Category Archives: Fall

Return from NYC

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It’s no wonder Santa Fe seems so quiet after spending several days in New York City.  A million and a half people jostle for space on the island of Manhattan while two million of us spread out across the state of New Mexico. This week I have noticed every sound–the caw of a passing raven, the wind in the pinyon trees.

Amelia White Park Photo Credit: P. Nixon

Amelia White Park
Photo Credit: P. Nixon

While I was gone the last of the summer visitors moved on and autumn moved in. The cottonwoods on Alameda Street  turned gold, but the flowers didn’t completely given up–a stand of yellow hollyhocks is still blooming on Armenta Street.

Tuesday Dave and I went to the farmers’ market to look for apples. Most years I turn them into pies for the holidays, but after a week away from the kitchen I was not yet ready to wrangle with a rolling pin.

Photo Credit: shoothead via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: shoothead via Compfight cc

I decided, instead, to make applesauce. We tasted samples  and poked around a box of seconds, filling a paper bag with golden supremes and honey crisps.  The simple recipe* called for baking the apples and didn’t tax my jet-lagged brain.  Now, if only I had a latke from Russ and Daughters on Houston Street to go with the tart, cinnamon-laced sauce.

*I left out the thyme and lemon and added a tiny bit of brown sugar and a healthy dose of Vietnamese cinnamon.

 

 

 

NYC–The High Line Phase Three

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Friday afternoon, sunny and seventy degrees, no better time to check out the final phase of New York’s elevated park.   This time I remembered to wear comfortable shoes.

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

The newest section, between 30th and 34th Streets, was opened in September on the first day of autumn.  It curves around the rail yards heading west towards the Hudson River.  The New York Times captures the beauty and allure of the urban park in this story.

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

Dave and I spent an hour or so admiring the views, checking out the flowers and grasses, trying to get the perfect photo.

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

The sun was low in the sky when we descended to street level looking for an uptown train to take us to the theater.

NYC Circa 1609

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So what did the island of Manhattan look like 400 years ago when Henry Hudson arrived?

West Houston and La Guardia Place Photo Credit: P. Nixon

West Houston and La Guardia Place
Photo Credit: P. Nixon

It’s hard to imagine.  Yesterday I spotted a brass plaque on a brick wall a couple of doors down from my hotel.   Site of John Seale’s Farm Circa 1638.  A farm–and  before that?  Streams, hills, forests.  It must have been so quiet.

A construction fence blocked my view of the old farm site, but I caught a glimpse of the huge bucket and heard the creak and groan of the crane.  Soon John Seale’s farm will see another transformation (how many has it already witnessed?).  By the time I make my next trip to the city, a sleek new apartment building will fill the space.

Time Landscape by Alan Sonfist Photo Credit: P Nixon

Photo Credit: P Nixon

Just a few blocks northeast of the old farm at a busy street corner in Greenwich Village the artist Alan Sonfist envisioned and created that earlier landscape. Conceived in 1965 Time Landscape became a reality in 1978.  One thousand square feet filled with beech trees, hazelnut shrubs, mugwort, milkweed, and asters, to name just a few.  I didn’t recognize most of the plants and trees and had to rely on my guidebook, Secret New York: An Unusual Guide, and the City of New York’s website to learn the names of the profusion of shrubs, trees, wildflowers, and ground covers that fill the twenty-five by forty-foot plot.

Time Landscape by Alan Sonfist Photo Credit: P. Nixon

Time Landscape by Alan Sonfist
Photo Credit: P. Nixon

New Yorkers and visitors alike must enjoy this re-creation of an earlier time from outside the iron fence.  It is a work of art, not a park.

I visited on a warm fall day and walked around the perimeter a few times, trying to take it all in.  Outside the fence yellow leaves littered the sidewalk creating new patterns each time the breeze stirred.  Inside a squirrel scampered under the trees and unearthed an acorn, sparrows splashed in an improvised birdbath created out of a shallow pan, and bees buzzed the still-blooming wildflowers.  All of them seemed oblivious to the hustle bustle just outside the fence.

 

 

 

Return to NYC: a glass of water

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New York City’s water is number 31 on Time Out’s recent list of 50 reasons why it’s the greatest city in the world.    Tap water?  According to the list it’s because the water flows from reservoirs upstate and is almost lead-free, making it one of the country’s best-tasting waters.

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

Jeffrey Steingarten, the food writer, in his 1991 essay “Water” concurs, claiming that if the water did not have to be treated with chlorine, “it would taste as delicious as anything from a bottle . . .”

