Posts tagged #Garden

A Spring that Lasts Forever

IMG_2072-April 03, 2019.jpg

When I lived in Alaska springtime was so short that you missed it if you blinked, I wrote about that last week. In Madison I don’t remember spring being that spectacular, other than the Magnolia outside my work blooming. And maybe that was one of the reasons but I also think spring came very late to Madison and Wisconsin last year.

April 28th 2018, Wyalusing State Park, Wisconsin:

When we first got here to NYC I was actually quite surprised by all the trees and green space almost everywhere on Manhattan (I mean, not including Central Park of course). Madison also has a huge amount of green space, even more than NYC, and in Alaska you basically lived in the forest so. NYC Parks also has this collaboration with the community called Green Thumb as I mentioned earlier, and the community gardens are always so pretty. There are quite a lot of them around Harlem. We also have quite a few large parks nearby. Randall Island is an island in the East River, then we have Marcus Garvey Park and Morningside Park here in Harlem and around Columbia.

March 26th 2019, Morningside Park:

April 1st 2019, Washington Square Park:

April 3rd 2019, Central Park:

We went to Colorado last weekend and the cherries on the west side of Onassis reservoir had just started to bloom. Once I got back I was unsure how much would still be blooming, and to my surprise it still was. Yesterday we walked by the cherry trees on the west side of the reservoir again and those trees are on their way out. But there are a ton of other cherry trees (I think they are) still waiting to bloom, and on the east side of the reservoir there are trees blooming too.

April 3rd 2019, Central Park:

Another thing I am quite surprised about are all the apps and scripts and just about anything that has been created for users who are interested in NYC and everything you could possibly think of. For instance I found this guide from the Central Park Conservancy which guides you through all the spring blooming of Central Park. According to the guide there are Yoshino Cherry trees on the east side, and Kwanzan trees on the west side of the reservoir. But the ones on the west side look more like Okame Cherry trees. The west side cherries are more pink, if those are what I have been seeing, while the Yoshino are more white (at least if you stand on the west side looking across the reservoir and the east side cherry trees). You can also visit the bloom guide for the most popular flowers on their website, and you can also head to NYC parks where they list what trees and flowers have started to bloom.

Around Columbia Cherry trees and Magnolias are in full bloom or at least reaching full bloom. I am used to Magnolia having a full bloom for a few days before it starts to taper off. But that all also depends on temperature and rain of course.

Posted on April 14, 2019 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Life in New York and tagged 2019 Central Park New York Garden Spring Flowering Break Up leaf-out Life in NYC.

New York - First Impressions

New York City Life

    We have now lived in New York for more than one month, and actually spent a couple of weeks here together. It was kind of a whirlwind before we were able to actually settle down here. I worked almost up until the actual move, we then packed our pod, packed the car (read tried to fit everything else in the car), and cleaned the apartment in Madison before we eventually left. Once we arrived about a day later, we unpacked the car, and cleaned the new apartment, and then went to bed. It turned out that driving in New York City, as in driving in Manhattan, wasn't so hard after all (although, W drove, I didn't so what do I know). It was a lot harder to find a parking spot. We spent one full day in New York together, going to Target and Costco, and then at 8 in the morning the day after, I was sitting on a plane to Nome, Alaska. Once I got back W had already left to Boston, and then to Alaska. So, we really didn't even live together in the apartment up until now, these past two weeks!

Manhattan

    You can constantly hear the sirens from ambulances, firetrucks and police cars mixed in with people honking, but they do quiet down during nighttime. Many New Yorkers are intense and very forceful. Kind of as if they forgot that there are good humans out there in the world. People are yelling at each other in the streets, in the grocery stores, yeah about everywhere. I wonder if there is such a thing as a happy New Yorker sometimes. The two first strangers in New York I met was on my way to Alaska. First the driver to the airport, who said he hated New York and New Yorkers, how he didn't think it was diverse enough. On the plane between New York and Seattle the woman I sat next to was moving back to Seattle, leaving her husband (although not leaving leaving, just saying he can come if he wants but I am not staying) behind in New York. She said she hated New York and New Yorkers, said she was sorry for me who just moved there. 

