What wondrous life

At the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, the harvest is piled into mountains of fresh orange and green and gold.

Who juxtaposed these little peppers and plums, a farmer or an art director?

 

It's fun to observe the Greenmarket's effects upon the spirit. Here's a lady named Betty, whose purchases turned her bicycle basket into a lovely planter. One encounters this kind of ready smile in other places, like Ohio and Colorado; in New York City, not so much.

 

 

But watch closely as even the most hardened and hurried Brooklynites purchase an armload of flowers.  They walk away cradling the bouquet like a new baby, surreptitiously marveling at it, and perhaps feeling a little identity shift.

For those few moments, you can glimpse wonder and vulnerability.

Yesterday, there was also an outbreak of cautious hedonism as the crowd sampled fresh sliced peaches. We'll forsake the obvious Prufrock for a less familiar Englishman:

What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

--"Thoughts in a Garden," Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

  

GREENMARKET DOG OF THE WEEK

Princess is a teacup Yorkie-Maltese mix, with some Ewok in there somewhere. When I met her, she was slurping water poured out from bottle to palm by a kindly flower vendor (hence the wet chops).