The Planting Fields

While Jennifer was at her conference at the Glen Cove Mansion, I got a tip from her friend and took a ride to the Planting Fields in nearby Oyster Bay. I purloined the following from their website:

"Situated between Oyster Bay and Locust Valley on Long Island's North Shore, Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park is one of Long Island's premier public arboretums and historic sites. A former Gold Coast estate of over four hundred acres, Planting Fields is rich with history. In addition, current information about innovative garden techniques and new plant selections is available.The Arboretum contains greenhouses, gardens, woodland paths, and outstanding plant collections.The grounds, landscaped by the Olmsted Brothers of Brookline, Massachusetts, are spectacularly beautiful year round. The estate buildings include Coe Hall, the 65 room former residence of the Coe family which has been restored as a museum bringing the past to life. Planting Fields is an ideal location for wedding photography and concerts, and hosts over 200 diverse events annually."

This is the first greenhouse I walked into. The smell alone reminded me of my Grandparents Domachowski's garden.
They had a lot of nice cacti, some of which are caged for your protection.


I am not that much of a flower photographer, so I didn't try very hard.
Cold frames outside the main greenhouses.

Here is the outside of one of the administrative buildings.

Approaching this, I thought it was just a huge, dense bush. Then I saw children walk out from within.
I climbed in myself to find a wonderful hideaway.


Inside another greenhouse a couple and their newborn twins were sitting for photos.



This is the Coe House.


A curious-looking sundial that was wrong by two hours. At the time I took the shot it was just after 2pm EDT. Perhaps the schedule of time was different when it was constructed?

This small pond was just in front of the sundial.

Here is a view of the house from before the pond.

Detail of a gate around a walled garden.

Detail of a Cherub just inside the above gate.

Arbors arc over a walkway.

Detail of another arched gateway.

Garden house.

Detail of window on garden house.

Beneath a tree that - even in mid-November - has not lost its leaves.


A curious statue.



Front door to Coe House.

Detail of front door.

Archway around house.

A closeup of Tudor Style adornments.

Porch upon which a wedding party was being photographed.

Detail of gargoyle on gable-end of roof peak. Note the curious twist to the brick pattern on the chimney.

Above the front door.

Looking For the Origin of 'BirThankMas'

'BirThankMas' is a combination of the words 'birthday', 'Thanksgiving' and 'Christmas'. It names an ad-hoc holiday in which one combines the three events for the honor of one person. For example, let's say my sister and her husband were born about the same day, and I have not visited them for Christmas or Thanksgiving in a long time. My wife and I might take them to dinner and a show for their BirThankMas present.

I don't know the origin of this, but I know I did not make it up. I believe I heard of it in a movie or a television show. If you know the origin of the word, please post a response here.

The High Line

To get to dinner at The Spice Market, which is about 27 blocks south of the hotel, we walked part of the way on The High Line.

The High Line is part of an old elevated railway, converted to a walking park, that passes through the meatpacking district. We entered on W.20th Street and walked all the way to 13th. We walked the same on the way back, after dark.













Scenes on the ground near the restaurant:

Re-posting: Killing Everyone Inside (Dadaist exercise)

Killing Everyone Inside

Normally we would storm a house
get a million miles per gallon and explode once a year
where the humvees burned together.

Lilith's eyes turn cloudy mixing it together
killing everyone inside.

If a packed journalism convention burns to the ground
I think Michael would blow up the boat with that bomb
running stoplights until the bus flipped over.

The air in a room is not forbidden,
resources don't come out fast enough
but apparently they work damn well.

Up through the fire tower at batterie la railleuse
making yourself look better than you are.
And so this is where we stand.

<<<<<<< * >>>>>>>>

My brother, Pat, provoked a few of us in a Dadaist experiment. He provided instructions on how to create a band's name, album title, cover art, and the names of the songs. I so liked the names of some of the songs in my creation that I used a similar technique to create the words to a whole song. Maybe I can write the music in a similar manner. His method is as follows:

"A dadist exercise: (This is a neat little experiment that might make a good assignment for your students, Phil [Phil is one of our other brothers]):
I got this as one of those little web experiments from someone I know.

1 - Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

If you want to do this again, you'll hit refresh to generate new quotes, because clicking the quotes link again will just give you the same quotes over and over again.

3 - Go to flickr's "explore the last seven days" http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that's your debut album. (It will resemble you.)


I got: Bérchules – Not From Anyone Else "

My results were:
My band: History of Gujarat
Album: Are Caught By Desire


I came up with a song list in a similar way to the title, as suggested by Pat. After that I came up with the lyrics, above, by using the song title in a google search and taking random passages from the results. About the only thing I don't like is the cover art idea. I had a picture of a woman running near a park.

POST-SCRIPT: I posted this to a poetry forum and got mixed reviews. No one panned it entirely, but a few people were disturbed by the imagery, and one person said it seemed very political and though liked it he thought he'd seen too many similar to it lately.

In spite of the randomness of it all, I like how it almost fits together. I love some of the images (packed journalism convention burning to the ground, fire tower at batterie la railleuse) and odd statements like 'making yourself look better than you are'.

If anyone can help me set it to music, I'd be thrilled.

Copyright 2008 & 2010 by Paul Austin/Patrick Austin.

Walkway Over The Hudson & Environs

I took a quick drive to the Walkway Over the Hudson today, and got a sandwich at a place called Lola's.


Next door is a place called Crave that opened in December of last year to very good reviews.

I took a quick run up to the Walkway to snap some photos.



Not too far away are a few more interesting places like La Deliziosa Pastry Shoppe and Cafe Bocca and Fine Art. Both seem well-rated. It may be worth it to spend an afternoon over the bridge and back, with refreshment bookending the trip.

Barbecue & Butterflies

We had a barbecue to say goodbye to our neighbor, Jerry. He brought his friend Bobbi, who we have met before.
I promised pictures of all the food and I screwed that up. Let's just say there was a lot (bacon-wrapped scallop, salt-encrusted tenderloin, chicken satay, armenian stick bread . . . and a lot more stuff I can't remember) and it was all good. Jennifer knocked herself out, as usual.

I did get a picture of this butterfly checking out the sage...


...and (this is for you, Laura) Fifi checking out the butterfly.

Fun Stuff

We're having a few guests over tomorrow for a shitload of barbecue. We had to get another grill to accomodate it. Just a small one, as you can see.


Jennifer worked her ass off while I frittered around. Here she is returning from the garden with Lola.



Toward the end of the day I got out my great-grandfather's draw knife and whittled a seasoned sapling into a walking stick. In this picture is the stick (about 4.5'), the draw knife and a Stanley surform. The stick on the right is a remnant of the original sapling.


This will be the head. Should I carve something into it?

Whoops, the surform slipped.
After I took these pictures I sanded it. I love how well-seasoned wood works. Years ago I would make things like this from freshly cut wood, and it always worked out poorly. I cut this particular sapling down three years ago, when we first moved in. In fact, it may have been Jennifer's dad who cut it down (from the tree in this picture). It sat in the garage all that time.

Check back tomorrow for pictures of the wild and crazy barbecue Jennifer is preparing.