Day Trip Diary: The New York Botanical Garden

"Lindy fell into step beside him. "I love your umbrella," she said admiringly.
"I bought it because it's cheery and it makes people look up. Have you noticed how nobody ever looks up?...Nobody looks at chimneys, or trees against the sky, or the tops of buildings. Everybody just looks down at the pavement or their shoes. The whole world could pass them by and most people wouldn't notice."  - The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.

The Last of the Great Whangdoodles is a richly imaginative tale by Julie Andrews Edwards of The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins fame about a professor's adventures with three children, and I'll be remembering some favorite passages here. It was published in 1974, the year before I was born, but that passage seems even more relevant today with everyone is glued to a device and looking down, not up or around at their surroundings.

There is a Little House on the Prairie episode where Charles, beloved "Pa," is attempting to install a "picture window" in the little house by Plum Creek, but it keeps breaking during a series of marital spats between Laura and Almanzo, via doors slamming, getting crushed in the buggy and so on. I keep thinking of that term, "picture window," about the images we see through our windows, and how it stirs our imaginations. There is a commercial for a car that provides Wi-Fi, with two young children ready for their car trip each with their own handheld devices ready to look down. I think gazing out of a window is a lost simple pleasure in today's distracted world. When we were riding to the park, I loved observing the cheery autumn displays people put out: the scarecrows, the mums, haystacks and such. One porch (how I love front porches!) had a comforting red-checked table cloth that made my heart happy. Sitting next to our baby Grace in the car, my mom observed how much she likes to look around and can entertain herself. That's exactly what we want. No screen in front of her to mentally pacify her. We want to stimulate her senses, observing the glorious world around her. Have you taken time today to witness the beautiful world around you?

Steve, Grace and I viewed the stunning scenery at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, one of my favorite places in New York. Here is a frame made of branches in their Children's Garden, the picture it captures: the woods.

Before we started our visit, we stopped in their Pine Tree Café for nourishment. I had a hearty sandwich of portabella mushrooms, roasted red peppers, pesto, arugula and goat cheese, with an organic Earl Grey tea. I adore the earthiness of mushrooms, and the fragrance of bergamot from the tea. I always love eating and drinking the flavors of the garden, and it seemed even more fitting to do so here.

 

Taking the professor's advice, I looked up at this towering tree as we ate, as did Grace. I love outdoor dining.

  

This sign at the children's adventure garden nudges visitors to observe, explore, discover and connect, but adults (myself included) can use the reminder too. Let's vow to do these things just as often if not more in our daily lives as we do checking email or Facebook pages.

There's a scene where the Professor is outdoors with the children asking them what they see. The children hadn't noticed the tree trunks aren't just brown.

"The trunk of that one is copper and smooth, and that one is grey and rough. Those dead leaves are a russet color, aren't they?" He told them to look under a hedge, "Can't you see the cluster of red berries hanging under the tree? The children looked closer. Suddenly, as if the focus were being changed on a camera, the red berries came into view."
 
"There aren't many people in this world who know how to actually look. Usually one glance is enough to register that the grass is green and the sky is blue and so on. They can tell you if the sun is shining or if it looks like rain, but that's about all. It's such a pity, for there is texture to everything we see, and everything we do and hear.

"As each day passed, the children's ability to look, listen, feel, taste and smell improved immeasurably."

Looking around, I too found whimsy is everywhere here, a sense of play and fun that children and animals instinctually know the importance of, but we get too jaded or forget to make time for in our adult lives. Maybe that's why I was drawn to children's stories even before having a child, which serve as a portal to that magical world.

 

 

 

This pumpkin carving was so fitting for my alien-obsessed husband who had us visiting Roswell, New Mexico, and Area 51 on our American Southwest road trip.

 

 

"The professor taught them the wonders of music; not only instrumental music, but the music of running water and the sighing of the winds, the hum of a city and the song of the birds."

I think of how nature provides for so many species and its magical healing properties.

How did the first people unlock these wonders? This fascinates me.

