A Day in the City, A Day in the Country

Our Teen Hell-spawn, posing at MOMA.

I've never read Michael Moorcock's novel Mother London, but as a former Londoner, I understand the sense of the title, the sense that your city feeds you, cradles and rocks you. Walking around a few streets in Manhattan, I tried to appreciate the qualities that might make a native of the Big Apple think "Mother New York". But I'm also a Texan and all that damned jostling kept distracting me. No one intentionally jostled me, but there was a Darwinian competition for space on the city streets, even on what I suppose was a relatively "quiet" Sunday afternoon. I kept sympathizing with the older buildings: graceful, functional at one time, and now starved for light and air by the glass towers around them. I could never live in such a crowded place, but visiting is just fine.

But forget about living in NYC, just getting there proved difficult enough. As other ex-Austinites have described our area of Long Island, we're in the Round Rock of New York. But this Round Rock has the wonderful feature of the Long Island Rail Road at its disposal. Can two Texas-London hybrids possibly find their way around? We drove to the station that was recommended to us, found it closed or at least suspiciously quiet and without any ticket kiosks. What to do? Mike, noticing the road along the tracks, decided to just keep driving until we found another station. Which we did, two minutes shy of the arriving, hourly, train. Clearly, a little web research will not be enough in future. If there's a Douglas Adamsian New York Pan-Galactica, we need to lay hands on it. And actually read it.

Our goals on our first visit were modest. Visit MOMA, walk through Times Square, get to Little Italy. Dinner! That was the plan, anyway. Jesse, whose physical education has been somewhat neglected of late, tired early, just when we got to the Greatest Hits of Art on the fifth floor. The adults will have to return. We dragged her through Times Square, bought her a hoodie, got jostled quite a bit more, returned to Huntington.

Less Jostle, More Green, and every other color

All this glorious weather has had me casting about for more rural pursuits than NYC can provide. Longing to walk some formal gardens and sit down to a formal tea, we went to Westbury Gardens, a fine and huge estate surrounding a Charles II mansion. We strolled for a long time around the exquisite English-style gardens, choked with blossoms, carved with paths and small hedges.






The estate included an unmissable Dog Graveyard, according to the sign. There were a half-dozen or so gravestones around, most with multiple names, thus leading to unappetizing images of digging up old graves whenever there was a fresh corpse to be added. The evident expense reminded me of an enormous gravestone in Highgate Cemetery in London, inscribed with the name, "Lucky" and featuring the head of a German Shepherd. Seeing the lavish funereal appointments, you couldn't help thinking the animal was bloody lucky indeed.











A Tree Peony (I think). Most of the flowers, except for a separate rose arbor at the side of the mansion, were cultivated in an enormous walled garden at the side of the house.



And some Martian Flowers (just kidding, I haven't a clue what these are called). I loved the spookiness of them.

Flowering clematises

Vicious Predator Alert!

After much strolling and aimless chatting, we were gasping for a cup of tea. Sadly, this was one thing that was not done well at the estate. True to American form, 'tea' was hot water in a paper cup, with a tea bag handed over at the counter. The cellophane-wrapped cakes looked villainous. This is jarring, because the food elsewhere on Long Island has been so very good. This indifference to the art of tea and cakes is the sort of thing that has perversely delighted some English visitors I've known. They were almost gratified to see Americans squandering such an obvious profit center.

I don't know if Brits make any money off of the little cafes that accompany almost any museum or country house available for tours, but you'd assume so given the care that's taken over them. Tea is served properly, in a pot. You don't have to place your wet tea bag on your saucer, thus hazarding stains on your clothes as you sip your cup. And the cakes are marvelous confections, tiny layers of sponge, there to give the vast clouds of cream something to grab on to. You need the scalding hot tea to cut the unctuousness of the cream. Glorious.

I imagine that Charles Phipps, the original owner of the estate, had many a fine tea, either while at home or while sitting on one of the fine benches placed inside the walls of the garden.