All in a row. Clarence, Georgette, and Lucy. Watching birds.

And putting nose prints all over the windows.

Fall is the most beautiful month.

I think that's a fact, not an opinion--speaking only for the area surrounding my house of course. Spring is light green, summer is green, winter is gray and brown.

I'm so sorry to report, to those who don't already know, that Estorbo, a NYC cat who had his own blog, died yesterday. This was a sweet, funny blog, with Estorbo's human mother interpreting (channeling?) the "beeg blad Dominican cad."

New York!

My daughter and son-in-law live in Brooklyn, so off to Brooklyn we went for a Friday through Sunday visit. As always, trips to New York give me energy and brighten my mood. Plus, I always come home with memories that seem to get stronger as the days roll by. Such is the power of that city over me.

After we got to Penn Station on Friday we walked the 15+ blocks to Rebecca's office and got a quick tour of the place (I think she prefers that I not literally name the company she works for...they're a bit private). The sculpture currently on display outside the front door is Jeff Koons' Orange Puppy, which last sold for 58 mill. I know, I know, I don't really get it either. The puppy's nose is roughly facing the ice skating rink at Rockefeller Center. At Christmas you literally can't walk around easily because of the crowds.

Rebecca was able to take the afternoon off so we hopped on the subway and went to Brooklyn to drop off our bags at the airBNB apartment we rented for the weekend. It was a spacious, funky, and perfect place for us to stay. Comfortable, quiet, good collection of books, nice wall hangings. And a wonderful fish/plant setup! Hard to describe but here it is:

The apt is a yoga studio during the day.

Then we walked to R's apartment to spend time with the grandcats, James and Robert. They are adored and pampered beyond description.

Next we had lunch at a new place in Crown Heights called Berg'n. I had a Breakfast Ramen Burger. Not exactly healthy eating but I've eaten much less healthy things. And oh was it yummy.

Then we walked a bit south to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. Wonderful, interesting, pretty in that nice fall'ish way I love:

Dinner that night was in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn at an Italian-Spanish-Portuguese place called Convivium Osteria.... Yum, yum.

On Saturday we got our typical late start and had brunch at R and S's favorite neighborhood restaurant Mayfield. Sort of southern American food (translation: lots of grits).

Next we subwayed into Manhattan and visited a gallery none of us has ever been to before: the Morgan Library and Museum. So many museums in DC and NYC are huge so this was a nice change of pace. And the library...oh that library!

We saw art spanning eight centuries: The Crusader Bible from around 1250, Cy Twombly art from the 1970s (meh), 19th century drawings and paintings by Theodore Rousseau, and a fascinating series of cartoons called From Here to Here: Richard McGuire Makes a Book. This drawing is from the collection: vacuuming woman in curlers is saying "the older I get the less I know." Yep.

The High Line came next. We visited the lower portion of it last year during a winter trip to the city, but we hadn't yet seen the recently completed upper portion. The guys who came up with the idea for turning an abandoned elevated railroad line into a pedestrian walkway filled with plants, benches, and great views deserve all the honors they've been given:

Sean, Becca, and Doug checking out the Hudson River.

 

 

 

After the High Line, we walked around Chelsea and the West Village before ending up at The Strand  ("Home to 18 Miles of Books") in the East Village. That's Doug walking toward the store entrance. I could have stayed for hours.

But we had to be off to the Laura Pels Theater in mid-town to see the Tom Stoppard play Indian Ink. Doug read the play this semester in his British Drama course at the Univ of MD so he was able to fill in many details about the British in India in the 1930s. Here's the stage before the show:

After the play we Ubered back to Brooklyn and had dinner at... I've forgotten where; maybe Mayfield again. Then walked back to the kids' apartment and I took a few shots from the roof. The white building near the center is the Empire State Building.

