Prospect: A Year in the Park

Semi-freddo

 

Last Sunday, the mid-January sun, already stronger, melted much of the snowcap on the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. A dark and rainy week followed, culminating in a dreaded inauguration; the timeless peace of the Japanese Garden is a good tonic.

So is the beauty of evergreens capped with white.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Botanical trivia: the word glaucous (from the Latin glaucus, meaning "bluish-grey or green") describes the pale grey or bluish-green appearance of the surfaces of some plants, especially conifers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was terrible at conifer identification when I was a Garden Guide (docent) at the BBG years ago; it all has to do with needle shape, structure, etc. Sometimes I still just call them all "pine trees," which is unforgivable. Here, you identify this one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's to a new era, on thin ice.

Native glory

If you really, really need a walk in the woods, but can't drive up the Hudson, head for the Native Flora Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Pretend that the not-too-distant sound of Flatbush Avenue traffic is the rushing of a mountain stream. (This garden does have a stream, but not a rushing one.) Carefully curated for more than a century to reflect the real Northeast, this reliably uncrowded path was magnificent yesterday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The names of our native trees are a kind of poetry. Scarlet oak. According to its tag, it ranges from Maine to Michigan, and as far south as Georgia and Mississippi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sugar maple, yes the kind that gives us pancake syrup, with spectacular rainbows within a single leaf.  It's the state tree, not just of Vermont, but of New York, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sassafras, with its mitten-shaped leaves and root-beer-scented bark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black tupelo, another ravishing red. Also called sour gum, an irony since it is prized for the honey bees make from it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the fallen leaves of a tupelo tree provided gaudy camoflauge for the Blurry Bird of the Day, a reminder that this garden makes it worth your while to look both underfoot...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...and overhead.

Save

Foraging at Dead Horse Bay

Does that sound faintly menacing? It's marvelous. On the first Saturday in May, a cool gray one, I signed up with the doyenne of urban gourmet foraging, Marie Viljoen, for a spring forage walk along seaside paths across Flatbush Avenue from Floyd Bennett Field. I love this wild fringe of Brooklyn, and I knew that strange things awaited us down on the beach. Our small group gathered, bags in hand, to pick nature's neglected salad greens (invasives only, nothing scarce or endangered) under Marie's sharp eye.

 

Marie is that gorgeous girl in school, the total original with the seemingly effortless style, but so incredibly nice you can't hate her for it. Tall, ginger, erudite about botany and with a sharp sense of humor, she could be a lifestyle guru (just see her blog 66 Square Feet (Plus)) if she were just less intelligent, quirky, and nuanced. She introduced us to the mysteries of pokeweed, whose young shoots are relished by Southerners (and, in this case, a South African), but whose mature plant parts and berries are toxic.

 

 

 

We gathered lots of tender garlic mustard tips; this pesky weed made a delicious, broccoli-di-rape-like green for my pasta that night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead nettles--edible despite their dreary name--rose above a fairy-forest of violets and other wildflowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Young milkweed--or maybe it's dogbane, a poisonous look-alike. They both have milky sap, but only milkweed has hollow stems. Butterflies eat it, too, so Marie recommends only foraging it in areas where it is plentiful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we headed toward the water, I nibbled the bases of phragmites (didn't care for them) and some resinous immature bayberries (delicious). Marie uses bayberry leaves like bay leaves, infusing gin or vodka with them, and the buds like capers. We emerged onto Dead Horse Bay, with the Marine Parkway Bridge rising in the distance. At our feet: sea rocket, a salt-loving little green with the kick of wasabi.

 

 

 

 

 

Also at our feet: the surreal washed-up detritus that has made Dead Horse Bay a famous mecca for beachcombers and bottle collectors. The currents turn up an unceasing harvest of glass, ceramic, shoe soles, and other urban imperishables, along with the occasional horse bones--remnants of its past (as a home for glue factories and slaughterhouses) reflected in its memorable name. I've been here before, and it's always fun to watch the incredulity of a first-timer at this dystopian harvest.

Some of the bottles are clearly recognizable, and as you toss them back you wonder, Whose nighttable did that Noxema sit on, and when? What family, after a pancake breakfast in some other decade, consigned that maple syrup bottle to a watery limbo? And, is "Miracle Power" strong enough to overcome the evil of an ancient crushed dollhead?

  

Next, we climbed up a low bluff, where Marie laid out a superb picnic: Vietnamese spring rolls, translucent wraps around bouquets of spring nibbles; pokeweed-sprout finger sandwiches; and a refreshing homemade cordial brewed from various natural elixirs gathered on her walks. And a buttery loaf cake scented with almond-y mahleb, or cherry pits. Coots and geese provided background music, along with the surf. Nearby, nestled in a dune, I found a little art installation that some previous visitor had left behind.

