The World Examining Works

The Joys of Spring continued!

 

A garden on Long Island must have at least one dogwood tree.

When children pick flowers dandelions are a sure fire hit. So gloriously yellow and bright.

Then we play with the silly lens to see what happens.

The austerity of lily of the valley.

Back in the city

there are parrot tulips in the community garden

an abundance of lilacs at Union Square this morning.

Pretty hard to guess what this is! Violet blossoms in plastic containers that have been rained on. Sort of pretty and abstracty.

Dogwood and lilac

and some lovely pastel eggs

and peony buds looking rather egglike.

 

 

Checking new font....

 

Tea and sympathy.

Tablecloth like my childhood home....

Cloisters

 

I'm afraid this blog is turning rather horticultural.

 

Anyway, the Cloisters  medieval  physick garden is a delight of dappled cowslip and woodruff...

 

... with a few timid violets to mimic the background of the Unicorn tapestries.

 

 

Ajuga and a mysterious larger-leafed plant. Julia Fogg please advise. (The quince notice refers to the tree!)

 

 

Herewith the said quince tree and a wonderful woven wicket fence.

 

 

Such lovely tiny birds and butterflies and a rooster in the margins of a manuscript.

 

 

The wise men being ignored by visitors.

 

 

This last picture just put in as a great contrast. The railyards from 11th Avenue at about 33rd Street.

The only echo is the complexity of design.

 

Hammering Violas

 

 

 

This year I chose violas with their delicate colors.

 

 

I placed the flowers between two pieces of watercolor paper and taped them together to prevent them from moving about too much. Put this between two magazines and then took out the hammer and smashed about a bit.

 

 

These are the flowers when I opened up the package.

 

 

This is the image on the other piece of paper.

 

 

Then I gently rolled the squished flowers off the paper with my finger tip.

 

 

In the final print the colors seem somewhat different.

A fun activity for those with time on their hands!

 

 

City Spring

 

 

 

Almost cherry blossom time on 22nd Street

 

Daffodils and a glimpse of grape hyacinth

More formal tulips

A miniature woodland garden: iris, pachysandra, bleedingheart, violet and helebore - a positive medieval tapestry in real life 

Ah! hellebore

Happy Easter

 

 

 

Bring out the rabbit plates --except this one might be a hare? or a leopard wearing bunny ears?

This one is cheery but muscular --perhaps a bunny by Michaelangelo?

And daffs, of course, against royal purple --oddly religious.

and a homage to my mother and grandmother who both loved anemones (against a little traycloth like the ones we used to embroider as children (well, girls --I'm certain boys didn't sew them!)

HAPPY EASTER

Vegetables/Morocco

 

These first few photos are of the veggie market in the souks on the way to the Musee de Marrakesh. It's a pretty humble market where everything is laid out on the ground. Note the woman on the right with her toddler on her back --from the size of the shoes probably almost three....

Tagine dishes on the left.

Artichokes! beets, eggplant, beans, cauliflower. What a feast and all grown quite nearby.

How much chopping and peeling to be done and how delicious.

Mint and herbs to be added.

And maybe a parsnip says the pregnant cat....

who would rather look about her than pod peas.

Up by the Mellah market the strawberries are in season. I think they are resting in clover.

 

All photos taken March 2013.

The Outer Garden of the Bahia Palace and Some Fruit and Flowers Too...

 

The two previous posts were about fish and flowers and I sort of wanted to post veggies and got sidetracked. Herewith the garden of the Bahia (Beautiful) Palace in Marrakesh.

The garden itself is rather a mishmash of tended and untended but was lovely in February...

There were

 

yellow daisy type things and 

a yellow bush.

I always imagine restoring these outer buildings

 and living there with the cats

 and the banana tree.

Ah! rose petals in a fountain in Essouira

where lemons abounded at Dar Baba

and oranges lounged in a nice ceramic dish.

The oranges are so much sweeter than here

and so many of them....!

 

 

Fish

 

Hm....fish

the fruits of the sea and madly picturesque and jolie laide...

so beautifully laid out here in Essouria where they'll cook one up for you just caught from the ocean.

They set out in little blue boats

full of important equipment

and mend nets.

The sea, like the fish, is beautiful and

frightening at the same time. Here a poor dead fish in Sidi Ifni.

and more strange creatures on the ground.

