White breasted nut hatch

Actually, apart from the bunny, this guy made my day, too. I had wandered into The Ramble, where one is more likely to see birds at this leaf-thin time of year than solitary men standing about in odd places waiting for odder things to happen to them. I stood still to watch three little chickadees who looked as though they would have sat on my hand if I had offered it. And I also stopped to listen, because all I could hear, in the heart of New York City, was birdsong.

The nut hatch, the first I have seen (I am not a birder, rather an accidental bird watcher), was about 6 feet away investigating a fallen tree, and moving vertically up and down it, very slowly and methodically, and utterly unfazed by my presence. I went closer and did not disturb him then, either. He caught several insects and only then moved fast bambambam killing them on the bark with his beak.

Central Park Spring

I had an hour to kill between an Upper West Side rooftop appointment and West Village townhouse garden appointment. Two very different spaces needing gardens. Wild, windy and sunblasted. Cool, dark, shady.

But before taking the subway downtown again I walked into the park, opposite the Natural History Museum, taking bites of a $2 hot dog as I went. The park belongs to Cornelian cherries at the moment, the earliest of the dogwoods. I now see their point: planted en masse, the Cornus, er, mas, make absolute sense. Alone they are lost. In threes and sixes they are stunning clouds of pollen-yellow.

There was a lot of the Lonicera fragrantissima. It has followed me about for two days and the lemony-sweet scent is delicious. Below, one can see how nondescript the bushes are.

Daffodils. Much of the woodland is fenced off and I am sorry for it. It spoils the view and one loses the idea of wildness.

More Cornelian cherries near the Conservatory Pond.

And...a BUNNY! This rabbit made my day. I totally forgot to ask his name. He was being walked on the lawn on his leash and his owner was also sad about the fences. He was friendly, unstressed and very soft to stroke.

The pond looking back to Central Park West.

Rather icky water near the Plaza, on central Park South.

Blue squill, I think, in the leaf litter.

Birds and birdsong abounded. Squirrels too. And tourist taking squirrel pictures. I always wonder about those.

I'll be back.

Shadow Country: Mr Watson's Voices

My dog-earing habit was put to the test with Peter Mathiessen's Shadow Country, an 892 page Southern [why are most of the best Southern???] epic published in 2008 (The Modern Library). I felt lost when it ended, and irritable. It's hard leaving a world one has lived in every night for a month, for the empty unknown.

I actually put the book aside after the first part, and picked it up again weeks later. I found the going turgid and complicated and couldn't imagine wading through a whole book like this.

Then it changed.

It is masterfully written and everthing has its reason. The dog-earing was put to the test because I found no sound bites. Precious few dog-eared pages. It's as though his revelations take pages and pages and years to unfold. Everything is dependent on or born of what came before. So lifting paragraphs out of context is without reward.

But: one of the first dog-ears, on p. 58, was for Estorbo, my Dominican cat:

"Ass-toneesh!" the Frenchman inched a little more of Brewer's lightning into his glass like it was medicine. "I am ass-toneesh from the first fokink day I set my foots in fokink Amerique!"

And for growing things:

" ...I planted corn by hand, gold kernel after kernel, row after precious row. Thin fresh green lines, weak and broken at first, came forth mysteriously and rose in a green haze; for a while, I cherished each and every plant among the hundreds, even the weak ones I would later weed away. I felt ingrown in this dark soil, as the Artemas Plantation's heir, putting down soft tendrils like a native plant of our old land. I grew to love the Clouds Creek earth, and in summer I made strange love to it in the soft evenings, lying down upon it naked as the soil gave off the gathered heat of the long day." P. 535

And for lyricism

"We...walked barefoot down along the edge of the blue springs, beneath a canopy of crimson maples, old gold yellow hickories, russet oaks. Charlie picked watercress for our wild lettuce, and a blueberry with reddish stems: she called it sparkleberry. She led my eye to the woodland birds of fall, knew their brown names - hermit thrush, sparrow, winter wren." P 579

Poor, terrible Mr Watson.

Ramp watch

Farmers' market: no ramps yet...

Kersefontein

After leaving Paternoster we arrived early at the farm and fed ourselves out of the back of the Landcruiser, which was still well stocked after 4,700km.

Hungry kitties joined us.

Hungry, thieving kitties who liked cheese.

And a tame, pushy sheep called Lemon.

Very pushy, and smelly. That night the sheep drank beer from the bottle of a blue-eyed boy, ostensibly the farm manager, who sat at his master's right hand at dinner.

This was a strange place. We had decided to stay here on the recommendation of a source I trust. But her experience was not ours.

It would take a better hand than mine to define the source, and describe the depth, of my unease here.

The farm buildings and house are beautiful and old, and have remained - famously - in the family since they were built. Pepper trees and eucalyptus against crumbling whitewash.

That night, at the long antique dining table, set with silver and crystal, and waited upon by Coloured servants - there is no other word to describe their role - there was vegetable soup, beef stew and boiled rice and peas, served to each guest in the manner of a nineteenth century country house by maids who could neither meet one's eyes, nor smile of their own volition.

The bombast, the undercurrents that I could strongly sense, but only guess at, gathered both of us up at that long table, and left Vince as ill as I have ever seen him and me eloquent and cold with rage.

It is a place to visit if you would like to see the relics of an old order. Some more worthy of attention than others.

Magnolia stellata, East Village

On East 9th where it makes a funny little triangle park between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.

New York Spring

Not all graffiti, all the time...

Sara D. Roosevelt Park, between Christy and Forsyth, and on Delancey.