Bailey Arboretum : A Walk in the Woods

    The one-time summer estate of Brooklyn financier Frank Bailey (whose fountain you may be familiar with), Bailey Arboretum sounds too good to be true: 40-odd acres of green peace on the North Shore, open free to the public, with free parking, 7 days a week the year around. And you are welcome to bring a picnic lunch and your dog (on a leash.)

    This is where we went to see Dawn Redwoods on Long Island. ("Surprise! We're not extinct.") And let me tell you, they are something to see:

I found it more or less impossible to frame a shot encompassing a whole specimen. Maybe next time. The ones growing on the estate here were planted from seeds collected in 1947.

 

Only seven acres are landscaped; the rest consists of rambling woodland paths, none of which are very interesting in late August. Still, they're shady and peaceful:

 

 

There is a dedicated children's garden area, and a small number of aviaries housing injured or otherwise-compromised rescued birds. They have a couple of crows (American and Fish), several red-tailed hawks, and a few owls (Great Horned and Barred).

 

This owl is blind in one eye.

 

    In my opinion, late August is a cruel month in the great outdoors. The birds are quiet, the insects are loud, and the pond scum is at its peak. So I'll be interested to see what this place is like in other seasons. The redwoods are deciduous!

    It surprised me to read that Bailey declares itself "the only accredited arboretum on Long Island and in the New York Metropolitan area." Say what now?  Planting Fields State Historic Park is a pretender? Bayard Cutting is a wannabe? Apparently they haven't applied for accreditation, which is a designation bestowed by these folk. Even more interesting, there are levels of accreditation, such that a golf course or a cemetery may be granted the status of an arboretum, albeit at a low level. (Maybe there's a tax benefit involved in doing so?) The page listing the levels of accreditation has links to lists of arboreta that meet each level. (Bailey is a Level 2.)

    So I'll be studying that list later, looking for more places to go. In the meantime, why don't you take a walk in the Long Island woods?

 

As I Was Saying

 

 

We closed out 2013 with an outdoor hockey game in Huntington, on what had to be the warmest December day on record. This is our capable young nephew in the center there, defending his team's goal. Victory was theirs.

And now it's the New Year!

It was a beautiful day for a walk out to the Fire Island lighthouse today; I think it was our first since 2011, the Year of the Iceberg. There were no icebergs today, but it was lovely.
And there was hot chocolate.

Come late afternoon we saw American Hustle, which might be the best movie I'm going to see all year. Seriously, I might have blown it all on the first day of the year, because that film was off the charts. (Is that still a saying?)

 

Nick Lowe at the Boulton Center

                                                                                   

 

Nick Lowe came to the YMCA Boulton Center in Bay Shore last night, the second stop in his latest tour after opening in Philadelphia. Traveling light, he was, with just the one guitar.  I'm not a musician, I don't even play one on TV, but he sounds great to me, especially for a guy who's been singing for five decades now.

The only unfamiliar tune he played was from his upcoming Christmas album (which might be the first Christmas album I ever buy, as it promises to be "The kind of record that gives vulgar, tawdry commercialism a good name!"  

At the end, with hundreds of his own songs left unsung, he borrowed his second encore (as it seems he borrowed his eyeglasses) from his pal Declan M., but his voice is the point, and it delivers.

A New Leaf

Oh, look at that; I've been away so long Blogger has gone and changed the dashboard on me. Well, let's see if we can't get this party (re)started. The pond lily above posed for me at Longhouse Preserve on a recent Saturday roadtrip I took with my brother. We visited the South End Cemetery in East Hampton, where the caretaker powered down his weedwhacker long enough to talk about some of the interments and gossip a little about former locals like Lee Krasner, for whom he provided landscaping services. We also hit a couple of tag sales and stopped at the Big Duck, in addition to strolling Longhouse, which combines gardens with outdoor sculpture. Then we headed back and to the north, broke the fast with the Bode clan, and finally headed home. Stella Luna put on two hundred and twenty-five miles! (She's usually a homebody, but she loves to get out and kick up her hubcaps sometimes.)  

DeBaun Is DeGone

It was just about two years ago that Camp DeBaun, an Oceanside day camp, closed its doors after 58 years of family ownership. There's no reason I should be nostalgic about it; I never went to camp there, nor even knew anybody who had. Still, I had occasion to drive past it quite often, and the shady plot of colorful, well-kept buildings was a landmark. Plenty of other folks remember it quite fondly, (it has a Facebook page, naturally) and I hope they took all the pictures they needed to before yesterday, which is when I snapped this one. You can just about see the camp name on the blue building to the right. I saw the big earth-movers as I drove past on my way to the nursery, pulling up great chunks of brush like awkward dinosaurs. It does seem a shame that so many fine old trees have to come down in order to make way for....what? A 24-hour, 60,000-square-foot supermarket, apparently. Oh, good. Because the other three supermarkets within a half-mile radius are, like, a half-mile away.

