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I’VE BEEN OUT ON LONG ISLAND this mostly dreary weekend, which confirmed that early March is not my favorite time of year. It’s those last weeks before green shoots emerge and buds pop that are the hardest.
I had planned to do a bit of yard work — cutting back grasses, re-planting frost-heaved perennials, picking up storm damage — but I didn’t. It wasn’t the drizzle. It wasn’t laziness. It was discouragement.
The deer damage is extensive. I don’t know if it’s because I wasn’t here much this winter, like I was last, or because I planted a lot of new stuff in the fall — evergreen stuff that ought to be green and is now mere twig. They went after hollies and skip laurel. Mountain laurel, too. And the ilex (above and below) that I hoped would provide screening. In some cases where shrubs are bare, I’m not sure whether they’re deciduous or de-nuded. I’d have to look it up, and I haven’t even had the heart to do that.
Early in the weekend, I got out my supplies for making a batch of homemade deer repellent. Then I put it all away. They’ve already eaten everything. Either it will come back or it won’t.
I ought to have gone in for the burlap treatment like my neighbors, below. That would have been do-able, and I’m pissed at myself that I didn’t do it.
The subject of deer fencing is hereby re-opened.
On a brighter note, below, I now have a bathroom sink.
THIS COTTAGE, of indeterminate age, is on Neck Path, where old farmhouses date back to when the winding road between Amagansett and Springs was called a highway. It’s near the Green River cemetery where local icon Jackson Pollock is buried, and a short way from legendary Louse Point, one of the most beautiful bay beaches in the area, and the best kayak launch.
Above: Rear of property, with former garage converted to artist’s studio at left
And it’s still on the market after a year, like many of the houses around here. The price has come down $80,000 from last year’s listing.
What that says about the market is, well, not good. Even worse is the fact that last year, the asking price of 599K didn’t seem unreasonable to me. Today it seems high. This worries me as a homeowner always interested in the possibility of selling my present place and trading up.
But it’s still a cute house with a vintage vibe, in top-notch condition and in a pleasant spot.
Go here to see the current listing with more pics, and here to read my enthusiastic post of a year ago. It was a buyer’s market then as now, but apparently, buyers are not buying.
AT FIRST I THOUGHT this was going to be a hopelessly random post, a mash-up of recent photos I wanted to share but that had no particular organizing principle. Only when I looked at them all together I realized the bay windows, stained glass, and carriage houses do have something in common. They’re all in Park Slope!
Park Slope, Brooklyn’s biggest brownstone neighborhood — in fact, the largest concentration of 19th century housing stock in the entire country, I once read — is many things. Here are some of them, in alphabetical order:
annoying, beautiful, congested (in spots), Democratic, elegant, fucked, Gold Coast, historic, intense, jogger-laden, kid-happy, left-wing, mansion-infested, novelist-ridden, overpriced, parking nightmare, quiet at night, restaurant-challenged, self-satisfied, top-of-the-market, unfazed, Victorian, wifi-ful, xpanding, yoga-friendly, and zealous about its food coop rules.
(I can’t believe I managed to come up with 26 alphabetical adjectives — if you can do better on any of them, feel free. Click on “[#of] comments” in tiny type under the post headline above, and a form will open up for your comment. I know, WordPress doesn’t make it easy.)
I’ve never lived in Park Slope, though I’ve long admired its varied architecture, and envied its proximity to Prospect Park and the Botanic Gardens. And, of course, I wish I had had the foresight to snatch up some of those brownstones when they were cheap (I’m wincing, recalling a 5-story house with a mansard roof on the corner of Sixth Avenue and a North Slope block — Lincoln Place, maybe — for $150,000…Would somebody please KICK ME NOW?!)
Anyway, now that I’m in neighboring Prospect Heights, I find myself in the Slope more often. I’m getting familiar with certain blocks I trod on my way home from the Fifth Avenue bus.
The list of places I want to try/hang out is growing…Cafe Regular, Juventino…and many of them are in the Slope. It’s like discovering a new continent, that’s how vast it seems to an outlander. And with such architectural riches, it could take a long time to get bored.
SEEING THE WORLD ANEW: that’s the point of the Tuesday afternoon photography class I’ve been taking at the Tribeca Y, taught by Palmer Davis (who also teaches at the ICP).
Palmer’s assignments are creatively challenging and intellectually stimulating. They make you look differently at the familiar. I feel I’m casting the cobwebs from my jaded eyes.
The latest assignment is “Abstraction,” taking things out of context so it’s all about form rather than meaning. I found I could accomplish that by shooting in close-up, and create images that look like modern paintings.
Pity about the lack of focus in the one above. But I still like it. It’s a lamppost in Carroll Gardens. As Palmer put it, “Abstraction opens up the possibilities of picture-making.”
If you missed my animal portraits and slices of Brooklyn for previous assignments, you can go here and here.
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