3rd House Journal

Bay Windows

The brownstone residences in Boston's Back Bay and Beacon Hill neighborhoods maintain some lovely window box displays. In summer, they spill over with impatiens, petunias, and primroses; trail tiny daisies, lobelia, and ivy; sprout coleus and caladium, geraniums and dracaena spikes. In fall, they transition to mums and fountain grass, Indian corn and miniature pumpkins, tiny asters and ornamental kale.

Since they always look perfectly maintained, we wondered when the owners had time to keep them watered and deadheaded and trimmed, especially given how difficult to reach some of them are. Then one day we saw a landscaper planting the fall displays in the building around the corner and we realized that professionals were probably most often involved.

I used to plant window boxes and a half-barrel at my condo in Grafton. Far from the tony neighborhoods of Boston, it didn't matter if the petunias got weedy, the geraniums wilted, or the cosmos were an entirely wrong choice for container gardening. It was my little patch of garden, an attempt to bloom where I was planted.

Halloween in the City

[Store window, Newbury St, Boston; 10/31/09]

Halloween is supposed to be the time when the veil between the spirit and physical worlds is thin, the ghostly or ghastly becoming more visible to the living. That's why I liked this spectral image of a mannequin peering out through a headless silhouette all "decorated" with yellow fall foliage reflected from the street below. 

 

D spotted the window display and pointed it out to me on Saturday morning as we walked back from breakfast. We'd eaten at the Trident bookstore on Newbury St where we were seated by an apparent sheep (white cotton balls stuck all over her shirt) and waited on by a young woman wearing a bouncy skirt and 60s-style sweater set that we took to be a Mad Men theme. Later on, we saw an occasional odd sight such as a box of popcorn walking down Boylston St. At other times, we found ourselves asking whether this or that person was wearing a costume or whether it was just a fashion statement. Or, Does that guy have a really prodigious 'fro or is that a wig? No, I think that really is a homeless guy...

By evening, more Halloween revelers could be spotted on their way to parties or clubs, dapper vampires and bewitching witches and the like. Alas we had to leave mid-evening so D could drive me home and himself back to town to finish packing up for his early morning departure on an annual trip with the guys. The ghosts and goblins in my neighborhood were already heading home with their loot when I got home. Though I didn't have candy this year (in fact, I haven't given out candy at the door since I left Grafton, being out and about elsewhere every October 31), I knew I wouldn't miss out on all the sugary chocolate as my colleagues would be bringing in a large supply of leftover candy this week, and they did.

Currency

[On the Commonwealth Avenue Mall; 10/31/09]

Mischievous winds tuck fallen leaves into our pockets.
We give them to sales clerk thinking it's money,
pull them from behind our ears like magic tricks.
They turn up between the pages of the newspaper,
in the cupboard among the tea cups,
scattering across the floor like mice.
The overnight rains will subdue them,
plaster them onto streets and sidewalks.
Then they'll dry up and blow away,
only their tannin imprints left to surprise us.

Boston Autumn

[Public Garden, near Arlington St; 10/25/09]

The fall foliage seemed to be near peak in Boston this weekend. While Saturday was a bit gloomy and downpours overnight threatened to pull all the leaves off the trees, Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day, bringing everyone out onto the streets and into the parks.

Running late this morning, so I'll just leave you with some photos of the season. See more in my Boston Fall Flickr set.

[Geese on the Esplanade Lagoon]

[Pumpkins, Deluca's market on Charles St]

Autumn's leave-taking

[George Washington statue, Public Garden, Boston; 4pm, 10/10/09]

The leaves were just beginning to turn in Boston this weekend, although the foliage map is showing that we're just reaching peak, or at peak, or just fading. As Lorianne has been writing, more than a season, fall here is mostly a brief transitional period between summer and winter, something to remember after the leaves have fallen and the monochrome of winter sets in. Although all of November and most of December are still officially part of autumn, somehow once the leaves have fallen, it hardly seems like "fall" any more. But for now we do have this brief lovely interlude to enjoy the full autumn end of the color wheel, and indeterminate temperatures where the sun's rays some days still impart enough warmth to afford a mere light sweater or open jacket.

[Red maple leaves, Public Garden]

On this morning's gray and drizzly drive to work, I was nearly fooled by the sunny brightness of a yellow-leafed maple into thinking the clouds were breaking. Pinch runners for the benched sun, yellow maples make good utility players of the season's close. 

Yesterday on a lunchtime walk, I saw a fat, copper-banded woolly bear caterpillar plodding its way across the street in search of some cozy overwintering spot. It reminded me we'll soon don our own fat woolly coats and spend time shuffling between our own cozy overwintering spots.