A sign marked this spicebush, which it says turns a bright yellow in autumn, and "migratory birds gorge themselves on the red berries, which are rich in oils that provide concentrated stores of energy. Native Americans used spicebush to treat several illnesses, including coughs, arthritis, and measles. Early settlers called it feverbush and used a drink made from the bark to control fevers."

"Oma says, when we were put on earth a really long time ago, each person came with a plant to heal all the troubles that come later....We've got Indian balsam, sage, wild rose. We've got juniper berries and honeysuckle. All of them do something different inside, heal things." - Brindle 24, J.J. Brown

A sign here reminding us to be good caretakers for our Mother Earth and her forests, as she takes such good care of us through all nature provides.

In the gift shop, I spotted this enchanting seed collection. Every garden does have a story. I cannot wait to plant seeds with Grace and watch them grow. I think this makes a great gift idea too. Check out the seed collections from Renee's Garden.

 

A marker tells us of the allure of roses. I love that they both stimulate the eyes and senses, not just smell but taste too. I still recall a mint and rose water drink I had at The Girl and the Fig restaurant in the California wine country, and a rose tea I sampled in San Francisco's Chinatown. Smells, taste, sights - all tap into our memory banks, serving as time machines to bring us to another place and era.

 

I can almost smell the fragrant tea roses looking at this photograph.

 

 

Just beyond the garden you hear the busy hum of life outside the gates. I want to linger as long as possible in quiet places, even if they are just in my memories.

 

We were here for the Kiku or chrysanthemum exhibit that ran in October, which was exquisite.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artfully crafted bonsai trees. 

 

 

Looking at the water lilies always reminds me of my magical day here with my mother to see the Monet's Garden exhibit.  

 

Poetry lined the walkway to the exhibit space. Here is a haiku, a "traditional poetic form of three lines with a syllable count of five-seven-five in the original Japanese," a marker noted.

 

 

Here, a tanka which has five lines and syllable count five-seven-five-seven-seven in the original Japanese, reflects on recapturing youth. 

I saw a cartoon recently where the doctor tells his patient, an old man, that while he still has the same aches and pains, the good news is he is still around to complain about it. So very true.

Thinking of my time here, I reflect on the life cycles around us. Some just a brief season, others, like the trees, whose lifetimes will go on far beyond our own. I consider too our youth-obsessed culture which focuses not on the magic and wonderment of youth but simple vanity. I will never understand our fight against wrinkles and gray hair.

Natalie Merchant, a favorite singer/songwriter/activist, said so wisely in an article in The Buffalo News, "Aging in this culture is not dealt with very effectively. There is wisdom that can only come with experience. Instead of seeing aging as decrepitude and decay, we can see it as something beautiful and natural. You know, I dyed my hair forever, but recently, I stopped dying it altogether, and now I'm fully and completely gray. I had to learn to embrace that."

Having a child reminds me about the fragility and preciousness of life. We are so grateful when we come home with Grace that she is safe and sound and at night putting her to bed that we have been blessed with another day with her. Looking at my dogs I think of their shorter life spans compared to our own human ones and remind myself to make the most of my time with them too.

I'm reading aloud to Grace E.B. White's classic, Charlotte's Web, which speaks to me so much about friendship and the mystery of animal communications and the strong desire of all species to live, love and bond. Charlotte weaves words into her web and the minister declares "the spider's web proved that human beings must always be on the watch for coming of wonders."

Let us always be on the watch for the small wonders each day, and to be grateful for the seasons and time in the gardens of our lives.

March Storytellers: A Month of Books

Thank goodness for the escape of a good book. The most trying time of my life was during my job loss and unemployment uncertainty, but 2012 has proven itself continually challenging with the loss of the beloved family dog, my father's heart surgery (he's back at home now from the rehab center) and our ongoing mortgage delay. When the bank decided to cancel the mortgage signing for no particular reason Thursday, I wanted to start wailing like an infant. I was on the bus that day coming home from work and still digesting the news that yet again we weren't moving on the weekend when the bus broke down. I was so grateful Laura Ingalls Wilder was there to tell me a story. I wasn't on the bus, I was witnessing the expansion of the American West. But more about that in April Storytellers.

