minerva and shopping and essen

tiny star shaped flowers from the trees on bank street . . 

breakfast for minerva . . 

breakfast for us at la bergamot . .

(greg's french toast)

shopping for pants for me for morgan's wedding at one of the fancy stores we pass on the way home.

dinner . . 

we had a delicious wheat berry/lentil and vegetable salad for dinner. the lentils and wheat berries are a package mix from olive odyssey (an online company), from whom i've also bought olive oil.

good night minerva. your family will be home tomorrow.

morning walk and a dance performance

janet and i took a morning walk along the river to la bergamot for coffee and a pastry . . 

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this evening greg, chanda and i attended dances patrelle's spring performance at the manhattan movement and arts center theatre. they did three pieces, two choreographed by francis patrelle, the second of which was our favorite: gilbert and sullivan, the ballet! (an excerpt). morgana and chanda had parts in the original production in 2012. here and here are two posts from then. tonight's show was wonderful and i'm so glad we went.

heading to the subway and home . .

laundry, coffee and cat antics

 
we started a load of towels, walked to la bergamot for morning coffee and pastry and then to home depot to try and buy a package of hoover size y vacuum cleaner bags. they were supposedly in stock but we couldn't find them. i came home and ordered them online from the hoover store (from whom i just received an email informing me that they are out of stock also).

pluto's current favorite resting spot.

cricket and zuzu playing with a broccoli spear they confiscated from the compost bowl.

monday afternoon one o'clock

the old guard meets for tea

 carol, janet and i had tea this morning at la bergamot cafe, a place where we often met in the past to discuss the december craft fair, which wasn't mentioned once amongst everything else we talked about. janet still has a fifteen year old making the rounds of the homeschooling activities, but carol and i are out of the picture. janet is not even sure if there is a craft fair this year. she thinks they changed the order and topic of the monthly meetings as the events coordinator has not been in touch with her. i think they just have a new events coordinator who is clueless about getting in touch with past meeting organizers. ah well . . it's not my concern this year! in the photo above, carol is showing janet a special dress she found in a thrift store. since janet is a costume designer, she thought she might be able to use it for a show. she also brought with her today a bag full of elegant sweaters and a brass belt buckle . . i think several of the items were from her own closets.

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i put up a post about my visit in connecticut with my cousin maria on september 12th. you can see it here.

 good-bye september . .

hello october!

highline walk with chanda

 the morning sunshine lifted my spirits just a little from my initial missing morgana feelings and i thought it would be a good day for a walk on the high line.

 the high line is always busy these days as we get so many tourists. today it was about 35 degrees and since it's february, the tourist scene was quiet. that made me happy. i like that people enjoy touring our city, but without any downtime it can be stressful. we also deal with a lot of construction on the high line. when it first opened we had spectacular views of the hudson river, but with a new building going up, there will only be one peek of the river between the whitney museum and it's northern neighbor (which i think is a holdover from meatpacking days, which i think is peter luger. you can read an eater article about it here.

  thankfully, a glimpse of the empire is still available!

 looking down on tenth avenue and twentieth street in chelsea. we'll walk up that street to the northwest corner of ninth avenue where la bergamote cafe is. (chanda reminisced about meeting my nephew adam here several years ago. that was a fun visit with him! you can read the blog post here. actually, that was a later visit . . the one she is remembering is here. if you compare the pictures, you can see the northwest corner of tenth avenue minus the apartment building that chanda is standing before. i guess it used to be a parking garage.)

 general theological seminary occupies the block on twentieth and twenty first streets between ninth and tenth avenues. they have a beautiful campus of old red brick buildings and beautiful oak trees.

 there are also really lovely apartment buildings and townhouses on twentieth street. chelsea is such a lovely neighborhood and is also home to the old estate of clement clark moore who wrote, twas the night before christmas. i love imagining the poem taking place every christmas eve at a house on twenty first street, not far from the small children's park on tenth avenue dedicated to the author.

at la bergamote i had the eggs benedict and a cup of coffee and chanda had mushroom scrambled eggs and a cappucino. it was so nice to be there.