Buckets of flowers

In your best Cockney: "Summer flars!" Some actually from the terrace.

Rather squished, in an old maple syrup bucket.

Suddenly I am reminded of a craving. I used to work late nights at an Eritrean restaurant. I'd come home starving. But I wanted very simple food. There was a phase of cooking polenta for myself - the soft kind, then pouring a lake of maple syrup into the middle of it, and surrounding it with a glacier of milk. I'd eat that, at 1am.

And now I want it...

Too much milk means yogurt

Got milk? We had too much.

On separate errands last weekend the Frenchman and I double bought, and I just noticed that the sell by on my half gallon was sneaking up. Although so pasteurized it might last well into the next decade, I decided to make yogurt. Once strained, and thick,  it is very good. Heating the milk for yogurt always makes me think of Hetty Sorrel in George Eliot's Adam Bede. She is the dairy maid who  "handled it (her trade) with all the grace that belongs to mastery.” Her dairy sounded like a nice place to be.

I brought the milk to a simmer, whisked in the tail end of some Fage yogurt, and have just bundled the enameled pot, with lid, in several layers of kikois and feather pillows to stay warm for the next eight hours.

I used the recipe - such as it is - for plain yogurt at 66 Square Feet (the Food).

South Africa on the terrace

...and perhaps in your garden?

The semi succulent Bulbine frutescens is used Stateside as a plant friendly to xeriscaping: it does not need a whole lot of water. My specimen  is courtesy of our friend Paul Westervelt who shipped the little pot to us in the spring, from Saunders Brothers in Virginia. It has settled in very well and has had flowers almost continuously, much visited by bees. The gel-like sap in the leaves has a reputation, in South Africa, for curing all kinds of skin ailments.

I like the cut flowers, because they seem to last forever.

I'm pretty sure this is an annual in our USDA 7b (-ish) climate, though I could see the plant becoming  a problem in some regions, along the lines of another South Africa plant, imported to control erosion, in California - Carpobrotus edulis, the well known Cape plant we call suurvy (sour fig). It is now a noxious weed in the States. At least you can eat it!

In other news, it seems fall has arrived, early. The weather, heinous for most of July, is perfect.

A new edible weed: quickweed, or gallant soldiers

Galinsoga parviflora

I have discovered a weed newly edible to me, despite being a familiar gardening enemy up on the farm: quickweed, or gallant soldiers. The Edible Wild Plants group to which I belong on Facebook featured it some weeks ago.

Galinsoga parvilflora - and its flora are very parvi. Tiny flowers. Like small white and yellow daisies. You probably know the one.

Yes, you can eat it. Raw, it tastes like pea greens, slightly sweet. Cooked - spinachy, chardy, collardy.

The Galinosoga story is an odd one. I had sown an entire packet of Magenta Spreen lamb's quarters, from Johnny's Seeds, in two troughs. What came up? Galinsoga. It may be some fluke, or accident, or coincidence - the seeds I sowed were tiny and black. And I have no lamb's quarters... Certainly I have noticed Galinsoga in the past (though I had no name for it, then) - but as far as I know it did not set seed. I always yanked it out.

Spot the Amaranth?

And late summer is peak weed season. Peakweed. Pigweed.

 (Joke. Worse, pun. Sorry.)

Pigweed is the sloppy-looking green species of Amaranth that most people would not look at twice. Amaranthus retroflexus and A. hybridus, practically invisible, it is so ubiquitous. It has a handful of common names. As I have written before, it is nutritious and earthy, and I prefer the leaves' mouthfeel to spinach, which isn't in season in hot weather, anyway. Think of it as summer spinach, now that high summer has turned a corner and is beginning the freefall to September, with Glut at its heels.

Last night I picked two large bundles of each plant, stripped the leaves, wilted them, and added the just-cooked leaves to pine nuts, raw garlic, parmesan, butter, olive oil and, the key ingredient, lemon zest. (In the past weeks I have eaten up all the salt-preserved Meyer lemons of spring, so yesterday's green sauce contained the peeled zest of one fresh lemon. Yes, I made some more preserved lemons, too.)

It was very good. An instant hit.

