The High Line/Part Two

The newly opened part of the High line -- between 20th and 30th Streets 

-- was amazingly busy last Saturday afternoon when the weather was sultry.

More of the urban/country/green experience.....

with the cars whizzing beneath us.

Piet Oudolf's grass designs will take a little time to settle in

meanwhile you can sit and ponder the wonders of 25th Street (if you really want to!)

At 30th Street is Rainbow City -- a big hit, I think, with the younger set

who can pummel the balloons and spin them to their hearts' content.

The slightly older may prefer the 'beer garden'.

Post Thanksgiving

After too much turkey and just the right amount of family

what better thing to do than take a quiet walk on a drizzly day?

This is the trunk of the very, very old wisteria in the grounds of the

General Theological Seminary on 20th Street.

This garden always reminds me of England. Drippy bare branches -- flashes of vivid green.

How the rain drops cling to the roses

and get fatter and fatter!

Then a nice cup of tea.

Tea and Sympathy on Greenwich Avenue

Michael Imperioli on The Red Carpet

Well, they put down a red carpet near my house......

...so Buster wanted his photo taken on it.....

 

Then the real fun started. At about five thirty all sorts of important people showed up including Michael Imperioli  --Christopher of Soprano's fame. Lots of photographers.

"Gosh, he's looking older," my daughter said when I emailed her the photo. ( She has the whole Sopranos box set in England.) We decided Adrianna would have liked the interviewer's skirt. As everyone is noting, New Jersey is flavor of the month: sausage stores and pizza parlors, McMansions, bistro sets and interesting plantings.

You never know who you'll run into wandering round in Chelsea.

Turf Wars: or a Guerilla Garden Battle

When I started my little garden round the tree stump near my apartment, I never realized how attached I would become to this public, vulnerable little patch. We water it every day and observe how each particular plant is doing.....

You will notice rather a bare patch where an evil-doer has removed a plant..... actually, about eight plants have vanished over the months......usually nice bright pink or yellow ones which is why we've been putting in herbs and stuff just with leaves......

My friend Luis has a much bigger and better guerilla garden at 25th St and 9th Avenue,

and is often to be seen tending it. We chat and compare notes. 

"Oh yes," says Luis, his plants often go missing too...... 

and he knows exactly where they go. Hm.......

So I wander a little to the west and discover a wonderful garden, well tended and full of plants I recognize only too well........So we leave a note saying: "I hope you are enjoying our plants; we miss them."

 


A case in point: the coleus with orange and green leaves (top left) was in the gap in picture #1.
This is all very funny really.
"Get a life," I hear you say......."What do you expect living in the middle of the city."
But still, I do wish she'd knock it off and get her own plants......We got rather attached to ours.

The Norwegian Epic Arrives in Chelsea

I love the little red tug boat

The Norwegian Epic sailing up the Hudson in exactly the same place as the famous airplane drifted down.....
It had just crossed the Atlantic for the first time. I was standing waving like mad but don't think my brother and his wife could see me and the dog!

Sister Goes for a Walk

Chelsea is home to all sorts of people, including ones who work in fashion and the arts. Though Sister is carrying a bag from Henry Bendel's, her costume is not cutting edge....more traditional somehow.

I think this white costume is summer wear.

And contrasts nicely against the dark window of the diner.

Sister is heading for the bar, but I don't think she will go in....

My Latest Project

Accompanied by my trusty companion, and inspired by Luis in the post above, I decided to adopt a neglected tree enclosure near my apartment.  It was plain, hard dirt with a confetti of cigarette butts. I added some top soil, potting soil and a few pale nicotinia.

Yesterday I went up to the green market at Union Square and picked up a few other little annuals.

The front of the metal railing is missing, so I imagine my little garden will get dug in and peed on and generally abused. But if it only lasts for a few days it will have been worth it. If it survives and thrives, I will post another picture of it.
Go here  for lots of other SHADOWSHOTS

Red Day

As I was on 8th Avenue at lunch time, it suddenly came to me that it was a red day,

 which is counter-intuitive since red isn't a very spring color.

Everywhere I looked people were wearing red. By Dallas Barbecue...

.... by the subway.

Even the fire hydrant had a shiny new coat of red paint.

The lone tulip in the pachysandra was red....

as were last fall's berries reluctant to concede the new year's arrival.

Paperazzi

All things considered, I'm glad that I'm not famous. Imagine what it would be like having this collection of people on the opposite side of the road from your house. They all have very fancy cameras with lots and lots of cool lenses and are quite chatty as I walk past on my way to the dog run.  They hang about trying to conceal themselves behind much too skinny trees.....

Really not a profession to be much admired. All I need to know is what sort of lenses they have and if I could ever learn to use one.

My main blog is now here

New York Portfolio

Three paintings by Robert Schmid photographed on a  roof in Chelsea.

My main blog is now here 

23rd Street

Very early in the morning the sun hits a building on the south side

 of the street and a plane looks like a comet heading earthwards.

High up, where the new building is, it is morning. Down below darkness still lingers.

Somehow, the shape of the new building is echoed in the garbage truck.

The black railing is the High Line soon-to-be park extension.

All the construction materials are cleverly reflected in the apartment building.

So many buildings to take pictures of. I'm longing for the plants to arrive.

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The End of February

The New york City Public Schools were closed today much to the delight of the local children.

Time to go to the park and make snowballs.

In the afternoon a slight thaw set in.

A twisted willow tree  freighted with fluffy snow on 21st Street.
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Looking Towards the Hudson at Night

Blogger seems to have altered the way you compose things --and , needles to say, I'm confused.

The light is always fascinating when it's almost dark, 

or dark at street level, but the day remains suspended in the sky.

I'm not quite sure what is behind the colored windows.

 The cage thing on the left is a golf range down by Chelsea Piers.

An advertisement for a vast U-Haul storage place. Storage is a huge business here in Manhattan since people both move a lot and also acquire all sorts of things that would clutter their often small apartments. Space is the thing people long for here more than anything else.

Lots of little vans you can hire to haul all your either useful or useless stuff around the place........

My main blog is now  here 

Thursday on 22nd Street

My main blog is now HERE

Bars on a window. 22nd Street

A poster hiding behind a metal fence.

Somehow the posters were all put up wobbly and not flattened out.

For some reason, I liked the color of the reflections in the car.