BBG in August

Lovely in every season. Here are some pictures from mid-to-late August.

View of black-eyed susans through the branch of a twisted tree:

A large flower (this is actually a double-portrait; look for the reflection in the sunglasses):

Tree reflected in the lily pond:

Water lilies with the softness of watercolor (thanks, Monet):

Lotus blossom, easily THE most photogenic plant in the garden:

A visitor to the BBG:

Small butterfly, big flower:

Snapdragons!!!!

I love the vibrant color of these:

Rose garden still has some blossoms, even though Rose Month was back in June:

This one reminded me of the lotus flowers, but it's still a rose:

No skating in the garden, sorry:

A picture from one of my few hiking trips this summer, to Anthony's Nose (near Bear Mountain):

Public Enemies

Some of the HFG gang went to dinner (Penelope's) and a movie (Public Enemies). I grew very sleepy during the movie. It seemed almost as if the film-makers were trying too hard not to favor either the outlaw or his nemesis... and in the process left me completely indifferent to both sides. My main impression of the movie is white guys in dark suits with bowler hats and machine guns. Plus one former hat-check girl (gotta love Dillinger's courtship technique).

I was a lot more impressed with the views from the theater: the Empire State Building in fog.







Dinner was nice as well. It reminded me of Home restaurant on Cornelia Street, though more bright, open and airy.

NY Philharmonic

It was a lovely evening under the pink balloons:

Two of our company enjoying the last rays of sunshine:

We were close enough to the stage that the speakers were behind us:

Alec Baldwin was the surprise guest MC before the show. I think he told us how to vote on the encore:

This time, I didn't even bother trying to vote. Luckily, the audience chose what I would have voted for: a Mendelssohn scherzo.

A view over the shoulder of someone with a much better camera than mine (he's taking a picture of Alec Baldwin):

It was a nice concert, though I was sad not to see any fireflies this time. They've been scarce most of the summer (just saw them at the graveyard in Stony Point). There were at least some fireworks after the encore, though further away and less elaborate than in previous years. Maybe they figured people would bring their own.

Yankee Stadia

Two views in June, very atmospheric, though more impressive in the original full-size pictures:

Vitamin Z 2009

Enjoying pictures after breakfast:

A young commuter running for the train?


Riding the carousel at Bryant Park:

Tickled to pose with Elmo in Times Square:

Face painting at the Central Park Zoo:


Putting on a lion face:

Extra-strength lily pads:

Rabbit sculptures:

Crocodile on the Q:

Picnic in Prospect Park:

Flashback to Sunnier Times

It's difficult to remember now amid the June monsoons, but we enjoyed a much sunnier time back at the end of May.

Diane was luminous in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden:


The roses were a riot of color - although the sun was too harsh for my camera to capture the scene properly:

One of the first lotus blossoms of the season:



A large flower (I was going to describe its hue as lavender or lilac, or even a light violet ... but that seems strangely misdescriptive here - aren't there any shades of pale purple NOT named after flowers?):


Today Sarah was kind enough to host a francophile get-together, and we watched My Best Friend in the original French ... without subtitles. The more often we paused the movie, the better I understood. It just takes time for me to process the words.

There's a connection of sorts between the sun-soaked BBG photos and the francophile fest, if a sadly contrasting one, because Sarah's once-beautiful garden is being drowned and destroyed by pests that apparently thrive in super-saturated soil. Her husband came back from the garden store with a clear ID of the culprits: spider mites, aphids and caterpillars. (He's rigged up a tent-like tarp to protect the plants from the continuing deluges, and is escalating the chemical warfare on the pests while trying not to poison the herb garden.)

The Downward Spiral

My cell phone, already notorious for dropping calls and turning itself off entirely at the end of a call, continues on its downward spiral.

This weekend, the plastic on the hinge began to flake off.* Soon I had a sort of cyber-hybrid look (think Seven of Nine from Star Trek, or Adam from Buffy the Vampire Slayer):

The hinge now feels so flimsy that I wonder each time I flip open the phone if this will be its last hurrah.** It's almost enough to make me stop playing the tetris demo game every five minutes on the subway.