Here a silver of sardines -- much bigger than the horrid little canned ones we were forced to eat as children.

More silver creatures in Ifni

and pink ones too.

 

A rather different life from Rupert Brooke's philosophical English river dwellers:

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!

 

 

 

 

Flowers at the Mellah Market, Marrakesh

 

The very end of February in Marrakesh

such flowers!

stocks and broom and mimosa, lilies and irises

birds of paradise and roses galore

calla lilies

and everything jumbled together

I buy mimosa for the smell alone and am given three blue iris.

Spring indeed.

 

Things I could Buy/Morocco

 

In Tiznit, south of Agadir

I discover a very elaborate headdress of Berber design. 

And pretty headscarves on the ends of posts.

I think this mannequin is waiting for the shop keeper to return from lunch.

 

In Marrakesh the clothes themselves are OK --though almost certainly made in China. It's the dummies I find alarming.

 

In Essouira, something right out of JAWS...

A bus ride from Tiznit......

and very beautiful melons...

 

Hearts and Flowers and All That Good Stuff

 

What a day for cynics to sneer and the rest of us have fun!

Flowers from the deli

all baby's breath and red cellophane

An apple to tempt one

or a cookie like a heart

Hearts on the deli window

and flowers too

the Empire State Building was actually a sort of pink but looks purple here

We end with white flowers....

Happy Valentine's Day

 

 

Art

 

People looking at art....

 There are all sorts of stances that suggest attention -- like the weight on one foot

seen here too.

And the head slightly back rapt attention....or puzzlement ....or leaving it neutral for now.

We went to the Outsider Art Fair on 22nd Street in the old DIA building and though there were some reliably quirky things (see above) much of the work seemed oddly faux naive and there were lots of swanky art galleries and price tags in the hundreds of thousands. Very different from when the show was in the Puck Building years ago.

However, it was very well attended and offered much to discuss.

I thought Jean Betancourt was a more authentic art work than most of the stuff on the walls. (Went up to her and asked if I might take her photo.....you can't look like that and not expect people to notice you.)

She makes funky jewellry and regrets that no gallery wants to represent her. THe business side of art never ceases to puzzle me. Will not discuss this here.

Anyway, off to the David Zwirner Gallery  where the work is reliably engaging (like the current Francis Alys Reel-Unreel)

and the crowd rather chic.

 

Cake

 

 

One of the best things about birthdays obviously. Here a stupendously wonderful Carvel ice cream cake.

 

Here is a young man who forced down his sandwich extra quickly to get to the cake.

Here is a young lady who has never eaten cake before --let alone ice cream cake. (The perks of turning one!)

Investigation

and ingestion.

No fork required really.

A New Lens and Experiments

 

Despite the title of this blog, I really haven't been examining much lately as there seems to have been a great deal to do. A friend finally managed to discover how I could buy the Tinto app for Instagram......herewith some experiments in looking at things differently.

The subway  -- a place to lose oneself in cell-phone world. With violent crime way down in New York, thefts of Apple products are way up..... 

This is the gloomy lens.....

And this is Spring Street in Soho looking ancient.

The nice girl who sold me cheesecake in Dean and Delucca. (I pretend to be a foreigner/tourist when I ask to take photos. I suppose I could just say I was a blogger....)

Then I got bored of all the gloom and changed over to a brighter film.....

and looked out of the window at the suddenly bright white wall on 8th Avenue

and at my positively transcendental pencil mug.

A different day on 5th Aveue the sky was astoundingly blue (well, it always is blue but this lens makes it extra bright.)

The church on 20th Street that pretends to be English....

and a bike outside the laundry.

 

All this makes me think of the old saw about 'rose-tinted glasses', and the effects of exciting music in films and all the things we do to alter mood (gosh!-- booze, drugs...poetry, words, effects of light!)

Happy New Year.

 

 

 

Seasonal

 

A rather gray morning up in Union Square. I think soup was being devoured at ten in the morning.

Wreaths and potatoes -- an excellent combo. I bought Butterball ones.

Santa was wandering about, but without his full costume --maybe it is being readied for the big night.

Waiting to see Santa in ABC Carpet. Everyone looking downwards....

Back home we have the tree up with the little old houses that I think are German

a splendid old ball with the silvering coming off --very shabby-chic --

and some of the little German angels I bought when the children were small

and lastly Gretchen who will be having her very first Christmas.

