Arthur & Bernie

Con-vah-sation. May 2012, Manhattan.

Last Friday, Arthur welcomed two new visitors: Eileen Fuentes and Briana Heard, who created the “Secrets of a Long Life” column in The Uptown Collective. They asked him questions, and took his picture, and made him feel very much like the expert he is. I did the initial introduction and helped with some details (“You enrolled at NYU after the war, right?” “How about we show them the photo of your dad’s doughnut truck!”), but I mainly just sat back and listened and smiled.

Stay tuned for Arthur’s secrets! I’ll link to them here as soon as they’re up.

Stoop garden. May 2012, Brooklyn.

Those plants I bought at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, they sure do look lovely.

When I water them before work and bend down to say good morning, I think of my grandmother. I wonder if it’ll always be like that when I’m gardening. Will I always think of my Dibi, and remember how she’d whisper and giggle and sing to her flowers? How her hands would dance over the plants as she’d weed the beds and care for them?

I hope so. She’s wonderful company.

To the mothers who taught me how to talk to flowers. May 2012, Brooklyn.

Color without end. May 2012, Brooklyn.

Last Tuesday, I went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Plant Sale. My grandmothers would approve — my Dibi, who you know, and my Grandmom, who passed away 10 years ago on that very day, the first of May. She was a gardener, too, as my dad reminded the family over email. She and Granddad planted all different colored roses out back. “Forsythia was her favorite shrub,” my aunt said in a reply. Interesting that forsythia popped out to me, too, around this time last year.

My boyfriend and I made our purchases and were about to head out when we decided to take a quick walk through the grounds. It was a gorgeous night — one of those early spring dusks when the trees are newly full and everything smells crisp. We came upon the Bluebell Wood where, after oohing and ahhing and twirling like Maria at the start of The Sound of Music, I read this:

I make a pilgrimage to Bluebell Wood every May, where the air in the cathedral of green trees is sweet with a pale blue spring. There is no more beautiful place in New York.

The quote came from a BBG visitor named Marie. Cathedral of green, it most certainly is. What a wonderful image, right? One of peace, of sanctuary, of quiet — and in a city of noise. We paused there for a while to take it in.

Oh yes, yes, yes — my grandmothers would approve.