Prospect: A Year in the Park

A spell so exquisite

Some years the trees at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden cooperate and actually bloom to coincide with Sakura Matsuri, the Cherry Blossom Festival. Not this year, with its wildly premature spring. Today was already "cherry confetti underfoot" day, with drifts of blossoms in every breeze.

 

Let a thousand photos bloom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone was a flower girl today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nearby, the tree peonies vamped it up, a sea of satiny flounces sprung from the imagination of a ballgown designer.

 

This year, everything is peaking almost simultaneously. Tomorrow, as the cold rain falls, I'll share lilacs, wildflowers and even some early roses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Spring is a happiness so beautiful, so unique, so unexpected, that I don’t know what to do with my heart. I dare not take it, I dare not leave it – what do you advise?

                Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.”

                                                        --Emily Dickinson, letter to Louise and Frances Norcross, Spring, 1874

This whole experiment of green

Gotcha! A week of late-May-like weather had everything bolting into bloom, but after a freezing night, some blossoms, like these magnolias on Wellhouse Drive, appeared to regret the hard-partying spring break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my own garden, the hyacinths pumped out their heavy blooms seemingly overnight, then dropped face-forward into the dirt. In the park, the daffodils seemed impervious to extremes, nodding in the chilly late-afternoon sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Songs of red-wing blackbirds richocheted around the lake shore, along with those of doves, cardinals, robins, geese, gulls, and a helicopter. Yet a deep stillness seemed to envelop the little Wellhouse, a building that always feels haunted to me. Perhaps it's because a vast well actually lies beneath here, its outline traced by a sunken circle in the ground.

 

 

 

 

 

A little madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King

But God be with the Clown,

Who ponders this tremendous scene—

This whole experiment of green,

As if it were his own!

—Emily Dickinson, "The Single Hound," XXXVIII

 

Death and resurrection, park-style

I wish people would stop saying, "Winter? What winter?" as if it were something to be missed. Daffodil buds are plumped to bursting along Prospect Park Southwest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even at 56 degrees, there was no mistaking it for spring. A stiff breeze blew scuttling leaves in eddies along the Center Drive. Near the Quaker Cemetery, and fresh from Ash Wednesday ("remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return"), I peered inside for a glimpse of mortality.

 

But a radiant forsythia distracted me from the rows of plain tombstones. So did the evidence of debauchery just outside the historic cemetery's perimeter fence: a scattering of beer cans, lighters and condoms. At least they weren't festooned on the grave sites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, that's a better offering for the deceased: a cluster of snowdrops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Throughout the park, the number of recently hewn trees is shocking. Glades have turned to clearings; the sharp smell of sawdust is in the air. A year of storms has exacted its toll, but this log's frosting of exuberant lichens was a reminder that decay is transformation.

 

 

In search of Happy Light in 2012

This winter, I'm throwing the book at SAD; I even bought a Verilux "HappyLight"®, before which I slumped in the frigid pre-dawn this morning. But I'm also determined to use Prospect Park as my full-spectrum light therapy...and to recommit to the daily park visits that prompted this chronicle three years ago. New Year's Day was spent in the HappyDark of the movies and a German restaurant, but on Monday afternoon I dragged Spouse to see the sun's last rays gild the lake.

 

 

 

 

 

And this morning, I braved the bitter wind to see the sun peer over the treeline behind the Long Meadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dogs were already out in force, jubilant in the bitter air. (Which reminds me: My limited edition of Park Bark: At Play with the Dogs of Brooklyn, a photo celebration of the park's dogs and their owners, is getting close to sold out! Thanks to all who ordered a copy for a holiday present, and if you'd like to get in an order (Valentine's Day approacheth), by all means go here and let me know if you'd like a dedication written on the flyleaf.)

 

 

 

 

 

WACKY TREE OF THE DAY

Monday afternoon, I spied what looked like a bunch of lime-colored, corrugated softballs in the leaves, under a thicket of thorny branches. One clung to the tree overhead. I struggled through the thorns and pocketed one to identify later. As I suspected, it was an Osage orange (Maclura pomifera). I've heard of these in the park but never found one before.

