The painters have been here most of the week, the front door couldn’t be used as usual and we had to walk to the front by going around the house from the kitchen. Spent the early part of the last weeks days moving abutilons out of the basement so we could finally turn the lights off down there.

Walking around to the front,  the ephemeral arabis flowers were blooming. It’s been cooler than usual this year; that coupled with the mini heat wave a week or so ago, has made a lot of our plants bloom early and stay fresh longer. The rhododendrons are on time but the azaleas are already showing color, if it had been a little warmer they would all be open today. Here are two rhododendrons with Japanese Geisha, an early azalea on the right.

We were driving around Staten Island this morning with our friend Diana who  introduced us to places we should have known about and visited for the past twenty years. We took her to the store on which I’ve been working with Friends of Fire (we will have a Grand Opening May 8-9), it’s been a lot of fun and we’ve met some nice people. Just one shot of a new arrangement at  the store. (you can see more photos of the store in my FaceBook Album)

The striking visual thing about our drive today was that the cool weather this week has slowed the passing of many of Staten Island’s blooming trees.  There are a LOT;  flowering almonds are in peak bloom everywhere, forsythia, crab apples and red buds color every road.  It seems that part of mayor Bloomberg’s Million Trees Project includes redbuds, there are streets lined with them.

Here’s a shot of my arabis before the rain last Thursday night.

And a view of the path from the back to the front. I shot this about twenty minutes ago, the arabis is still looking good.

Fritillaria melegaris, ‘Checkered  Lilies’, have naturalized in the front border.  I think it’s unusual for the white flowers to do better  than the colored varieties, they out number the maroon flowers.

All the porch furniture had to be stacked in the yard while they were working last week.

One of the treads being cleaned and trimmed.

Colman on the porch with some of the carpenter’s tools.

Trevor on the right with his Dad, a family carpentry business.

All new risers, the old ones had rotted edges.

Today the porch is finished and the paint has cured. I began to move some of the furniture back into place and hang new chains for the plants.

Some more Spring flowers.

Ipheion, attractive and fragrant, it’s also invasive. . . the leaves last until July, dying off  (so you can plant annuals over them), reapperaing in late October to grow in the pale winter sunlight.

A close-up of some Rhodies in the back yard.

And Henry keeps us company where ever we go.

I’m about a month late posting this and the show has probably come down by now. (The evening of March 9, 2010)  I took almost a hundred photos and it’s taken time to put this posting together.

We were invited to the opening our friend, Gwen Strahle, (she lives in Connecticut) who was selected for this exhibition. It’s been a long time since we were in this neighborhood, 20 years ago Colman and I had an apartment a few blocks from the Museum of the American Indian and the Hispanic Museum complex. Since then, the Museum of the American Indian has moved downtown to the old Customs House near Battery Park.  The Academy exhibit is in two of the buildings in the center of the museum complex near 158th street on the West Side. The photo above is of some of the grand sculpture in the passage between the museums on the way to the academy  exhibition space.

This is the central area of  the first  building.  The exhibition is in two buildings with a small courtyard in between.

Taybin and Kat were on the same train, we met them as we were getting onto the platform at 157th street.  Taybin is in this shot.

This is Laura Battle with some of her work.  It turns out she knows Gwen. Laura battle info.

This is Lisa Sanditz with one of her paintings.  I thought I would try to get as many of the artists with their work as I could find.  I was only able to pair four with their work all evening. Other images by Lisa.

One corner of the gallery.

Our Friend, Gwen Strahle with one of  her paintings.

Some more Gallery shots, the next few are taken in the second building.

Gwen talking with Anja, Austin and Colman.

I like this large sculpture. It was very difficult to get a good angle on it, you can see how wide it is in a photo above of the whole room. It’s called Fold  by John Grade.

Kat, Taybin, Anja and Austin talking with Colman

I thought these were particularly strange.

Laura Battle talking with  some of her friends.

I was surprised to see two friends from Staten Island, Mitchell and  Lorraine.

Alexi Worth with a couple of his paintings.

This is where we came into the show first, a very large room with a really high ceiling and enormous skylight.

The courtyard between the buildings, looking toward  Broadway.

Some shots of the yard. Daffodils, chionodoxa, scilla and hellebores. Scattered plants all around the house. Daffodils, chionodoxa, scilla and hellebore. Everything in bloom today. The daffodils were rescued yesterday, we’d had a vigorous rain and wind event  that laid a lot of the new blooms flat, spattered with mud.

