Warm day at the zoo

It's warm (high around 70F/21C), it's sunny, and it's Saturday, so a lot of us thought it was a good day for the Bronx Zoo. Unfortunately, large parts of the zoo are closed off for reconstruction; one effect of this is that the tiger area was very crowded. So we left there quickly, and looked at snow leopards and cranes instead. We smelled a skunk and saw some bushes in flower, I think of the rhododendron clade but not the large, bright flowering rhododendrons gardeners love. We also smelled a skunk, near the red panda area. The baboons were out and about, and the picnic area next to them was full of peafowl, including a young-looking peacock with the tail feathers just beginning to grow in.

We heard and saw a kingfisher, near the bison enclosure. We saw two American robins, in a tree just above daffodils.

Yes, daffodils. Three of them, wide open and bright yellow. I suppose cherries imply daffodils (and the daffodils imply dandelions, and the snowdrops we saw in our neighborhood on the way home) but I wasn't expecting them. Forsythia, yes: it does that in warm autumns, and this has been, or maybe still is, a warm autumn. But it's one thing to be told that there are crocuses in bloom at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, another to see daffodils, right there in front of us.

Waiting for the bus, we inspected the lawn of the NY Botanical Garden: dandelion, purple clover, and a variety of small wildflowers we don't know names for, including some tiny pale purple ones that had stopped blooming two weeks ago but were blooming again on Isham Street this morning.

Warm day at the zoo

It's warm (high around 70F/21C), it's sunny, and it's Saturday, so a lot of us thought it was a good day for the Bronx Zoo. Unfortunately, large parts of the zoo are closed off for reconstruction; one effect of this is that the tiger area was very crowded. So we left there quickly, and looked at snow leopards and cranes instead. We smelled a skunk and saw some bushes in flower, I think of the rhododendron clade but not the large, bright flowering rhododendrons gardeners love. We also smelled a skunk, near the red panda area. The baboons were out and about, and the picnic area next to them was full of peafowl, including a young-looking peacock with the tail feathers just beginning to grow in.

We heard and saw a kingfisher, near the bison enclosure. We saw two American robins, in a tree just above daffodils.

Yes, daffodils. Three of them, wide open and bright yellow. I suppose cherries imply daffodils (and the daffodils imply dandelions, and the snowdrops we saw in our neighborhood on the way home) but I wasn't expecting them. Forsythia, yes: it does that in warm autumns, and this has been, or maybe still is, a warm autumn. But it's one thing to be told that there are crocuses in bloom at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, another to see daffodils, right there in front of us.

Waiting for the bus, we inspected the lawn of the NY Botanical Garden: dandelion, purple clover, and a variety of small wildflowers we don't know names for, including some tiny pale purple ones that had stopped blooming two weeks ago but were blooming again on Isham Street this morning.

Feeling caught up

I've spent much of the last day or so burbling to cattitude about my most recent trip: some of the conversation, some of the food, some of the general Montreal stuff. One thing that this brought to my attention is that before this past week, I hadn't really had time to talk seriously with papersky since last Easter: she was away in Britain when I visited in the summer, and she had a lot of other people to talk to during the Farthing Party.

This visit, we got plenty of time to talk, including but not limited to time by ourselves in the mornings, at home and out shopping, especially the last morning I was there, and I feel more solidly connected again. Nine months isn't long enough for me to have been strongly aware of what I was missing, but it was enough time for us both to have be missing it. We talked about writing, about other kinds of work, about people we love, about Montreal, about tea, all sorts of things. It wasn't just time for the two of us: three or four or five people feels different from forty or fifty, or even from smaller groups within a party of 20 or 30 attendees. When Papersky, rysmiel, hobbitbabe, and I spent a day together eating dim sum, going to the Biodome, then tea at Cha Noir and dinner at the Peruvian restaurant, it was the same four of us all day, and we knew it would be. That's a lot less hurried, without the sense of trying to talk to lots of cool people in a short period.

Also, I was sleep-deprived at the Farthing Party, and thus less focused on the conversation than I'd have liked, and don't remember it that well.

Feeling caught up

I've spent much of the last day or so burbling to cattitude about my most recent trip: some of the conversation, some of the food, some of the general Montreal stuff. One thing that this brought to my attention is that before this past week, I hadn't really had time to talk seriously with papersky since last Easter: she was away in Britain when I visited in the summer, and she had a lot of other people to talk to during the Farthing Party.

This visit, we got plenty of time to talk, including but not limited to time by ourselves in the mornings, at home and out shopping, especially the last morning I was there, and I feel more solidly connected again. Nine months isn't long enough for me to have been strongly aware of what I was missing, but it was enough time for us both to have be missing it. We talked about writing, about other kinds of work, about people we love, about Montreal, about tea, all sorts of things. It wasn't just time for the two of us: three or four or five people feels different from forty or fifty, or even from smaller groups within a party of 20 or 30 attendees. When Papersky, rysmiel, hobbitbabe, and I spent a day together eating dim sum, going to the Biodome, then tea at Cha Noir and dinner at the Peruvian restaurant, it was the same four of us all day, and we knew it would be. That's a lot less hurried, without the sense of trying to talk to lots of cool people in a short period.

Also, I was sleep-deprived at the Farthing Party, and thus less focused on the conversation than I'd have liked, and don't remember it that well.