Limbo

10 August 2015

Just before the July 4th weekend Vince greeted me at the terrace door (bottom right of both images, if you are curious). I was on the terrace, gardening.

He looked at me. I have bad news, he said. He meant it. I was very quiet. There was some silence. Then he said, Graham is not renewing our lease. I looked at him some more. You're joking, I said. 

But he wasn't.

It was a bad time.

That seems a lifetime away. Then, it was flat out panic. But we are now six weeks out, and four days from decampment.

Everyone currently in the building is moving out.

Half our belongings are sitting in an empty apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Beyond its kitchen door a wide open, empty backyard waits for us. A quiet, tree-filled street is at the front, singing with cicadas. 

The Harlem terrace is being taken apart, piece by piece. Compare top and bottom. The wooden planters have been emptied of plants. The tall jewelweed thickets have been cut down and pulled out. The herbs have been transplanted and carted to Brooklyn. In the next few days the birch pole screen will be dismantled and the beans removed.

14 July 2015

Don't tell me that change is good. Change is just change. Don't tell me that things are meant to be. Nothing is meant to be. Things just are. Because of things that came before, because of decisions that people make. Consequences.

We will make the best of it because that is what one does. And the package of what is to come is a good package, all things considered. A beautiful neighborhood, a peaceful street, no construction in the building, no drummers. (But there is a principal ballet dancer on the top floor - does he jeté across the room in the late mornings?)

We are glad to be leaving the noise and tension of this apartment. We are glad to leave the fights on this street, the screaming motorcycle gangs, the worry about the random gunshot. I will miss the friendly neighbors on the stoops, saying, Hi, how you doing? I will miss the easy compliments and banter of the neighborhood men, who manage never to be creepy. I will miss the Tuesday night gospel choir practises and the rocking Sunday services. 

I will miss the cheap quails eggs at the supermarket on Lenox Avenue (I think they will miss me too - I bought all of them!), and the friendly wine shop staff at the new store on 125th. I will miss the proximity to Central Park's North Woods  in every season, and the Conservatory Garden, and I will miss the quick subway ride to Inwood Hill park. I will not miss the summer squallor of Marcus Garvey Park's hill, its propositioning lurkers, the flasher, the gunshots and the drugs. I will not miss the casual racism on the street. I will not miss the weekend hatemongering preachers on the corner of 125th and Lenox. I will not miss the terrible sign above the church of ATLAH.

I will miss the diversity and the effortless courtesy of doors opening, and opened. I will miss being called honey by women I do not know and I will miss the song of hm, hm, hm. 

I will miss the high ceilings and tall windows of our apartment. I will not miss hysterically high electrical heating bills and the frigid winters.

I learned to bake sourdough here, to make cheese, and to blend vermouth and fizzy wild flower ferments. I last saw my cat here.  

I will not miss the terrible stove. 

I will miss the terrace and its weather. I will miss the lady yelling at me from her apartment across the way that my barbecue smells good. I will miss the cool-season, open-window belly-laughter of the Hyena Man who watches TV on a giant screen, and I will miss the virtuoso tunes of the Whistling Man, who lives nearby.

I will miss the doves, the red house finches, the single cormorant flying east every evening. I will miss the robin's song which lulled me to sleep on noisy nights.

Knowing a place takes time. Plotting the sun, reading the light, learning the birds, recognizing the voices. I like to walk a regular path. To see a shrub in all its seasons.

I have become attached, and have always resented letting go.

Close the book.

[Curiously - predictably - there is another Limbo post: October 2013, the month we moved to Harlem.]

It begins

Today the small plants and furniture and boxes move to Brooklyn. Next week the movers will shift the big stuff.

The Alpine strawberries are ready.

Harlem nights

In summer the Harlem terrace is deserted from midday till late afternoon, while the sun blazes down. By 5 o' clock the shade has arrived, cast by the tall building to our west, and I emerge to water the pots, often with a drink in hand.

While we are packing for our move I am consolidating all of my foraged infusions and cordials, so last night's drink took shape from a collection of crimson dregs: wild black cherry cordial (fizzy, with a hint of bitterness), sloe gin, and my second vermouth blend, Northeast #2, as it is known in these parts - lots of botanicals, including local bayberry, spicebush, sumac and super-invasive but essential mugwort (yep, Artemisia is an important ingredient in Noilly Prat!). So, those, with loads of ice, a twist of Thai basil from the terrace and a squirt of tonic water. Good.