October in the city

[From "75 Chestnut"; Sunday, 10/4/09]

After a mostly rainy-drizzly weekend, the sun broke through on Sunday afternoon. We'd holed up most of Saturday evening watching the first three episodes of Mad Men, which a work colleague lent to me. Neither of us had watched the series and it was quickly easy to see why it's been critically acclaimed. For one thing, the sets and costume details from the 50s are amazing. Then there's the 1950s sensibility - the unabashed ogling of secretaries in the office and overall attitude towards women, the ubiquitous cigarette smoking and cocktails, the chafing of a number of characters in their straitjacketed social roles, not to mention good writing and acting. Fascinating.

Anyway, many hours of couch-potato life, however entertaining, began to wear a bit thin, so it was nice to get outside on Sunday. We wandered through the Public Garden, where the unseen elves that dig up and replant the flower beds with new seasonal displays had installed October-themed hardy orange mums and ornamental kale. The pumpkin crop in the area was a near-complete washout with the June-July rains, so the mums were a perfect substitute.

 

We ended up at 75 Chestnut, a favorite little restaurant in the Beacon Hill neighborhood (I've been only once before, after the Beacon Hill Art Walk in June), snagging a table in the increasingly sunny front window (see top photo). I think it's one of the best brunch meals I've ever had (it's off the menu, no steaming trays brunch buffet). We also got to keep an eye on the Patriot's game first half, which was unobtrusively, at least from our vantage point, on the screen over the bar. Equally unobtrusive was the jazz bass player in the far corner of the dining room, laying down a mellow urban background note to the scene.

[Omelette w/fingerling potatoes & veggies; Eggs Benedict w/sausages]

Other scenes in the city on Sunday afternoon...

[Photo shoot in the Public Garden]

[Berklee students jam outside JP Licks on Newbury St]

Jamaica Pond, late September

[Jamaica Pond, Jamaica Plain, Boston; 9/26/09; click to see larger]

Before heading back into town on Saturday after the Jamaica Plain Open Studios event, we walked along Jamaica Pond, part of Boston's Emerald Necklace, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead (who also designed New York's Central Park). I've blogged about walking around Jamaica Pond before (see A Fine Kettle of Fish), which I visited last February as well as the prior January (photos here) when the pond was frozen. This time, just before dusk on a late September afternoon, there were a couple of sailboats and a rowboat on the pond. As in winter, joggers and dog-walkers circled the mile and a half around the pond. We noticed one gull standing on a rock at the waters edge near a sleeping duck. Then we saw that there was an entire encampment of sleeping ducks camouflaged in the dirt along the shoreline. Had they designated the gull as sentinel? Moving in a bit closer, we watched one duck, head snugged onto its back, opening and closing an eye on us, so we moved on to leave them to their naps. (And, I might add, heading home for our own.)

JP Likes

[Backlit flower, Jamaica Plain, Boston; 9/26/09]

On Saturday afternoon, we took the T out to the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston for the JP Open Studios event, featuring a daunting 200+ artists spread out around the area. After getting off the T at Green St, map in hand, we headed towards the more familiar surroundings of Centre St to begin our exploration, arriving at the original JP Licks ice cream shop, a Boston-area favorite. We did forgo ice cream at that point (though we hit up the Newbury St JP Licks later in the evening), and did a bit of art jewelry browsing at Fire Opal gallery, but then we walked by Bukhara Indian bistro and couldn't pass up the warm spicy smells emanating from their brunch tables. Yum.

So, after that delay, we set out again in search of artists, passing this mural off Burroughs St, among the many murals in the neighborhood.

Luckily, we hit a treasure trove of artists all in one place at the Eliot School art school, inside the old schoolhouse building and outside on the grounds. I ended up buying a shimmering blue handpainted silk velvet scarf from Heather Kidson (she has a few scarfs here, though not the velvety ones at the moment).

We also talked to some other interesting artists, including Lisa Goren, who paints pieces inspired from her trip many years ago to Antarctica. They reminded me of the polar landscapes and Polar Attractions exhibit I saw at the Peabody Essex Museum recently (the PEM put her on their artist links list for the exhibit once she found out about it). Interestingly, when I asked her what she painted before she went to Antarctica she said, "nothing!" She only started painting six years ago. She's planning a series of 300 whale bones, which I think corresponds to the number of bones in a whale. Since she also paints kelp and other features of the Antarctic landscape, that's a lot of paintings! I'm always fascinated by the obsessive artists.