 

Here are some cool facts about Osage oranges:

* They are related to the mulberry, and are not citruses. (The fruits supposedly smell a little orangey, but mine didn't.)

* Few animals except horses eat the fleshy fruit (technically called a drupe), which is inedible and mildly poisonous to humans--but an extinct ground sloth may once have relished it as a slothalicious treat. Some folks also claim bug-repellent properties for the fruit, which exudes a milky sap (as I discovered when I sliced it open).

* Its nicknames include "hedge apple" and "horse apple." Grown as a hedge, it predated barbed wire as a way to fence in cattle.

* The tree's wood has been prized by bow-makers dating back to the Comanches for its flexibility and strength; early French settlers called it bois d'arc, or "bow wood."

* Merriwether Lewis sent cuttings of Osage orange to Thomas Jefferson.

Happy New Year...see you in the park!

Solstice lookout

Sunset, the day of the solstice; the sun was vanishing behind the buildings of Windsor Terrace by 3:30 p.m. I wanted, Druid-like, to capture its last rays, so I headed up Lookout Hill, the tallest point in Prospect Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lookout Hill is one of those spots in the park that one is warned against visiting alone, but when leafless, it seems exposed as well as remote. Condom wrappers and other nasty bits attest to its seclusion, but even in waning daylight I felt fairly safe with the occasional jogger...and an intrepid mom and kids who were using the hill as a family Stairmaster.

 

 

 

 

 

The flattish, circular top of Lookout Hill would be a great place for a Wiccan ceremony to worship the distant sun, but for a while I was completely alone. To the south, I could see...good grief, was that the Coney Island parachute jump? It was. Turning a few degress to my left, I looked down on the lake and away to the erstwhile fields of Flatbush where we live.

 

 

 

 

 

As I left the park, the festive decor glowed in the shadows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BARKING MAD THANKS!

...to all who have ordered a copy of Park Bark: At Play with the Dogs of Brooklyn, my photo homage book to the canines of Prospect Park and their owners.   Go here for easy PayPal ordering...and remember, Valentine's Day is coming up fast!

Not one lasts

The day after Thanksgiving involved pie for breakfast. Later, I dragged the three of us to the park. A brisk mid-afternoon walk, this time of year, quickly becomes a sunset walk.

Drummers' Grove stood empty.

Oak leaves piled up against the Oriental Pavilion.

Across the lake, an animated party (bridal, apparently) worked with a photographer by the rustic shelter. He had rigged up elaborate reflectors, but none as good as the lake itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

Seed structures everywhere...in readiness for dispersal, death and rebirth.

 

We drank coffee on the Boathouse steps as the sun sank behind the trees.

 

Good Lord, Advent starts tomorrow...just in time to ease the heart as the shadows stretch their longest.

 

 

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman,

       the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things

       come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go,

       not one lasts.

Autumn Movement   by Carl Sandburg

 

 

 

 

Through the mist

Henry James may have thought "summer afternoon" were the two most beautiful words in the language, but I'll suggest "autumn mist" as being up there. I have been using a broken toe and a stupid Velcro boot thing as an excuse not to walk in the park (what was my excuse all summer, before I broke it?), but was lured to the Long Meadow.

Remember that perennial school assignment to collect some fall leaves and glue them to construction paper? I still want to do that every year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the distance, the off-leash dogs capered like happy ghosts...

and at closer range, did more corporeal things.

 

I've decided that, if Daughter goes away to college, I will finally get us a dog. (I tell her it will replace her and will be given her room.) Now I mentally audition dogs as they pass, preparing for the day. One thing is certain: It will be a bigger dog, not a little yapster.

Near Bartel-Pritchard Circle, a big party tent was being decorated for tonight's "Fall Bash" park fundraising gala. Too rich for our wallet at $250 a ticket (still available at the door tonight!), but I peeked inside and saw some sort of fancy stage-dressing to create a faux-park; looks like the philanthropists will have fun.

And they won't have to get their shoes as muddy as I got my Velcro bootie; a path was being laid down for them, to be covered with rolls of fake turf.