East Harlem aka El Barrio, Spanish Harlem

    We live in East Harlem, or Spanish Harlem which it is also called along with El Barrio. East Harlem has a large population of Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics. Back in the day, 1800's and beginning of 1900's East Harlem was mostly an Italian neighborhood, and today has one of the most exclusive restaurants in the US, an Italian restaurant called Rao's. The closest we have gotten to Rao's, well except walking by the restaurant, was when we purchased their famous tomato sauce at our local grocery store. As you can imagine there is a wide range of cultures that are merging in East Harlem, and with that a wide range of interesting restaurants that we have to explore. We have a really nice apartment with a guest room and actually two bathrooms (well the technical term is one and a half). We live very close to the subway and it takes about 20 minutes for us to get to Brooklyn bridge with the subway. We have of course spent many many days in the apartment, but we have also been exploring the neighborhood some. Every day has been hot, well hot to me. We have had temperatures in the 80's and 90's ever since we moved in, and our AC units have been running a lot these past weeks. Now the temperature is finally dropping and we can actually leave the windows open to create a nice breeze through the apartment.

Central Park and community gardens

    During the weekends we have been doing chores around the house and then gone to central park to relax. Central Park is actually a National Historic Landmark and has been put on a tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage Sites. This past weekend we went there and had a picnic in the afternoon sun. Central Park is my favorite part of Manhattan, of course who would have thought? Northern Central Park gets less touristy compared to southern Central Park (not too suprisingly). Other than Central Park there are a lot of other parks in Manhattan of course, and a ton of small community gardens that are run by the neighborhood communities and NYC parks. It is called Green Thumb and is the largest community gardening program in the US. The community gardens are run by residents in the area, and anyone can join a community garden. Of course, these gardens aren't open at all times, since they are run by the community, but you are mostly free to enter and look around if you happen to come across a garden that is open. We have one right by our apartment, which I will try to join!

Posted on August 23, 2018 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Life in New York, Nature and tagged Community Garden Garden gardening Central Park Park NYC Parks NYC Manhattan East Harlem Spanish Harlem El Barrio 2018 Life in NYC.

In The Rearview Mirror 2017 pt. 4

Flashback Friday

October

    October arrived, more work of course. We had friends over for a Swedish dinner party, filled with snaps, meatballs and good company. Gorgeous sunsets by the lake and the terrace. At the end of October we went to New York. I explored all of Central Park and managed to do about 9 miles walking per day on average. We saw Columbia University and a lot of other pretty places in the city. After that we went to Princeton, New Jersey. I fell in love with that small town. What a place. Like England on steroids, in the middle of nowhere, or so it felt. Fall colors had already arrived and I saw some great art at the art museum.

November

    November came and with that more fall. Fall has become a sad season for me, since my mom died in November 2016. This November our cat Olive got sick, and we though she just had a cold or something. We took her to the vet, and brought her home after some antibiotic shots. A week later we were there again, because she was breathing weird. That's when they noticed the water in the chest cavity, which apparently equals to "she will die". And she did, about three days later at a different vet, she stopped breathing while they were putting the catheter in after we decided to put her down. She died on her own terms. She was only about 8 years and had cancer in all of her stomach, so there wasn't anything we could do. 

December

    December and yet another Christmas. This year we did not venture out to Bozeman, instead we stayed in Madison. I baked, a lot. So much saffron in this house. I had been a bit sad about the lack of snow and thought that this would be the first Christmas in the US without snow. But on Christmas Eve I woke up to snow falling on the ground! Later that morning we went to Natural Bridge State Park and explored it all by ourselves. Apparently no one else go hiking on Christmas Eve. We celebrated christmas both on Christmas Eve, the Swedish tradition, and on Christmas Day, W's tradition. We even managed to have a fire outside, which was great. I always forgot how nice it is to have a fire outside, especially when it's cold.

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Flashback Friday, Rearview Mirror and tagged rearviewmirror2017 Garden gardening Central Park New York New Jersey Princeton Columbia University Princeton University Fall Madison Madison life Winter winter sun Snow Snowcover Cats Olive Devils Lake State Park Devils Lake Natural Bridge State Park State Park 2018 rearviewmirror.