Lascivious lilies and dinner

Hmm...

The smell of cloves in the air - very lovely.

The parsley put to use: handful of parsley, stems removed; some very good canned tuna in olive oil; thinly sliced red onion,; finely sliced radish; vinaigrette of balsamic, garlic, salt, etc.

Summer Roll for Marijke

Please note the mint leaves on the right. Terrace-grown. New York organic. From left: chicken marinated in ginger, garlic, brown sugar, lime, fish sauce, chile, then grilled till sticky and sliced. Coriander/cilantro depending on your continent; shallots, thinly sliced; greenish mango; carrot; then mint. Dip rice paper wrappers in hot water (Mimi says there are two schools of thought in Vietnam: either dip one side, or dip two sides). Actually I just plopped them into hot water, not knowing any better and they were fine. Make a dressing of lime, fish sauce, brown sugar, chile - and use as a dipping sauce once the rolls have been, er, rolled.

Greenroofs bedondered.

This ratty sketch is how the grass will grow on the Irvine roof IF the project happens. NBC is hot to trot and the client is now a little camera shy, if $'s and appearance fees are not involved. Hm. That's not gonna happen - so again. Wait and see.

Below, our greenroof No. 2 in as many weeks. Met these guys yesterday: PSYOP TV saw me on tv... I thought, when I walked into this large, airy smooth-concrete floor room that it was a shared architects' space, with desks rented out, which is a common practise in the city when you're a young architect. But no, said Bernadette, this is all us. Check out their website. Major animation going on. Anyway, the unprepossessing rooftop, baking hot, grabbed me, and I sent back a very quick sketch - far below. They love it and I'm going to develop.


They were very budget conscious and I suggested chopping their existing deck into modules to save money. Each "pad" would perform a functin: barbecue pad, meeting pad, chillpad, with the inbetween islands being prairie grass, a small amelanchier forest (pie!), and a turf island for picnics. I'm excited..this is goign to be fun. Best of all, they like the idea enough to pay more they wanted to in the beginning and are considering putting in a new deck. So new modules all round.

More Lilies. Better this time.

Went out onto the terrace this morning, in blazing eastern light, and here they were...Lilium "China Express".


Serious, sexy anthers...



Lilium "Red Velvet"



I think they're gorgeous. They need a bottle of champagne. Prosecco is simply not good enough.

Marijke's Last Night

So these are Bud and Cyril - part of the final celebration dinner to say goodbye to Marijke before she headed off to Cape Town yesterday. Somehow they got hold of my cellphone and tried the old 911 trick. Shame. They didn't know who they were dealing with...

We drank a bottle of Raats Cabernet Franc, 2003. Nice with a bit of a chill on it.

My parsley crop was chopped finely into some yummy French butter with lime to annoint the Clawed Boys.

My first fig! Very pale inside and absolutely sweet.

Amelanchier Jam

Extra berries waiting to be jam.

Jamming away, 1 lb fruit to 3/4 lb sugar. Juice of one lime/lemon. Usually, at this point, when one makes jam, a lot of frothy, scummy stuff bubbles to the top and needs to be skimmed off if the jam is to be clear. Not this time. My theory: no pesticides, no herbicides. Only good, clean carbon monoxide and the salty breeze off the East River. This is New York organic.

One pot, precisely.

This morning's breakfast.

Berrying in Brooklyn

Amelanchier berries under the Manhattan Bridge on the East River...

I met up with Marijke here, got off at the York Street stop on the F, wandered down the cobbled streets and waited until she pulled up on her bike. Our resolution: pick enough berries for a pie. How wholseome. How American.

We moved from tree to tree - there are probably about eight; we attracted a lot less attention than I had supposed. New Yorkers studiously ignore the weird, the cracked, the unseemly. A couple of women asked us what on earth we were doing and then were brave enough to try some berries. They skipped a little afterwards, like small girls caught doing something forbidden and good. Starlings and pigeons were trying to beat us to it, but there was so much fruit we got plenty. Also plenty sticky. This is a lovely little park, complete with pebbled beach and small waves. Very good for sunset picnics, though the noise from the trains crossing the Manhattan Bridge is interesting.

Our loot in the basket of my bike. The same bike that Marijke rode all over the city, so much so that we wore through the back tyre. OK: it was an old tyre.

The pie later at Natalie's. The weird thing was that it smelled of almond essence, or marzipan, as we were eating it, and I'd added none. Reading up on it later, the wood and leaves of the tree contain quite a lot of cyanide...The pastry was Molly Bolt's (famous in our family for the apple pie recipe we still use). Anyway - we're all alive.