After months of not being able to walk in Central Park with my fosterdog because he was too dog reactive, the situation reverses. He's now come along with his training far enough to start exposing him to more dogs so we now take about four long walks a week- from 110th st to 80th st and back. He has mixed feelings about this new enterprise - half of him really likes all the interesting new stimuli, half of him is wound tight as a spring dealing with all these 'scary' dogs.
I, on the other hand am thrilled to be regularly immersed in the late autumn landscape. I watch gangs of birds feast on plump berries. I see Gingko foragers stooped to collect the foul smelling fruit that they prize. There is some pale yellow winter jasmine in bloom. The landscape is painted with a fairly broad range of colors still, there's greens and yellows and berry accents that keep the more sombre monochrome of dead leaves and stark branches in check.
Late Autumn Walks
Fruit leaves
I love Tangerines and I couldn't walk by a box of them in Chinatown, still with leaves intact without buying some. There's something that cognitively suggests freshness and ramps up the desirability for me when I see leaves on fruit- I want them more. I grew up climbing fruit trees as a kid and remember the smell of the leaves that sometimes had a faint suggestion of the fruit itself. When I see them now, it somehow refreshes this memory and I'm investing in more than just the fruit. They don't last too long either. They get dry and brittle fairly quickly so having them still green and supple is a good measure of how fresh the fruit is.
Fleeting Green
After it's abundance all summer, green in the fall garden, as it retreats becomes an interesting color accent. Not the blue cast of evergreens that start to become more apparent now as things around them die down, but the chlorophyll pigment of leaf greens that won't quite let go and insist on being part of an array of autumn hues. I love this palette of greens and browns, and all the colors in between, as you can probably tell from this site. It's a palette I want to bring indoors to sustain me through the winter months until it re emerges next spring. I just updated the about section with some new videos about the Arts and Craft movement- see how predominant this palette is in their work.
Persimmons
At this time of year, Persimmons are easily found on the streets of Chinatown, I always buy a few, not for their flavor so much as their looks. Such a beautiful color and shape- and that dried calyx on top- like a fine carving. I love to have a bowl of them just to look at. One reason the flavor is an issue is I often mistake the two kinds- Hachiya and Fuyu. The former you can't eat until they are completely ripe and the other you eat while its still fairly firm. I never remember which is which and bite into the acorn shaped hachiya and spit out its bitter tanin that lingers for hours. The photos above are fuyu. The tree is also beautiful- there's one at the Brooklyn Botanic.
Autumn Palettes
Autumn is a great time to go foraging for color palettes. I find color juxtapositions, pairings, and contrasts that surprise and inspire. Here are two good examples, a few remaining fiery orange leaves set against a dusty blue background, cris cossed with neutral branches and a dusty pink hydrangea separated from a vibrant blur of oranges by a range of leaf hues from green to yellow. Both of these have information for textile designs but I rarely use them that directly. Mostly its subconscious, the information composts and feeds something down the pike.