I read four books in March, but I'll mostly write about two. I found Peter Mayle's The Vintage Caper at Cinema Verite thrift shop in New York City for $2. It was a fairly entertaining tale about an entertainment lawyer from Los Angeles whose wine collection gets stolen and the detective on the case who travels around Paris and Marseilles. I read a lot about the food scenes but they are very meat-centric, and since I'm a vegetarian, I'm not drooling over eating lamb or kidneys. I did get to thinking about the idea of wine as "liquid art," and about the idea of collections and why we start them.

I also read Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a selection from our book group at work which meets sporadically. I purchased it at Shaw's Book Shop in Westwood, New Jersey, my go-to shop for new books. I really wasn't in the mood for a depressing book about the slums in India, especially one with a vague ending. When I told a coworker I guess it makes you grateful, she's said, "Catherine, we're already grateful." She's right. But even if I was in a better frame of mind, I don't think I would have a different opinion. I found virtually no hope in Boo's portrayal of life in the Mumbai slum, in which a garbage collector and his family are accused of a terrible crime. Everyone seems to be corrupting everyone. I should have skipped Boo's book, but I'm so glad I didn't skip...

Abigail, Portia Howe Sperry and Lois Donaldson, $1, estate sale.
Some background on this book from goodreads.com:

"When the Great Depression hit in 1929, life changed for millions of families across the United States. The Sperry family of Fort Wayne, Indiana, was one such family whose comfortable life was shattered by the depression. Penniless, the Sperrys pulled up roots and moved to Brown County, Indiana, a vacation place that held happy memories for them. Portia Sperry found work at the Nashville House hotel and became the gift shop manager. In response to requests for locally handcrafted items she designed a rag doll that she named Abigail. The doll was educational, having buttons, snaps, shoelaces, and string hair that could be braided. The doll was so popular it eventually was sold at Marshall Field's department store in Chicago. As a result of the doll's popularity, Mrs. Sperry, along with Lois Donaldson, wrote the fictional tale called Abigail. Their efforts resulted in an educational and entertaining book describing how families in the early 1800s journeyed from Kentucky to Indiana.

This Hoosier classic was written in 1938 and sold at the Brown County Folks shop in Nashville, Indiana, where the Abigail doll was created and sold. Set in the 1830s, the story centers on young Susan Calvin, her doll Abigail, and the adventures they share while traveling by covered wagon from Kentucky to their new home in Brown County, Indiana."

Fans of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series will likely enjoy this book, but with a major word of warning if you're reading it with children that you're in store for the same attitudes of the time: jumping up and down over the killing of a bear, one shocking use of the "n....r" word and disparaging attitudes toward Indians whose lands they were settling on.

"Not so many years ago, the Indians were still warlike, and bitterly resented the white man's coming to take more and more of their territory."

Well no kidding!

I loved a chapter where Susan's grandmother tells her a bedtime story "about a lazy boy who grew to be one of Virginia's finest men, and one of America's great leaders." The tale was not about George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, but of Patrick Henry.

"My father said Patrick Henry's words were the first words of the American Revolution. Not many ever felt the same way after he heard them. We didn't have war for ten years, but this was the first time the colonies had differed from the mother country..."

Grandmother said he was often called the "silver-tongued orator" and her father heard him speak before the House of Burgesses in a "speech - it will go down in American history - never to be forgotten. Some day, Susan, you will learn all of that speech by heart. He closed by saying, "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."

I thought about much we have forgotten Patrick Henry, probably a footnote in most of our history classes. I also longed for leaders who are powerful orators. Our governor of New Jersey Chris Christie not long ago called one of his constituents "an idiot" and has called a colleague a "jerk." He does this often, and I wish he would not stoop to these levels as a leader of our state. It's an embarrassment to a state that is ridiculed enough by the nation. Overall, though, I can't think of any leaders now that I consider great orators. I don't think we live in an age that celebrates the power of language and the beauty of the word.

