I love New York City

Like love

I would move my wife and children there in a minute if we had a gajillion dollars

I love everything about it

Including the large rat that ran across our path on our way to supper in the tony, quiet, and decidedly un-hip UES

But, mostly, I love it because of the people

The people we were scheduled to meet

Godfamily

They live in London

They used to live in New York

We don’t see them enough

We were going for Godmama’s birthday party on Friday night

And the other people I love

My high school pals who live there, too

I love them

Like love

A few weeks before the trip, I sent out another APB to the crew

A few emails, texts

Cocktail hour scheduled

I could only meet for any hour or so before the birthday party, said party being the whole reason we were there

Arranged

Done

Planned

Time and place appointed

So, I left my wife and children in SoHo on a Friday afternoon after the best lunch visiting with the Godfamily in NoHo

After we had gone further downtown in SoHo

To Glossier Flagship in Lower Manhattan

That’s a whole other crazy story

Anyway, I walked from Canal Street up through that benighted bastion of consumerism, over to Broadway, back through NoHo, past Grace Church and The Strand Bookstore, around Union Square, then up to Gramercy Park and then into The Freehand Hotel, prearranged meeting spot

I would love to have access to Gramercy Park, from the Krom Moerasje, little crooked swamp

Because it’s beautiful

And private

I put my phone through the fence to grab that shot

Hope I don’t get a fine from the Gramercy Park Association

But, from basically Canal Street, t’was a hike

Glad the weather was perfect

My AirPods played playlists of music from high school

Lots of music from high school

Had to get my mind right for people who have known me for over thirty years

Earlier in the day, I had seen one of those meeting us at the hotel

Hadn’t changed a bit

As I walked through Union Square, I received a text from him

“Will be a minute or two late”

Another text from our organizer, “Running a little late, getting on the train in BK”

Another text from another friend, “Where are you?”

So, we all met up and visited and laughed and laughed and commiserated and laughed and told stories and laughed and laughed some more

I love these people

 

They say they love me

I pay them handsomely

We pick up right where we left off every time

But we never really leave off

We never do

It’s great to be connected

Our myriad conversations shan’t be repeated here

Two members of the class behind ours joined us, too

We lived in the same dorm

Love them almost as much as my own classmates

They had to get to Brooklyn for Peter Hook’s concert

New Order indeed

As the clocked ticked and the sky darkened, I checked my watch

I had to be on East End Ave by 6:30

No way I was making that

In addition to the two heading to see Mr. Hook, there were others who had to go to the next event

What the City doesn’t sleep when I arrive?

One of us had to go on back to BK

One of us had to be at another party

One of us had to be in the same neighborhood as the Mayor whom they all despise

The rest were going out to supper

Finally, the time came

“Want to meet us later?”

“I don’t want you to leave”

“Can’t we keep you here?”

“Let’s go”

“Let’s go, then”

“And, yet they do not move”

“Isn’t that Waiting for Godot or something?”

“Ham, you’re gonna be late”

“I know, but it’s o.k.”

“Know where you’re going?”

“Sure, 23rd street to the 6 then up to 86th street, then walk on over to East End”

“You got it”

“Need a Metrocard?”

“I have one”

“You’re not a tourist”

“I am such a tourist”

“You hate SoHo; you’re not a tourist”

“You’re going to a party on East End Avenue; you’re not a tourist”

“Trust me; I’m a tourist”

So, we hugged

I hugged them all

Men and women

Equally loved

I walked downstairs and then out into the cooling New York evening and over to the station

As I swiped my Metrocard, I thought, “Damn, I love those people”

As I switched the Spotify station to a lengthy playlist of a certain nostalgic band, I began to cry

Really cry

Like crazy cry

Just full on blubbering

Right there beneath 23rd St

Runny nose crying

Glad I have a handkerchief crying

Crying through the rushing wind and squealing brakes as the 6 pulled into the station

I really stepped on the train heaving

As I held the metal pole held by countless riders, no one paid me one wit of attention

Oh, look, crazy dude crying on the 6

After

All

It

Is

New

York

About the time we rolled into the 51st station, a nice lady standing next to me put her hand on my arm

I took out my AirPods

She said in a lilting Islands accent, “You o.k., Sir?”

She had on medical scrubs

“No, Ma’am. I just left a group of people whom I adore and who adore me. I don’t get to see them enough. It hurts me to leave them.”

