July Sky Blues . . .
July Blue Sky
(NYC 07 28 2020)
Summer treads light during the long days of July. The sun hangs overhead as a white hot ball set in a deep blue sky.
Thriving on that light and reflecting back up a similar pure blue hue, the blooming of chicory and dayflower make a match of the heavens and the earth.
Chicory, Cichorium intybus
(NYC 2020)
Asiatic Dayflower, Commelina communis
(NYC 07 2020)
— rPs 07 31 2020
A Midsummer Day’s Blues . . .
Blue Flower Bathed in White Sun
(NYC 07 2017)
I continue to contend the sun as a star may have shifted more to the white, so strong is its midsummer light; it’s that bright.
Light, the favorite food of the perennial Plant, capital P, fills one fan found now on open lawns and streetsides as urban as the hyperdeveloping West Village. This immigrant citizen is the blue daisy of summer days: Chicory.
This blue Asteraceae, Cichorium intybus, had been in Europe a wildflower used for a bitter green and, later, its roots roasted and ground as a complement or addition to coffee once that sweetbitter bean had been introduced conversely through colonization.
Find chicory today, in bloom now, sometimes see it sprinkled like pale nonpareils on a lawn.
Chicory Nonpareils
(NYC 07 2017)
Chicory bathes in full sun as the summer’s other signature blue petals open in the shade, each one for just a day, and given the hot intensity of the seemingly white sunlight, sometimes just for a morning; a bright one, but a good one.
Commelina communis – Asiatic dayflower
Dayflower With Visitor
(NYC 07 2017)
A midsummer day’s blues are in full bloom about the west side of Manhattan.
— rPs 07 18 2017
All In One Month . . .
NYC at Month’s End
(Joan of Arc Monument, Upper West Side)
The year 2016 began in New York City with an almost springlike feel. A few scattered wildflowers could even be found holding onto one or a few fading blooms. A week passed, and then the first sustained polar cold arrived, which provided frozen views of wildflowers gone to seed. Winter appeared to be shaping into a bright and dry season until, all in one day, the blizzard hit, a wipe out of a white out that has, at least for now, placed the wildflowers of the West Village beneath a white blanket over two feet thick.
What a difference a month can make!
January 1st – Hudson River Park
Chicory
(Chicorium intybus)
January 20 – Harlem Meer, Central Park
Narrowleaf Cattail
(Typha augustifolia)
January 24 – Somewhere on Manhattan’s West Side
Snow: Knee Deep!
— rPs 01 29 2016
Still Life Set in a Cityscape . . .
Butter & Eggs by the Stump
The City Still Life, continued: Ideas or Ideals?
October brings a new, almost kinetic view: warmer colors spread in the foreground as the backdrop of sky, like the temperature, reflects colder hues. Bright, or subdued, autumn’s more visible variety can shift one’s attention and shape it toward color composition. Hikes along a river lined by trees showing ever less chlorophyll have fueled thinkers too numerous to list anywhere but in some form of comprehensive Encyclopedia Autumnus.
One subject: The City Still Life, con Flores, im Herbst (“with flowers, in Autumn”) often pops up besides the trees that can no longer leaf. The stump, the rooted gravestone of a neighborhood tree, low to the ground, overlooked, left alone, or still in line to be removed, centers a wild space that may be encircled by plantains beaded by rain, nightshades gathered in miniature copses, or scatterings of less dispersed species:
Chicory, Chicorium intybus
Chicory in October
Mallow, Malva neglecta
Mallow in October
Yellow Toadflax (Butter & Eggs), Linaria vulgaris
Yellow Toadflax in October
Conscious tree cutting and removal always depresses me, more for the fact the tree cannot be left to compost where it comes to lay. A green space more sustained by itself by letting it be would better reflect its organic natural history. Spaces may be shaped, that is understandable. May it also be comprehended that a city park curated as a rotating clean slate may not be ideal when applied in a universal, as in monolithic, manner? Stumps add character and the distinctive wild space equivalent of a still life set in a greater landscape, or cityscape.
– rPs 10 07 2014
Wildflowers of the West Village 