The Woodstock Inn on the Millstream

Unless you have been given a personal recommendation, making reservations to stay in new places can be hit or miss, despite the reviews, and I just hate missing. So this Inn was a lovely place to land.

Sure, it's a motel, with your car parked out front, and a road going by at the side, but it has exactly that American motel thing: the shared porch out front, and each room its own chair for sitting and putting your feet up on the rail while you swig your brewski (or Perrier Jouet?). One imagines. The rooms are small (a couple are larger but were booked) and very clean. Space for clothes in a mini walk-in closet and chest of drawers, Wifi from Somewhere, and...a TV (I don't have TV, and watched it to learn how to escape from a sinking car: wait for the car to fill with water before exiting through window!). A little heater that works (unlike the one at the Inn on 23rd...yeah, not a fan) warms you up, and today it got really cold.  Bathrooms are tiny and perfect, with girl-friendly lights over the mirror. They smell of the organic lavender hand-soap in them, and have fluffy white towels, washcloths and tissues. More lavender soap comes wrapped for shower use.

There's a communal fridge at the end, where we stored ice, wine and our all-important wine sleeve.  The sun was out yesterday, making it a bright green and yellow place and the air was filled with ladybirds. They swarmed over the fridge when I was there. Anyone know why? The whole of Woodstock was full of them. And winged ants were processing from the depths of the earth up a beautiful crabapple tree. Does that mean we're in for a heck of a winter?

Breakfast is rather ambitiously billed as gourmet, which is a bit of a stretch. Salmon does make an appearance, so I suppose that is at the root of the matter. But pepper comes as dust from a shaker, which is not what salmon wants or deserves. The bagels are fine in a chewy way, and the bread may have seen better days. Jam is Bonne Maman, so quite good, and coffee is the kind I never drink so I'm no judge: drip. I'm extremely opinionated about coffee and would like to travel with my stovetop espresso maker. Plates and bowls are paper. Milk's organic. There is fruit and granola, but that is not me. But I really wasn't unhappy, for some reason. Maybe because the breakfast room looks out over the garden, which is a great lawn running down to the beautiful stream, and there is a lot of squirrel action to observe.

The sound of water is a constant presence as it falls over some shallow shelves and provides the kind of white noise people pay for and put in machines.

The view up and down is really lovely, and though we've subsequently seen some jaw-dropping scenery, and are in danger of becoming jaded, it still measures up.

Bonnie, an opera singer turned organic farmer (very strange life-trajectory similar to mine), and friend of the owners helping out for the day, pointed us along the stream to a path that would take us to town.

Many leaves, and littering streams so that they looked like dark and embroidered carpets.

An old bridge in the middle of town, dating from the mid nineteenth century, and apparently in use till 1976, if I  remember correctly.

Because the season is so much more advanced up here, just two hours north of the city, I squealed at all the saturated crimson of the Euonymous alatus (burning bush, winged euonymous). I understand that they are invasive, and have now seen lots more in the woods, but wow, how red can you get?

Some very late Queen Anne's lace...

More invasion, and this one seems serious. Again, beautiful: Berberis, not sure which one. We've seen hundreds sprawling low and red in the woods that we drove through today, deep in the Catskills.

Tiny rosehips whose tiny roses must have been lovely in May.

Note to selves: Return!

 

 Note to friends:

Go!

Overlook Farm Market

So much for not posting from the road: Wifi is a wonderful thing.

Off the W9, which runs parallel to the Hudson's west bank, is this farm stall selling, now, more apples than you've ever seen. Or than I've ever seen. And more cultivars. About an hour after leaving New York City, we pulled up hoping for some picnic provisions. We had the trusty cooler backpack from Crate and Barrel in the trunk, stocked with an ice-sleeve for some white wine, the little cutting board, the sharp knife, the napkins and the small glasses. We didn't have knives or forks (yes, they may be necessary) as I'd forgotten them (the night before we left was rather fraught due to an Upsetting Email, and I was more scatterbrained than usual). So we walked in, saw apples, smelled crates of quinces, and then  found a fridgeful of sandwiches costing no more than $2 each. Already we were in another country. We bought three: egg salad (Vince), liverwurst and mustard (and lettuce) - for me! - and turkey ($1!) for Maman. Also some fresh cider donuts, and four apples. We had some triple cream brie in our back pack.

