Ice field

After the once-every-more-or-less-two-weeks shop at Wholefoods on Columbus Circle (which allows me to stock up on organic chicken, a grass-fed steak, maybe, and, this time, two beautiful branzinos), I veered off into Central Park in search of the great outdoors.

I walked along the road for a bit, but then saw the Sheep Meadow, with no one on it. Not even sheep. 

And in I went. At first I managed to stay on top of the snow, which was frozen, but soon enough I broke through with an abrupt drop in altitude. Undeterred, I decided to aim for the middle of the white field.

I wasn't prepared for the crunch and plunge with every step, which shows how little I know about snow. I've never really had this much to practise on. New York's lucky if it gets a decent snowfall a season. We've had several, and the cold after our last one had kept untrafficked snow clean and cold, and has changed its fluffy nature.

No wonder those Everest climbers have such trouble. It's hard work!

Phew. In the end I followed a set of tracks across, wobbling every now and then as the ice caught my feet. Fortunately I did not have to worry about my purchases thawing.

I reached the far side and the beautiful elm alley.

Where I found an impossibly well dressed dog.

The shoes! I'm not against snow shoes for dogs - the salt and chemicals on city sidewalks are horrible, and I think it's awful that most dogs have to walk in the noxious slush (this from a cat person) but these are...a little disturbing. 

The pond is iced over, completely.

The Ramble is on the other side of the bridge (site of spring walk).

I crossed the bridge, then headed back to the subway, shoulders now aching from the heavy bags, and caught the B from 81st to 125th Street, where I surfaced and walked west, passing icicles and stray cats, before turning up our front stairs and letting myself into the apartment, greeted my well fed black cat, and unpacked what I had found.

Frozen rose

There is a leak in the gutter of our building, high above the terrace. It goes drip, drip, drip all night.

This morning, I discovered that it had turned my Iceberg rose - never better named - into a rose-icle.

Sea and Sea Fish Market - learning to shop

After my walk-in-the-snowy-park the other day I stopped at Sea & Sea, on 116th. It was my third visit. 

The first time, with Vince, we stood like giant white fish out of water, opening and closing our mouths as some incomprensible system worked smoothly around us. But by looking stupid and touristy enough someone eventually asked us what we wanted and that is how we got our giant fish sandwiches. Three crisp fillets were fried to order and slapped between between two slices of Wonder-ish bread. We ate them - at least, as much as we could - on a park bench in Central Park a few blocks south.

The second time, on my own (also in the snow, now that I think of it), I requested two fillets, please, and expected opposition, as well as to pay for a full sandwich (a whopping $3.50). But I simply got what I asked for, no questions asked, and a dollar off the price. That time, I doused my fish with hot sauce and a little salt before the fryman wrapped it up in wax paper and slipped it into a small brown paper bag. I ate it walking north on Lenox. Good. Very good.

So now I was ready for a purchase of whole fish from the Ice Wall, that piscine Maginot Line staring at you from the ice chips in the east. All kinds of fish. From carp to catfish to giant things called sheepsheads, to flounder and snapper and butter fish and barracuda and porgy and sea bass and whiting.

A woman shopping ahead of me had a stainless steel bowl.  So I grabbed one, too. She fetched some red plastic tongs and aimed for her fish. So I found some red plastic tongs and started studying the fish, too. I landed up in front of some yellowtail snapper. Pleasingly pink with yellow stripes and tails. Memories of Miami. I looked at their eyes, carefully. They were bright. Not a lot of other bright eyes in the wall, that day. I stuck my tongs into the ice, gripped my snapper and pulled. Nothing. I wiggled. The fish started to budge. I put some discrete muscle into it, got a firmer grip and yanked. The fish broke free and flew - just - into my bowl (and the crowd went wild!). Success. Two more, and I carried them to the back, where a row of men takes money, weighs fish, and cleans them. Mine were weighed, and given to two men in yellow oil slickers to be filleted.

A woman behind me brought a bowl with two heads of a pointy-faced monster fish to be weighed. $20 was too much for her and she sighed and murmured before retiring. A young woman brought a bowl of shrimp and a dish of broccoli to be weighed, and then carried them to the cooking station at the front doors, where you can have you dinner fried or steamed while you wait. A tall West African man waited with a bowlful of crabs.

There is a lot of fresh produce - in individual, clingwrapped trays: vegetables like broccoli, okra, snap peas or cauliflower. The lemons, three for $1, are the most reasonable in the hood. Then there are extras, like Scotch bonnet peppers, peeled and whole garlic, fresh ginger and bunches of thyme. Behind me, as I waited, were tanks of live crab and lobster. Two girls walked past with bags of snowcrab legs.

