Winding down at Sissinghurst

 And some essential maintenance.

The tower is under scaffolding for the next six months.

A cold snap at last.

I have been planting tulips 

and trying to remember what my intentions were

for Spring 2018 when I ordered them.

In other news, furniture is being eyed up for reupholstering.

A new carpet is being laid.

Light bulbs have been replaced.

Autumn is the new Spring.

Tall Cat takes refuge

from Storm Brian.

(It's not here quite yet.)

Lamb's (lettuce) to the slaughter?

Two beds of succulent winter salad leaves

in the ground.

Each one surrounded by grit,

with two beer traps filled with Guinness,

strategically placed.
Muddy paths jet washed.

All surrounding weed and plant cover removed.

Let battle commence.

Edited to add:
Two torch patrols tonight
 and the enemy's capabilities have not been underestimated.
Both beer traps have been dug up.
One of them moved 30cms and not a drop spilled.
Many, many little black slugs were apprehended while climbing out 
from under the boards.
The leopard slugs were patrolling the paths.
But incredibly it turns out they are the gardener's friend.
They eat other slugs! Who knew?

Training Day

Determined to get better use out of our Senior Railcards this year,

we decided on an ambitious day trip,

which necessitated a 5 a.m start,

and approximately eleven hours sitting on trains,

because that's what it takes to get to Edinburgh and back.

It was worth it.

I've been hearing so much about True to Life, British Realists in the 1920s and 30s.

No photos allowed but you can read about it here.

So now we've been pretty far west, pretty far east and pretty far north.

Pretty far south will soon get our feet wet,

so it may have to be south west next.

A trip of extremes 3

I will never forget the blast of heat

 as we stepped out onto the roof garden of the Met,

so deceived had we been by the cool interior.

And there were Adrián Villar Rojas' heatstroke victims,

3D models,

huddled in sparse shade

 and collapsed over dining tables

clutching replicas of objects from the Met collection.

How relieved we were later to find 

the Conservatory garden in Central Park

in the relative cool of the evening.

A trip of extremes 2

At last an opportunity to browse the stalls at Union Square Greenmarket,

 often described by Frances  on her blog.

Hadn't bargained for the wasp sting but

luckily no lasting reaction.

Chihuly at the New York Botanical Gardens.

I had only ever seen his Rotunda Chandelier at the V&A in London before this.

A regular stop off for coffee was either Bluestone Lane Cafe,

or Jack's Wife Freda near our Airbnb apartment in West Village.

It was a very convenient, if pricey location.

Last year we stayed in Brooklyn and had a lengthy commute

for Manhattan sight-seeing. 

I was grateful to be able to avoid the subway in the great heat.

We were alternately roasted or frozen on the journeys

that made walking too arduous.

Ten miles was an average daily hike,

not always intentionally!

I was pretty struck by the contrast in fortunes of NY residents

we observed on the streets and in the subway,

especially when we saw women begging (panhandling) with children.

A complex issue.

Manhattan was full of the loud, exuberant, tattoed, opinionated, striving young.

I wondered where all the people my age were.

People who didn't litter their reportage with 'like' and 'literally'.

One very elderly woman in a restroom in the Strand Bookstore

eyed me exhaustedly in the washbasin mirror and said,

'Isn't it horrible out there?

The subway is just dreadful.'

 I smiled sympathetically, nodded my agreement,

 and we went our separate ways.

We had a rendezvous at a ramen cocktail bar in Harlem to make.

A young person suggested it and took us there.
We would never have dreamt of going down into the dingy
subterranean bar of our own accord,
but it was really good fun and watching the barman constructing the cocktails
in front of us was like a cabaret act.

A trip of extremes

A tranquil scene in Central Park on one of the exceptionally hot days

of the record-breaking September heatwave in mid-West and North-Eastern US.

A sunset sail aboard the Adirondack Schooner in New York Harbor -

with not a breath of wind.

The arresting sight of Marine One with its decoy helicopter

and V22 Osprey tiltrotor attack helicopter escort, flying out of Manhattan.

 City life escape to Cold Spring on the Poughkeepsie line

out of Grand Central Station.

The train hugged the Hudson River shore for much of the route.

On the way back I did a double take at the highly fortified walls of

a building wedged between railwayline and river.

Could it be a prison I wondered aloud.

Well yes, was the answer.

It was Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

A maximum security prison confining about 1700 prisoners.