I'd never been to Coney Island until this weekend's trip to visit Chelsea in Brooklyn. For people who don't know, you get there by riding the Q train to the southern end of the borough. (Given my lack of knowledge outside Manhattan, you could've made me believe it was on Staten Island...or even New Jersey.)
Just up from the entrance, these two rides beckon like giant neon bugzappers. Chelsea doesn't like ferris wheels and I'm not crazy about electrical shocks, so we passed them both by. Just walking down the boardwalk proved entertaining enough, with all the people around killing a Friday night or playing midway games. I'm sure the history is there and it has the hot dogs, but give me a couple hours walking around Soho or Greenwich Village over Coney Island any day.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Ajuga in bloom
This picture from May shows the vibrant purple flowers ajuga kicks up when it gets good light and ample water. (The pipe in the background is a downspout, which the flowers are happy to live near.)
All of this ajuga came from an original group of plants that Katy sent from St. Louis. Less than two years later, we're moving offshoots to other spots in the yard. We didn't expect the excellent flowering, a very pleasant side effect of copious spring rain.
All of this ajuga came from an original group of plants that Katy sent from St. Louis. Less than two years later, we're moving offshoots to other spots in the yard. We didn't expect the excellent flowering, a very pleasant side effect of copious spring rain.
Garden progress!
This year saw leap-and-bounding changes to the garden "space" (not much) that surrounds our house. Although the house reaches almost the boundary of the property, the trained eye can detect patches on non-house that I believe gardeners call "dirt." Naturally, the largest amount of this growth-enabling substance is right where the sun doesn't shine, along our house's eastern side and in shade of the neighbors and two trees. Here's how that area looked in April of 2006.
To improve the space in general, we added a gravel path to the side yard in 2007. This meant pulling up the bony bricks, lining the path with something practical, and adding an initial line of plants to the front sidewalk, which runs along the top edge of this photo. In went a pair of rhododendrons, some pachysandras, and a couple of other flowering plants. That helped, but looks even better this year after the new terracing and a half-dozen flora species.
Of all the flowers, I look forward to the lilies the most. They come in a beautiful orange-red, as seen below. If only they stuck around more than a couple of weeks! Maybe a complement of long-bloomers will add some balance to their burn-out-young mentality.
Our best shot of this year's lilies, which bloom a gorgeous deep red.
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