Lonelyville not so Lonely

I've visited the amazing Lonelyville garden twice. It's been open for a couple of weeks. Every time I go more people have found it. Like all the bees that are harvesting from the well-tended and gracefully arranged plants which include beebalm, cone flowers, hostas, hibiscus, hydrangea, impatiens.....and many more. Lonelyville, on PPSW near Vanderbilt, faces Prospect Park, and you can sit in front in an Adirondack chair and let your dog drink from the water bowl at your feet.

What can I say? It's a gift to the neighborhood. On Tuesday my daughter and I got to hang out with lots of other kids and caretakers in the garden and enjoy the collection of black and yellow vintage toy trucks that were parked near the base one of the giant planters. (The planter contained a plant with flowers that were color-coordinated with the toys parked at its base...that's Lonelyville!) One child started playing with the hose that someone had left out, but was lured away from it before the kids started to fight over it, and before anyone's laptop got drenched.


I met a teacher who was there with his son, who told me about his plan to start an ESL/Art high school. A man with a vision who wanted to talk. What a treat! He had a lot of nice things to say about the Grassroots Festival he and his wife and son had just been to in Ithaca. He told me Arrested Development had played. I sat in a fog for a minute trying to figure where I had heard that name before until the TV show came to mind. Duh.

The truth is, Lonelyville is magic. (That's right, like Jesus, Sarah Silverman!) I don't really want to think so. I don't trust places with such a precise aesthetic (I have a neurotic fear of design snobbery, or any kind of snobbery), I'm jealous of their thermos collection, and my husband still complains about one of the women who served him coffee being sarcastic to him because he forgot his change (so he can be a little absent minded, he's got a lot going on...are you always perfect?) But I know it is magic because when I walk through the door I go through a time/space warp and am no longer in Brooklyn. I've landed upstate or somewhere. But I don't have to worry about how to get home.