City Views, Country Dreams

Good evening from New York.

Late summer is gracing us with some mild weather with low humidity.  Very good for hair styles and perhaps also helpful in keeping our spirits mild and attitudes positive.

Around midday today, I arrived at my dentist's midtown office, armed with my checkbook.  The project at hand was the repair of several vintage dental areas.  One was a filling...that's relatively easy to renovate.   The other adjacent site required the replacement of a crown.  I keep thinking of the Diamond Jubilee, and jeweled crowns associated with royal thrones.  My crown is more humble.  

Today's visit required various impressions of my tooth to be fashioned, and in early September I will return to the dentist's chair to have my new porcelain crown installed.  It will be a subdued ceremony, and hopefully all will go well.  Meanwhile, I have a temporary crown, and a little envelope containing some materials that will allow me to re-attach said temporary crown should it become dislodged.

Let's send up a big wish that any such re-attachment will not be required.

Leaving the dentist's office, I decided to walk home, via the southern end of Central Park.  This roadway is called Central Park South.  I usually show you photographs of The Lake but there is another lake visible from the CPS sidewalk.

Here is another view of this lake.  I cannot imagine having the nerve to be a solitary painter like the fellow in the following photo.  I do like to sketch in the Park, but prefer to be in a different area.  Sometimes bad things happen to good people in this southern tip of the Park.

There are many horse drawn carriages parked along Central Park South, awaiting paying tourists.  Whenever I walk along this road, I try to keep up a pace and attitude that announces me as a local.  I would never, never want to take one of these carriage rides.

I feel very sorry for the horses and do not find these carriages as remotely romantic.  Within the past few weeks, there was an incident in which a carriage horse was spooked by something, reared up dumping the carriage passengers and driver from the carriage.  The horse proceeded on its own through very busy traffic, following a route he knew would take him back to his overnight stable resting place.  No one was seriously hurt.  So the news reports reported.

Okay.  I will get off my soapbox.

I continued my walk home, passing by children's playgrounds, lots of sunbathing folks, lunch eating folks, romancing folks.  By the time I exited the Park on to Central Park West, the numbing Novocaine given me by my dentist was just about all gone.

My jaw was tender.  I was so glad that I'd been to the Union Square farmers market yesterday, and bought lots of deliciously fresh vegetables.  I was able to made an easy, nourishing and really yummy soup, inspired by the wonderful Mia who posts a delightful blog  from her home in Norway.  The soup's ingredients included lots of zucchini, potatoes, onions, some garlic, vegetable stock (I cheated with some OXO cubes) and a bit of pepper, and cream swirled in at the end.

My tender jaw is feeling much better after having some of that soothing soup.  I will freeze the rest of the soup.

I've also kept my lace stitch knitting going, now working with a lovely lighter shade of the same Madelinetosh merino light yarn.  It is a pleasure to work with, and our slightly cooler weather makes knitting even more of a pleasure.

My summer reading continues to zig and zag.  I've got a few detective novels on the go, and next up will be The Waves.  I somehow cannot believe that I have never read this book.  Perhaps I have?  If so, how is it that I cannot remember this experience?

As always, I thank you all for your visits and kind comments.  It was fun to see which of the ten things detailed in my previous post rang chords with some of you.