Blimp

Over New York Harbor, from the roof. This new building on the right has really messed with the view of the gantry cranes. The blimp sailed fast, south and downstream, then turned laboriously and struggled at an angle back up into the wind, then turned, and sailed downstream again. It was advertising Direct TV.

The garden report for early July

I photographed the Silk Road lilies early in the morning on Saturday, while I watered the pots before we left for our short long weekend. The neighbour's cat came to visit.

Upon our return the last of them are still in bloom, dropping deep yellow pollen and long petals, and the first Dunyazades have opened. This signals the start of serious summer. It's going to be a long two months.

The compensations will be small and botanical: my jewelweed opened. Stolen as a seedling from Inwood in April, it is now about four feet tall. It is our in-house poison ivy antidote, but I love the plants themselves. The strong, sappy stems have a powdery bloom to them, and water runs like diamonds from the leaves after rain. The yellow flowers still surprise me.

The strawberries are in the middle of their second flush, with the third hot on its heels, it seems. They are covered in flowers.

My first cilantro crop is looking good, even though two other pots failed and turned yellow. Below, the cilantro is between the Greek basil and the summer savory.

Although I was sad to leave the woods and lake and ferns of our weekend away, it was lovely to get back to my tiny garden, to water, pick berries, and turn out the potato crop.

I had noticed a potato pushing out through the soil, and the leaves had turned yellow, so it was Time.

Very satisfactory. We ate them for supper with butter and chives, and salt and pepper. While good, I can't honestly say that they were the potatoes of legend. I have had better. Is that blasphemous? Home-grown must be the best? Maybe potatoes actually need to mature a bit, out of the soil. I don't know. A flavour in the skins set my mouth on edge just a little.

The first little green tomatoes have appeared. I anticipate a glut. And for the first time I really have held off on buying year-in year-out tomatoes. I shall succumb soon at a farmers' market. I crave buffalo mozzarella and basil. 

I have four little Sugar Baby watermelons on the vines.

And the roof strawberries are settling in. 

The spotted trout and oak leaf lettuces are sharing pots with the tomatoes, and I have enough to pick for a small salad every day. And this particular cucumber tasted just fine, but the previous one was inedibly bitter.

The garden goes on.

Wild mushrooms for breakfast

A handful of tiny black trumpet mushrooms gathered from Ellen and Michael's moss lawn became breakfast this morning, with local hen eggs, imported parmesan, and thyme from the garden.

And now we shall leave the ferns and tall trees, the quiet lake, the fireflies winking like Christmas lights in last night's dark woods, and return to Brooklyn for fireworks and a picnic on the roof.

In Pennsylvania

The house is surrounded by hay scented ferns.

The lawn is made of moss and mushrooms.

The leaves of the ox eye daisies are eaten in salad.

Black raspberries line the country roads.

Gins and tonics are carried down to a lake and sipped after swimming.

Sippin' rum is opened before braaing.

Brooklyn boerewors is braaied by Michael.

And eaten on the night before the big, green rains came.

Edible Milkweed Flowers

Asclepias syriaca in Red Hook.  Four foot stems with sweet flowers, heavy with bees, dripping latex when picked...

Lilac milkweed flower syrup, made after blanching the flowers to remove the white sap, and infusing sugar syrup. And prosecco, of course. Called it a Milkweed Royale. Smells like fields of honey bees.

June's Flowers, New York

Rubus odoratus, Prospect Park; goutweed,  Prospect Park; Rosa multiflora, Dead Horse Bay; Magnolia virginiana, High Line; white echinacea, High Line; Allium, Battery Park; Echinops, Battery Bosque; Asclepias syriaca,  Red Hook; Lysimachia punctata, Gowanus Garden; Lilium henryi, Henry Street Garden; Echinacea, Gowanus Garden; lamb's ears, Gowanus Garden; Echinops, Battery Bosque, Dead Horse Bay flowers; Yucca filamentosa, Pier 44.

Pickled field garlic

I love watching this water. No matter where I am in the world, I will remember this constant motion, this old, slow method of moving from one place to another place in a city that likes to move fast.

On the lawn sloping down to the water at Pier One, we ate our April-pickled field garlic. Not in brine for long, it has a volatile punch of pure garlic but remains faintly sweet. A slice of Stinky's wonderful duck rillettes and some ham washed the pickles down perfectly. A family was snacking on the blueberries planted above the swampy part of the park - most of them are still green. The blueberries, not the family.

Today we plant a garden in Park Slope. And tomorrow we hoof it to Pennsylvania, with boerewors in our luggage, for a Fourth of July in the woods, near a cold, clean lake, with swimming, and foraging and cooking, and friends. Until next week posts may be sporadic. Or not.

Enjoy this most American of weekends...