The green weed pesto recipe is next door, at 66 Square Feet (the Food).

We are not alone

Gallant soldiers (Galinsoga parviflora) and pigweed (Amaranthus hybridus) on the roof farm, last night

So we're going through a rather bumpy time, right now. We do not know yet whether we will move or stay - and apartments typically only appear on the market a month in advance (our lease ends after October). So a lot is up in the air - and then yesterday this letter arrived in my Facebook Inbox. It helped me put some things into perspective. It is reprinted with kind permission of its author, Melissa Estrella Ivey. Thank you, Melissa.

Dear Marie

My name is Melissa, and I would like to tell you how beautiful and inspiring your blog is. I’m sure you heard this before. But, your blog actually helped me when I was going through a somewhat rough time.

Back in May, my husband and I had finally found what we thought was our dream home. After months of searching, I could finally dream of having a garden with fruit trees, flowers, herbs…a place for our puppy to run, for us to have romantic meals under the stars. We live in a townhouse, and I love gardening. It always felt that I was very limited with the amount of plants I could have, especially because it was hard to bring them all inside during winter time. Our small deck is ok for the 2 of us. There is a stone wall right there, obstructing any view we could ever wished for. And the noisy air conditioner, right next to the deck, always in the middle of our conversations. So, yeah, we were as excited as we could be with the idea of having a view of a beautiful nature reserve.

I was browsing garden ideas on Pinterest, when a picture led me to your blog. I could not believe how beautiful your terrace was. And I wished I had those ideas before, so my deck could look as lovely as your terrace. A few days later, we got the news that we had not been approved for the loan. Our hearts stopped beating for a second, and it felt like we could cry, right there. We had had 30 days of complete madness, trying to get all paperwork done, and faxing, and re-faxing, and writing letters to the bank, and visiting our soon-to-be-home, to find out, on day 31, that we could not finance it. I know it sounds dramatic, but it took us a couple of days to recover.

Then, I went back to your blog. I started reading it, the older posts, the ones about plants, about picnics, cocktails, I could not get enough of it. On my way to work one morning, I stopped at a nursery, and walked amongst the plants, looking for trees, herbs, vegetables, that would survive living in pots, and some that would live through the winter. I did that every day for days.

Reading your blog gave me such strength that I didn’t know I had. I planted herbs, flowers, a fig tree, lots of rosemary and basil. My deck is still very noisy, but looking gorgeous with my plants in it! We have these stairs in the front of the house that I made sure to fill with plants as well. You even inspired me to cook (I cannot wait to put my hands in your book- already pre-ordered!).

Thank you for being this incredible person through a beautiful blog. Your words and pictures were an emotional support when I most needed. And today, they are part of my daily routine; it’s like visiting a good friend!

Melissa

Seahorses and security guards

Iceberg - LICH in the background

On separate and personal trajectories yesterday evening, Vincent and I learned two interesting things about this town we live in.

He, embarking on a cruise around New York Harbor, read a sign beside the Hudson that said that lined seahorses (that's their name: lined seahorses) frequent the wooden piles in the water, and like that habitat.

Seahorses.

In the Hudson River.

...

Speechless, really.

I will be looking into this. And Vince feels about sea horses what he feels about chameleons. He may just have found a reason to like this city.

That's the big news, despite its brevity.

I discovered, after days of wondering about their presence, that there are now 70 private security guards deployed around the edges of  LICH (rhymes with hitch) - the beleaguered and sprawling Long Island College Hospital, two doors up from us. It has - had - a busy emergency room, my primary care physician was there, and that's where I was (not) treated for the raccoon disease Frank was convinced I might have two years ago (instead, they gave me a course of Hepatitis B shots in the light of the Litter Mobbing activities I was engaged in at the time). LICH is owned by SUNY (rhymes with looney) - State University of New York, who says it is haemorrhaging $15 million a month and must close.

And, get this: the staff has been told not to come into work. But remains on full pay. Patients are turned away.

SUNY wants to sell the property to developers who will knock it down and turn it into some very expensive real estate. Ask Mr Elgart, our landlord. Market forces, says his daughter, in response to my question about why they raised the rent $600 on us. But our neighbour's market forces only raised his rent $200. Whatever.

