Heat

New York has been doing that thing that New York so frequently does at this time of year, and been absolutely glorious. It's been bakingly hot, but without the sting of the humidity that we get for so much of the summer. I've managed to be careless and have slightly reddened shoulders from wandering around the last couple of weekends.

Yesterday, the wandering took place at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where there was a chile pepper festival. Neither of the adults was quite sure what this would entail or how long different types of hot sauce would hold our interest, but it turned out to be a delight to mooch around the Cherry Esplanade, sampling different mango or habañero or spicy brown sauces (yes, the latter a nod to our beloved HP. It was a tad vinegary for my taste).  We ended up purchasing some absolutely delicious blood orange cooking sauce, ate our way through chocolate orange cardamom spiced cookies, and purchased some spicy honey to hopefully recreate the incredible dish we had at Misi a few weeks ago - slow roasted tomatoes, coriander, fennel seeds, and spiked honey that was unlike anything I'd eaten before. Dragonflies and mayflies droned around in huge numbers, and the kid potted and took home his first plant - a chile pepper that maybe, just maybe, will survive more than a couple of weeks.

MYB 4 for 4 - 2/3 & 2/4 Complete

Sunday was a mixture of loveliness and, for want of a better term, bleurgh. The bleurgh being the work and, alas, losing a rather bad-tempered second football match against a very annoying team, annoying particularly because they definitely were not better than we were. Ugh. But we won the first with some fabulous (for us) football, and TOH and I got to the Botanic Garden to see the Japanese Garden and the bonsai trees in their autumnal glory. They were remarkable - beautiful shades of red and yellow, including one bonsai with two trunks that had one half red, the other yellow. I'm not sure how I feel about bonsai, given that they appear to suffer the equivalent of footbinding for trees. Additionally, despite having no psychological or psychiatric training, they do seem to be quite a transparent (and futile) attempt to control nature completely. Nonetheless, these are beautiful things, and the bonsai, both in blossom and in their foliage change, have provided extreme beauty this year. We're thinking of redoing our photo positions for next year's BBG membership, and the bonsai may well be included in the new lot.



Monday saw me desperately trying to wonder how I was to complete week two of the MYB 4 for 4 challenge - morning was not possible (chores before work) and the evening saw a send off for a dear friend at work. So I decided to get let out of the cab early with a colleague and walk the 20 minutes back to the apartment, instead of getting the cab home. Not exactly going for a run or sweating much, but better than I would have done without the challenge. Which is the point, I think.

Botanics: February

Last weekend we went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens for the second in our series of monthly visits. (In fact, we even went once in-between when we had friends in town - we're all BBG, all the time, it seems). The major change was, obviously, the change in temperature that had thawed (most of) the snow and brought out far more visitors to share the gardens with than on our previous trips. So I'm not going to post all of the photos because although there is now green to be seen, there's not much flowering and still an awful lot of brown stalks everywhere. Occasional crocuses and snowdrops could be seen, which bodes well for our visits in March and April.

The fountain.

The cherry orchards from above.

The herb garden - you can see green things! sort of!


Proof that the temperatures haven't climbed that much.

The flowering quince - absolutely spectacular. I find bonsai and their cultivation a bit strange, I have to say, but this was exquisite.

Botanics: January

In a rather inspired move, TOH got us a family membership to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden for Christmas. It's just down the road from our place so a regular visit should be rather easy to do. And yet... it's on the far side of the Brooklyn Museum, and we did not really use that membership that well. So despite my grumps (having got back from a rather hectic if sunny time in Mexico), this morning TOH persuaded me to go out there and, last minute, we decided to take the Nikon with the spanking new wide-angled lens that TOH also got me for Christmas (what can I say? the man is extremely good at gifts). While en route we hit upon on a great idea to create an incentive to go to the BBG and to use the camera more: each month, we will return to the BBG and take photos from the same position to show the change in seasons as the gardens sprout and flower and then, in autumn, fade and shrivel and pass away until the next spring. So here are the first results. Month to month I won't add all of them, don't worry, but those that show an interesting progress, or them side by side. I'm extremely excited by this project - and, of course, I'll be doing it without the auto settings. Arrgh!

The View from the Entrance

The Bluebell Garden

The Herb Garden

The Visitors' Centre

The Fountain

The Cherry Avenues (from the North)
(I cannot WAIT for spring!)

The Cherry Avenues (from the South)

The Rose Garden (North West Corner)

The Rose Garden (looking south)

The View From the Top (Right)

The View From the Top (Middle)