This was yesterday afternoon, the Lilac Collection, Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Tonight, listening to cold rain lashing the windows and gusts howling, it seems long ago.
Every year, it is my stated mission to inhale lilacs from every single bush, allegedly to detect nuances of scent among different varieties. (For example, white ones have a very light scent; blue ones are incense-like.) In truth, I am just drugging.
In the Cranford Rose Garden, a few bushes were already crowned in glory. Roses in April, really?
Our native wildflowers in the Northeast are delicate debutantes, all in white. Left to right: Solomon's seal, false Solomon's seal, and trillium. The shady floor of the Native Flora Garden was carpeted with them. Trillium is also called wakerobin, and there were plenty of wide-awake robins marching around in the undergrowth.
We observed sadly that Streamreach, our beloved Ent near the BBG's wandering waterway, who shaded many games of "float stuff downstream" during Daughter's childhood summers, had sustained two mighty wounds since we last paid him homage. But he's standing, half an Ent still nobler than another tree whole, and I hope tonight's brutal winds do him no further harm.
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.
Two weeks of late May mysteriously land in the middle of March, and I manage not to get over to the park more than once or twice. The reason: My own garden has been bursting out and yelling at me to perform every manner of service for it. A dozen rosebushes alone have been screeching to be pruned, and without the excuse of being miserable in the cold, I have been their slave.
But I've got to get over there because all sorts of stuff is going on. From my front porch, I can see that the trees are greening up, smudged with verdant pastel, a full month ahead of schedule. And that's not all.
* The Lakeside project is shaping up to be pretty damn amazing. Here's the Animated Architect Sketch; I love the snowy part, and the part where the trees drop down magically on Music Island. And the part at the very beginning where the Robert Moses crap building just disappears. (Thanks to the Q at Parkside blog for the heads-up.)
* The "Googa-Mooga" festival is stirring wild interest among the hip; it's some sort of food and music fest on May 19 and 20 that mysteriously, while "free," requires a ticket of extraordinary scarcity. Spouse has managed to acquire at least one of these prized tickets, which has him very excited even though we have yet to learn what bands are playing. Oh well: The festival's website proclaims that "food is the new rock," so we can dance along to the artisanal pickles.)
* And on March 31, the Carousel reopens for its hundredth anniversary. It's been given a nice tune-up by Todd W. Goings, a carousel doctor (what a dream job!), nicely profiled here. (Photo, right: Chester Higgins, New York Times)
* At the Prospect Park Zoo, the Golden Tamarins have a wee baby riding around on their blond backs. (Photo: Julie Larsen Maher/WCS)
Meanwhile, check out a nicely researched gem on the park's mysterious Vale of Cashmere at the wonderful history blog of the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklynology. This is the long-gone "Children's Shelter." The Vale, that haunted and troubled gem, looks very different than the playground envisioned by Vaux and Olmsted. Time to get over there and see for myself.
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.
Last weekend saw folks donning capes to fly around the balmy Long Meadow...
and doffing jackets to relish the warm sunshine.
Three little girls took a cookie break beneath the benign gaze of James T. Stranahan, "father of Prospect Park." Their innocent enjoyment was just what he worked so hard for...although he would have been puzzled by their strange headgear.
Someone flopped in the shadow of the little shuttered guard booth.
And on the park's main drive, there was palpable delight whether on foot or on wheels.
It didn't feel much like a week after New Year's Eve...and no one was sorry.
Huge thunderstorm passed over the park, then the sun burst out. Then it happened all over again. Then I took a walk. Everyone disappeared and reappeared twice in rapid succession: dog-walkers, runners, soccer players. The sun dappled in just before setting, trees dripped, and everything smelled like the deepest woods possible. The humid warmth that has lingered like a clueless guest was vanquished, and a cool mist cloaked everything. Autumn is right on time.
I suspected I'd find some fungus, and I did. Somebody already got to these for a tasty bite; since no squirrel or vole was Socratically prostrate nearby, I presume they were edible.
I won't be getting to Prospect Park today to enjoy the inch or so of rain predicted. (I'm actually headed for the Cloisters, more on that later.)
So in honor of the weather, here are a lady and gentleman mallard by Nicole, the photographer I met in the park this week. I felt a bit guilty for dissing mallards; they may be ubiquitous, but they are lovely.
When it's pouring rain and people complain And things aren't worth a shucks, Don't you yell, just say, "Well— Lovely weather for ducks!"
Jay Livingston & Ray Evans COPYRIGHT 1953 Famous Music Corp. (ASCAP) International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved
EXTRA: PARK MYSTERY FILM SOLVED!
A delightful tale just gets better: Todd Bieber, the young New Yorker who found and developed a roll of film of some frolicsome tourists in Prospect Park, did succeed in tracking them down, and visited them in Paris. Check it out here.
The unwary may be drawn to enter Field 11 when the white mist rises. But the good burghers of Flatbush know better.
The open gate beckons...but no soccer players cavort on the Parade Grounds this second morning of 2011.
Many are those who enter the white mist, and never return. Some claim to have glimpsed a strange white bubble in the distance, from which issue cries and groans and the sound of blows being struck. Perhaps this mysterious entity swallows the doomed intruder when the mist descends on Field 11.
Or perhaps it is that dreaded spectre from Dutch times, more harrowing to gaze upon than the Hollow's Horseman...
...the Headless Snowman of Caton Park!
Wishing all of you a blessed 2011...see you in Prospect Park!
Yesterday, I struggled through our unplowed streets to find respite in the park, where the paths had been nicely cleared. The cries of happy sled-riders drifted across the frozen lake to the south shore, where few footprints had broken the drifts.
Brooklyn of ample hills was mine. The contours of Lookout Hill appear vividly when snow-cloaked beneath bare branches.
The bizarre drift patterns were a boon to the squirrels, who found exposed turf for foraging around the base of many trees.
The Peristyle looks spectacular in the snow and December sun, both outside looking in...
...and inside looking out.
There weren't many folks out, but I was passed by joggers, walkers, and two horseback riders.
On the way home, I passed the deflated undulations of the Tennis Bubble, a casualty of the storm.
Just before noon, I started a quick walk in Prospect Park, unaware of a tornado watch until 6 p.m. The sky opened.
The phragmites may be unwelcome invasives, but they look all tropical storm-ish when the wind bends them back. The "Cherokee Hotshots" have done wonders since our last Brooklyn tornado; I saw few fallen limbs along the Wellhouse Drive.
Clad in quick-drying hiking pants and river sandals, I felt an unaccustomed, soggy delight in the downpour. I had my purple umbrella, and he had his shell, and we both stuck our heads out.
What hope that the enablers of Gluttonous Resurgent Waterfowl will follow these new signs at the lake's edge? They must be a warmup for the park's "Canada Goose management plan" to be issued by a "wildlife management committee." All this makes me envision a goose sitting at the conference table with Dilbert et al., demanding a golden parachute from the Pointy-Headed Boss.
The family of swans coasted off in the rain; no Cheerios being tossed under a tornado watch.
