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.

No one was fooled

A freakishly warm January day...65 degrees F at 5:30 p.m. Would the park be overflowing with joyful joggers and climate-change celebrants, I wondered? Perhaps earlier, perhaps elsewhere...but on the Parade Grounds, the still-early darkness gave the lie to illusions of springtime. The avenue between the playing fields was utterly deserted between Caton and Parkside Avenues. I checked over my shoulder, recalling wisdom from a rougher era: You are safe when completely alone; it's the isolated bit of "company" that raises the alert. So I slowed my pace.

 

Near the glowing blob of the tennis bubble, light lingered in the west through broken clouds. The honk and cackle of innumerable geese arose from somewhere in the dark...as agitated as if they were on the floor of a slaughterhouse. I wonder what laundry challenges await players on that artificial turf thanks to goosey gatherings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hate the tennis bubble--not only because I don't play tennis, but because it rises every year as a harbinger of cold, inclement weather. Tonight it was superfluous, but you don't just pop these open and shut on a whim. I heard no thwacks or curses or shouts of victory within.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Near the Park Circle entrance to Prospect Park proper, a lone jogger and one dog-walker passed, and a young man with a guitar case sat scrolling through his phone. The air was fragrant with fresh pine mulch from the recent Christmas Tree Slaughter (at which point I realized that I had slaughter on the brain, a legacy of the 1980s when walking in deserted park perimeters).

Inky branches and fence, etched against the bubble's weird glow. I walked home past the police station within the Parade Grounds, which felt no safer for the fleet of NYPD cruisers that flanked me. A rat scuttled across my path into the shadows. 

 

 

 

 

On a spring or summer night, it seems that half of Brooklyn is out in the Parade Grounds, hanging out by this snack bar, putting the spin on a soccer ball, skating, running. But tonight, no one was fooled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Pining away

A bitter cold Epiphany morning, after the first snowfall of 2017. We saw a few "bro" types walking around Brooklyn in shorts and flip-flops, but this bro, one of the two "Horse Tamers" at the Park Circle, has them beat for under-dressed macho.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A nearby lion sheds snowy tears.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But we're not here to admire the statuary; we're here for "tree-cycling." It's the circle of life: The (only slightly crispy) tree stuffed in our trunk was dragged home from the Greenmarket, at Prospect Park's other end, just a week before Christmas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It always saddens me to see them, stripped of their finery and fed into the chipper, as the glorious, resinous smell of Christmas fills the air one last time.

Some bags of mulch, a consolation prize.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so all the Christmas festivity wraps up, just as winter's journey really begins its slog. Time for the Wise Men to go back home by a different route and remember what they saw beneath the star.

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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.

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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.

 

No rest for the cheery

April 1 is three weeks gone, and the sun is out, and it's Saturday. The grass gets a workout after its winter rest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Long Meadow is, like all Prospect Park's iconic spaces, a place that Brooklynites turn to their own uses. Some choose to bake, prostrate, in the strong spring sun, while others lunge for projectiles--often within the same few square feet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Digital springtime: Lean against a budding tree and check your phone. Near this guy, a young woman sat cross-legged in blinding sunlight peering at an open laptop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get out there with your personal trainer and work the man-buns. The dude in black put his bro in blue through an unlikely series of strength and agility exercises.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Close-up: The redbud was blooming, but why do they call it "redbud"? The buds are the precise color of "orchid" in the old jumbo box of Crayolas, and they have the outrageous habit of blooming in pom-poms directly out of the tree's bark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Longshot: Pastels, not Crayolas, smudged and hazy. Greens and so much more.

After the thaw

I didn't get to the park on the day it went above 75 degrees F a week before St. Patrick's Day. I was stuck inside working. But the next day, still warm, showed evidence of jump-starts everywhere over by Lakeside. Snowdrops made little bouquets near the bust of Mozart in the Concert grove.

 

I almost mistook this fragrant witch hazel for forsythia. Witch hazel is happy to bloom in January, but apparently even happier in March.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The turtles are out. If we get a terrible cold snap, how will they get back into the mud?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teeny plants forced their way out from the new granite hardscaping.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on the rink, skaters in t-shirts sloshed through a rippling slick of meltwater.

Desire lines

 

That's what they call those shortcut paths beaten into parkland by human feet seeking the quickest route from A to B. There used to be only one way to enter the Long Meadow directly from the crest of the path from Grand Army Plaza: a desire line worn into the slope. But the park must've smartened up, because this log-girded walkway now welcomes visitors onto the vast expanse of grass. I took this shot a few weeks ago on a balmy December day, just after we bought our Christmas wreath at the Greenmarket; who could have guessed that the balminess would last through Christmas and beyond?

 

As their parents talked in boring adult fashion, these little guys found great sport in harvesting and rearranging bark chips on the log railing. In this year that saw an ugly high-rise condo pierce "my" side of the Prospect Park treeline, the Long Meadow maintains its air of secluded mystery, opening up like a miracle as you enter from the traffic and stress of Flatbush Avenue. The Long Meadow is long enough to be shrouded in mist at one end on a foggy morning, long enough to walk and feel as if you've really discovered something, long enough to clear your brain. Here's to a coming year of joy and discovery, of peace and health to all my friends and folks in Brooklyn and beyond. May your feet beat a shortcut to your dreams.

 

 

Thanksgiving on Ice

The day after Thanksgiving, if you're lucky enough not to be toiling for "Black Friday," can be a sort of benediction: the cooking and entertaining done, and the weekend not even begun. A beautiful blank slate, like today's Lakeside rink after the Zamboni slicked it over in the 64-degree sunshine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Folks flooded onto the fresh ice, some in T-shirts, while crowds sunned themselves outside the cafe.

 

Parenting on ice: That moment when you remember that skating can be legitimately terrifying...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...requiring the grasping of little hands...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...and the guiding of little feet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sun was so strong along the lake's nearby shore that turtles were basking. Four days til December...but for today, it was still Thanksgiving.

 

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.