My camera lens had fogged up so I couldn't take pictures until the minute it cleared, when I was handed my bagful of cleaned fish. The men had shown me my fish bones and asked if I wanted the heads, too. They had been told, they said seriously, that I would not want the heads. I did want the heads, I assured them, so heads remained attached to the backbones.

And that was that. I had my fish. Bouillabaisse would follow. 

I felt like I'd passed some kind of test.

Next time, I'll get fish and chips. 

With vinegar.

One snowy afternoon

West 127th Street

It snowed again. Wet, sticking stuff that turned every tree into tangles of lace.

 125th at Lenox Avenue

On corners the slush was already greying into puddles.

But whenever you looked up, there was the snow, icing any surface it touched.

I was heading to 116th, to brave Sea & Sea for some bouillabaisse (p. 169 of The Book) ingredients.

Emboldened by my last visit, when I ordered just two fish fillets for my sandwich, instead the usual three, I felt I was ready for the big one: an actual purchase of fish from the ice wall. 

West 121st Street

But then I got sidetracked, and walked east, to Marcus Garvey Park.

Mt Morris Park West

...which was deserted, and pristine.

Last autumn it was depressed, neglected, with hardpacked earth and thirsty trees. 

But now it is beautiful.

The park interrupts Fifth Avenue. The schist hill was too big to blow up for the grid.

 I saw about six other people. Each one of them was smiling. 

I had been nervous of the leaf cover and lone men, late last year.

But this time I walked all the way to the top. 

This is high country, for Manhattan.

If you'd been there we could have had a snowball fight.

A hawk flew out of the trees, here, slow, silent.

Fifth Avenue. Central Park is at the foot of the two tall towers at the end.

Looking northeast.

  

I passed a boy on his own, talking to his iPhone, which was filming his progress.

Below me another boy ran to a metal pole, stuck his tongue onto it, waited, and ran on, tongue still intact.

Tonight there will be more.

White out

The front steps, today.

I rearranged the terrace a bit yesterday, little expecting today's snow. Nothing major, just swiveling the stone table, swapping some pots around, thinking by moving. I want a bigger table and am wondering just how big a stone slab I can find. The current one, a fieldstone gift from a friend, years ago, is three feet long by about two wide. It can squeeze four, but I'd like a comfortable six, for those spring and summer dinners whose thought pulls me through winter.

I cut roses back, finding some disease in the canes, and may take up the kind offer of a couple more bare root roses from David Austen. Then again, these roses are tough and tend to survive. Also, I'm not allowed to order anymore plants online; I think I need an alarm on my laptop. Bwaap, bwaap, bwaap! Back away from the computer!

Quite apart from the annual climbing beans, the Nicotiana and the last-minute favas I ordered, I now expect for my horticultural melting pot terrace: 10 Lilium longiflorum (Asian species lilies, white, trumpet-shaped), 3 Lilium canadense (native to the Northeast), 6 Gloriosa superbum (southern Africa), and 10 Uvullaria grandiflora (a woodland wildflower native to the Northeast) - I hope the latter do well. I've never grown them before. They're summer-dormant so perhaps I'll plant them with Begonia grandis (hardy begonia), if I can find any, or ever-blooming Dicentra eximia, another native.

But for now, the snow falls thick, wet and fast.

The last lunch

In Cape Town, there is always a last lunch before I leave for the airport. Nowadays, I catch a shuttle instead of being driven by my mother. It arrives, always ten minutes early, and I say my last goodbyes. I pat the dogs, and I hug my father and my mother, and we all try not to cry. It doesn't work.

But before that, for lunch, my mother does what she does. Loads a large tray with everything necessary for a beautiful table, with beautiful food, and my father does what he does, provides, quite matter of factly, but with innate delight, a bottle of Champagne, and carries the heavy tray out of the house and down the slope of the lawn, and across to the shaded deck under the plane tree.

And then we eat, and drink. Lately, he has been aiming the Champagne cork at the birdbath near the fence, and at least twice, managed to overshoot it. He is not a man who believes in squandering the pleasure of a bottle of bubbly by opening it with a discreet pffft.

It has to make a bang.

Summer breakfast

I hadn't realized how green our Cape Town breakfasts were.

My mom bought these oversized cups for our morning coffee one summer, and then on our last trip, Vince found the jug (described, significantly, as a "custard jug." The Frenchman hoovers up South African custard in Olympic time) and bought that for her. Good for roses, too.

Knysna forest honey, and my mom's apricot jam.

My mouth waters.