Brooklyn
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Natural Object: Poppy
Sweet dreams are made of this — well, they might be if this was that kind — a poppy seed capsule/pod that managed to survive the winter in the garden of friends in Windsor Terrace. Meanwhile, let’s go walking with Thomas De Quincey: Some of these rambles led me to great distances; for an opium-eater…
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Uneven Development
Forsythia blooming: the microclimate of a ESE-facing wall on Sydney Place intensifies the sun. Meanwhile, in Prospect Park:The trees bid their time.
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Basic beach
I live on an island. It’s a rather lengthy island, and so, unimaginatively, it’s been called “Long Island” for several centuries now. I’m on its far western end, in the once-upon-a-time city and now borough of Brooklyn, which, uh, doesn’t really think of itself as being a part of “Lon Guyland.” The reasons for this…
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Early Spring Subtleties
Some tree species aren’t very showy with their flowers. They aren’t out to attract animals because they’re wind-pollinated; and they aren’t out to seduce gardeners with luscious blooms. So their beauty is subtle, but undeniable. This is some kind of elm species, near Prospect Park Lake.I was away for a week, and while I was,…
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Ribbed Mussels
The Atlantic ribbed mussel, Geukensia demissa, at low tide at Calvert Vaux Park. Unlike the more famous (because delicious) blue mussel, Mytilus edulis, the ribbed mussel, which is found up and down the East Coast, prefers brackish waters. They are a keystone species for salt marsh habitat and vital to Jamaica Bay. Establishing beds within…
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Calvert Vaux Park
Calvert Vaux was born in London (the family name rhymes with “fox”), immigrated to America, worked with Andrew Jackson Dowling, the founding father of American landscape architecture, and published Villas and Cottages, a landmark of American neo-Gothic design. Vaux’s great claim to fame, however, is teaming up with Frederick Law Olmsted to work on both…
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Brooklyn Stalactites
Here at Backyard and Beyond, we spare no wonder for our natural and unnatural world. In the Bergen St. F/G subway station in Brooklyn, these stalactites descend from both platforms. They’re classic soda straw formations, hollow through the center. They are also, obviously, not exactly like the ones you’d find in a cave. (Frankly, you…
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First Bees of 2011
I’ve seen my first bees of the year. I was in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where honey bees were working the crocuses: and the pollen-saturated Rose-Gold Pussy Willow:No other species of bees were seen, but the bumblebees should be out and about soon. There were a few flies, including this:A drone fly, Eristalis tenax. It…
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March Turtles Beat the Hares
The Lullwater still had ice on it, but Prospect Park Lake itself was completely free of the stuff. I saw about a dozen turtles sunning themselves yesterday afternoon. These animals spent the last half year or so down in the mud at the bottom of the Lake in brumation, a form of dormancy that isn’t…
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Brooklyn begins to bloom
On Clinton Street just now, incontrovertible spring. And in Prospect Park, several tree species are flowering. Most of these early springers make modest little flowers, emerging before leaves, which give the trees a fuzzy appearance. This Chinese, or hybrid, witch hazel, meanwhile, makes a showy, odd-ball flower. (The American witch hazels, H.virginiana are unique because…
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