The World Examining Works

Urban Gardening

   

I got terribly bored of looking at the previous nasturtiums...

 

anyway, the roof garden and the tree pits are flourishing  -unlike my writing or blogging... 

 

I have been smashing pansies but the results are pretty much the same as last year's...

These are some bits and pieces from the roof.

 

Light through glass - rather fun.

 

Huge excitement - I bought two tiny vases - about the size they appear in the photos and have taken about a billion photos of them.

I am meant to be writing an essay about "Why I Write" hmm.....not very useful when one isn't writing much at all. I'm mostly copying my long essay about life in LA in the seventies. You can imagine what a huge audience there is for that little snippet.

Also not writing an essay about Persephone Books.

Also thinking about what an endless audience there is for self-help books - about the billion ways there are to improve one's self.

Possible title: How to be Idle and Enjoy It: A Thousand Strategies for Wasting Time.

File under: Family, Dog, Food, Friends, Blogging, Taking Photos of Things...

Happy Weekend.

 

 

Party

 

 

 

 

Today is our annual opening-of-the -festive-season party. So we have to tidy up and buy snacks (Trader Joes's hummus is wonderful). So, much chopping of vegetables and

a foray to the Flower District which seems to have shrunk to just west 28th Street

  

 

where there so many flowers it makes your head spin. Such amyrillises! so many berries!

Both my mother and my grandmother adored anemones. Slightly old-fashioned and with such jewel richness of color.

 

So I bought home  some purple ones - darker than this photo shows.

 

Then I had to tidy the bookshelves - that rather pathetic collection of books -the ones I have left that haven't been pressed on people who don't really want them and never return them.

I always snoop at people's book shelves.

So back to tidying up and ironing tablecloths.

 

And (Department of Shameless Commerce)

I finally got the first version of my book website up now  four of my books are available on Kindle.

You can download Ruth & Gisela (first edition was called A Fortume Child) for only $2.99 - and you can read the opening for nothing to see if you like it....

 

 

 

 

Sunday and a Novica Giveaway

 

 

 

 

The other day I was coming home on the subway

snapping randomish sorts of pictures and discovered a man reading the Hollywood Reporter. I always like to snoop and see what people are reading. Yesterday on the way to Queens a young woman was reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. We agreed it was a very good book. Most really studious serious types are playing video games.

 

Usual Saturday at Union Square with

 

a plethora of pears 

 

tasteful herbs (rosemary sage and thyme)

 Brussel sprouts galore

  

and a winesap apple which reappeared as

 

 

cupcakes with apple in them.

 

 

 

Wind chills in the teens, a wicked wind and snow last night tore down most of the remaining leaves and deposited them in convenient  piles. (The gray splotch is my winter coat).

 

 

This last picture is of a leaf in the paper that wrapped the lovely Thai paper  I ordered from Novica.

It's that time of year again. I have a $25 Novica gift code to send to one lucky person who leaves a comment here by next  Sunday  December 1st. I just happen to be addicted to paper, but they have silk scarves and clothing and all sorts of beautiful things from artisans all over the world.

 

 

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

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

 

 

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.

 

Shack Chic

 

What I like about ABC Carpet is that it is a quite batty shop filled to the rafters with wonderfully overpriced glories, and crafts, and ethnic stuff. The sort of shop where you need stupid money to buy things. I was there yesterday with Frances wandering about. We came across an expensive art book called Shack Chic with pictures taken of impoverished homes in South Africa. (see below)

The colors are super and artsy, but the tattiness sad rather than chosen. The batteredness from real hardship not playing at it --as in 'shabby-chic'. Gosh.

I felt very disturbed by the prettification of need.

In another book, Mud Chic, the bed, though colorful, looks wretchedly uncomfortable. Need may be somewhat picturesque at times  --I just feel bad looking at it in such expensive surroundings. That aside

on sale in the basement a bicycle made for two.

Upstairs mirrors

and a baywindow taken from somewhere!

What a world of illusions we are in.

Frances' new sitting room

looking out over Broadway

and the ESB on the way home.

 

Diner

 

There are diners in the city, but we rarely go to them. Like reading People Magazine in the nail parlor, some things are place-specific.

So we head to the diner our first morning on Long Island

and eat all sorts of cool bad stuff with butter and bacon and syrup.

Munday's is all decked out for the 4th of July still

all glittery.

The serious breakfasters sit at the bar.

 

 

New York Wedding

 

Fathers' Day. Sunday afternoon in Rockerfeller Center

The reception room so pure and white.

The outdoor space overlooking St. Patrick's Cathedral and one of the grooms.

A marvellous photo op.

And the clothes! Note the tarbush (often called Fez) from Morocco and the green shoes

I think the photographer has sprung from the 20's of the last century

Not to mention the clothes....

and the table after dinner

and the view from the window.....

 

Wishing Robert and David a long and happy life together.

June 17th 2012