Brooklyn in the Nor’Easter

There was a big nor’easter in the mid-Atlantic today, which dumped snow all over the tree-lined streets of Brooklyn. I only clomped around in the billowing snow for a little bit before returning to tea and cat playtime at home. However, here are a couple of pictures of Ditmas Park wearing its winter finery.

Bonus image of kitty cat playtime: Sumi is playing with the campanile of a little toy cathedral

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Winter Aconite

Dare I say it, but it felt a little bit like…spring…out there today in New York (at least the parts that weren’t covered in huge sheets of discolored slush). Sadly the ice sheets still cover all of my shade garden and flower posts from the back yard will have to wait until spring actually gets here, but looking at the internet I see that some flowers are popping up in the corners of other people’s gardens. The one above is Eranthis hyemalis (winter-aconite), a member of the buttercup family originally native to France, Italy and the Balkans but now widely naturalized across Europe and the East Coast.

There isn’t really a larger point or story to this post. I am just pleased that the flowers are coming back (even if we are talking about the earliest, earliest, earliest flowers of the season). Like all of the ranunculales, the winter aconite is quite poisonous from the tip of its anther to the bottom its root (so don’t go around the snow banks shoveling them into your mouth, I guess). We will get to those promised ideas for improving global society in soon-to-follow posts (😊) and I suspect we will start seeing some more spring flowers too!

NYC Snowstorm

Looking West on 42nd Street, NYC

Happy February! The shortest yet longest month kicks off today with a vast nor’easter blanketing new York City in snow. Although it is rather unpleasant to navigate the mountainous drifts and hidden rivers of slush, snowstorms aesthetically suit the city. The translucency of the snow (which grows more opaque with distance) makes evident how enormous the skyscrapers of Manhattan are. Additionally, the monochromatic winter hues suit the austere grays and blacks of New York.

Grand Central with some mysterious new monster building behind it

All of this is a long way of saying I took some candid pictures of 42nd Street with my cellphone today and I am posting them instead of a thoughtful essay. Perhaps the famous place I work can do some of the heavy lifting today instead of me.

Grand Central from my office window

Look at how pretty Grand Central and the Chrysler building are! If we are not going to build giant teapots and huge pairs of pants, can we at least go back to building giant buildings like that please? I am sorry I cut off the statue of Mercury of the Grand Central picture directly above. Maybe I will try again when there is not a giant cloud of snow blowing into me! In the mean time be safe. We will get through this winter some day. If past posts are to be believed, it is only a month until the hellebores start budding (and you had better believe I planted some spring tulips which are sleeping beneath the mountains of white).

The Chrysler Building in the snow

Winter Photos from Home

It is December 16th and a winter storm is blanketing New York City in snow and howling at the windows. I wish I had taken some pictures in Midtown (I work on 42nd Street across from Grand Central Station and the Chrysler building), but, alas, I was hurrying towards the subway instead of standing around taking photos like a tourist. You will have to be content with these candid winter shots from my garden and front stoop in merry olde Brooklyn. At least you can see the holly tree (immediately below) and the beautiful plane trees which live on my street.

Speaking of trees, it is the Christmas/Yule season and I have put up my sacred tree of life to shine brightly in these dark times (you can read more about it, in these posts from past years). I need to think of how to liven it up, if I am going to post it year after year, but all of the animals make me happy (and, since there are hundreds, I don’t think I can add any more). You can also see some of the flounders peaking out from behind it.

We will say more about the holidays as we near the solstice and the end of the year (thank goodness this year is ending…but have we learned anything?). Until then, I am going to drink some cocoa and take a winter nap. Stay warm and be safe! Happy holidays from Ferrebeekeeper!

New York City Seasonal Streets

Speaking of the holiday season, one of the pleasures which the New York City Department of Transportation offers is “seasonal streets” when swaths of the public thoroughfare are closed off to automobile traffic for the sole use of pedestrians and bicyclists.   “Seasonal Streets” also provide an opportunity for artists to put up colorful temporary work directly on the surface of the road.

Here is a swath of Nassau Street between John Street and Fulton Street which has been given the seasonal treatment.  Vendors are starting to set up little holiday shops and pavilions (although I worry about how much custom they will find on cold snowy days like today).  Looking south (picture below) you can make out a famous New York taxicab which is advertising an underworld theme show… (?) as it drives beneath some of downtown’s equally enigmatic comic book punching holiday decorations.