I picked the hostas, as the flowers may be damaged in the move. They smell wonderful (the cultivar is 'Royal Standard'). The salad is figs, local tomatoes and quick-pickled Persian cucumber slices with pea sprouts and terrace basil. The vinegar is wisteria blossom, the last of the 2014 batch.

I bought some local beef short ribs from Harlem Shambles as a treat, and grilled them over coals after marinating in black soy sauce, lime juice and some mugwort leaves. After they had rested we sliced them from the bones and wrapped each bite in either a shiso leaf (terrace), or American burnweed leaf (Erechtites hieraciifolius, foraged, and the larger leaves on the platter). Interestingly - he is the perennial guinea pig - the Frenchman much preferred the burnweed, which has an amazing affinity for the flavours of southeastern and eastern Asia. It's a little like cross between culantro (Eryngium foetidum - also in the family Asteraceae) and  the better-known cilantro.

Lately, we eat on tin plates and drink from mismatched glasses. I am paring down the kitchen and packing it away. Soon, it will be like camping, as today I pack the cookware, and we will be down to grilling outside and one pan (cast iron, of course) if it rains and we are chased indoors.

Shiso thirsty

It is hot in the city today, and I can't wait to dip into one of these.

I grew many shiso plants last year (and wrote about the herb for Gardenista), but forgot to order seed, this spring. Luckily, one dropped seed germinated and now we have a modest crop of the fragrant leaves. They have an affinity for gin. I crush them a little before adding the gin, and topping with tonic water. A few Persian cucumber slices macerated in the liquor for five minutes before the tonic is poured are a very good addition.

Later, for supper, there will be grassfed beef shortibs marinated in soy and lime juice, grilled over coals, rested, sliced, and wrapped in a choice of shiso or American burnweed (Erechtites hieraciifolius) leaves. Because there is still some forage left in this forager.

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Book an Autumn Walk

Harlem Terrace in The Times

Harlem Terrace. Photo by Pablo Enriquez, for The New York Times

In June we were visited by Anne Raver, whose gardening stories have been a fixture for so long in The New York Times. Her article about our terrace is in today's print edition, and you can read it online: A City Garden in Harlem is on the Move to Brooklyn.  (Naturally, when we learned that we had to move, the story's angle shifted, a little!)

Late summer light

Our twilight is reflected from the tall wall of the building on our terrace's eastern edge. The sinking western sun is hidden from us by more buildings, but bounces down to make the terrace a strange pink in the late August evenings.

The Nicotiana mutabilis are very tall, now, and speak unexpectedly to the pinks and apricot of the Agastache 'Acapulco,' also planted for pollinators and hummingbirds. Honey bees still besiege the calamintha, and when they leave, a single firefly blinks in the dying light.

Tomatoes are often on the menu, now. Stuffed here with rice and dill and little bits of leftover lamb (the lamb-less version is in my book). In the glasses, very cold prosecco with sliced white peaches from the tiny but excellent farmers market on Lenox and  West 118th.

We still save up stories from our days, for supper conversation. The Frenchman tells me about The Man with the Dog, The Man in the Suit, and The Tide of Construction Workers - all regular and developing themes from his Harlem-Empire State Building subway commute.

Nights are hot, but the terrace always seems cooler. While we eat we listen to the small yapping dog whose location we have never been able to pinpoint. Occasionally, in the last few weeks, there is an eruption of angry shouting from the homeless shelter across the way. It used to be very quiet, but something has changed - new management, I think. We wait for Korean Air's Airbus A380 to lumber overhead, on initial approach to JFK - its wide wings and massive tail are unmistakeable at 13,000 feet. And sometimes the American kestrel perches at the top of the homeless shelter's fire escape and scans for careless pigeons.

City life. Day in, day out.

Tomatoes till we bust

The tomato days are here. They really only start in mid-July, and we will see them till early October. I have learned to wait for them. No tunnels, no Canada-grown (sorry, Canada), but sun-ripened fruit from Jersey, upstate New York, and Long Island.

And then they will be over.

The best way to eat the first ones is to toast some good sourdough bread, rub it with raw garlic, smear it with mayonnaise, load it with tomato slices, salt and pepper it, and drizzle some olive oil over the lot. It is simple and it is decadent.

If you want to go crazy, add some basil.