 

 

 

As we headed back, we found a big mushroom that Marie saved to identify later. (You don't guess with mushrooms.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I caught my Blurry Bird of the Day, a redwinged blackbird, harbinger of spring in all places marshy and reedy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And we headed back up to Flatbush Avenue and ordinary life, having feasted on the foraging fringe of Brooklyn.

 

For a deep dive into Marie's beautiful matrix of New York, food, plants, life and beauty, you can buy her book 66 Square Feet: A Delicious Life, One Woman, One Terrace, 92 Recipes. And for her take on this walk, including her gorgeous photos, go here.

Breath, taken (Guest Park Edition)

Dreary day, dreary errand. Got off the Q train a stop too early, was aiming for Lexington and 59th. Somehow, remembered that when I get off at the wrong stop, something wonderful often happens, and squared my tired shoulders and slogged up into the light. By some grace, looked immediately to my left.

 

 

 

 

Saw this.

For us Brooklynites who don't work in midtown and live close to Prospect Park, it's easy to kind of forget about Central Park. For those of us history wonks, it's tempting to get uppity and remind people that Central was not Vaux and Olmsted's masterpiece in their own minds; that came later, here in the green heart of Brooklyn. But on a cold, damp day in early May, what a fresh and exquisite vista to greet one upon arising from the subway--almost like a hallucination.

Pan right, slightly; another masterful composition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pan left, and another.

 

From this vantage point, clinging to the stone perimeter of park and subway, one looks around and sees, mostly, the gracious old dowager hotels that line Central Park South; one must go further north and tip back the head to have the treeline punctuated by the repulsive, scary new supertowers rising along "Billionaire's Row" on 57th Street. Here, I merely gave a loving nod to the Plaza, where my father-in-law worked for 50 years and where we spent our wedding night in 1983. I can't imagine anyone ever gazing so fondly some day upon the icy stratospheric sliver of "One 57" and its ilk.

 

BBG Discovery Garden Redux: No place to hide

It was with some trepidation that I visited the new Discovery Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden late in August. The Children's Garden farm--where my tiny daughter leaned over a plot of seeds in "KinderGardeners"--was unchanged, a tangle of crops worthy of Beatrix Potter with the charming cottage at its heart. But the dear little Discovery Garden that used to be at the Flatbush Avenue/Empire Boulevard entrance has been wiped away for a spacious new entry, and a whole new Discovery Garden created.

 

As a former BBG docent ("garden guide"), I still feel a fierce proprietary interest in its every development. I was very underwhelmed by the much-heralded new Visitors' Center, a sprawling vanity project that manages to incorporate every LEED-certified trend while seeming utterly unconnected to the Garden's historic vibe (and, mysteriously, facing the parking lot with a vast swath of blindingly white concrete). I had high hopes for the new Discovery Garden, but it didn't thrill me, frankly.

 

 

 

It's...very educational, I guess, and far better designed for large groups, laid out as a series of environmental habitats. I'll bet they all "align to Common Core standards." The boardwalk-like paths and rope bridges are fun to explore, and I liked this nest with some building materials in it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But everywhere there are signs urging you to be a Young Scientist, suggesting questions and experiments like an earnest progressive textbook. This "meadow" seemed more man-made than meadow-like to me. In the Poconos as a kid, I'd wander in meadows for hours on end--they were wild, lush, untracked, humming with life. Wonderful places to dream and do nothing--not even science. Are kids still allowed to just dream in meadows?

 

 

 

 

The pond feature needed some work; I highly approve of investigating pond scum, but at least at this early juncture, the pond seemed without much (at least of the macroscopic variety) to investigate. No fish, frogs or turtles, for sure. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a variety of bug-houses but a warning not to disturb the bugs (good for not getting sued by kids who forgot their Epi-Pen, but not much fun), and a station for adding to the Curiosity Collection, whose display jars were sealed shut. As a kid, my chief private game was something I called "nesting," which consisted of collecting just this sort of thing--but for a fantasy winter survival cottage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silky, irresistible treasures like these bursting milkweed pods--it will be hard to balance the "hands-on" thing while keeping kids from "harvesting." The whole project, while state-of-the-art in its eco-friendly zeal, was somehow dispiriting. You could get lost in the old kids' exploration area, amid towering hedges and sunflowers; you could stand at a table full of pine cones and, well, mess with pine cones, with no one asking you to sort, hypothesize, or analyze. It was flowery and messy, full of beauty and a bit mysterious.