Even despite the sloppy weather the scene is quite festive (while still maintaining a special concrete canyon/Blade Runner feel). Thanks DOT! This (almost) makes me want to hang out more in the financial district!

Nor’easter Garden

I have been excited to start blogging about my spring garden as it awakens from the uncharacteristically frigid Brooklyn winter of ’17/18…and although the tulips are starting to sprout up, we have had a nor’easter “bomb cyclone” EVERY week for as long as I can remember (admittedly, winter is robbing me of memories of warmth, light, and joy).  Anyway here is a picture of my garden on March 21st…the second day of spring.  Hmmm…it is pretty (surprisingly so: my point-and-click photos don’t do it justice), but it is not especially springlike yet.  We will revisit this vista soon, I hope, as the world comes back to life.  In the mean time I hope you at least enjoy the snow photos.

Crowns of Ice and Snow

We haven’t had much of a winter so far…which is fine with me.  I dislike the cold part of the year and I was happy today when it was unexpectedly sixty and I got to bike in to work.  And yet there is supposed to be a blizzard tomorrow!

So, to celebrate the season of snow and ice here is a little gallery of crowns which are meant to resemble snow and ice.  Some of them are really pretty—especially the ones which are actually made of icicles (which I have always loves for their otherworldly frightful beauty).

I wish that more of them looked like snowflakes though—they really have their own disturbing alien allure.  Anyway, I hope you are inside enjoying a bog mug of your favorite hot beverage and nestled by a fire.  And for my tropical and southern hemisphere readers, why do you guys never invite me to come visit?

Happy blizzard.  I’ll see you all tomorrow.

January 2016 Blizzard (BK Edition)

There is a big blizzard somewhat improbably named “Jonas” hitting New York right now, so I thought I would walk around Brooklyn and get some photos of the storm. For once, there was almost no traffic, so it was like paradise, but…somehow it wasn’t quite like paradise (maybe because of the driving wind filled with stinging sheets of snow). It was, however very beautiful which I tried to capture before my lens got all wet.

This entry is really for my tropical and desert readers. I guess anyone from a temperate area knows all about storms—or anyone in the Northeast Corridor can just walk outside and look at the storm. If it were 1816 we would probably all be doomed, but sitting inside with the radiator banging and my lights blazing as I pet the cat and communicate with the world from my computer, it is sort of peaceful…at least for the moment.

Some Pictures of Brooklyn in a March Snowstorm Part 2

This post is really the second half of yesterday’s snowstorm post. After I realized how pretty the snow in the backyard was, I decided to put on all my winter gear and walk around the neighborhood. For reasons which elude me entirely, I live in a really beautiful neighborhood (well, I know why I live here, I just don’t know how I continue to do so). The majority of the houses were built during the first twenty years of the twentieth century and they have an outstanding grace and style which modern houses lack in every way (although my landlord and I can both vouch that these magnificent old homes start to fall apart somewhat during prolonged cold weather).

I am a painter rather than a photographer, but who wants to set up an easel in a billowing snowstorm? For that matter who wants to stand on the sidewalk to paint an elegant old house? Architectural paintings are not my métier as a fine artist! However today I think the monochromatic winter landscape helped smooth out some of my weaknesses as a photographer…

Sadly, as always with my photography, I don’t feel like I really captured the dark beauty of the blizzard or the decrepit splendor of this part of Brooklyn. Still the pictures are worth looking at just to appreciate the lovely houses of Ditmas Park. Also, with any luck, we have said farewell to this sort of snowstorm for a good long time. Hopefully you are looking at these photos in the tropics or in June and the snow provides only a frisson of wintry intensity rather than weary resignation which all New Yorkers feel as the winter of 2014/2015 draws onward toward its conclusion.
 

Some Pictures of Brooklyn in a March Snowstorm

My Back Yard, March 5th, 2015

It’s March! As spring takes hold across the United States, I thought I would show some pictures of my garden as the first tender shoots begin to… argh! [indecorous remarks withheld by censors] Well, OK, it looks like winter is going to be here a bit longer. I guess it’s pretty in a cold majestic way, right? We can learn to live like this with no hope or resources…or does anybody maybe want to trek south like in “The Road” and build a New New York somewhere closer to Cuba?

Well, anyway, here are some winter pictures of the Ditmas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. I know it looks like something out of a darkly beautiful Russian fairytale, but I assure you, there is a dynamic city somewhere behind all of that snow and ice. We’ll check back on spring in a few weeks… In the meantime maybe read some Tolstoy and sacrifice some more sheep to the dark gods?

The street out front, March 05, 2015