beans: The all-gardening March edition of Martha Stewart Living Magazine, edited by gardening director Stephen Orr, is on newsstands now and in it you will find 66 Square Feet! I feel very lucky.

And having just arrived Stateside I still look forward to getting my paws on a copy.

Photographer Juliana Sohn shot the images, perched calmly on a tall ladder on the roof (and while she worked I learned that her mother is an experienced - and secretive -  forager). Stephen, below left, directed the proceedings and Estorbo, Vince and I tried not to get in the way unless we were asked to pose. Feta was drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with crushed thyme (hmm, I'm getting hungry, jet lag makes me want lunch now. Why did I not bring the Koringberg olives back with me? Stupid.), pickled wild garlic was tasted and served,  and serviceberry cocktails were poured - they may have been sipped, too. And if this wasn't all exciting enough, I believe they will be featured in a new iPad and iPhone cocktail app.

If anyone was amazed that a tall Frenchman and South African and a long cat could all live in this tiny space, no one said so.

And perhaps that is part of the point?

Food, flowers, friends. That is the recipe. They can all be mixed in a very small bowl.

Serve to anyone willing to be pleased.

You can buy this second all-gardening edition of Martha Stewart Living on newsstands, or purchase a digital edition for iPads online.

The Litter Mob in the New York Times

Rainbow condom in Prospect Park's Midwood. In the picture, Uli Seit of The Times

I'm sorry about but the picture, but, well, it is what it is.

The story of our litter pick up in Prospect Park is in today's New York Times, written by Elissa Gootman. It is very well written.

Vincent and I find ourselves looking at trash the way a connoisseur might, now. Which reminds me to post about Dead Horse Bay.

So, the next Litter Mob, June 7th - volunteers sought. The usual drill:

Meet at corner of East Drive and Center Drive (map here) in  Prospect Park, 9am sharp.

Gloves, grabbers, bags and birdsong provided (our gloves were late last time. Won't happen again...). Come armed with a sense of humour. Don't pack lunch. You won't want it afterwards. Not because you are feeling strange, more that you feel you need to be scrubbed down, first. Maybe emergency first responders for a nuclear disaster can practise decontamination on us, every other Tuesday.

We will also be doing a little horticultural work this time as a reward for schlepping condoms away. The Midwood still needs a lot of care, and helping to plant saplings is a step towards ensuring trees for future New Yorkers, who have not been born yet.

If you would like to help next Tuesday*, please RSVP me.

And thanks again to our last crew - especially to the Manhattan resident! -  for hard work, stiff upper lips and an excellent haul...

For more about the Midwood (the part of Prospect Park that we help clean) and its litter issue, visit this list of posts.

* It bears repeating that it is midweek because we are accompanied by an Alliance employee, who is not available at weekends.


As usual, some background posts on the subject - the sticky road to the Litter Mob, most recent first:


Litter Mob 2 - the images
Prospect Park Litter Action

The Next Litter Mob - 5/24

Prospect Park's Litter Mob 5/10

Prospect Park Litter Mob - Invite

Prospect Park, Calling All Heroes!

Deep in the Litter-y Woods

End the Litter in Prospect Park

Prospect Park's Litter

The Park via Sackett Street

Brooklyn's Mushrooms

Leaf Litter

Prospect Park - litterally

The Good, the Bad and the Mushrooms

After the Storm

Wild Mushrooms from Brooklyn

Foraging with Steve Brill

Martha Stewart Living

...will be on the terrace, soon!

I don't know whether to panic, bake a cake, or open some Champagne.

Maybe I'll do all three.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I need volunteers to help me polish the gravel, paint over the blackspot and teach the cat some manners.

(Volunteers to be compensated with cake, bubbly and doses of panic. Fun, yes?)

New York Times link love

Today's New York Times' City Room features a picture from my recent post about the quiet of Brooklyn Bridge Park...

I admit I squealed, and nearly spilled my coffee ('Tanzanian berries', light roast, courtesy of the Porto Rico Importing Co. on East 8th Street).

Planet Green favourite

Thanks to Colleen Vanderlinden, founder of the Mouse and Trowel Awards, and garden writer for Discovery's Planet Green blog, for including 66 Square Feet in her Planet Green favourite garden blogs for small spaces.

2010 is a good year for top tens. Yee ha!

New York garden blogs

Apartment Therapy, the go-to blog for apartment dwellers everywhere has named 66 Square Feet one of the top ten New York gardening blogs. High praise, and I have a silly smile on my face. Thank you, Aaron!

We share the honour with some friends: Frank at New York City Garden, the Ellens at Garden Bytes, and Xris at Flatbush Gardener, as well as some other very good blogs you might enjoy...go over and visit.

Visi Magazine and 66 Square Feet

Visi Magazine features a four season, multiple age spread of 66 Square Feet in its April 201o edition!

Here's a taste of the Urban Eden (Balkonboer, in Afrikaans) article that editor Johan van Zyl wrote.

Gowanus Garden has its day

Anne Raver's Times piece about Kirstin and her garden links to 66 Square Feet...

So, for the blog record, this is still my favourite garden in New York, ever since I started blogging about it in 2007. And these are the cottage flowers that I first saw growing in it in 2006.

And this is what the side closest to the street looked like last weekend, when the Frenchie and I walked over the bridge:

Le Concrete, as threatened, by the city.

Below, in contrast, last, late Summer.

Things change.

But, then, I had not met Kirstin. I used to wander by, and wonder, and wish they'd ask me to play.

I don't suppose...

...we could get a little of this white stuff this afternoon, with the thunderstorms? Hard to believe this was March. I'll haul myself up on the roof for a comparitive view this evening. Maybe we'll have a drink looking out over NY Harbour.

Good news! The New York Times' Anne Raver is writing a story about Kirstin's Gowanus Garden. She called and interviewed me briefly this afternoon, and was very nice. Can't wait to see the piece.

Garden Confidential

OMG!

I hadn't seen this until now. Shot last August for this spring, this was for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, in HiDef, and my manner is so...mannered! Eugh. The interviewer was terribly conservative and kept feeding me lines, instead of the LXTV patter which I find so much more natural, for NBC (though One wonders about One's hair, and make-up...I was much more careful with the Canadians because of the threat of HiDef!). And the whole thing took an age to shoot - in 90' weather - because of the complicated camera involved...But it was interesting and led to new friendships.

Click below:

Rooftops in New York

Open House NYC