[personal profile] gingicat gave me "tile, magnolia, trail" as things to talk about.

tile: Our kitchen trivet/hotplate is a plain square blue tile that I trash-picked while walking down a street in Chinatown on my way to the subway. I took this one from a pile of eight or ten tiles, presumably left over from a construction or remodeling job. We used to have a smaller, decorated tile that was made and sold for kitchen use, but I dropped and broke that years ago and haven't replaced it, even though there are times that it would be useful to have two or three trivets. Maybe after we move, when we have a kitchen large enough that a second trivet wouldn't immediately prompt the question "but where would we put it?"

Magnolias aren't one of my favorite trees, even though they bloom early in the spring, but I once I had to get blood drawn for some test or other, at a new-to-me-location, in February. I got off the bus and smelled something pleasantly floral, looked around, and was pleased to see one magnolia in bloom, in a row of several that were still in bud. Smelling that tree was all I got out of that trip: the person who told me to get the blood test had forgotten to tell me not to eat beforehand, so I had to reschedule for another day. (I no longer remember what the test was for.)

"Trail maintenance is everybody's job," and I extend that to things that aren't exactly trails: it doesn't matter why there's a dead branch across the sidewalk, if I can lift it and there's somewhere obvious to move it to where it won't be in anyone's way, I do it. I used to carry a Swiss army knife, which includes a small saw blade. That blade isn't why I got the knife, and I didn't use it very often, but it was occasionally handy when wandering through Inwood Hill Park picking berries, and more than handy the day there was a fire in our apartment building and [personal profile] cattitude and I went down the fire escape. Somewhere around the third floor, I had to cut through chinaberry vines that had grown up a tree and then across the fire escape. (Once we got the all-clear and went back to our apartment, I called the fire marshal to report the hazard: I had cut through just enough of the vine to be able to pass, and was worried about it growing back.

There is a patch of snowdrops in bloom a few blocks from me (on that sloped stretch of 214th Street between Indian Road and Seaman Avenue, for [personal profile] roadnotes and anyone else who knows the neighborhood). Snowdrops tend to be the first flowers of the year, but this is at least a fortnight early even for snowdrops, even in a mild year.

Weirder than that, there's a hyacinth in bloom uphill of that, tucked in next to a building. Magenta, with florets about halfway around the spike. I assume the heating system is leaking, but where snowdrops are surprising, a hyacinth is absurdly out of sync. (This is a full-sized hyacinth, not one of the little grape hyacinths.)

(It's been a gray, foggy few days; so far this weekend we have done some more decluttering, and played a bunch of Scrabble.)
redbird: closeup of a white-and-purple violet (violet)
( Dec. 15th, 2012 12:52 pm)
There is one marigold in bloom in the churchyard at Broadway and Isham Streets. What's noteworthy is that this isn't the last of a batch that were transplanted into the garden months ago: it's a single volunteer plant. I've been watching the closed bud for the past couple of weeks, and a few days ago had concluded that it wasn't going to flower. (It's been chilly lately, and we've seen frost on the lawn across the street.)

This morning, we were walking back from the drugstore and saw it. One small flower, a few inches above the ground, and facing sideways rather than turned up toward the sun. I'm guessing it opened a day or two ago.
redbird: me in Inwood hill park (park)
( Jan. 4th, 2012 07:53 pm)
There was a massive fire in my neighborhood last night: apparently it took the fire department four hours to get it under control, and they were still there and pouring water on five hours after that, when we were walking to the subway this morning. And Broadway between 207th and Isham Streets was still closed at 6:00 this evening, when I got back uptown. The building was gutted and will be demolished (that according to NY1; I'm linking to DNAinfo because I'm guessing their story will be reachable longer). Fortunately, there are no serious injuries.

This was a two-story building, entirely commercial; the Fire Department seems to have kept the fire from spreading to either the nearest apartment building or the next commercial building to the north on Broadway, but what's lost includes the Citibank branch, a laundromat and a pet store on 207th Street, and a new hardware store that I had shopped at once or twice and liked. (It's a branch of a store further downtown, so I'm hoping they'll be able to reopen; a brand-new business would, I think, be less likely to have the resources.)
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redbird: me in Inwood hill park (park)
( Jan. 4th, 2012 07:53 pm)
There was a massive fire in my neighborhood last night: apparently it took the fire department four hours to get it under control, and they were still there and pouring water on five hours after that, when we were walking to the subway this morning. And Broadway between 207th and Isham Streets was still closed at 6:00 this evening, when I got back uptown. The building was gutted and will be demolished (that according to NY1; I'm linking to DNAinfo because I'm guessing their story will be reachable longer). Fortunately, there are no serious injuries.

This was a two-story building, entirely commercial; the Fire Department seems to have kept the fire from spreading to either the nearest apartment building or the next commercial building to the north on Broadway, but what's lost includes the Citibank branch, a laundromat and a pet store on 207th Street, and a new hardware store that I had shopped at once or twice and liked. (It's a branch of a store further downtown, so I'm hoping they'll be able to reopen; a brand-new business would, I think, be less likely to have the resources.)
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redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
( Sep. 27th, 2010 06:12 pm)
I've uploaded eight photos to Flickr: six of them are of some large orange sunflowers that were growing down on 207th Street last month, with bees visiting. The only color manipulation on any of those is that I used Paint.net's "autolevel" feature on one of them.

very orange sunflower
This is the most orange of the lot.
(The plants also produced a few smaller yellow sunflowers.)

The other two are of a jimsonweed plant that was growing at the edge of a soccer field in Inwood Hill Park, next to the cement edging of a path: the spot is a tiny, intermittent watercourse, which was probably an advantage this dry summer.
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redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
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