 

Merry Christmas 

Sfumato

 

Earlier this week the weather was misty and English --quite unlike the clear piercing light we usually get.

On Monday morning the tall buildings were shrouded in fog. (Shrouded always sounds a bit melancholy and romantic.)

Even the tree by the Midtown Tunnel managed to look picturesque.

Billowing something or other between the buildings of Penn South.

Dusk looking towards 23rd Street.

All these bare trees remind me of photos I took several Decembers ago on the beach in Morocco

where magic forests were created by the tide pulling dark sand over light sand or viceversa. I have always kept these pictures when much else has been lost.

Such trees, or coral, or roots of teeth 

Here trees reflected in water on 24th Street.

But back to the old misty business --Cold Spring Harbor on LI on misty Monday with the Hipstamatic filter

and the plain version.

Lastly Miss Gretchen -- like Diddle Diddle Dumpling my son John/One shoe off and one shoe on.

 

And the winner of the Novica gift code was commenter #6 DCW. I will send the code via email so you can buy someone a present from their  new gift finder.

 

 

Wintry Delights and a Giveaway

Always something appealing about the absence of leaves

so we can see the squirrel more clearly

and the moon still up in the early morning.

Glorious red berries in the flower district --sadly, the sort that start dropping allover the floor as soon as you put them in a jug.

But the amyrillis! Well, all the lovely tall stems did was fall over so....rather short amyrillises now.

And yes, I did get to see the tree and the angels

and looked at all the people taking pictures of stuff being  projected onto a building across the street.

As ever, being the sort of people who are slow to catch on to things, (The Sopranos, Downton Abbey, Twin Peaks) we have started watching 30 Rock and here is the statue of the very same......

Time for holiday shopping! As they did last year, the kind people at Novica who specialize in handcrafted presents from all round the world, have given me a $50 gift code to give to a reader of my blog. So please comment by Monday 10th!

They wanted me specially to mention their new gift finder which sorts presents into categories. Personally I love the silk scarves.....

 

Natural and Unnatural

 

I'm a great fan of fruit and veggies to look at, take photos of, paint and even eat. How the pears glow in the chill November sun!

This is a most useful thing. A wreath made entirely of herbs which would be wonderful to have in a chill dank kitchen but would dry up in an instant in an overheated apartment.

Perfectly exquisite very very small cauliflowers. I buy a tiny one just for me since R. thinks they are boring and tasteless.

Windfall Farms micro mesclun. $16 for a quarter pound. The most expensive greenery on the planet. A treat just to look at it. I buy $7 worth which is enough for small salads for two.

The pears, when inspected at home, prove to be picturesque but a little wrinkly round the neck. (Avoid obvious comparisons here....) The brown leaf looks sere, which is an excellent word.

And now for something completely different....

a stupendously awful/wonderful window display (23rd St between 7th and 8th)

he looks as if he has a canteen hanging off his nose

while she probably has jaw-ache from that rictus of a smile.

 

Season's Greetings...etc.

Thoughts on English Food

 

For some reason people used to enjoy being rude about English food --probably because until somewhat recently lots of people boiled everything to death. Nowadays English food is rather splendid and enjoying something of a Renaissance.

To start with the traditional cuppa. Here at M&S on Oxford Street. Note the asrounding blandness of the color scheme. I had already eaten the miniature cookie that came with it --just like in Belgium.

More reviving tea. Here the kettle has boiled on an Aga. Note the all-important teacosy.

Rosie has a great selection of tea pots for all occasions. What  a jumble of china from low to high from swanky shops and from estate sales.

Good heavens! We used to have the Rector, Mr.Porter, to tea once in a very great while. How splendid it would have been to have the right teapot to hand.

Breakfast tray. Weetabix (my poor brother is Peter Wix --so guess what he was called at school....) Marmite.....Yum.

Apples decorate the church for Harvest Festival. If anyone needs to know how to pick apples and store them, I can supply information.

Lunch. A pork pie! Ham. Branston Pickle. Beans and beets from the garden. I think the cucumber came from a shop.

And last of all --  supper the piece de resistance: Toad-in-the-Hole. A splendid one. Gastronomic bliss!

 

My story Jane in Winter is rather full of traditional English food.