Well actually, NYC and her hot cousin, Brooklyn…

This was, from start to finish, a great trip. I had biz class ticket due to frequent flier miles and it was a Boeing 757-200, a great model plane, the biz class seat reclined so you could lie flat + an individual monitor for each seat (for all seats in the plane) and maybe 50 movies plus TV programs to choose from. I watched “Tim’s Vermeer,” a documentary about an incredible guy who had a theory about Vermeer’s use of a camera obscura…Staying in the Village was fantastic. It’s still a village, albeit inhabited I would guess mostly by richos. You can get into very quiet cul-de-sacs, lots of leafy trees, tons of restaurants…speaking of which here’s where I ate. Often as not these were places I’d sussed out by walking by:

-Buvette, 42 Grove, French bistro, unique, stylish, also pretty well known

-Taverna, 63 Bedford, Greek food, genius chef. Great Feng-shui due to eye-level mirrors all around room…BTW, around the corner was Nakazawa Sushi, no window menu, obviously expensive, filled with smug looking youngish people; ah, to have a salary of 300K/year…

-Yerba Buena, 23 Avenue A, East Village, chef from Mexico City, Latina fusion

-Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop, Gotham West Market, 611 11th Ave. Good, inexpensive. Another place in this complex has over 400 types of beer, which you casn buy and take to the Slurp Shop.

-Mo Mo Sushi in Bushwick, totally excellent. Unusual.

-Gastromarket, 315 10th Ave (near Highline), cask conditioned beer and great food

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I know I’ve said this before, but it’s really paid off to build a tight, rat-and other critter-proof chicken coop plus yard. Billy Cummings did the honors here: concrete floor for their nesting room and feed room, aviary wire on the sides and top of the yard; wire down into the ground a foot or so at bottom edges of yard for digging critters like skunks or raccoons. The yard works so well we don’t even bother closing the little door to their nesting room at night. I probably built five funky chicken coops over the years before this one.

   The bantam hens work really well for us; the Golden Seabrights are not only (in my opinion) the most beautiful of chickens, inquisitive, perky, and friendly, but they lay surprisingly well. Once you have your own fresh eggs, you can’t go back to store-bought.

  The sod roof is doing well after the late rains.

I’m on the 22nd floor of the BH International Hotel in the Kowloon District. It’s a mid-range hotel, no doormen, you carry yr. own bags, etc. Right down the block is Parkes Street, which must have 50 restaurants in 2 blocks. Kowloon is rich, colorful, old, funky in parts as opposed to the glitter and elegance on the other side of the water, the mall of all malls on Hong Kong island…two places to eat: (1) Mak Man Kee, 51 Parkes St., world-class won-ton soup and noodles, chef  working in 12 sq. ft. kitchen, always crowded, you sit at small tables with other people, every seat taken (2) my sussing out of restaurants paid off last night; this place on next block down Parkes St., no name or street number in English — hip, friendly, no gringos in sight, fabulous (hot) hotpot w/ noodles, clams, San Miguel beer…bamboo scaffolding still famously in use in HKG…At a time like this, the limitations of this method of blogging bugs me; I really want to do a book-page-type layout, but don’t have coding skills, so am limited to one pic under another — going to change this soon…Trevor and I catching ferry to Macau today…

Sometimes I post really good comments because I don’t think many people read comments on older posts:

“Anonymous has left a new comment on your post “Straw Bale Gardening”:

well, it is getting time to think of garden stuff. thought someone might find this interesting..

https://www.urbangardensweb.com/2013/07/11/french-straw-bale-garden-grows-crops-and-flowers-on-urban-balcony/

https://www.rootsimple.com/category/gardening/vegetable-gardening/page/4

https://www.rootsimple.com/2013/04/lady-urine-water-conservation-and-halfway-humanure/

https://www /.rootsimple.com/2013/04/a-straw-bale-urinal/ 

https://e3liveblog.com/2013/08/09/straw-bale-gardening-grow-a-garden-almost-anywhere/https://happyhouseandgarden.com/categories/15210/strawbale-gardening-instructionshttps://littlegardenspace.blogspot.ca/2014/02/how-to-grow-fresh-onions-year-round.html

“In November 2010, my best friend and I found ourselves nearing the end of an impromptu and underfunded trip to Europe. With just 80 Euros to our names in Florence, we relied on a network of friends of acquaintances to secure lodging for a long weekend before we moved on to Athens. We had only a vague understanding of where we were going to spending the next few days. All we really knew was that we were going to be staying in a non-traditional community in the mountains northeast of us. The author J.R.R Tolkien and “elves” were mentioned, but we weren’t sure how much of what was being told to us was simply lost in translation.

   We boarded a train, a bus, a Jeep and finally walked on foot to reach our destination. It was breathtaking. We were greeted by a herd of cattle wandering the valley as we made our way to the dwellings. We learned that the community was nearly entirely self-sufficient; all their food was grown there. There were many cows, goats and chickens being raised as well. We also learned the name of the community, which translates to the Valley of The Elves in English.…”

Click here.