Ten Days in May

HERE’S HOW MY LONG ISLAND, N.Y., GARDEN looks now, with the trees nearly all leafed out for the season, following a night and a day of blessed rain.

As recently as two weeks ago, it still felt like very early spring. Now we’re in it. A few warm days, and the rewards start coming.

The irises I thought were planted too deep, or didn’t like the acidic soil, suddenly shot up their flower stalks. The beds around the front deck — now a tad less shady, thanks to the removal of five or six more trees last March — are filling out, though plenty of bare spots remain.

I’ve been planting like a maniac, all in a spirit of experiment. I’m no longer making any attempt at design in the four raised beds in the sunny center of the property, where I’ve variously had dreams of starting flowers from seeds or growing edibles. Now it’s just a fertile place to hold the odd things picked up at nurseries in Philadelphia and Dutchess County, at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s annual plant sale, and at community garden sales here and there.

I’m making repeated trips to the local dump for free compost, mulch and wood chips, a scene that never fails to remind me of Monica Vitti in Antonioni’s Red Desert, walking through a post-apocalyptic landscape in a pencil skirt and stilettos.

See nature’s progression below:

Back to front: an ilex ‘sky pencil,’pagoda dogwood, two ninebark ‘Coppertina,’ a couple of lavenders, an acanthus and some annuals in their Brooklyn staging area, awaiting transport.

Variegated Solomon’s seal, planted last October and doing spectacularly well.

Golden bleeding heart and ferns as they looked two weeks ago.

An old azalea, here when I bought this property in 2013, thriving as a result of pruning and Hollytone. 

Stuffing the raised beds with bulbs only worked for a year. My Costco alliums and even the daffs failed to come back. Only the Pheasant Eye daffodils from a catalogue company bloomed this season, weakly. 

Still early times, as of two weeks ago, in the bed above. 

A car full of compost.

A few native dogwoods on the property blooming better now — must be the Hollytone.

Signs of growth abounding this week:

Weeping spruce putting it forth.

Purple violas, gift from a friend, in a gorgeous hunk of driftwood, gift from another friend, in a spot where I had to remove a failing boxwood.

Watch this space…

Silver ferns around three rocks, an attempt at artistry and restraint.

Happy smoke tree.

I have high hopes for my Pagoda dogwood from the BBG. May be 12 feet tall some day.

Mystery plants appropriated from vacant lot nearby, where property was clear-cut for development. Digitalis? Remains to be seen.

Rodgersia — a first for me — and lady’s mantle in front of a rhodie about to burst into bloom.

Irises blooming after all.

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My only stab at agriculture this year: a single Sun Gold tomato plant in a whiskey barrel. 

 

 

 

 

Brooklyn the Beautiful: Clinton Avenue

MY 2008 Honda Fit has nearly 100,000 miles on it and keeps on chugging. Its the best city car I’ve ever had. (You should see me wedge its 108″ into a 109″ parking space.) Occasionally it needs maintenance, however, and recently I brought it into the shop for new struts and springs.

Walking home, I took a route new to me, at least as a pedestrian. I’d driven along Clinton Avenue before and knew there were outstanding houses there, but there’s nothing like being on foot for really observing your surroundings.

There are probably more freestanding Victorian mansions here than anywhere else in Brooklyn — remnants of the robber-baron days when wealthy industrialists chose this area, near the East River and the ferries to Manhattan, to built their family homes.

Along a several-block stretch of Clinton Avenue from Fulton Street almost to the river, there are more-elegant-than-usual brownstones, detached Greek Revival houses with porches and lawns, and smaller freestanding houses in a variety of architectural styles, some quite playful.

The neighborhood is called Clinton Hill, and along with Columbia Street in Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope’s “Gold Coast” (Prospect Park West), it’s one of the best places to see how the 1% lived in 19th century Brooklyn.

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Brooklyn the Beautiful: Dogwood Town

THIS MAY DAY in Brooklyn is a drizzly one. Still, Brooklyn’s brownstone streets are exquisite in spring. Don’t tell anyone… they may decide to move here in droves.

Dogwoods have been in their prime these past couple of weeks, lighting up the fronts of dark-hued row houses with blossoms of pink and white.

P.S. It’s not just dogwoods. See below.