Supper on the terrace

Pavillon Deneurieux, 2008, a very drinkable Côtes du Rhône selling for $9 at Heights Chateau. We're going back for a case. Perfect for early summer.

Somewhere in the comments on one of the blogs that picked up the bad chicken story, someone mentioned Union Market on Court Street. We went there today, and found a local shopping nirvana. Good fresh produce, lots of cheese, bread, small but good butchery and a fish market, and various esoterica like boutique tonic water...So we came home with a package of thick-cut lamb shoulder chops @ 6.99/lb.

Perfectly aged, they were very tender, though my knives need sharpening. I did nothing clever, just threw some lemon juice, terrace herbs (savoury, sage and thyme) and garlic at them at the last minute.

I grated some salted ricotta over an arugula salad in an attempt at recreating the salad I loved at A Voce...it was good. The ricotta became pliable and tender.

The cat died and went to heaven. Vince picked off the last bits of lamb from the bones for him.

We all have our weaknesses.

(Food)

Over on the food blog the Caesar salad basks in its 15 seconds of glory as a finalist for Food 52's Week 48 competition.

Rose garden

My office, yesterday...

And some good company:

La Reine

Perle d'Or

Mme Ernst Calvat

Henry Hudson

Harison's Yellow

Cornelia

Albertyne

...name obscured by rose bush, must find out.

And a bunny.

Rain

...gutter's overflowing again. Maybe someone will make me a little paper boat to float in it.

Exotic Plants Denmark...

I was just googling Disa cornuta as a roundabout way of finding my own picture on my own website (blogger has its limitations). This googling of mine all apropos of a nice letter from a botanist in Germany who would like to use some of my disa photographs for an exhibition in Hannover.

Then I found my photograph on a website advertising and selling exotic seeds. And they have the nerve to copyright their own content!

There is no contact information whatsoever on the website. Feedback is clearly not required.

And I know that photo theft is inevitable which is why some people put those awful watermarks on their images.

But I am cross.

Update: 5-19 -10 - Exotic Plants has removed my picture from the website, and apologized.

Not a mouse or a trowel

Thank you to all who voted for 66 Square Feet in the Mouse and Trowel awards. The winners in the Container and Urban Gardening categories are Mr Brown Thumb and Life on the Balcony.

Oh, and the Mystery Tree has been identified.

Roof garden roses

Getting up to the roof involves climbing up a metal ladder, popping a hatch, and hauling myself up out of it. I go barefoot as this leads me to believe that I'll be more sure footed. When I return I am black-footed, after walking on the neighbour's roof. More about that in another post. The Mystery of the House Next Door (it's where the raccoon lives. But people live there too. In the same house).

I wanted to see what the roses look like from the top. Also, I like rooves. Roofs. Whatever.

There is something very movie-like about New York rooves. Roofs. They are over-certified - see the Walker Percy quote in the side bar, scroll down...They are full of satellite dishes and chimneys, and from this roof you can see New York Harbour, and the orange ferries, the tugboats and their charges, Governor's Island and the big white building on it that sucks exhaust fumes from the tunnel beneath, which connects the southern tip of Manhattan to Red Hook, for cars. You can see the back gardens of the houses behind us, and the trash pile behind the Long Island College Hospital's dormitory for doctors. Far away, across the water, you can see New Jersey, and planes landing at Newark, in the west. To the east, there are church steeples, and tree tops.

And on this roof there are roses.

Iceberg, below.

And New Dawn.