 

 

 

I guess that's not on the Common Core. Neither is rolling down hills, but the only two kids I saw really enjoying themselves were doing just that.

All things worthwhile must end as gifts

That, anyway, is what Isamu Noguchi said late in life. "What other reason is there for art?"*

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden's gift to us this fall is an installation of the sculptor's works on loan from The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City. A few days ago, on my birthday, we wandered the BBG's Japanese Garden--itself a work of living art--to see some of them. A drenching rain had broken weeks of drought; the sky was still turbulent-looking, and everything smelled faintly of something like jasmine. Downed leaves floated across the pond.

I confess that Noguchi's strange, simple shapes leave me more puzzled than dazzled, but I enjoyed seeing them, with some knowledgeable commentary by the Garden's own guides. This one, "Strange Bird," dwells near the "turtle island" and is a sly reference to a pair of bronze cranes that have been in and out (currently out) of the Japanese Garden over the years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Daughter was reminded of the Dodo in Looney Tunes' "WackyLand" (itself a goof on modern art). Apparently Noguchi, a Japanese-American who died in 1988 at age 84, considered himself rather a strange bird, a global citizen (and longtime New Yorker) yet one who never fully resolved his identity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sculptures are right at home in the Japanese Garden, with its design magic of "hide and reveal" and its illusion of deep vistas and distances. You spy "Mountains Forming" (1982-3) from afar, tucked out of reach above the waterfalls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you climb up to the Shinto shrine--itself a hidden treasure--you see it more clearly, but it's still tantalizingly out of reach. It also looks completely different--"another layer in this imaginary mountain landscape," says curator Dakin Hart of the Noguchi Museum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My problem with outdoor sculpture in natural surroundings is that the exquisite forms of trees, leaves, and clouds, and even raindrops, tend to overwhelm the human creations. But then, Noguchi did once say that everything is sculpture. Except, perhaps, the apartment buildings that rise beyond the garden's perimeter.

 

 

 

*From Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi, by Hayden Herrera, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

Skyscapers

Guest park today: Central Park, that other Vaux and Olmsted masterpiece. But from the inside, looking out...and damn, has the view changed since I last hung out near Columbus Circle.

 

Back in my college days in the grim 1970s, this was my neck of the woods; Broadway was studded with shabby, atmospheric old dance studios, where I sweated and stretched between taking classes at the ugly new Fordham campus and standing in line for SRO ballet tickets at Lincoln Center. I didn't spend much time in Central Park, however; nobody did. It was more punchline than tourist magnet. But Central Park South held onto its dignity, a phalanx of elegant hotels gazing down on the green rectangle that sheltered the muggers.

These days, the park is safe and choked with tourists, all looking as if they are trying hard to enjoy their overpriced rides in sketchy pedicabs and horse carriages. The environs of Columbus Circle are a glossy bastion of retail, with the stunning Time Warner Center a welcome replacement for the long-rotting hulk that was the old New York Coliseum.

 

But it seems as if the skyline south of the park has gone a bit mad, like an athlete bulking up on steroids and menacing anyone in his path. The lush sculptures that gazed down on Columbus Circle in its sleazier days now seem to push back against the crushing volumes around them. Christopher himself seems taken aback...

 

 

 

 

 

 

...while the marble figures around the monument to the battleship Maine monument remain oblivious, even to perching pigeons and tired tourists, as they have since their unveiling in 1913.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With so much glass rising around them, creatures of stone can seem ancient and weary...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...or surprisingly spunky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, other eyes in the sky keep watch over the brave new world of safer streets, richer rich and ever less welcome poor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But nothing prepared me for my first look at "One57," the middle finger of New York's new Billionaire's Row pointing skyward at 90 stories. The gilded "Columbia Triumphant" is no match for greed triumphant.

 

This shot gives some sense of its grotesque scale, as it dwarfs the iconic Essex House sign. The atrocity looms like an invading "War of the Worlds" ship over all it surveys. I am told that most of its multi-million-dollar condos are bought solely as investments, or "pied-a-terres"; perhaps the Russian, Chinese, and Brazilian oligarchs can hire someone to turn on the lights so that it will look lived-in. No, never mind. It will never look lived-in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At right, another pair of architectural masterpieces visible from the park. One thing I love so much more about Prospect Park than Central Park is the sense you can get of being "lost in the country" within its borders. The rectilinear Central Park has always been visibly ringed with luxury buildings; this Singapore-like forest of newcomers will soon be "the new normal." But Prospect Park, too, is following suit, with shiny condo buildings springing up around its perimeter, encroaching on Olmsted's beloved illusion of escape from the city within. Maybe when all the rents are $5,000 a month and up, we can pitch tents in the parks for the working class, and they can look up at the skyboxes of our overlords. Me, bitter?