 

Bronx cherry-bombers

We live within walking distance of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, but I couldn't face the crowds at Sakura Matsuri, the cherry-blossom festival.

So on Sunday, we traitorously headed up to the Bronx to the New York Botanical Garden to see their cherries. Why is one "botanic" and the other "botanical"? No one seems to know, but Bronxites do bucolic quite well; these folks were lounging on a cool afternoon with one of those classy picnic hampers.

 

 

 

 

It's amazing how different NYBG and BBG are. The Bronx garden is a vast expanse that can only be practicably explored via their tram, which has an informative but somewhat intrusive recorded narration (and the drama of trying to catch one, and find a seat, at stops throughout the property). BBG, by contrast, is gorgeously compact and easily walkable on a first visit. Bigger isn't better--just different.

I loved the painterly drifts of tulips here near their (huge) Haupt Conservatory. Tulips are so much happier when they're not lined up like a firing squad.

 

 

 

 

Daughter loved these red ones, interplanted with spiffy yellow accents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subtle eye here: variegated young leaves on the shrub echo the green-touched white tulips beneath, and blue forget-me-nots beneath is cool-color genius. In my garden, the color scheme is decided by whatever the squirrels don't eat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LILAC PORN ALERT

It's great fun to use the word "porn" on a blog; Google sends drooling idiots your way for years. And what do they discover? Ha, ha, suckers! Here be the subjects of my panting lust!

Deliriously nuanced lavender ones!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hallucinatory pink ones! (I think this variety is "Congo.")

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And impossibly pure and tender white ones. Daughter admired the design of the budlets while still closed (and took this shot).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent awhile by a little waterfall in the Bronx River, over which swayed these alder cones. Everything was pale green, fresh and a little wild.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll be back at BBG shortly for the infamous Plant Sale Members' Preview, having saved all my fierce crowd-fightin' mojo over the weekend. Except for getting shunted to overflow parking at Fordham, it was a stress-free day in the roomy glades of the Bronx, even if we did burn a good bit of $4.27-a-gallon gasoline to get there.

 

 

 

 

 

Project Greenlight

Go Spring! Heck, go Summer! The Lycra Dudes were out in force on the park drive, along with every other soul in Brooklyn lucky enough to be at liberty this morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Park Slope moms lay in a stroller circle and worked on getting back those pre-baby bodies. A Parks employee looked on, somewhat puzzled, it seemed.

I never did get back that body, but the one I've got just got a greenlight after an angiogram. That will put spring in your step! Walked today, a warm-up for biking; I couldn't care less what I look like in Lycra now that I know my left anterior descending artery is sleek and shapely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I walked the full circle of the park, resting on Nellie's Lawn. There's not a whole lot of shade yet, but the tiny leaves are screaming mobs of hungry chloroplasts, so in a few days, there should be plenty. Heard while sitting here: cardinal, dove, and either pheasant or grouse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine if these were extremely difficult to grow--what a status symbol it would be to have a lawn star-studded with dent-de-lions! Special consultants would be brought in to cultivate them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These smelled exquisitely sweet. What are they, again?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After this winter, which a blogger friend accurately termed a "death march," it almost felt like too much to handle. But not really. Go, everything!

 

 

 

A late afternoon in spring

The woods in Prospect Park look like a faded pastel, with faint pinks and greens scrubbed in lightly behind charcoal tree branches. The sun warmed us up briefly around 5 o'clock after a grey and cold start to the day, and lots of folks came out.

 

The Daughter and I tromped about in the woods; we saw a cardinal, red-winged blackbirds (doing their spring "songs"), hermit thrush, a streaky-breasted sparrowish guy, and lots of robins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

Things looked misty and the city seemed far away.

 

 

What is more April than violets?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
And along Prospect Park Southwest, these guys rocked out on a Passover stroll. Coming towards us, they had the whole Superhero Team vibe going, needing only a CGI fireball behind them to walk away from. Blessed holy days--be they Passover, Holy Week, or just spring itself--to all readers of AYITP!