“Well, that’s a gift from Him,” she said as she pointed to the sky

More tears at that

Before she got off at the Hunter College Station, she stop and turned, patted me on the arm and said , “Well, good luck. Be glad you have friends.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You have no idea how glad I am”

By the time I got to 86th Street, at least I had stopped shaking

As I walked the five blocks toward the river, I started to smile and giggle at our conversations

They are all wicked smart

And funny

By the time I got to East End Avenue, I was fine

By the time I walked into the party, only my Guardian Angel on the train and I knew about my emotional outburst

She probably thought I was another tourist who had lost his mind in the City

The next day, I heard from another New Yorker classmate who now lives Upstate who said she would have come into the City had she known we were all gonna be together

Ooops

I told her about my crying on the train

Her reply, “Yep. We’ve all cried on the 6 before”

Arriving at my favorite garden store some twenty minutes before they opened, I had no choice but to proceed to the nearest Bojangles for a biscuit and some coffee

Had to

Duty bound

What else would I do early on a Saturday morning?

If you’re not familiar with Bojangles, then, well, you’re obviously not from this part of the world

Bojangles Chicken & Biscuits

Based out of of Charlotte, North Carolina

A Southeastern Staple

It’s Bo Time ™️

Highly recognizable branding

Yellows

Reds

Their biscuits are handmade every day

Magazines have published odes to them

Cajun Filet Biscuits have comforted many a hungover patron with buttermilk and flour and fat and thinly fried chicken breast dipped in hot sauce

Their coffee’s pretty great, too

On the morning in question, I had time to kill, so I went inside to place my order

The lady behind the counter precioused herself to me prior to my turn at the register

As the customer ahead of me finished his order she said, “Well, that’s $13.14. That’s fun to say, idn’t it? Thirteen, fourteen”

I thought so

The patron ahead of me didn’t respond

He smiled wanly

“It’ll be ready in a jif, dahlin,” she said to him

I smiled as I stepped up to the register

“May I please have a sausage and egg biscuit and a large coffee?”

“Oh, I love your manners! And, of course you can, dahlin,” she said

Smiling still, she said, “Well that will be Six dollars and Sixty Six…oh..no..no…no..no…no…no.”

Her countenance changed

Furrowed brown

Worried concern

“Dahlin, I am NOT making change with Satan’s number. I am sanctified. Can you order something else?”

She was not joking

Her eyes were wild with fear

Wild

Knowingly, I replied, “Well, get behind me, Satan. Let’s start over then”

“Now we’re talking, dahlin” she replied. “Now we’re talking!”

She all but high fived me

Too blessed to add to her stress

Should always stick with the Cajun filet and not be led astray by the serpent

Because, much like my new friend at Bojangles, I am not making change with the devil’s number

 

In honor and memory of my neighbor Don Jones, who loved to work in his own plot of land

In a most tricked out 1970’s color scheme – harvest golds, burnt oranges, avocado greens – a cross stitched saying hung in my maternal grandparents’ hallway leading to the bedrooms

My mother had cross stitched the saying, had framed it, and had presented it to my grandparents, who, at the time, were pretty great gardeners.

Who plants the seed beneath the sod and waits to see believes in God. Anon.

Faith in its truest form

Nathan, whose last name I know not, helped them weekly. He was a wizard in the garden

Really, I never knew Nathan’s last name. Still don’t. He worked for my grandparents, my great aunt and uncle, and some of their friends

Nathan knew how to turn a spade

Green thumbs on both hands

On both sides of my family, I come from a long line of amateur tillers of soil who love to get their hands dirty, who love to see the flowers blossom, who love to see the bulbs produce, who love to plant

I think my European antecedents were all peasants, vassals, serfs, no matter what the family histories may say

I love to work in the dirt

For me, it is a matter of faith to plant, till, sow, hoe, harvest

God put Adam and Eve in a Garden

Jesus is the Vine; we are branches

My Great Grandmother Gladys Jones, who lived in Bishopville, South Carolina, had a garden with roses, daffodils, flox, Queen Anne’s lace, azaleas, spirea, tea olives, a beautiful bed of pink oxalis in front of her porch. Old timey plants

She knew her stuff

On a visit to our house in Beaufort, she turned to my father, her grandson, whom she adored and said, “George, I see you have a wisteria. Hmmmm”

The wisteria came out

My great aunt and uncle Kemp and Rachel Kempson had a beautiful garden with foxgloves.  Aunt Rachel kept egg shells in water to provide calcium to certain plants

My great aunt and uncle Bob and Laura Thomas trained smilax to grow in what were essentially hanging baskets on the side of their piazza in Ridgeway, South Carolina

My maternal grandfather grew amazing tomatoes every year

Bumper crops year after year

He had the touch

My maternal grandmother nourished a flowering quince whose original progenitor was from her grandparents’ home in Virginia

My father is still nourishing a portion of that quince today

She also tended well her myriad camellias

If anyone knows where I can find an Irene Coker variegated red and white bloomer, let me know

