-
Late season.
Been thinking about the concept recently while visiting some haunts both local and distant. Not ruins exactly. Let’s say slightly faded in the most perfect way. Like the nearby genteel rose garden at the Lyndhurst. Its blooms in November just as exquisite as the ones in June. Possibly even more ravishing. Is it my imagination,…
-
Stumperies and critter holes and other mysteries
await at Untermeyer Gardens in Yonkers, New York. Yes, the famous property — designed in 1916 to be “the finest garden in the world” — now features a Stumpery. The park once boasted sixty greenhouses. It’s still pretty nice. Just what is a Stumpery? You would be well within your rights to ask the question,…
-
Forests and New York City
is not a pairing that would make sense to some people outside the Metropolitan Area (we always say that, as though there is no other metropolitan area in the world). But majestic trees do exist among the concrete canyons of NY. I’ve been fortunate to come up close to some of them. Walt Whitman: Why are…
-
I’ve known these trees and stones, these streams and trails forever.
Growing up in the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson in southern Westchester County, Hillside Woods was a personal oasis. Not deep forest, not a virgin tract, but one hundred acres that formed the backdrop of my life — and so many other peoples’ as well. When I heard about an effort to escort deer out of Hillside…
-
Take a closer look.
What do you see? It’s almost the new year. Time to look within. How will you change? What parts will endure? Is the past alive? Is it dead? Somewhere in between? Is life short? Sometimes seems that way. Is life long? Could be. It’s all relative. We need to name things, somehow. Of course. Sometimes it’s…
-
Winter color so vivid all around
at Wave Hill, the historic estate in Riverdale, the Bronx. Always a magnificent public-access arboretum, but perhaps especially beautiful on this brisk early afternoon in mid-December. Berries all around. Not only crimson holly, perfect for the season. But purple. The aptly named beautyberry. Shakespeare wrote about boughs which shake against the cold,/Bare ruin’d choirs, where late…
-
There are many great trees in New York City.
Yes, true. But what about the Great Trees of New York City? This is the brainchild of New York City Parks, which is reviving a project that was last completed in the 1985 with the goal of identifying the most iconic trees in all the five boroughs. Ordinary citizens nominate exceptional trees, as many as…
-
Poking around where I am not supposed to be
is a favorite pastime of mine. All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream, said Edgar Allan Poe. Thinking about some writers who have opined on the dark side of life as I spend some time in in a dream within a dream – the abandoned Contagious Disease Hospital at Ellis, taking around a group of…