snow day

i was going totally stir crazy today indoors. it snowed last night, but it's quickly turning into that special brand of yellow-ish brown new york city slush that you want to avoid at all costs. everything is dead and sad (by everything i just mean my outdoor plants, not people or anything). and on monday, the semester starts and i have to (i mean...get to) teach, so i can't just sit around watching my paperwhites grow anymore.  i've been propagating some jade plant cuttings too, but recently realized that i was doing it all wrong. this seems to be a theme with my gardening...i really should research then cut, rather than the other way around. anyway, we'll see if i was able to save them...stay tuned. 

my sad dead yard.

how i wished my yard looked. (this is actually a garden near the river cafe and brooklyn bridge park in the summer of 2014.)

so instead, for some insta-plant gratification,  i went up fifth avenue to zuzu's petals. zuzu's is the neighborhood florist (it's weirdly also the name of the ramen shop in the neighborhood, but there's no relation that i can see), and i'm always tempted to submit a job application when i go in there so i can be surrounded by beautiful flowers all day long. everyone in there is living the dream, if you ask me. 

so i trudged through the said slush and got myself some snow day plants. this is what i came home with: 

the green leafy thing with purple undersides is a calathea, and the pinky-green plant is a chinese evergreen.

a close-up of the bright pink edges of the chinese evergreen. it went perfectly into the crinkle planter from cb2. 

i instantly felt 1,000 times better. aren't those lovely? the google gods say that they are both low-light plants, and the calathea is from the tropics. the "siam aurora" chinese evergreen is apparently a new hybrid - they don't all have the variegated pink coloring. anyway, now that i have these plants, i suppose i can go on living until spring comes. but i may need another new houseplant or two if this miserable weather keeps up. (hhh, don't say i didn't warn you.) 

new orleans! (the green edition)

last week, i spent three days in new orleans. it was timed perfectly to avoid the sub-freezing temperatures in new york, but sadly, the polar vortex (or whatever they are calling the latest cold front) reached even louisiana. it was in the 30s and 40s though, so that's something. it doesn't really look that cold in these photos, since the plant life seems to be thriving, but all i can tell you is that maybe even sub-tropical plants can survive a night or two of frost. 

as i noted on my recent trip to taiwan, the greenery in new places is now one of the highlights of travel for me. so in an attempt to counteract the effects of eating five times a day (so. much. eating.), we walked for hours through several different neighborhoods as well as the new orleans botanical gardens and lafayette no. 1 cemetery.     

the cemetery, it turns out, is the oldest municipal cemetery in new orleans. at a single city block, it's not as big as some of the others, but it was the perfect antidote to all the butter and oil we ingested at commander's palace (hhh had a crock of chowder and oysters; i had shrimp and grits). i was especially taken by all the ferns bursting out of the brick and rock. there was also this - hugh grant's (and his family's) tomb. funny how there are no dates on the stone. or maybe this is typical? i am no antebellum cemetery expert.

the cemetery sits between washington, coliseum, prytania, and sixth streets. it's in the garden district, which is full of lovely old homes i could spend all day looking at. (you could try this self-guided walking tour.) if you get tired, there is coffee and a bathroom, a bookshop, and a shop of turkish cotton textiles worth checking out at 2727 prytania street.

on our second day in new orleans, we ventured into mid-city. between meals, we did more exploring and ended up at the botanical gardens. despite the low temperatures, the plants generally seemed pretty happy. there were also several enclosed areas housing tropical and desert varieties. outdoors, there was an edible section with raised beds. i recognized rosemary, rainbow chard, and several types of lettuce. there was also something that hhh thought looked like giant purple basil, but i think it must have been an entirely different kind of plant...right?

all this botany gets me excited about spring planting! i've already gotten a bunch of paperwhites that i'm forcing indoors, and i came home from california with clippings from the heirloom jade plant in hhh's mom's garden. (more on that later.) i also got a dozen air plants! (hhh: why do you need so many air plants?) 

anyway, all this is to say that i am ready for this ridiculous frigid weather to be done already. okay, a few more green shots to tide us over until it's really springtime.... 