I like to think I have inherited the green thumb

Nothing makes me happier than working in our garden

It’s small

It’s urban

It’s become a Charleston style garden after some 15 years of work

T. Hunter McEaddy designed it for us

Landscape Architect that he is

I grew up watching my parents plant and tend, mow and rake, water and fertilize

Same with all of their neighbors

I swear Beaufort was filled with gardeners, and with helpers in those gardens

African American men who knew how to do

Jack Haynes

Sam Cole

And, again, men whom we addressed only by their first names: Arthur, Julius, Willie

Not appropriate, but it was the time in which I was reared

Jack Haynes helped my parents from time to time and other families around Beaufort

He was a bird

One Saturday as Jack Haynes was helping my father with some yard project, my father broached the subject of another family Mr. Haynes helped on weekends

“Jack,” he called, “you think Miz So-and-So is a little crazy?”

“Crazy?” he asked, “Crazy as shit!”

We have never forgotten that in my family

Crazy as shit

She was. But she was smart enough to hire Jack Haynes to help out in her yard

I like to think I paid attention to the Jack Haynes of the world

Additionally, I love reading books about plants and gardening

Latin names really help in learning about a plant and how to care for it

Those names are in gardening books, too

Books such as

The Gardens at Hatfield by the Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury

Penelope Hobhouse on Gardening by Penelope Hobhouse

Obvs

Gardens of Historic Charleston by James R. Cothran

The Charleston Gardener by Louisa Pringle Cameron

No amount of reading substitutes for doing, though

I can gauge the seasons by what I’m doing in the garden

Those of us who are diggers in the dirt are always looking at least two months ahead

Did I put the aluminum sulfate around the hydrangeas soon enough?

Did I add the Hollytone to the Meyer Lemon in time for there to be fruit?

Did I order the paper white bulbs?

Did I order the caladium bulbs?

Did I put the basil in enough sun?

Did I take out too much of the aspidistra?

Did I trim the all the suckers off the limbs of the crepe myrtles?

Did I dig out the lemon balm after it got too leggy?

I don’t want to over plant

A well-known gardener was once quoted as saying she had a fine garden, then she filled it with plants

Accordingly, I only make two annual pilgrimages to Hyam’s Garden Center on James Island

It is my Mecca

 

One trip to Hyam’s in mid-October

One trip to Hyam’s in mid-April

For the annuals

The pops of color

I will over plant a pot

Crowd it out

With flowers and greens and seasonal herbs

In October, it’s for pansies, violas, sweet alyssum, stock, foxgloves, delphiniums, snapdragons, parsley, rosemary, potting soil

In April, it’s for periwinkles, pintas, gomphrena, purple shield, million bells, basil, mint, oregano, cilantro, coleus, potting soil

The rotation changes

But not much

I plant 100 caladium bulbs in late April

All the same color of green and white

White Christmas

Every year

I hate change

I live in Charleston

 

I plant 40 or so daffodil bulbs in October

I am tending a Pink Perfection camellia that came from a cutting from my grandmother’s house in Camden, South Carolina

It’s taken about seven years to be almost two feet tall

I planted another camellia last year

That kind green bud

There are accidental problems in any garden

And in any life

Lambs ears burn up in our heat

Lavender plants, too

Even plants with full sun directions can use a little shade in our subtropical tending to tropical Zone 8

But, there are wonderful surprises in any garden

And in any life

For example, that Wandering Jew taken from a cutting from my in-laws has really taken over in that back corner

Its purple haired beauty spilled from the confines of its clay container and made a run for it, sprouting and colonizing all over

It will take over

We have had two trees taken out of our yard due to two named storms

More sunlight than ever

The grass actually grows

It’s a lot brighter

The yews we planted love it

Yew would, too

 

I may move my plumbago to give it more sun

The morning glory I run along our back fence every year adores the additional light

So, what’s your story, morning glory? I’m writing this one

Around Mother’s Day, our fence and arch are covered in Confederate jasmine that perfumes the whole yard

The most heady of smells

Around Hallowe’en, the two tea olives by the front porch perfume the whole yard

The most ephemeral of smells

 

 

 

I love to weed

I love to be covered in dirt

I love to sweat through the dirt

I love to cut back

I love to trim

I love to prune

I love to spread pine straw

It hides a myriad of sins

I love stand with the hose and water, air pods in place, music going

That cold beer at the end of a full day of yard work tastes so damned good

As the seasons change, it will be time to get to work in the yard

This year, I’m letting two planters become incubators for monkey grass with which I will eventually line a bed

I think I will cut back the hyndrangeas as they are getting kind of leggy

 

 

But what to put in those planters by the gate?

That’s the best part of being a digger of the dirt

Creativity

Following in the steps of the Old Master

Having a little faith