In Steingarten’s story of his quest to find the perfect glass of water–one that  tastes like it was just drawn from a clear alpine stream–he describes his local tap water:

“My water is piped four miles down Fifth Avenue from Central Park, and after I’ve drunk my fill, it continues all the way downtown.  Chlorine is introduced at Ninetieth Street, and because it dissipates as the water travels, enough chlorine must be added uptown so that some is left to disinfect the people on Wall Street, who are probably drinking Perrier anyway.  In order that Wall Street may thrive, I must put up with water that tastes less perfect than it should.”

Yesterday afternoon I arrived in New York City with reservations for dinner at an Italian restaurant on East Twentieth. The first thing I ordered was water–not a bottle of the fancy sparkling stuff, but a glass of New York’s finest. Cold, clear, and refreshing with no taste of chlorine, and at a price that can’t be beat– the perfect start to a few days of vacation in the city.

The End of Tomato Season

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Three deer chomped on the tomato plants and petunias just outside our back door while Dave and I stood watching.

Photo Credit: ahisgett via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: ahisgett via Compfight cc

Truth is the tomatoes didn’t do well this year, probably because I didn’t plant my small garden until early July. Within a week we had a hard rain and hail that shredded the geraniums. It didn’t faze the tomato plants; they took off like Jack’s beanstalk. It reminded me of a piece of gardening lore I picked up as a kid–if the tomato plants stalled out in the heat of the summer, slap them with a flyswatter to get them going.

One of my plants sprawled; the other grew and grew until it was taller than I. A purple basil plant and my favorite lobelia withered in their shade. Both put out a profusion of flowers and then fruit, but most never ripened.

Last week we had a salad with six cherry tomatoes, my harvest for the year.

Torn between shooing the deer away or running to get my camera, I did neither. After eating their fill they sauntered off into the pines.

The Smell of Fall

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Photo Credit: J B Foster via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: J B Foster via Compfight cc


Autumn Fires
by Robert Louis Stevenson

In the other gardens
 And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
 See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over
 And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes
The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!
 Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
 Fires in the fall!

Fall arrived Tuesday, the day I was making my way home from a  trip to California and Hawaii. When I left New Mexico, ten days earlier, morning glories still ranged up and down the coyote fence and hummingbirds flitted around the sugar-water filled feeder.

Over three thousand miles away on the Big Island’s west coast the air was heavy and still on one of the last days of summer. The palm trees were quiet, not a whisper of a trade wind. Even the Pacific seemed subdued. At the beach a long, pale pod from a kiawe tree fell at my feet.

Photo Credit: Shawn McCready via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: Shawn McCready via Compfight cc

Pecking in the grass, a kolea hunted for insects. Hawaiian school children keep an eye out for the arrival of the long-legged golden plovers, winter visitors from the Arctic–a sure sign of autumn in a place where signs of the changing seasons can seem subtle to visitors from the north.

Back in Santa Fe I know what to look for.  It’s still warm, almost hot, but the rabbitbrush has bloomed yellow and a canyon towhee scratches in the dirt looking for seeds. High up in the crown of a dark-green cottonwood I spot a patch of gold. And, in the evening air I catch a whiff of piñon smoke wafting from an adobe chimney.
 

Hawaii: Crouching Heron, Basking Turtle

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To get a glimpse of what the Kohala Coast might have looked like before man arrived with his myna birds and monkey pod trees, Dave and I walked towards the sea (makai, in Hawaiian) along the coastal access between the Hilton Hotel and A-Bay Beach.

The sun was getting low in the sky, but we paused to admire the anchialine ponds surrounded by jagged black lava rock and emerald green shrubs and grasses.  A black-crowned  night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax hoactili) crouched, perfectly still, over the smooth surface of the brackish pool intent on the tiny shrimp swimming there.  Similar to his cousin on the Mainland, this night-heron is indigenous to Hawaii, which means that unlike the house sparrows and saffron finches flitting around the shopping centers and golf courses, he came to the Islands on his own, without any assistance from humans.

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

At the beach, a mix of small, sharp-edged lava rocks and smooth white coral, we found two large slabs of lava and settled in to watch the setting sun,  partially obscured by vog from Kilauea Volcano erupting further south on the island.

Dave noticed him first.  A Hawaiian green turtle (Chelonia mydas) just a few feet away from us was lumbering across the rocky beach.  After a few hours basking in the sun he was making his way back to the algae beds.