Colman at breakfast.

These flowers were blooming in the front yard earlier this week, I think they are seedlings of the pink chionodoxa, whose flowers had yet to open when I took this photo. They are very small, barely over two inches tall.

Scilla is all over the yard.  I planted them in the back first  shortly after we moved in to this house, then a few years later I planted borders of them in the front yard.  They have seeded themselves everywhere, these are by the hatch in the back.

two or three years ago I ordered about 200 chionodoxa bulbs to line the walks in the front.  They were supposed to be blue flowers with white centers and wine colored stems. The suppliers sent the bulbs and I planted them, I was surprised and disappointed when they bloomed pink.  Before they were gone that first spring, I decided that it was a fortuitous error.  There’s already a lot of blue blooming here.

The first honey bee I’ve seen this year.

Hellebores by the back door.

Henry caught scent of something on a Spring breeze.

Thursday, January 28th 2010

The day started early and cold. It was snowing, but because the roads weren’t yet holding much snow, we thought it would be all right leaving for New Jersey in the tail end of the rush hour.

Once we had crossed  on the Outerbridge Crossing the snow had stopped, as we got further on the Garden State Parkway it looked as if there hadn’t been any snow there at all. Colman and I were the second and third visitors to arrive.  This arrangement of plants greeted us as we entered the greenhouse.

Anthony Silva, Colman and Joe Silva.

A greenhouse cat found me and rode on my shoulders for the first walk through the main greenhouse. She felt like a kitten but they said she is about 12 years old.

I like this green orchid, the blooms form a ring around the pot edge making a wreath under a canopy of bold, broadly ribbed leaves.

There are a great number of green cymbidiums in bloom, this end of a bench that went around a corner and about a third of the length of the greenhouse.

This is a species paphiopedalum from Vietnam. The flower is in its last days but still has a remarkable presence above netted leaves.

This plant is in full bloom, a lot of flowers in one pot.  A close-up follows this photo.

This little dendrobium was hiding in the very back of the greenhouse with the cool masdevallias. It is a dendrobium,  in a 3″ pot, it’s my favorite of all the plants I have seen this trip. If we had a cool enough place to grow it we would have taken it. It was picked up by a couple that spoke with a German(?) accent.

Joe talking with some of the other visitors.

Our friend  Ron arrived as we were finishing up looking and buying plants.

A couple of visitors found this bulbifilum growing in a fern root basket on a high shelf.  This is another favorite.

We went to the Staten Island Museum last Saturday to see the Juried Art Show. We had been to the opening which was very crowded and wanted to see the work without a party going on. Both Colman and I have pieces in the show. Here he is with a print of one of his graphite drawings, this one is Light Terraces.

A shot of me with my paper tapestry Buddha’s feet.

Here are some shots of the room. It’s not complete. There are about 30 pieces in the show in all media including painting, photography, ceramics and collage.

Two of our favorites in the show are this etching by Bill Murphy

And this painting by Milton Black.

After seeing the show we went downstairs and visited part of the permanent collection.  It’s a wonderful sort of old fashioned museum,  mostly  a natural history collection like a victorian cabinet of curiosities. Everything from mineral specimens and fossil fish to shells, stuffed birds and pickled (local ) snakes.

The Museum also has exhibits on Staten Island History  with a number of interesting artifacts and models. They sponsor events on the island year round.  You can find out more by visiting their:

Staten Island Museum Web Site

This is a very nice collection of cone, cowrie and textile shells.

I like this large mottled shell, there’s more green in it when you see it in person.

Not the sort of pickles you’d find in your pantry.

This is probably the strangest piece of furniture anyone could own.

I was out in the greenhouse checking on my seedlings and I noticed that Colman’s Stanhopa had opened.  The plant had put out an enormous spray of buds which I thought would open soon,  I didn’t expect them to open all at once, but there they were.  Here’s Colman with the plant (the label reads Stanhopa nigroviolacea, but we’re not convinced that is the real name).

 Colman says this is the first time it has bloomed,  he got it from Santa Barbara Orchid Estate in June 2004. Here’s a close up. 

 There’s another plant in bloom among others in the greenhouse.  It is hard to photograph because it is difficult for the camera to focus on flowers that have narrow petals and the flowers are so far apart. But this is one of my favorite plants with its brown and green flowers.