Another artist who had work that reminded me of a PEM exhibit I'd seen was Amy Hitchcock, who does assemblages - shadow boxes and collages - that reminded me of Joseph Cornell's oddball pieces. She lit up when I mentioned him (she went to see the Cornell exhibit twice) and showed us how she made some of her pieces, scanning Victorian postcards, such as one of Paris, and combining them into the assemblages.

Finally, we talked to Barney Levitt, whose work D was particularly taken with. Many of his paintings were "narrative still lifes" - or still lifes with a playful or dreamlike attitude. On his website, he says of his figurative work, "they will make you smile or wonder" - and many of the still lifes did as well.

It was all very creatively inspiring.

Sunday in the Park

[Boston Common, around 5pm on Sunday; 9/20/09]

The city was bustling this weekend. After the relative quiet of summer, when the students are gone and the natives head to the Cape on weekends and we had the place to ourselves (well, besides the tourists), the sidewalks were suddenly crowded with boisterous students yet to buckle down to studying and with reenergized urbanites back from summer holidays.

It helped that it was a beautiful weekend weatherwise. Saturday evening in the North End (traditionally Boston's "little Italy"), where we had dinner, people waiting for tables spilled out into the streets all but drooling for the smells of garlic and spices. Luckily we had reservations at Euno (D was taking me for a belated birthday dinner), at a nice cozy table downstairs away from the noisy hubbub permeating the upstairs dining room through its open front windows. It was a good recommendation from friends (see Lorianne's photo taken in July) -- good food and lovely atmosphere. We saved room for dessert, but decided to skip dessert there in favor of one of the many cafes that serve good cappuccinos and cannolis on Hanover St. In my younger days, I used to double-park on Hanover late at night after clubbing with friends so we could get a strong espresso for our ride home. Alas I am reduced to decaf, but also sans car, so we could walk off the food, at least as far as the nearest T station to get home.

[Studying by the duck pond, Public Garden; 9/20/09]

On Sunday, the streets were relatively quiet in the afternoon during the Patriot's football game (unfortunately, not worth staying indoors for), but when it was over around 4:00, the gorgeous weather lured anyone who'd stayed in back outdoors again. People strolled or stretched out in the parks, and we sat on a hill on the Common for quite awhile, treasuring the warm day, knowing that before long it would all be covered in snow and ice.

[Public Garden, around 6pm; 9/20/09]

[Duck pond, Public Garden; around 6pm]

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It's officially fall now, folks! Happy autumnal equinox. :-)

[Boston Common Frog Pond, closed for the season]

Down by the river...

[From the MIT boathouse; 9/6/9]

...down by the banks of the River Charles (from Dirty Water)

We spent a lot of time down by the Charles River, on one side or the other, this weekend. I realized I'd missed watching the sailboats on the river this summer, so we made a point of walking down to the esplanade on Saturday. Then on Sunday we walked across from Boston to Cambridge to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus in search of their public art. The Boston Globe had featured an article on the art and architecture at MIT, so on that suggestion, we armed ourselves with a campus art map and headed over the bridge.

[View from the Mass. Ave. bridge; John Hancock building]

It was very windy on Sunday, making the sunny day deceptively chilly -- and sending the sailboats dipping this way and that. Which was was I thought of when we got to the Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center on campus. The buildings' odd hodgepodge I'd seen in photos looked more interesting in person and reminded me of the dipping and bowing sailboats on the river, although I understand that it's supposed to signify the "freedom, daring, and creativity of the research that's supposed to occur inside it." The bright sunlight played off the many reflecting surfaces like sunlight playing on water. We didn't get inside the Stata Center, which I hear is also quite interesting in design. The buildings, alas, have some problems, including leaks (MIT sued Gehry and the construction company over it). Anyway, they were irresistible for photographing.

[Ray and Maria Stata Center at MIT]

We also trekked all over campus, finding Jacques Lipchitz sculptures and IM Pei buildings among our finds, plus a side trip across Memorial Drive to the MIT boathouse, and a stop in the student center to refuel at Ana's Taqueria. Then we headed back to the city for a rest before heading back out to see the sunset over the river at a little after 7pm.

[Scullers rowing on the Charles River, sunset; 9/6/09]

...I love that dirty water
Oh, oh Boston you're my home.

Speaking of dirty water, we spotted a couple of people swimming off the docks on the river Sunday evening. A passerby was shaking his head and I said, "Do they have any idea what's in that water?" He said, "They're French." Sure enough, the two young guys swimming were speaking French, though I couldn't pick up from the distance whether they were Canadians or French. Clearly they weren't from around here.

I do hear that the river is a lot cleaner than it used to be, and probably reasonably safe for swimming. An older Vietnamese couple were fishing off the dock, catching what appeared to be fat sunfish that they were no doubt planning to cook for themselves.

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See more photos from the weekend here.