stay warm!! xoxo

taiwan series: taichung alley plants

my parents' house is behind the taichung railway station, an older part of town that's remained relatively unchanged for the past twenty years. well, that's not really true - new buildings have gone up and old ones have been torn down - but these changes haven't really altered the feel or the look of the neighborhood much. on our street, there's the elementary school my brother went to, a hot pot place, and a night market past the next intersection. it's all mom-and-pop restaurants, bakeries, and tea stands, with the odd doctors' and dentists' offices on every other block. the one major department store in the area has been renamed four times (that i can remember) but it's still the same building with a new sign. i still refer to it by a name that's three iterations back and have no idea what it's currently called.

i have my rituals when i come home: i get a danbing 「蛋餅」from my breakfast spot, and i head to the nearest chunshuitang 「春水堂」for some bubble tea and fried turnip cakes (theirs are amazing). i also always go to my dentist and optometrist, because if you know anything about the affordability and quality of taiwanese health care, you'd come to taiwan for all your medical needs too. and when i'm done with that stuff, i get back to eating... there's lots of it to be done! all that eating means that i've gotta burn it off somehow, and that's where shopping comes in. :) or if i'm taking a break from conspicuous consumption, i'll just take some walks around the alleys. this time, i noticed these magenta pink flowers everywhere. if only flowers bloomed in new york at this time of year! 

i suppose these plants have been here all along, but before my relatively newfound love of leafy things, i never really noticed them. i'm only now appreciating all the ad hoc greenery lining the streets. i'm going to have to start identifying plants through garden compass! (it's a great plant ID tool where you just take a photo of the mystery plant in question and then they reply with an identification within about 24 hours.) it's too bad i can't take some of these varieties back to brooklyn with me...

pawling, new york

it's the weekend! how are you going to spend it? my in-laws are in town so we'll be staying in brooklyn, and probably also eating something delicious. (it's nice that i married into a family that can appreciate a good meal.) but a few weeks back, hhh and i ventured about 20 miles east of poughkeepsie to explore pawling and check out the brunch at mckinney & doyle. we ate a hearty breakfast at the bar, and then walked around the town center. 

we always check out the bookstores, so we ducked into the book cove. the books were just meh, but there were a lot of fun curiosities in the antiques section. 

i paused a long time at this lamp (above). it has hooves.... but i loved all the old landscape and animal paintings! 

after that, we drove around a bit more and came across this place. i made hhh circle back, since i can't ever have enough plants. plus, we needed some for the campus apartment. parrino's greenhouse has a gift shop with floral arrangements, as well as this huge greenhouse below. they also have chickens! but i don't think those are for sale.  

and here's one of the happy plants back at the apartment. hhh picked it because loved that the succulents were so tiny, he said. fast forward a few weeks...he is now expressing alarm at how quickly it's growing. "it's not as cute anymore."  

happy weekend!! xoxo

poughkeepsie farm project & vassar ecological preserve

it's the weekend! i'm back in the city, and hhh is selling records at the bk flea today. i have to do some work first, but then i'm planning to meet up with him (and to get some tasty snacks at smorgasborg). i think it'll be a good weekend.

last weekend was pretty good too. we did some exploring and one of the places we checked out was just down the street from our campus apartment. vassar has a farm and ecological preserve! as you can see from the exclamation mark, i'm very excited about this. there are several trails on varying terrains, community plots with all kinds of vegetables and flowers, and a farm staffed by the the poughkeepsie farm project. the place was pretty deserted last sunday, but it made for some nice wandering around. 

vassar also conducts scientific research on the farm and preserve. we came across the collins field station about halfway through our loop, and it looks like that is where the field research activities are based. hhh thought it was someone's house. 

in total, it's 527 acres of earthy goodness. 

we started at the farm, and came back to it at the end. some of the sections were divided into smaller plots (for individuals to farm?). there was also a meditation garden (though locked), and a larger plot currently offering csa members raspberries via the honor system. we were tempted. 

these are the buildings back at the entrance. looks like the office of the poughkeepsie farm project.

what are your plans this weekend?