nature | And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, August 3, 2025. Today Elliot and I spent a day walking through nature’s bounty at the Bronx Botanical Garden, located at 2900 Southern Boulevard. We took the subway instead of driving there and having to worry about parking the car. We went there at the invitation of our Amherst friends “Laura” and “Richard” who were coming in to spend some time with Laura’s cousin, “Albert,” who hails from New Jersey. Albert is disabled and he had his attendant “Kelly” and his wife “Bette” drive him to the Garden. The exhibit we were all interested in seeing was Van Gogh’s Flowers that captures the many multifaceted flowers that constituted some of the artist’s most indelible paintings.

We were all supposed to have met by 12, so we set the alarm for 8:45 a.m. and naturally got up before the alarm. Today marked the second day that the tenants in the building had issues with water pressure due to some mechanical malfunction in the pumps or whatever is responsible for delivering the right measure of pressure through the pipes. Luckily, we still had some water and I was able to take an attenuated shower. We decided to have breakfast outside, so that we could use the bathroom instead of relying on the toilet in the apartment to not do its intended job. And here I just watched Netflix’s special on the doomed 2013 Carnival cruise where toilets failed to flush altogether and passengers had to resort to defecating in biohazard bags. Yuck! I know, too much information, too much information!

Anyway, we walked to Pink Forest on Austin Street and had something (I had a ham and cheese omelet while Elliot had a vegetable sandwich) to tide us over until lunch at the Garden.

We then walked over to the subway to wait for the E to take us to 7th Avenue, where we then transferred to the uptown D train and got off at Bedford Park Boulevard. The train ride took all of an hour before we came to our stop. As we exited the station, I looked for signs pointing to the Garden and found a small sign saying to exit the station to the left. When we got outside, I thought we were walking in the correct direction until I stopped a young girl lost in listening to music on headphones who couldn’t answer where the Garden. It was then that a woman overhearing my question stuck her head out of a second-floor window and pointed us in the right direction. That is who we need to guide us in the right direction: a woman in an apartment building listening to us from a second-story window. I find it very New York-ish. Only in New York then!

We made a left and here were clearly posted signs telling us we were walking in the right direction and that our destination was just eight blocks ahead. We must have arrived close to 12 and I looked for Laura and Richard at the front of the Garden, but they weren’t there. So I called her and she said she was at the other entrance to the Garden and that we needed to walk there after buying our tickets. We were at the Mosholu Parkway entrance, not at the Southern Boulevard entrance, so we made our way through the park, past the reflecting pool, and to the other entrance, where we now saw Laura and Richard.

We hugged and embraced and then waited for Laura’s cousin to arrive. We didn’t have to wait long, as Laura soon recognized her cousin’s car. Kelly was waving out of the car so we all walked to it and introduced ourselves to Albert and the others.

In all, I think we stayed at the site for about 3-and-a-half hours, if you include lunch at the Pine Tree Cafe. We were a little disappointed to discover our admission ticket did not give us access to the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory in which everything was inside. There were so many acres and acres of plants and flowers that we could only see that much, given how warm it was in the sun. Of course, I would forget to use sunscreen on my skin today.

There was a tram running through the Garden, but we discovered that it wasn’t wheelchair accessible, so we had to eschew taking it. Therefore, we just used our feet to get around and I feel we barely scratched the surface of seeing mostly everything in the Garden. Maybe this means that we can return to the site in the fall or early spring when it’s not so hot.

One highlight of our visit today was the opportunity to take watercolors and a palette and to draw a picture of nature on a small piece of paper. This was provided in some pavilion near a lake with turtles swimming in it. Laura took the plunge, so to speak, while Elliot and I were picture shy. Sadly, I have no talent in that area and have always known it.

When it was time to call it a day, we walked Kelly, Bette, and Albert to their car in the lot, saying goodbye. We then walked to Laura and Richard’s car at another locus point in the vast parking lot, whereupon Laura gave us a little bag sporting maple syrup and Laura’s own special brand of chocolate cookies. I can’t wait to sample them later or tomorrow. They also drove us to the nearest subway stop, so we didn’t have to walk those eight blocks back to the D. We were very grateful for that.

Now we just took the subway back to 7th Avenue and then transferred to the E once more. In that time (the trip back just consumed a little over 65 minutes or so), I was able to finish Edmund White’s Hotel de Dream, just one of White’s many novels he wrote over five decades.

I enjoyed this reimagining of American literary phenomenon Stephen Crane’s last days wasting away at the young age of twenty-eight from tuberculosis. The novel deals with his relationship with his wife Cora and presents a novel within a novel, as Crane feverishly dictates the story of a married banker named Theodore Koch who falls in love with a young male prostitute named Elliott. Crane called this story The Painted Boy after the mascara the 16-year-old wears to attract male customers. Even though Crane was patently heterosexual, it is pointed out that his early days as a journalist sensitized him to the plight of the poor, and it was quite possible that he did meet such a lad in his days wandering the lower bowels of Manhattan. And it is possible that Crane originally planned the book as a companion piece to Maggie, Girl of the Streets which is obviously about a female prostitute.

Anyway, it’s getting late here, so now I can move on to another book, this time one of nonfiction. This one is called Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of Modern Empire. I saw this book at this new Kim’s Video store in Brooklyn, and I just ordered it on Amazon two days ago, and it just arrived today.

Oh, good news: our water pressure issue was resolved by the time we got back from our visit to the Garden. Even though we met a neighbor by CVS on Queens Boulevard as we got out of the station who informed us that things were still the same, so maybe it got repaired just about the time we returned to the apartment after seeing her. Who knows? All I know is that I won’t have to use the bathroom at the Austin House Diner tomorrow. Boy, is that a relief!

Have a good week, everyone.

And so it went!