Elevation seems to be a theme

Soon after Josh finished his trail race in the Alps, we found ourselves at our favourite burger joint in Chamonix. It's called Poco Loco and if you go there I highly recommend the Chèvre burger {it's worth it in cheese alone} and I think the other great one was called the Americano. It had seafood sauce on it-sounds peculiar, was great. 

It is so intriguing and joyful to watch the runners finish the race. They run through wild country. Sometimes it might just be them, the narrow trail and the sound of their own foot falls. They also find themselves in little groups running together for a while, sharing the highs and lows, keeping each other going/sane. The lovely thing about this race was the array of people from different countries. Sometimes people run together without speaking the same language, together in purpose.

When they finish the race they are given glory and an item-of-clothing-present, in this case a bright red vest. This, along with the unsettling amount of gear they run with makes it kind of obvious that they've just finished running and people stop to congratulate everyone. All very civil and generous. 

While we were eating our excellent burgers, a guy from the US started chatting, he was running the following day. This has been a long winded introduction into how I heard about the Brooklyn Grange. This guy's friend had been instrumental in pulling the project together in 2010. Basically, the Grange is an inner city roof top farming initiative. They have one acre in Queens and one and a half in Brooklyn, which is the one I visited. 

This farm, the largest of its kind is on top of the Navy Yards. They produce over 40, 000 pounds {about 18,000kg} per year. When I went there was spinach, kale, basil {green ands he pretty black kind}, various lettuces, a good variety of tomatoes and peppers, eggplant, ground cherries, carrot, raddish, a few chickens, bees and a couple of flowers!

They supply vegetables to restaurants, CSA members and directly to the public via weekly farmstands. They host Wednesday/Sunday dinners on the farm, inviting local chefs to cook up a storm. And roof top yoga, of course. 

The farm is open to visit on Wednesdays from 10am to 5pm they take you up every hour on the hour {last visit at 4pm}. They are good people, enthused, knowledgeable and also just figuring it out as they go, which is my very favourite kind. While I was there I met a Danish beekeeper who was volunteering for the month. I asked them if they needed an extra pair of hands on harvest days etc and they said that they actually have more help than they need at the moment which is so great. 

Go visit! The season is winding up so i think you can visit until the end of October brooklyngrangefarm.com

flowers in the sky

My ipad seems to be having issues uploading photos. I'm going to try again with this one, apologies for the storage photos last time on this post.

I am wandering back through photos and adventures I've had on this trip. I am currently in Brooklyn, we just finished a back to back wedding weekend which was beautiful and exhausting. It is wonderful to be working with flowers over here. 

This post goes back to a splendid handful of days we spent in Chamonix. We were there to see the Alps, see my boyfriend run an ultra marathon trail race through the Alps covering 119km and just over 27 hours of tenacity on his behalf and to look at flowers in the Alps{on my behalf}. 

The flowers adorn an incredible cafe called Chalet La Floria which is a strolling 50 minute hike up from Chamonix, a winding pine avenue which crosses little glacial rivers.

The Chalet was built by a couple about 20 years ago on a small outcrop 1337m above sea level. They brought in 4000 flowering plants including a riot of geraniums, dahlias, begonias, fuchsias, echinacea, sea holly, daisies and edelweiss. They still run the cafe now and have a great photo album of the build. They brought everything up by helicopter and four wheel drive. Such an ambitious and splendid dream realised. It was peaceful and incredibly beautiful up there. 

Walkin' the High Line

Traces of tracks 

Excellent avenues

This morning I caught the subway to manhattan and explored The High Line. This is the most wonderful space. It gave me that excellent joyous feeling where I walk around with a smile and I suspect people think I'm drunk-except for the ones who are also smiling and then we just nod at each other and sometimes I do an awkward single or double eye wink. Good times. 

Anyway, almost as soon as I mounted the steel stairs to this great park, a lovely local grandpa figure all in white {sun visor, glasses, shirt, shorts, socks, shoes all glowing white} started chatting to me and pointed out buildings that I would have missed because I often think that I only see plants and flowers wherever I am and my tunnel vision precludes me from seeing the rest. 

The High Line was a railway which until about 7 years ago was a reportedly unsightly spectacle that was lobbied to be torn down until some enterprising individuals noted the wild flowers growing on it and turned it into a privately funded park space. It is such a treat! It's right in the city but elevated enough that you are aware of the traffic sounds/busy life noises but you are removed enough that it is muted and kind of a nice reminder that you are in a wonderful landscaped garden walkway in the midst of the city. 

Great elements have been retained, original tracks peep through the greenery and are echoed by the lines in the wooden benches and steel embedded in the concrete paths. There are generously sized wooden sun lounges scattered throughout and great sculptures and viewing platforms. The whole walk is spectacular, a seamless blending of old and new both in the park and in its surrounds. It is currently about 1 mile long with ongoing work being done to expand. 

What a space!

Denmark

Copenhagen is somewhere I've wanted to visit for a little while. Danish design gets me every time. We had three days in the city which wasn't enough. We did some good wandering, I adored the Glyptotek and Nyhavn with all the coloured pitched roofs. The Botanic Gardens were great, somehow it was my first time in a big glass house---> it was a really big glass house, monster palms and ferns and banana trees. There were also some great orchid houses and succulent areas but sadly they were closed so I could only see a little portion of the splendour. There were lovely lakes and water lilies growing well so we had a small nap in the sun on a wooden dock that made its way onto the lake. 

Danish people are so friendly and warm. Some dear friends from Norway came a visiting which was really nice, they were staying in an apartment so we had a little dinner party and pretended to be locals [one of my favourite things is having small dinner parties in foreign countries-so far I've only had them in a couple of countries, but trying to have more]. 

Biking in Copehagen was great, the city {and country} could not be more flat and the bike lanes go right through the city. I wandered along the canals one evening and saw about 7 streets in a row with the most charming houses ever. They were an old slate grey brick version of the colourful houses that I think most people associate with Danish housing, terrace style. They all had tiny front gardens which were mostly wild and wonderful, cobbled narrow streets, small wooden forts for kids to play in built on the sidewalk and long picnic style park tables and benches outside lots of the houses. The tables were really sweetly placed between two houses which made me think/hope that the neighbours probably get together for meals/drinks every now and then and have little street parties. It made me really happy. 

We then went north to Aalborg to see some old friends who a Danish, lived in Australia for 20 years and moved back to Denmark about 15 years ago. They are such lovely family. We used to go on all sorts of adventure holidays with them when they lived in Australia and it was truly wonderful to see them again, look at funny old photos and talk about all the things you do with dear old friends. 

Along the way we stayed two nights in a tiny village of about 10 houses. The house we stayed in was one of those insanely lovely Scandinavian one room and a lofted bed type arrangements that tears at my heart strings. It was so simple and beautiful. One day I will stop hoarding things and I will live simply. It was a full moon when we were there and the wheat farms were striking as the sun set [slowest sunset ever] the wheat turned golden and the sky was deep flinty blue grey. It was kind of perfect. One farmer had also grown a little plot of dahlias.

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