New Year's Day, 2017, 3 p.m., Prospect Park. The solstice is still palpable at the Peristyle.
Lakeside, the new landscape, is beautiful in winter, too.
Christmas touches of red have yet to be bleached by January.
On the ice, uncertain next steps are just part of the fun...for most of us, anyway.
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
"The Round," by Stanley Kunitz. Copyright 1995.
"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.
It takes a braver soul than I to relish the park's snowy expanses during "Polar Vortex 2.0," but it turns out that it was a key inspiration for "Let It Go," the power ballad for cartoon heroine Elsa of "Frozen." Oscar-nominated songwriters Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez are quoted in the Brooklyn Paper:
“We went for a walk in Prospect Park and stood on picnic bench. We looked across the park and said, you’re on a mountain alone and you’ve lost everything you knew. But also everything you’ve been holding back.” In the song, which is delightful, our heroine lets loose her icy powers. “Letting go of fear and shame and allowing yourself to let your unique power out is a message we’re excited to have go around the world,” Anderson-Lopez told the paper.
Now that the Child is in college, we don't go to Disney movies on autopilot, but this one looks gorgeous, and one has to respect a lyric like "My soul is spiralling in frozen fractals all around." Here's our very own park ode to letting go in the snow, belted gorgeously by Idina Menzel. It has almost inspired me to go out for a walk, so that I too can say "The cold never bothered me, anyway!"
An ideal summer's evening for the return of the New York Philharmonic to Prospect Park. Tchaikovsky floated over a happy crowd; we got there just as things started, and camped near the periphery.
Every year, it seems, people bring more babies and toddlers. For much of the second half of the bill, Respighi was pianissimo and kiddies were fortissimo. At this distance, one is forgiving.
Vendors were selling glowsticks and glowing mohawk-headpieces. Some of them seemed to emit a screeching sound. At least they weren't vuvuzelas.
Daughter curled up on the picnic blanket and dozed under a pile of sweaters through The Pines of Rome. She awakened to remark that, now that she was 17, she was no longer a child, then settled back to sleep until the fireworks began.
I assured Daughter that no one should get too grown up, ever. As the last starbursts sunk into the night sky, everyone went "ooh" and "ahh" and applauded and cheered gleefully, as if none of us had ever seen fireworks before.
Things were heating up on Saturday at the Grand Army Plaza greenmarket: Peppers are coming in.
This life-size milking cow showed up to promote the Dutchess County Fair. I love big fiberglass animals.
Zucchini usually come in green or yellow, long or patty-pan, but Evolutionary Organics has piebald globey ones this year.
The morning's haul: tomatoes (beefsteak and yellow cherry), peaches, collards, garlic, arugula, mesclun, and a $6 Jersey canteloupe. Slaughtered, it provided three generous servings, so at $2 per serving that's not so bad for melon bliss. Still, it amazes me how fast we burn through cash in pursuit of seasonal delights.
By dusk, things were heating up musically: We stopped in at the bandshell's Celebrate Brooklyn concert to hear Red Baraat, a brassy Bhangra band we'd loved at the Botanic Garden's Chili Pepper Festival. Talk about infectious beats; a few folks couldn't resist rocking out.
We left before the venerable Dr. John took the stage.
Tonight's Greenmarket dinner: Pasta panzanella from Giuliano Bugialli's pasta book. The only thing cooked is the spaghetti; you put hot pasta on a bed of fresh arugula, and spoon over a mix of chopped raw tomato, onion and garlic marinated simply in olive oil, with basil over the top. Great for a hot night.
Thanks to the PLOG blog for taking some historic footage of Abe Lincoln gazing impassively as the ill-starred Wollman Rink bites the dust in Prospect Park yesterday.
Many of us had some grand times skating outside on the curiously skewed rink (you sort of had to skate uphill one half and downhill the other), surrounded by woods and sky. But the dismal structure and its mechanicals violated Vaux and Olmsted's original plan of a lovely Concert Grove.
(So did Lincoln, actually, and he'll be moved back eventually to Grand Army Plaza. At right: Here he is in his original locale, circa 1890; presumably that Moorish be-nubbined thingie in the mid-ground is a fountain; the tower to the left is a long-demolished water tower, if memory serves. I wonder who the little girls grew up to be?)
The original original plan had an island on which musicians would play. A romantic notion, although apparently the acoustics weren't very good. Moses obliterated the bandstand island in 1960 for the wretched rink building.
Now if only the new plan called for rebuilding the original "Concert Grove House." This postcard view, circa 1900 or so, shows an elegant slate-roofed manse tucked behind lush landscaping; apparently it was built in 1874 to house comfort facilities for ladies and gentlemen and a fine restaurant. It was torn down after a fire in 1949, alas!
Images: Prospect Park archives
Grand Army Plaza got hammered by last Thursday's roving twisters and microburst, but all was blessed and sunny at today's Greenmarket. A zydeco-flavored band played before a backdrop of police tape and downed branches.
Just inside the park, kids and parents put tree wreckage to imaginative use.
A teepee of sticks is a fascinating place, and here nature has provided what the neighboring botanic garden had to pay an artist to produce.
Meanwhile, the harvest has fully unfurled its flag. We dragged home the makings for a huge ratatouille, and more of this summer's exquisite corn.
Today's Greenmarket guest was a vivacious author and blogger, Karen Seiger, with her nifty new book, Markets of New York City. Not just farmers, but craft, flea, holiday, and food; the book is sharply designed, and the author also took all the pictures. Asked if she's a photographer, she replied, "I am now!" That's the spirit! The book would make a great gift for an urbane shopaholic; to buy it, go here.
GREENMARKET DOG OF THE DAY
Moose, a Golden Retriever, met my eyes and then leaned his head against my knee adoringly. His babysitter reports that he loves eating and, well, loving folks up.
That's Pooh, not Palin. But it is time to refudiate our grievances and head off for summer adventures, like these day campers did last Wednesday. If you are not leaving town for mid-summer, pack a picnic and try a part of Prospect Park you've never explored before.
The park abounds in quirky activities--this weekend alone, there will be flax harvesting at the homestead and, speaking of do-it-yourselfing, "a DIY World's Fair of music and art" at the Bandshell (featuring folks named Cucu Diamantes, Les Nubians, Los Hanky Pankys, and Monsta X).
And of course there will be the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket every Saturday morning, where the signage is very DIY (and organic).
If you miss it, did you know there's a small but very serviceable Wednesday Greenmarket at Bartell Pritchard Circle (across from the movie theater)? Stroll on over and play peek-a-boo with the Yukon Golds.
"It's the same thing," he said."
And so, farewell to June. In front of the Lefferts Historic House, phlox is blooming and little green apples are fattening up.
Near the Carousel, not calliope music, but the unmistakable strains of Bach, filled the summer air. A helmeted cyclist noodled away at Invention #8, his trusty Cannondale by his side. This is part of a public project of 60 street pianos called "Play Me, I'm Yours"; to read more, go here. They're right, it is cooler than the fiberglass cows, and it's over July 5, so I'm glad I caught it.