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.

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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.

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.

 

 

Distracted but never forgotten

Shaking off the torpor of this endless winter, I tagged along with Kevin Walsh yesterday on his 77th "Forgotten New York" walking tour; when Kevin does my park, I've got to be there to kibbitz and learn something new. We began at Grand Army Plaza, where the cherry blossoms frame the Quadriga if you look just right. I thought "Quadriga" meant something about the shape of the monument; Kevin said it's the type of chariot. That's why he wrote the book.

We emerged from the Meadowport Arch to the vast expanse of the Long Meadow--the longest unbroken greensward in New York City, which I had not known. (Kevin, however, learned from me that the official shepherd of the meadow's Victorian-era flock of sheep was criticized in the New York Times for drunkenness.)

Kevin's tours are full of fascinating facts; I get distracted easily, though, by the movie montages that swirl past:

Some "Inside Llewyn Davis" by the meadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bit of "Gleaming the Cube" near the Marylanders' monument.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And in the Nethermead, a Waldorf school outing "Far from the Madding Crowd."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We visited the Third Street panthers...but I was drawn in by the heartbreaking memorial to this youngster killed by a car.

 

Further down Prospect Park West, at the Ninth Street entrance, we admired Lafayette, but I was intrigued by the fine polish on his sword, courtesy of untold numbers of fingertips.

 

We marveled at the Camperdown Elm...while I was thrilled to capture a Common Yellowthroat among its contorted branches.

 

Through the fence, we peered into the hidden Quaker Cemetery, where Montgomery Clift is buried...and I puzzled over some ambitious stick structures just outside its confines. (No one seemed to be in residence, neither earthwork artist nor homeless person nor beaver.)

 

Many thanks to our intrepid tour guide, who generously shares his encyclopedic knowledge of New York's mysteries with his fortunate Forgotten Fans. 

Gold, standard

At today's Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, a soft November sun turned so much to molten gold. It was like a child's picture-book version of Thanksgiving bounty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peppers, incredibly, are still abundant, although one has to pick to avoid those with soft wrinkly cheeks; eggplant and zucchini from southern Jersey were also remarkably good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I gave the summer veg one last chance, deciding to wait on things like this golden cauliflower that peeked from its bonnet of leaves. These and the other cruciferous guys will be around a good while longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apples are still at peak. The Honeycrisp variety is more expensive, but has an extra flavor note that I think of as "gingersnap."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On hand today were Emily and Melissa Elsen, the enterprising young ladies behind Four & Twenty Blackbirds, a superb pie establishment I have haunted down near the Gowanus. Their new cookbook, The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, looks phenomenal and has the magic instructions for making Salted Honey Pie, my current addiction. I enjoyed a wonderful conversation about all things Pie (although I stopped short of an exposition of my theory of the Pieness of Pie). and assured them that the book will shoot to the very top of my Christmas list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The backdrop for today's market was a scrim of gold, russet, and a bit of green. This tree is one of the park's brand-new youngsters, a sapling with the mighty task of replacing some of the countless trees lost to Sandy and Irene. It sheds its leaves onto the history-rich soil of Prospect Park for the very first time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GREENMARKET DOG OF THE DAY

Moses is a 7-year-old English bulldog who was born in Pennsylvania. His human says Moses likes chilling on soft blankets. I would love to join him in that.

 

Technicolor time-lapse

October 28, 2013.

November 7, 2013.

This is the pristine southern entrance to the new Lakeside area--pristine because it remains fenced off to the public. The garden design is beautiful, done with a painterly eye to composition as well as color. In nine days, the golds and reds appear to have fallen into the undergrowth, where they keep up a dull radiance; soon, that flame will go out, too.

One year since the mayhem

 

Hard to believe a year has passed since Sandy swept away so many lives, and homes, and places of gathering. And trees. The park was butchered, on a scale that dwarfed its previous recent ravages by Hurricane Irene. Days later, it snowed, and more fell.

In a world of instant gratification, it was a harsh reminder that trees can't be replaced with CGI. The "prospect" of Prospect Park is changed, in some places, for the rest of my lifetime. (Not for nothing that Tolkien had his Ents, the wise walking trees, distinguished by their agonizing deliberation in thought, speech, and action.) From Prospect Park Southwest, for example, where the tree above was impaled, you can now see clear from one side to the other; before, there was a mysterious wall of branches and trunks that shielded the park's heart even in winter.

The park's staff have done an incomprehensible amount of work to clear deadfall, prune damaged but salvageable trees, and plant new ones. The work is still ongoing, every day. Not a bad day to make a donation to, or join as a member of, the Prospect Park Alliance in memory of the lost Ents. 

Don't blink

Decided to cut through the park to the Wednesday Greenmarket. Watched the preparation of the stage for tonight's New York Philharmonic concert. Enjoyed the flutter of a kite.

Then suddenly, a blue jay hectored loudly and every other bird went silent...followed by a very near cry overhead that sounded like Kyrie! Kyrie!

A red-tailed hawk coasted a few feet above my head and landed in a low branch near the Long Meadow. I crept closer to take shot after shot of him, as he glared down at me, for all the world as if he were sizing me up as prey.

Their eyes have a far higher "flicker fusion frequency" than ours, enabling them to see clearly at high speeds--a lesson not lost on the silent little birds around us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those talons are impressive, and the feathers are marked like royal ermine. The guy just bears himself like he knows he's king (queen?) of the food chain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a few moments, he took off, and within seconds the vigilant sparrows resumed twittering.

Quiet riot

I confess: I've been avoiding Sakura Matsuri, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's cherry-blossom festival, for awhile now. In the rare years (like this one) when the blossoms manage to coincide with the event, it's mobbed; when the blossoms are too early or already underfoot, it's still mobbed. The point of "hanami" ("flower viewing") is admittedly to party; apparently there's a Japanese saying, "Dumplings rather than flowers." But the last time we went, we even waited 40 minutes for a Bento box.

But I won't miss the annual "running of the perennials": the BBG Members' Preview of their annual plant sale. At 4:30 sharp, garden loons descend with rusty red Radio Flyer wagons on the Cherry Esplanade, which was still madly blossoming yesterday after last weekend's orgy of hanamania. Young children did backflips on the tender grass; older ones, like mine, were pressganged into helping plant-crazed parents haul their loot.

 

 

 

I got heucheras, which thrive in my shady, arid problem patches, and 3 different kinds of cherry tomatos, because the big beefy heirlooms keep dying tragically in midseason of unnamed diseases. There's also a rose geranium and an alpine strawberry in there, an Asian eggplant and a "Labrador violet," which is dainty and not at all like a goofy drooling dog.

 

 

 

 

 

It was just about the quintessence of spring, this last day of April—cool breeze, fresh green, and overhead the lavish blooms that my college-bound daughter described at age 5 as looking like "the trees were wearing fluffy pink sweaters." And now, to kill those plants.

All photographs Brenda L. Becker