Gotham Diary:
Restoration
18 April 2013
It happened very quietly, without the whir or the grind of tools. When I came out of the shower, the men were on the balcony, moving about silently. As soon as I was clothed enough to approach the window, I saw that the plywood block on the balcony door frame had been removed. And I never heard a thing! The duct tape was pulled from the HVAC intakes. The men boarded the gondola and went down a floor.
Paralyzed rapture.
In the living room, I pushed the potted ivy — nearly as tall as I am, with its obelisk trellis — a bit to one side and squeezed toward the door, which I opened just a little. The cable connecting the router to the WiFi booster in the bedroom had been neatly garlanded around the doorknob by the workers. I reached round and cast it free. Now I could open the door all the way, and step down onto the balcony. The rush of repossession was acutest joy.
I went out to lunch, and then took a walk to Carl Schurz Park, passing Holy Trinity (above) on the way. It was a beautiful day, and I took a lot of photographs in the park. Then I ambled on home.
As soon as I was changed into house clothes, I dragged the pot of ivy out onto the balcony. I lugged a number of other things that had been cluttering the apartment for the past seven months — large ornamental clay pots, a garden tool kit, and the bag of potting soil with which I’d amazingly managed to coexist in the kitchen. I swept up the debris shed by the potted ivy. I sat down on the garden kneeler (which also serves as a little bench) and put my tea on the blue Chinese garden seat. For the first time in a million years, I wished that I had a million friends to call up with the news. I did get hold of Fossil Darling, which was something. I sat outside for over an hour, getting up from time to time to peer at the men down below, in the workyard that they had set up on the roof of the garage. From time to time, they looked up — this part of their job was done.
I ordered a “beer garden” table, with two matching benches, from the Williams-Sonoma Agrarian catalogue. I’d seen at once that the table was right for us because, like our balcony, it is narrow. It ought to arrive in early May. I also ordered the French watering can that Gardener’s Supply sells — in blue. It’s offered only in blue at the moment, but I should have chosen blue anyway, because when the blue watering can that I had for years and years finally disintegrated, because I neglected to empty and invert it before what turned out to be a rough winter, I replaced it with a red one. Very bad idea! On the small balcony, the red watering can was like a buzzer that couldn’t be turned off.
The next item on the agenda is to plan to bring the things that we saved down from the storage unit up at the tip of Manhattan. Ray Soleil will help me with this. There’s a wooden bench, three metal garden chairs (in great shape), and boxes and boxes full of plastic faux bricks (also from Gardener’s Supply). The bricks interlock and provide a handsome and comfortable flooring for the balcony. Taking them apart was one of the last things we did last fall, in the course of stripping the balcony for this railing replacement project that has now come to an end — at least on our front of the building.
It’s going to be very different, the next incarnation of our outdoor room. There won’t be any florists’ étagères to fill with potted plants, or huge faux marble planters to fill with floral whatnot. I’ve come to accept that the balcony’s climate is not salubrious for plants, probably because of all the particulate matter sent up by the trucks that take a free ride on First and Second Avenues on their way to and from Long Island. The potted ivy does well, and so does parsley (which must of course be well washed). In the paper this morning, I read about a mildew that has attacked the common impatiens plants — so that’s why I haven’t seen any in the shops. What about geraniums? I suppose we’ll have a few, but nothing like the lineup of former years (done). As soon as I can replace the leggy nepenthe in the living room with tight new plants, I’ll move them outside. The balcony won’t be a garden. It will be a sitting room — outside. With a table for the occasional dinner. Kathleen plans to order a six-foot bench, so that she can stretch out completely for luxuriant naps.
Ray is on his way uptown by now. Before lunch, we’re going to carry the wicker club chair that spent the winter in the blue room back outside. I’m in the course of ordering an indoor arm chair to take its place, from the Canadian firm that made the identical chair that we found in our hotel room in Cincinnati in January. (Ray tracked that one down — bravo!) In the meantime, we’ll just play musical chairs, the oldest game in the house.
This morning, as Kathleen and I were having tea, I heard the sound of metal clanking right outside, behind me. Could the men be back? I hadn’t heard the hum of the gondola’s motor — a sound to which I had become keenly attuned. Looking outside, I saw nothing. The gondola cables were invisible. How had the men slipped past? I leaned over the railing (such fun!) and saw that the gondola was still on the roof of the garage. It was only the cables that had been hoisted. As I stood there, one of the hemp safety ropes began to shimmy, and soon it was pulled past. At the moment, two heavy black cables that I never saw until yesterday are the only lines. I won’t be surprised if they disappear before lunch time. But I won’t mind if they go on hanging around.
I’d better get dressed. But first, I’m going to close the windows; the weather is not so nice today. (I forgot to say how wonderful it was to have the balcony restored to us on the finest day of the year so far!) It’s much easier to open and close the windows now; I can do it from outside.