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge

Driving through Broad Channel last month on our way back from an appointment, we passed a sign for the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge and decided to stop in. I'd never been there before, though everyone else I've spoken to since is all "...yeah, of course, all the time...since I was a kid..."

Well, it was new to me. And what a nifty place! Birds birds birds. We only saw a few during our midday visit: swans, egrets, red-winged blackbirds...but there are lots more: ospreys, being brought back from the brink of extinction with the help of custom-built nest platforms like the one I wrote about years ago, and barn owls, who are given barn-sized birdhouses. There are houses erected for smaller bird species, and special ones built for just for bats. Quite spoiled, the lot of them. Here's the big barn-owl boudoir:

The refuge is also home to diamondback terrapins, and many of their nests are right next to the trail, as you can see in the photo below. I can't tell you how long we stood there, marveling at the metalworking capabilities of the turtles, so cleverly protecting their nests, before we realized there was an adult right there, just beyond the cage, watching us! Remarkable creatures.

There are lots of sweeping vistas across the salt marshes, alternating with shady avenues of greenery. In the distance, way beyond the free avian housing, you can see the Empire State Building:

There were lots of insects as well, dragonflies and spiders and bees. And snails, of course.
This guy was in the middle of the path, in the blazing sun. I don't know what he was thinking.

He'll be extinct in no time, behaving this way.

We tried not to startle this tall, exotic specimen:

I was clearly a "casual" visitor, without a great big lens, or even a hat, and felt strangely out of place for not carrying a tripod. Everyone else was fully equipped. The bright sun made it hard (for me) to photograph the flora, but it was there. Much of it, sadly, undesirable, like the Japanese knotweed that was strangling the native yucca in a picturesque, spiralling manner.

If it ever stops raining this summer, I recommend you visit the refuge, which is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area. There's an informative and well-equipped visitor center, the trails are easy for people of all ages and abilities, and it's free. Oh, and bring your camera.

Some Underwater Friends

The pet store we visited last weekend also hosts some dashing saltwater types, like this blood shrimp, lionfish, and friendly hermit crab. So if rooms full of birds creep you out a little, there's a bunch of serene fish tanks to look at instead.

This Weekend Was For The Birds

We visited Parrots of the World on Sunday, and lucked into baby-bird season. Most of the smallest were inside glass cases with too much reflection, but Ken took this great shot of two "older" young 'uns who were in the open.

Many of the birds are exceedingly friendly:

Some are quite presumptuous:

Others are more interested in their fellow bird:

And the mynah - well, he wasn't warming up to anybody.

Getting High At Work

This intrepid fellow was a good thirty-five feet above the ground here, painting the flagpole of the local American Legion hall this afternoon.

You know how painting can be kind of tedious, even boring, sometimes? I don't think this is one of those times.

Isn't Something Going On Today?

It didn't look like anything special was going on when we voted this morning at the Lonely Little Polling Place, our local firehouse, shown above. That's what it looked like at 9 a.m. on Election Day, while elsewhere, (like at Queens' Central Library, also a polling place,) the lines stretched for a block or more at the same hour.

Is That A Banana?

We were in Freeport last week looking for a fish dinner; in addition to that, we got to witness a dockside wedding, presided over by a giant inflatable monkey. Some days are special like that.

The Pagan-Fletcher House, Valley Stream

Happy New Year! While resolutions were still fresh and easy to keep, I went for the first of many many daily 3-mile walks I plan to walk this year. Really! I promise! And if I bring the camera on every walk (like I did today) I'll be able to prove it. This is a restoration of an 1841 house near the park.

Holiday Wrap-Up

There's really no competing with these folks. The front yard has a donation box for I forget which charitable organization, and raising money is ostensibly the point of the display, whose lavish excess is rivaled but unsurpassed by five or six other homes on the same block. I like to swing past it once every year; it's nearby but off any beaten path for me. And you know what? I think it's best that way.

Two Houses of Worship

...with one doorway between them??

Well, There You Go!

That's how you compete with those 99-cent stores, isn't it? Find your niche.

Those Amazing Ospreys

On a boat ride out to the Huntington Harbor Lighthouse, the guide pointed out this osprey nest in the channel. Needless to say, I was pretty impressed with the metalworking capabilities of the birds.