On Sunday we had another pleasingly late start -- 11 AM. Had coffee at R and S's apartment, and then walked from Crown Heights to Clinton to visit the new bakery of R's good friend Anna. Anna has been in Brooklyn for about 4 years, same as R, and in that span of time she created a cookie business from scratch (ha). In her small Brooklyn apartment kitchen, she started making Dutch cookies called stroopwafels (her newish husband Steve is Dutch) and selling them at street fairs and festivals. She then quit her day job and rented space in an existing bakery, continuing to get new business and expanding into ice cream sandwiches. In September, she opened her own bakery, The Good Batch, on Fulton Street. Can you tell I'm impressed? Local Girl Makes Good in Brooklyn Cookie Biz! Here are Doug, Anna, and Rebecca in the kitchen:

We had another great brunch at a place called Three Letters a few doors down from The Good Batch. I was taken by that picture near the kitchen door. Andre the Giant? I forgot to check.

So that's pretty much the trip. Many great memories. And it's always good for me to leave my comfort zone, as they say. My comfort zone is my couch, which I love almost as much as my new iPhone.

One last shot of the newlyweds walking through mid-town. Aren't they cute?

I quilt. Occasionally.

 

My good friend Shannon and I have been making quilts together for, I don't remember how long. (We met in 1991 so sometime between then and 2003.) Here are the most recent paired quilts we made and swapped as Christmas presents to each other. As always, we started with the same fabrics, and the same basic pattern and idea, but then we did our own special design and surprised each other. (Top quilt made by me, now living with Shannon. Bottom quilt made my Shannon, now living with me.)

Downward facing kitty (Clarence) above. He LOVES this quilt.

 

 

They were great fun to make, and now she and I will start working on another quilting project. TBD.

Critters in my yard and nearby.

I know that the caterpillar became a black swallowtail butterfly and that Lucy likes studying the praying mantis outside the front window. But what is (are?) that (those?) flying insect(s) on my leg? It (they?) landed while Doug and I were canoeing around the local reservoir recently. They landed, flew away, returned, flew away, returned, on and on. If it's a them they spent a long, long time hooked up like that. And I mean hooked up in the sense that it's used most often these days. 

Clarence! Eight months old and still perfect in every way.

Clarence.

Clarence is now about 5 and 1/2 months old. To describe his wonderfulness would take pages and pages. Let's just say that he's as close to perfection as kitties come. He's very hard to photograph. Looks like an ad for Nivea doesn't it?

Kitten playing, displaying his amazing nervous system. Adult Lady Cat tolerating.

Sweet Georgette definitely tolerates, and sometimes enjoys, Clarence.

Clarence in charge.

Clarence is in the house! 12 weeks old. Lucy is adapting. Slowly.

What a life.

Have you heard about the upcoming first-ever Internet Cat Video Film Festival in Minneapolis? One pundit said that we watch cat videos at work because cats are usually doing the two things that everyone wants to do: hang out at home and nap.

Miscellaneous.

A certain Nyack blogger asked recently how my kitties are doing. Just fine, is the answer. Hard at work, as usual.

Henri. Paw de Deux.

Go to full screen to see it all. Double-click image to do so.

I dare not name this plant in the title of this post.

It's a wisteria and I know it's invasive and non-native and I'm sorry but I still want a wisteria tree in my front yard. Last summer I yanked up a runner from the tree shown in the top picture (my neighbor's tree in bloom) and potted it up. Lo and behold it survived the winter and is now growing inches a day. Soon I'll find a place to plant it. If I keep the runners in check, and put in my will that whoever lives in this house after me must also keep the runners in check, well then I've done what I can. In return for the (in my view) fairly minor sin of growing a wisteria tree I will continue to not use my clothes dryer. For about 4 years now we've basically not used the dryer so look how much energy we've saved! I'm not sure that this is an apples to apples trade but it's close enough.

The kitty in the tree is Kenny -- my neighbor's sweet boy. He likes to hang out in his tree while his owner sits on the ground under him reading. Maybe one day I'll get a picture of them together. It's very cute.

[Note: This is the neighbor who proudly flies the Tea Party flag so I'm thrilled that she (he? the husband?) decided to take the flag down for a while. We've only become friendly in the last couple of years so it will be interesting to see how we get along when I put up my Obama sign in September.]