Al fresco dining: one of the chief pleasures of the season. Above, the garden of Brooklyn’s Bedouin Tent restaurant on Atlantic Avenue, with a view of the Belarussian church next door
THESE DAYS, I’M BOTH a city mouse and a country mouse. I’ve been bouncing around from here to there — a few days in Brooklyn, a few days in Springs (Long Island, N.Y.), depending on what I have to do.
The newish and very welcome Botanica Garden Center on Atlantic between Third and Fourth Avenues
Look what’s behind the Botanica Garden Center, above
Out in front, impromptu green space
Row of three houses, surprisingly genteel, along gritty Ninth Street in Gowanus
Back in the country, I have a sense of purpose I didn’t have a couple of months back. An erupting garden, in need of watering, weeding, and deer-spraying, will do that.
My backyard greening up, as it looked a week ago
The scrawny magnolia I inherited is filling out, year by year
Great, deer-proof stuff: deutzia, I think it’s called
Local color, before the tree leafed out
Gardiner’s Bay, above, a short walk from my house
“Gobble it up with your eyes,” my mother used to say. Spring’s beauty is already fleeing. Trees that were in full flower a week or two ago are now all-green. Savor it while it lasts, and then — we have no choice — let it go.
What a fine life you have!!!
The “deutzia” is not deutzia but “corylopsis pauciflora”. Nice woodland plant.
And I love your mother’s expression!!! Exactly!! What a wonderful time of year…
Thanks, Anon! The corylopsis was probably mislabeled at the farm stand where I bought it and I never bothered to fact-check.