 

Apples were being delivered by truck.

 

Mutsu and Red Ida...

 

The kind lady who ran the market and who perhaps owned the farm invited us to use their own picnic table behind the building  in a quiet garden next to a stream. I looked at their orchards and visited  a goat. Each row of trees was different. Stripes of fruit on the ground, as though they'd just been shaken.

 

Goats are so odd.

We had to choose an apple to go with our picnic, and eventually decided on Red Ida.Tart and sweet.

 

The Necessaries for a Good Picnic:

1. A tiny cutting board

2. A sharp, serious knife

3. Glasses. Not plastic, not paper. Glasses. They can be small, they can be cheap, but they must be glass.

4. Napkins. Useful for other things, too. White flags for surrender. Strainers for water. Bags for berries.

5. Tin plates (forgotten at home)

6. Dry ice sleeve for wine or drink

7. Tablecloth or kikoi. Useful for setting the scene. Purely aesthetic.

If you can only choose one of the above, choose the knife.

Souvenirs

...gathered after a picnic today beside a quiet leaf-littered stream and tall yellow trees.

Catskills' Fall

I am writing from Woodstock, where I am  quite blown away by the beauty. The colours are gorgeous, the trees movingly autumn-clad. There will be few if any posts over the next few days, but my memory sticks are filling up fast.

If you still have time to get away for fall colour, and are in the Hudson Valley neck of the woods, I recommend the Woodstock Inn on the Millstream very highly. It's the kind of motel you wish for: pretty, impeccably clean, and set near a broad stream over whose low rapids yellow trees lean and leaves sail.

We have picnicked every day on apples bought at farm stalls, one apple per meal, so that we are learning exactly how they differ. Honey Crisp is leading the pack.

More soon.

Graffiti in New York

Above: Highline in July

There's an article in the NYTimes City Room blogs about removing graffiti still dis/gracing the Highline.

Graffiti fuels an endless debate. I have found street art to be something that pleases me enormously in particular contexts. Removing it on the Highline seems absurd to me. The Highline, this old, abandoned industrial artery has been beautifully restored, but so much of its original context has been expunged. I am a huge fan of the plantings, plant geek that I am, but would find their juxtaposition with paint to be entirely appropriate to where they find themselves.

Below are some examples of graffiti I have loved. Feel free to weigh in on them, and to disagree, with erudite explanation. I am curious about why I like it, and when I would not, and what others think..

Below, the tag in the recently designed and planted Tribeca garden.

Below, above the 66 Square Foot terrace, isn't this graffiti? And more ephemeral and more toxic, and no less beautiful for it?

The roving truck that parks on Forsyth Street, early this year.

More problematic, on the newer side of the Liz Christie Garden, behind the vegetable and fruit plantings. The scraggly white tags are not working . But the black balloon is getting somewhere.

And, of course, the Gowanus Garden, in spring 2006, above. This graffiti was wiped out, as evidenced in this post.

And on the other Gowanus canal bridge, on Carroll Street. Why is this not a successful canvas?

And finally, below, good, gone art, ex Spring and Elizabeth Streets in Nolita.

Calamintha

Still blooming on the terrace, but feeling the cold.

October table

Even though these are Californian quinces, I had to have them: they had the scent, see? The concords are from up the Hudson, and smell very ripe and grapey. The tulips may mean spring but here they are fall, when the weather outside stores is cold enough for them to stay shut. Once inside they open beautifully, languidly, and stretch their sinuous necks.