Susan spots "pretty yellow balls" and asks mother what they are. "Those are oranges, Susan. I haven't seen any since I left Virginia," answered Mother. "What do you do with them?"

When I eat oranges (I'm snacking on one as I type this), I often think of our pioneers who found them rare and so coveted them. In the superb and highly recommended PBS documentary Frontier House about three modern families living as if it were 1883 in Montana, I also recall a scene where the modern pioneer children savored oranges.

Favorite March storyteller: The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, 50 cents at the CATS Resale Shop in Westwood, New Jersey, by storyteller extraordinaire, Julie Andrews Edwards. What thrifted luck to find this so soon after reading Mandy! I never would have even picked it up but I recognized the title. She writes in the introduction that she declined the publisher's offer to provide an illustrator, and there are no splendid drawings like in Mandy. She said this tale is about using one's imagination, and what an imagination she has.

"As the years passed, man became involved in technology and agriculture and industry. Of course, it was natural for him to want to learn about his environment and the laws of nature, about the universe and how to get to the moon, and so on. But as he broadened the new part of his mind, so he closed down a beautiful and fascinating part of the old – the area of fantasy. The more knowledge man gained, the more self-conscious he became about believing in fanciful creatures. People began to think that such things didn't exist. The terrible thing is that when man dismissed all the fanciful creatures from his mind, the Wangdoodle disappeared," Professor Savant tells siblings Ben, Tom and Lindy, and travel to Wangdoodleland to find this mythical creature.

This fantasy book is so different from Mandy, about an orphan sprucing up a cottage in the woods and hoping for a family of her own, but it's very similar in that they are both very much about finding your way, the challenges we face on our path, and an appreciation of nature.

There's a scene were the Professor is outdoors with the children asking them what they see. The children hadn't noticed the tree trunks aren't just brown. "The trunk of that one is copper and smooth, and that one is grey and rough. Those dead leaves are a russet color, aren't they?" He told them to look under a hedge, "Can't you see the cluster of red berries hanging under the tree? The children looked closer. Suddenly, as if the focus were being changed on a camera, the red berries came into view."

"There aren't many people in this world who know how to actually look. Usually one glance is enough to register that the grass is green and the sky is blue and so on. They can tell you if the sun is shining or if it looks like rain, but that's about all. It's such a pity, for there is texture to everything we see, and everything we do and hear," the professor tells them.

As a result of reading this book, I have became more observant of colors, textures and what was before my eyes and I have also broadened my definition of "music."

"As each day passed, the children's ability to look, listen, feel, taste and smell improved immeasurably.
The professor taught them the wonders of music; not only instrumental music, but the music of running water and the sighing of the winds, the hum of a city and the song of the birds."

Lessons taught to the children were good reminders at any age: to listen to people, and that what they say might not always be what they mean, and that people we will distract you and taunt you to veer you off your path, but that you should not fall off course from your goals. This book also made me grateful to explore the world of children's and young adult literature (this book is for "Ages 8-12!") and that I'm reading more period. I know too many people who spend a sunny, warm spring day in front of the television.

In a USA Today article about the national parks service trying to get younger people in the parks, they cited a "2010 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that people ages 8 to 18 spent an average of 7 1/2 hours a day on digital media. Last month, a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that three times as many Millennials — born in the 1980s and '90s — as Baby Boomers said they made no personal effort to help the environment.

A "big concern" of the National Park Service "is maintaining 21st-century relevance," says James Gramann, a Texas A&M professor writing a book on people-park links. Visitors ages 16-24 are most under-represented, he says."

I think as a civilized culture, we should resolve to step away from our devices more often, get out in nature, care about our Mother Earth, and spend time with a good book.

I'm already excited for my April reading list, which will include a Native American storyteller.

What good books have you read lately that you'd like to share? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.