Saturday, August 15, 2009

Green Flare































































The upside of a recent trip to Flushing, coming across the split casings of the Goldenrain Tree pods as a public art motif adorning the fence of the parking lot behind St. George's (note to self, there's a tree in that cemetery holding a very interesting dialogue with the Osage Orange in the Nethermead- must go back to investigate someday, and eat more soup. The tree looks like it has its own thesis on the afterlife.)

Goldenrain tree raining green a ways into the Queens Botanic Garden, past the weeping willow that weeps willows to end all weeping, planted across the walk from the orchard filled with crab apples and people who love inhabiting such a space. The new herb garden being added to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden will include an orchard, but don't expect to pick fruit from those trees, it will be forbidden, you can barely sit in the BBG much less eat there. Sometimes it seems like Brooklyn doesn't love Brooklyn so much, but that doesn't go for ATW, the garden's primary benefactor.

I'm excited Brooklyn will have an urban orchard, and do love the BBG even with its stringency. It's nuthin compared to the Red Hook Pool. And most likely, the fruit of the trees will be astringent, so no loss. What if Brooklyn had a public urban orchard? It's easy to imagine scenes that might unfold there, and the sort of ethics of usage that would evolve to be violated.

Providence RI was gorgeous today and hard to navigate, luminous unsupported domes, old brick, mullein, mysterious buildings, one vacant of its interior for 70 years (the old Masonic temple), another whose interior, viewed through the vacant spaces of massive windows, was stripped down to a grid of rusty beams that seemed to sing a coarse aria inside the brick shell.

4 comments:

Robin Morrison said...

Singing girders.



The Singing Girders of Planet Null-A by Robert Azimov, adapted for TV by Scheckle Weeks.

inesi: a state or sense of sudden self-relevance, to be distinguished from solipsism, a belief that all is the self.

The former is raw phenom, a bit of physiocognitive weather; the latter is another silly notion.

amarilla said...

Sudden self-relevance? I'd like to hear more about that.

Marie said...

I wonder about staging a protest picnic at the BBG. Cucumber sandwiches. Peaches in Asti (alcohol!!!).There is little more civilized than a real picnic, and little less civilized than banning them!

amarilla said...

I guess I've never staged a real picnic, things always get pretty messy with us, dishes stepped in immediately, balls landing in food, drink overturned, but I can imagine an inkling of what a graceful lovely thing you would pack, Marie.

Given the amount of trash you find in Prospect Park on a Monday after a weekend of good weather, I can imagine the expense the garden would incur having to clean up after less conscienscous picnicers. I wonder how they could extend the liberty without undermining themselves.