Last Week's Snow

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

                                                          Wu-Men

I am not usually the person who posts poetry, but I really liked this one. The first snow of the year was a week ago. It was delicate and charming, a welcome arrival for the beginning of the year.

 

These weedy little daisy flowers were still hanging on. My friend at the community garden said they bloom when everything else is brown, and here is the proof.
 

The garden looked seasonally appropriate.
 

The milkweed pods still had their seeds. I guess they disperse in the spring.
 

I gathered pots of snow which I melted down to water the houseplants with. They always enjoy rain showers in the summer, so I thought the snow would be beneficial. They seemed to like it. This was also the last day of the tree, seen in the corner.
 

The next day it snowed again, and what was forecast as a dusting quickly got out of hand.
 

It was Saturday, running the usual weekend errands soon became an ordeal.
 

The daylight drained away and everything got quiet.
 

The next day, the weather got warm, the snow started to melt, now it feels like spring.

Midwinter

I bought a new camera. I had been planning on buying a cheap video camera to mimic security camera footage for another project I am working on. But the man at B & H led me down the line of display cases to a beautiful camera with a Leica lens that also shoots video. His selling argument was that I could always shoot at a lower quality to imitate security footage.

The camera is a huge improvement over my 10 year old Canon. I wandered around a little bit trying out the camera. It makes me so happy that L'impasse (dead end) is still on 8th street. There used to be lots of crazy clothing stores and funky shoe stores, now only a few remain. I would love to see the Valentine's Day date involving these outfits.

A tropical rain storm interrupted my camera exploration, and despite various groundhog predictions of spring, winter returned. There has been a spate of decorative snow, sticking mostly on trees and grass, leaving passges clear. The best kind of snow for the city really.

The elm trees in Union Square were so pretty.

The sad blue building hasn't looked this good since the misguided addition of a glass curtain walll obscured all its cast iron details.

It was about here that I realized that I could change the image format between square, rectangular and panorama. Unfortunately, I also changed the image size so all these pictures are only good for the web.

I am getting more familiar with the camera controls.

A little later, the sun came out and all the snow melted off the trees, water cascaded down branches and the awnings sparkling in the light.

Taking Pictures With One Arm In A Sling

I was hit by an opening car door while I was riding my bicycle and I injured my shoulder. For a few weeks, I had to wear a sling when I went out. It limited what I could carry.

I could not even carry my little point and shoot camera. The only pictures I have taken with it were on this one afternoon when the light was pretty in the garden.

Instead I used my camera phone as I wandered around the city, staring forlornly at the cyclists reveling in the mellow autumn weather.

All of my pictures were a little tilted, thank heavens for Photoshop.

When I was photographing this post Halloween confetti of party fliers, a car drove up on the sidewalk just to my right. It made me feel as if the city was trying to kill me. Indeed, 13 pedestrians have been killed by cars since Halloween. According to the Gothamist, 4 of them were on the sidewalk when they were struck.

This is what Bike Snob NYC calls a hipster high lock.

I have been out of the sling for two weeks. This is actually from a week ago. I was about to post it when I heard about the attacks in Paris. The blog post didn't feel important so I left it a few days. Violence continues, even today, in Mali. I could wait forever.

Garden In Flower

Sunflower about to bloom

Pollinator Flowers

Hydrangea flouncing around

Butterfly bush

Everything is overgrown

Milkweed on the left

This spot used to be shady before the neighbor cut down the tree. Now I may need to move the ferns.

Catnip also attracts pollinators

Plants on the patio

Gardening

After a dry spell that lasted for most of May, we finally had a week of cool rainy weather. It started with a long deluge. The trees seemed to dance under the rain. All of the greens became more verdant.

I have not been trimming the little patches of grass that I haven't pulled up. They are growing very high. The wisteria has climbed the fence and begun to battle the neighbor's ivy for supremacy.

I am in a strange place with my work. I finished a virtual street art piece that I spent a few months on. I used the Domino Sugar factory to represent a building from a dream. The problem is that the factory is being slowly demolished. I am worried that if I put my piece up while the factory is still intact, it might distract from the point of my piece. I need to wait until more of the building is destroyed.

I am going in a new direction with my Urban Demeter project. I want to plant seeds in empty tree pits rather than put plants out. The picture above is the beginning of a Three Sisters Planting. The problem with growin from seed is that it takes a while and in the meantime there is nothing but dirt, and maybe some small green sprouts. The corn has come up on this spot but it is not growing very quickly. I may need to feed it. Many tree pits have compacted soil which is very hard to work with.

I am in a bit of a holding pattern so I have thrown myself into the garden.

We put some bamboo fencing on the walls of the patio to hide the ugly stucco.

It makes the light warmer.

I love lobelia, even though it rarely survives the July heat.

The milkweed I planted last year has come back. The plants are growing every day, one really tall, the other three smaller.

This is one of the beds where I planted flowers to attract pollenators.