I've seen worse -- imagine cell phones with huge cracks all over their face, held together by a polyurethane coat or duct tape -- but this degeneration does not bode well. After all, plastic does not have the same self-healing properties as skin (an odd fact, when you think about the term plastic surgery for procedures which can only be successful to the extent that the skin is not like plastic).




Footnotes:
*Possibly due to an adjacent pack of cards in my purse inexorably pressing against the phone.... This is actually a more plausible theory than it may sound.
**Then again, I did forget my cell phone at home last weekend. Were I inclined to anthropomorphize electronics, I might think this was payback/abandonment issues....

Look at Me, Mommy, Look at Meeee!

The officers' retreat was fun, especially since we had a few lucky breaks with the weather. Z picked me up afterward. We watched Street Kings, which was interesting (though not as good as last week's Gran Torino), and I asked him a question I'd been wanting to ask. It left me feeling pretty vulnerable, just to ask -- and then clarify -- my question. But there are different levels of vulnerability, after all. We had dinner with his son, who is a real sweetheart, and then I went back to the city.

I was so glad to be at church this morning for the ordination and installation of our new officers. The laying on of hands never ceases to move me. Our pastor took a look back at his first sermon here and explained how his view of the challenges of this church had changed over the course of the year. He's come a long way.

Ce Mois de Mai (coda)

Today was Pentecost Sunday. Don't tell the fire marshal, but if you look closely, you can see tongues of fire descending on the congregation:

Here's a closeup:

At the moment, the only tongue I'm speaking is English. You know your French accent is really bad when non-francophones think you're speaking German.

Yesterday KJ and I took it easy. We watched Quantum of Solace, then went for a walk in the park, where we saw (drum roll please) an Elmo pinata! It was a bit high for the kids, but it looks like they have a sort of pulley system rigged up.

Memorial Day Weekend in the Adirondacks

Damon, KJ, Marie and I drove up Saturday morning to the Moffit Beach campground. We arrived around 1 pm and got one of the worst possible campsites - right next to the entrance, the streetlights, the showers and the ranger station - and far away from the rest of the group! Thanks to Marie's French charm, however, we managed to trade-up to swampy Campsite #68 located at a fork in the road. It really was a big improvement, and we were happy to get the tents up before the rain started again.

After we got settled in, Marie, KJ and I went canoeing on Scandaga Lake. It was really pretty, but I think what I liked best was climbing around to switch places in the canoe.

Saturday night we enjoyed a BBQ with the entire gang - maybe 28 folks in all - but we retired to Campsite 68 before it got very late. So we missed the rangers who came to tell our group to quiet down. I'm not sure why the rangers singled our group out as the noisemakers, ignoring the blaring loudspeakers next door to us.... Guess we looked a lot more approachable.

On Sunday, 10 of us tried to hike to the Good Luck Cliffs. We found the parking lot, and we found the trailhead. We found our way to West Stoner Lake following the detailed trail description and trail map. We also found plenty of bugs - and we weren't even looking for them. The only thing we couldn't find was the turnoff for the Good Luck Cliffs. Somehow we missed it both coming and going.

KJ and I went kayaking afterward, though our paddling technique most likely left something to be desired... I have a feeling we're not supposed to end the session completely soaked.

That night the rangers kept slowing to a crawl in their jeeps as they repeatedly passed our group HQ campsite. Our group lay as low as it could (some literally ducked under the picnic tables), but again there were much rowdier groups at the other end. Go figure.

Monday we had much better luck with the hike to the Echo Cliffs on Panther Mountain. It was steeper than I expected for a "1" rating (easiest on a scale of 1 to 5), but the views were well worth it.

Rather than retracing our steps after the hike, we continued down 10 South to explore 29A East which fortunately did exactly what it was supposed to in terms of connecting us to 30 South. A great day, and a great weekend.