As we shambled around the park, I was consoled by this fellow, who was cleverly whacking away at an acorn. No billionaire will ever be as at home in the sky as he is.

Petalheads

"Rose Night" is our favorite members' event at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. An evening of endless setting sun...gin cocktails and a vaguely Gatsby vibe...and a dreamscape of roses.

 

There was a band playing Bertie Woosterish tunes...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...and folks making efforts at roseate style statements.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fancy hats were a theme. Some came from out of the closet...

 

 

...while others were concocted on the spot. Father's Day hint: It's a good dad indeed who wears the hat.

My friend's grandmother used to say: There's a thin line between an outfit and a get-up. But in the Cranford Rose Garden, with flowers gotten up everywhere, you can get away with a lot.

 

 

 

Let's face it, the roses are the stars of this show. Anyone who knows only the sad, cold, fragrance-free missiles of an FTD bouquet should be prepared to faint with ecstasy upon meeting the Old Roses...heady perfume bombs with petals so lush they look like a kid drew their finger through whipped cream. (Rosarians call this "quartering," I believe.)

 

 

 

 

Lavender...one of the most elusive rose colors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How many shades of cream and gold can you imagine? Not enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This lascivious chamber of secrets is named, for some reason, "Jude the Obscure."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Climbers on chains!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These gardeners paint with flowers.

 

We left as the sun sank behind the climbers. Twenty years ago, a week from my due date at the cusp of summer, I knew I'd always associate the longest days and the roses with the coming of beautiful new life. I still do.

 

Sakura MacSelfie

We skipped the crowds for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Sakura Matsuri festival, but the cherry blossoms (at least those trees already blooming after this laggardly spring) were only slightly less mobbed last Tuesday, when the breeze was balmy and the admission was free. Hanami, the traditional contemplation of transient blooms, seemed to have undergone a profound transition this year, happening mostly through handheld screens of every size and description.

 

This bloomer on the Cherry Esplanade was surrounded with two kinds of buzz: pollinators, and photo-op seekers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Young or older, no one can resist posing in front of the foamy mounds of flowers.

 


This lovely Instagrammer wore a chic jacket in a complementary shade of creamy raspberry.

 

But some folks did seem a bit preoccupied with the whole selfie thing...

...including users of the rapidly proliferating "selfie sticks."

 

Over in the pavilion of the Japanese Garden, it came as a relief to see someone taking a picture with a good "old-fashioned" camera...or better yet, just gazing at the beauty through a pair of young eyes.

 

 

Still a small world

I bear a curmudgeonly lack of good grace toward Queens, my homeland, and especially towards Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Growing up, we never thought of it as anything but a sad afterthought to the World's Fair, whose rusting relics we'd pass on the way home from "the city." Ironically, the Spouse--a Brooklyn boy--had a job within the park for more than a decade, where he nurtured an obsessional love for all things World's Fair. In this underwhelmingly celebrated anniversary year of the 1964 fair, we went today to the "World's Fair Play Festival" at the Queens Theatre in the Park.

The set of interconnected playlets, set across decades in the '39 and '64 fairs and the present day, varied widely in quality, but some were excellent (especially "In the Hall of Artifacts," a haunting glimpse by Todd Almond of a brother and sister long after '64, in the age of HIV); and the notion of commissioning them and presenting them right within the old fairgrounds was wonderful. The cast gave it their all in a tiny black-box theatre, evoking a collage of human response to the fairs' pie-eyed optimism about Progress and The Future.

Afterwards, we wandered around the realtime, real place in its most quintessential present personality: We stumbled upon the riotous color, music and dance of a Colombian festival. The Colombian flag was a lively counterpoint to the dystopian sight of the old New York Pavilion.

 

 

 

 

Colombians do not have to be encouraged to dance to the music. It just sort of happens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every Colombian in Queens seemed to be there in sunny yellow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pair of folkloric dancers entertained a crowd in the shadow of the Unisphere as jets roared overhead on takeoff from LaGuardia.

 

 

 

 

 

Stamping in very cool footwear, skirt swirling, and lots of chivalrous partnering were on display.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cultures collide and mash up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We wrapped up the day with an iced coffee doused with caramel and condensed milk from a Colombian coffee cart that drew long, avid lines of old-school java-lovers. Garbage cans overflowed; cars nosed past masses of oblivious pedestrians as the fair wound down. In all its messy reality, the park remains a truer global village now than it ever was in the Imagineered version.