What a dump!

Signage on the fencing around the new visitor's center construction site at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden informed me that the garden was once Brooklyn's place of refuse. Something tells me that the philanthropist Alfred T. White had something to do with the parcel's staggering transformation into its current form. How often do such complete reversals happen? Now the lotuses that rise out of the murky pools there have added significance.

I wouldn't put this sort of miracle past White, but I can't say for sure because I haven't read the book about him, The Social Vision of Alfred T. White, published by Proteus Gowanus. Last time I checked the Brooklyn Public Library didn't have it in circulation.

This plant somewhere between the Tamarisk and the Butterfly Bushes swarmed with so many stinging insects I got a little queasy. There were wasps of diverse waistlines, various communal and solitary kinds of bees, several bee imitators, tiny bees the size of seed beads, diminutive butterflies and this Ermine Moth with whom I was very proud to share the refuge of a very lovely dump for a few minutes.