Things have become ugly, there have been arrests, including that of my councilman, Brad Lander.

In the last week or so we have noticed a sudden bloom (like the algae that preceeds a dead zone in the ocean - a consequence of phosphate runoff) of security guards around the place. And fewer sirens. There is apparently a handful of patients left in the building.

So I talked to one of the security guards today. It was that guard who told me there are 70 guards, from 12 different security companies on the premises.

But all of them have very basic uniforms that say "Summit". They have nothing like genuine ID's - no photo ID at all - just names embroidered on baseball caps and a laminated badge that says "Security". Then there are the guys in dark blazers, whom news reports have describe as armed.

It is creepy. And smells of dead rats.

Who are you guarding? I asked.

They don't tell us everything, the guard said, half apologetically.

Do they tell you to look out for any particular sort of person?*

No, not really. It all seems peaceful to me.

Then the guard said, They tell us not to use our radios! He was incredulous.

They sound paranoid, I said. Like someone's listening to you.

Uh huh, the guard concurred. They are.

The guard had Googled the hospital at home and said, It's real old, dating back to the 19th century...

Uh huh, I said, that's the part next door to us.

I hope it stays open, said the guard.  But if they want to pay a lot of money for us to work every day, I'm glad.

Oddly, it sounded like good money.

More expired rats. Most security guards don't make good money.

It is creepy.

..

I like the seahorse story, better.

Update, 6.49pm - just spoke to another guard taking his "fifteen" as he put it, on our stoop's front steps. He says they are guarding the hospital against angry workers whose pay will cease the minute the hospital is officially closed. "No severance, nothin'." Nurses, doctors, technicians, cleaners, caterers..."We are the hospital's bullet proof vest, " he said, spreading his hands over his chest to illustrate. "They are calling us scabs. But I understand. They got mortgages to pay, kids to send to school. I just hope nobody goes postal."

More LICH Links:

Nurses Roam the Empty Halls - New York Times
650 LICH Employees Told Not to Come Back to Work - Wall Street Journal
Wall Street Waits in the Wings - World Socialist Website
Brooklyn Officials Storm LICH - Brooklyn Daily Eagle
LICH Under Lockdown - - Red Hook Star Revue

Rain, after dry days

It is a quiet, cool, rainy day in Brooklyn. 

Rain drips from the copper flashing on the terrace edge onto a flat surface with a steady, hollow tap. Rain patters onto the skylights. Into the gravel, over leaves. On the terrace floor, naturalized mint and violets crowd into a thick, wet carpet. The fig is beginning to look like a tree again and small fruits have formed on the new green branches under umbrellas of leaves. 

I should be heading to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to pick up my weekly BK17 sourdough loaf baked by Sarah - this week's bread is lemon and fennel pollen - and also to take some pictures for a story for a new magazine about to launch in South Africa: Platteland. 

What a wonderful name. Hard to translate, exactly. It means countryside, but it embodies so much more. A way of life. A type of small town, a garden gate, a dog trotting down the street, a lady siting on a stoep, a cool kitchen on a hot day, water running in a furrow, a trail of dust behind a car on a dirt road.

The light is good for photos - but everything will be wet. Does that matter?

My basil it at last looking like basil. I sowed the seeds before we left for South Africa, in late May, and they came up, rather crowded and stunted, a little too hot, but responded well to thinning, feeding and judicious watering.

The strawberries are not well (I mean, who is?). They have spots on their leaves, which indicates a fungal infection and I think that the very wet June was to blame, followed by terrible, humid heat. I keep the pots clean, nipping off bad leaves, and make sure not to overwater, but don't have it in me to repot all of them. They must endure, and we will see what they are made of.

The last of the Gloriosa lilies has opened. But even as the buds fatten and pop, the leaves on the long reaching stems die off one by one. A sort of wilt that begins as a small bruise and then takes over the whole plant, as though each cell in the leaf has ruptured, and the chlorophyll leaked away. At the very end the intelligent hook in the leaf, which lassoes supports as the stem grows, expires and lets go.

August. More to come.