Brooklyn
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Natural object: Sweetgum pod
I’ve always liked these. The seedpod from the sweetgum tree, Liquidambar styraciflua. They are persistent; this one, one of a whole host, only recently (probably in our recent heavy snow) brought to earth. Each cavity contains many tiny seeds, which provide food for songbirds, chipmunks, squirrels, and couple things we don’t see much of in…
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Field Notes
Top, left to right, Lacebark pine, crocus, snowdrop. Bottom: Paulownia seedpod, snowdrops, sweetgum seedpods. Prospect Park, Friday morning/early afternoon. Mild weather: overcast early, clearing, little to no wind. Temperature: low 40s by the time I was done, hat off, coat unzipped. I walked half way around the Lake from the south end, and then ran…
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Gowanus Lady
This week, the Gowanus Canal, a relic of the Industrial Age that runs through the soft underbelly of Brooklyn, was declared a Superfund Site by the EPA. I’m inordinately fond of the ol’ toxic sewer outlet, which is also known as the Lavender Lake, although I prefer to borrow Kipling’s “great greasy green” aliteration. It’s…
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Learning from Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau didn’t particularly like cities, including New York, all that much. “The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population,”he wrote while visiting in 1843. Thoreau was a country mouse at heart, not a city rat. He was neither the first nor the last to believe that there was a…
Backyard and Beyond 