"Darling, it is off. You're sitting in a draft."
I passed a hand in front of the slightly cracked window and realized that he was right. It was June and the air felt like something an A/C unit would produce. It seemed as if I'd fallen asleep and then awakened on Mars.
&&&
Okay, it's been really wet here. The Weather Channel says that the jet stream, which usually makes Canada wet at this time of year, has shifted a little bit and so is making the north eastern United States unusually damp. Day in and day out, torrent and trickle take turns. Long Island is about to have its wettest June on record. You'd think I could occasionally remember to take my umbrella with me.
I'm missing the sun, but there are bright sides to all this gloom. I'd rather hear the great meteorological purring that is an all-night rainfall than the din of an A/C unit. It's a matter of aesthetics. We are thankful that the rain masks all the street sounds that would normally filter up from the arterial road that is closer to us than I would like. Still, I love northern light and would like to see some of it this summer. In this grayish world, nothing has an edge.
I'm missing the sun, but there are bright sides to all this gloom. I'd rather hear the great meteorological purring that is an all-night rainfall than the din of an A/C unit. It's a matter of aesthetics. We are thankful that the rain masks all the street sounds that would normally filter up from the arterial road that is closer to us than I would like. Still, I love northern light and would like to see some of it this summer. In this grayish world, nothing has an edge.
&&&
Clearly, some days do have edges, even here in Cold Scream. When I've had enough of unpacking and sorting and throwing crap away, when I've had enough of seeing Jesse cram her nose into Facebook, I haul her down to Cold Spring Harbor's Main Street, there to get lunch at a deli (a mysterious place where New Yorkers know what to order and where Texans just point at the menu and hope for the best--I had more success in French bakeries than I do in New York delis, despite not knowing a word of French). We take the sandwiches with unknown stuffings across the street to the harbor. There we sit on a rock. So far, it's always low tide at noon, but still pretty. I try to make the walk last longer and she always tries to end it quickly.
Clearly, some days do have edges, even here in Cold Scream. When I've had enough of unpacking and sorting and throwing crap away, when I've had enough of seeing Jesse cram her nose into Facebook, I haul her down to Cold Spring Harbor's Main Street, there to get lunch at a deli (a mysterious place where New Yorkers know what to order and where Texans just point at the menu and hope for the best--I had more success in French bakeries than I do in New York delis, despite not knowing a word of French). We take the sandwiches with unknown stuffings across the street to the harbor. There we sit on a rock. So far, it's always low tide at noon, but still pretty. I try to make the walk last longer and she always tries to end it quickly. &&&
I remembe
r the rhododendrons in London's Kew Gardens, how they bloomed around May, so profusely that they seemed to blanket the entire park. The gardens of Kew are a very managed environment, however, and I don't recall ever seeing rhodies bloom in the wild in Britain. But maybe that's just a defect of memory. Anyway, I was astonished when driving Mike to work one morning, to see a forest of white and some purple rhodedendrons beside the road, stretching, as far as I could tell, over a dozen acres or so. I couldn't wait to go back there on a day with good light so I could take these pictures.
For the plant novices I know, rhodedendrons
come originally from Asia and are a cousin of the azalea, a southern beauty that's a little more drought tolerant than a rhodie. I've read that rhodies are almost a weed in the Pacific northwest. I haven't yet heard how the locals feel about them.
I assume that these rhodies got their start with some ambitious newly arrived gardener, who brought a few specimens with him/her over on the boat from England. Over the decades, the rhodies have definitely won the field, at least in this little pocket of life off of the Woodbury Road. The white ones are so prolific, they're almost spooky in the heavy green light. The barricades they form around the largers estates are twenty feet high in places.
But that's enough plant admiration. One hundred boxes down, two hundred to go.
r the rhododendrons in London's Kew Gardens, how they bloomed around May, so profusely that they seemed to blanket the entire park. The gardens of Kew are a very managed environment, however, and I don't recall ever seeing rhodies bloom in the wild in Britain. But maybe that's just a defect of memory. Anyway, I was astonished when driving Mike to work one morning, to see a forest of white and some purple rhodedendrons beside the road, stretching, as far as I could tell, over a dozen acres or so. I couldn't wait to go back there on a day with good light so I could take these pictures.For the plant novices I know, rhodedendrons
come originally from Asia and are a cousin of the azalea, a southern beauty that's a little more drought tolerant than a rhodie. I've read that rhodies are almost a weed in the Pacific northwest. I haven't yet heard how the locals feel about them.I assume that these rhodies got their start with some ambitious newly arrived gardener, who brought a few specimens with him/her over on the boat from England. Over the decades, the rhodies have definitely won the field, at least in this little pocket of life off of the Woodbury Road. The white ones are so prolific, they're almost spooky in the heavy green light. The barricades they form around the largers estates are twenty feet high in places.
But that's enough plant admiration. One hundred boxes down, two hundred to go.
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