The greenhouse experiments

The Fuchsia magelannica (named for the Straits of Magellan, and otherwise known as tree fuchsia or perennial fuchsia) cuttings have been through a lot.

First, a long plane ride. Then a glass of Harlem water for a week. Their leaves started to crisp up. I gave them  a plastic bag to retain humidity, feeling bad that I had hurried them from a southern summer to a dry northern winter.

I gave them individual plastic bags when all their leaves dropped off. They stayed there in their water like sad sticks, for more weeks. I decided to accept it and throw them out. But when I unwrapped them I found tiny green leaves sprouting between main stems and side branches.

I potted them up in damp peat moss inside  a light supermarket produce bag tent, for light and for humidity. But then they were too humid and developed mould. So I loosened the tent you see above, getting rid of the elastic band and airing them once a day.

Clearly, I have never rooted fuchsia cuttings, before. We shall see.

Apropos of naming plants, I am reading a fascinating book about late 18th and early 19th century botanizing and the discovery of Botany Bay (and of Australia, by way of New South Wales). It is a biography of botanist Sir Joseph Banks, written by Patrick O'Brian, who wrote the Aubrey/Maturin series of historical novels. This biography was published in 1983, and if you can plough through O'Brian's turgid description of Banks' school years you get to the plant-y bits, which are riveting. To a plant-y person, like me, anyway. He botanizes in Newfoundland, Iceland and right the way from Cape Horn through the South Seas (before Bligh gets there for the breadfruit and the infamous mutiny, although later it is discussed and he features), where he notes that vegetable-fed dogs taste rather like English lamb, via New Zealand, and to the east coast of Australia. Later they become very stuck on The Great Barrier Reef, which no European has seen before. Many journal entries are included verbatim, and seeing these landscapes through first person eyes is wonderful.

Seeing brown and thinking green

A cold walk, on Saturday afternoon. Long-ago snow still lay on the path in Inwood Hill Park, half-melted, now turned to ice, so that we skittered uphill. It was well below freezing. The woods were brown.

Our January afternoon above, and a day last May, below:

I showed Vince the route I walk with foragers, and pointed out my old Japanese knotweed patch, upright canes rigid and rattling with seeds in the wind.

The January Hudson view:

Below, a trick. Last early-April's Hudson view, Doesn't look much different does it? Spring takes its time, in these trees.

If you look down, April is more rewarding (nettlesssss):

On our walk on Saturday we also saw a perfectly round hole, belonging to someone who was not home.

I found some new patches of pokeweed - easily known by their tall, pale, hollow canes - to investigate later in the spring. In May poke looks like this:

And at home, for a ribolitta lunch, it looks like that:

My Inwood botanical walks will be on the 25 of April, and the 16th of May. 

I am looking forward to the green.

Sticky chicken

The chicken's next door. 

Now go and buy a lot of cilantro.

Evening

...is better than daytime, in the long dark house on 127th Street.

I found potted hyacinths at the flower sellers on Lenox and 112th.

The drink is sumac vodka, cognac and a slick of maple syrup.

Quiche Lorraine being assembled.

Small farm in the big city

When we were in Cape Town recently I visited the Oranjezicht City Farm, a two year old urban farm completely enclosed (yes, I know that's redundant) by the Cape Town city bowl.

I wrote a story about how the farm came to be, and what is happening there now, for Gardenista.

You can read it here: Citizen Farmers.

Dusk - the brown animals

Cape hare, lièvre du Cap - Lepus capensis

One late afternoon at De Mond I left Vince hunting sunbirds and sugarbirds in the aloes behind the cottage and drove off to photograph an interesting little roadside garden we had passed the day before, planted outside a row of dilapidated farm cottages.

Afterwards, on my way back down the dust road in the Landcruiser, I stopped three times for three animals, the first wild ones we had seen while staying there. 

Steenbok (I think) -  Raphicerus campestris 

(...in a field, appropriately, for the Latin.)

Yellow mongoose - Cynictis penicillata 

S/he was about the size of a very long cat, with an excellent tail, to which the species name refers, "like a paintbrush."

Walk in the hood woods

Late in the afternoon, I went for a Saturday walk. It was very cold. Cashmere T-shirt plus cashmere pullover plus cashmere hoodie plus thick merino wool cable knit turtleneck plus long coat plus hood of hoodie under cashmere hat cold. Plus scarf-like-a-blanket (yes, more cashmere).

Cold.

Did I mention the knitted leggings under the jeans? For a South African that is Serious dressing.

The woods were empty. I crunched around for an hour.

Then I crunched back home.