The Conservancy Garden was very blossomy when we were there, but I hear the wind has blown most of them away. We’re in Venice, CA right now where the blossoms have given way to fat roses, but it’s colder than NYC and also gorgeously windy.

And here, as pretty as any blossom that ever blossomed, are two Afghans photographed by my friend Susan Rennie, a wonderful photographer of all things Venice and all things dog. Check out her other photos here.

Dog-Eating-Dinner

A happy dog cruisin’ in California on his way to Thanksgiving dinner.

When we got back to the city, all the leaves had been summarily removed from the trees and deposited on the ground, making Riverside Park look gray and wintry and dull. And the idea of moving to California seemed like a brilliant incontrovertible idea. But then…the tree that blooms every December 1st…

and then I heard a red tailed hawk and looked up and there were two of them sitting in the trees, Here is a bad iphone picture of them.

As for this storied move, it hasn’t yet happened. The apartment is not yet sold, and so we live in limbo, which is to say we live exactly as we have been but we have to make the beds every day.

Most important of all, for me, is that I have just read My Antonia for the first time! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am so lucky to have grown up so illiterate. This is a book most people read in junior high school. I was much too pretentious in junior high school to understand this subtly simple book. Now on to O Pioneer! I think. Maybe we should move not to LA but to Nebraska. Waddya think?

During a beautiful rainy walk in Riverside Park the other day, I saw a coupe of juncos–what I know as slate-colored juncos, because that’s what Roger Tory Peterson calls them. I looked them up on my fab iphone birdwatching app so I could listen to their all, and I couldn’t find them because they are called something completely different. It was very vexing. But juncos are so pretty with their tiny yellow beaks and that jaunty flash of white when they fly. The reason I was out walking in the rain was that People had come to look at the apartment. People keep coming, which means we live under marshal law and keep the place in perfect order, not easy for three people who who work at home. I have very mixed feelings about these People. I want them to love the apartment, to ooh and ahh and be bowled over have their socks knocked off. I want them to make us fabulous offers, hundreds of thousands of dollars above the asking price, to become engaged in a heated bidding war, to bribe us with Billy Cort Salmon champagne the 500 dollar Fry boots I want. On the other hand, whoever heard of 500 dollar Fry boots and how dare people come looky lou at our house and think they can wrench it from our tightly clasped hands?

The rain was a steady drizzle and the sky was the kind of slate gray that made the colors impossibly bright. Janet and Hector and I wandered around, some of us exclaiming at the beauty, others of us peeing, until we took shelter in the Boat basin Cafe. It was empty and closed, but the strings of lights were lit up and the blue and white checked table clothes were on the tables and it was dry and quiet and beautiful sitting in the gloom listening to the rain and watching the boats sway in the wind. Yet another remarkable day in New York City. Here are some pictures:

That scruffy being above is a cairn terrier, which would be quite enough to make me turn to Justin Smith’s wonderful piece on 3quarks daily, but the piece itself, about dogs and philosophy, is fascinating. click here to read it.

Here’s the link:

http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/nyc-in-pictures/78130/cathleen-schine-author