Photo Credit: Dave Betzler

Photo Credit: Dave Betzler

We turned away from the sunset to watch him inch closer and closer to the water.  And then he was gone, into the waves, taking millions of years of secrets with him.

The Cats of Anaeho’omalu Bay Beach

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Anaeho’omalu Bay (A-Bay) Beach on the Kohala Coast of Hawaii has a half-mile stretch of salt and pepper sand and calm water, a great place to learn to stand on a paddle board, strap on a snorkel and fins, or bask in the sun.  It’s also home to a colony of feral cats that live behind the beach next to an ancient Hawaiian fish pond under the gnarled and twisted limbs of a tree that I have yet to identify.

Considered by some to be pests, threatening rare and endangered birds, feral cats are everywhere on the Big Island: cruising for table scraps at outdoor restaurants, snoozing under cars in hotel parking lots, grooming themselves on quiet lanais.   In 2011 I wrote a story about two tabbies that made daily visits to the back door of the condo where I was staying.

Many visitors to A-Bay don’t seem to notice the felines, although there’s usually at least one sunning on the lava rocks next to the parking lot near the sign posted by KARES, the local  nonprofit whose volunteers feed this colony.

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Last week when I visited a caregiver had recently set out food and fresh water so there were lots of cats around.   I counted about fifteen and many looked familiar to me from prior visits.  Most of them had tipped ears showing they had been spayed or neutered, keeping the population stable.  A blue-eyed Siamese watched me from his perch on a tree limb and a black and gray tiger-stripe jumped up on a lava-rock wall near where I was standing, close enough to touch.

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I was looking for a cat called Red.

I first noticed the orange tabby with one missing eye two or three years ago.  Charlotte, one of the volunteers who care for the colony, told me his story.

Red was in a nasty fight with a cat from a nearby colony. Charlotte was told about the brawl by a woman who heard the cats and then saw them separate.  Charlotte looked for Red for days, but he had disappeared.  When he finally showed up a couple of weeks later, he had  a bulging, infected eye, that looked like something out of a horror movie.

She tried to lure the wounded cat into a trap with food, but he eluded her. Finally, in desperation she made her move, getting close enough to grab him and  put him into a cat carrier.  A local veterinarian cared for him for several days and removed his injured eye. Charlotte and another volunteer shared the cost of the discounted fee for his surgery. (KARES is only able to pay for spay/neuter surgeries)

As I was about to walk away, Red showed up.  He looked healthy and contented and settled in to share a bowl of kibble with two other cats.  Charlotte says he’s friendly, but always gives her a wide berth.

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What to Read When Flying over the Pacific Ocean?

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The ocean makes me uneasy.  Maybe it’s because I’m  from Kansas.  So, why do I love to read tales of dangerous fishing expeditions and solo efforts to navigate small sailboats around the world?

By P. Nixon

By P. Nixon

This little stack of books has been with me for years.  A couple of times I have tried putting one of the worn paperbacks in the giveaway box in the basement, but they always migrate back upstairs.

Movies, too.   Last year it was The Life of Pi–a boy stranded in a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker on board.  This year I had to see All is Lost–an old man patching a hole in his wrecked yacht in the middle of the Indian Ocean with no radio connections.  I couldn’t believe how long it took him to get out the sextant.

Tomorrow morning I will board a flight for Hawaii.  By the time the jet lifts off and turns west, I will be rereading Dove–a sixteen-year-old boy’s journey around the world in a twenty-four-foot sloop.  It will help take my mind off all of those miles of ocean below me.

 

 

 

First Snow and a Canyon Towhee

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By P. Nixon

By P. Nixon

I Heard a Bird Sing
by Oliver Herford

I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

“We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,”
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.

Photo Credit: K Schneider via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: K Schneider via Compfight cc

I don’t see him much, if at all,  in the spring and summer, but I can always count on the canyon towhee (Melozone fusca) to show up on my portal in the winter.  Our first major snow came early this year and sure enough, there was my favorite backyard bird perched on a collapsed tomato plant. 

 

He looks like a fancy, over-sized sparrow with his ruddy crown and dark spot in the middle of his breast.  He usually hops around my container plants, pecking at the seed that falls from the bird feeder, but on this snowy day he looked miserable, even though I realize I am projecting my feelings about the cold, wet weather on this small feathered creature.  He perked up when I threw out a handful of millet from a five-pound bag, purchased especially for him. 

 

Late in the day the sun came out and the canyon towhee was joined by flickers, finches, and some bossy pinyon jays.  They took not-so-patient turns at the feeder while he pecked at their leftovers in the snow.