Up on the High Line

P.S. I stopped a member of Friends of the High Line this morning and learned that the plant below is a Harlequin Glory Bower, not something from outer space. Its blossoms smell like jasmine and its leaves smell like peanut butter. (No, that’s just too strange. Maybe it is from outer space.)

For about nine years, I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge nearly every morning on my way from Fort Greene to Soho. (Sometimes I took the Manhattan Bridge for a change.)

That walk is one of the great free New York City experiences, but now that I’m working a little farther uptown, I’ve managed to work another great New York walk into my schedule. I get off the C line at 14th Street and walk down Gansevoort Street to the southern end of the High Line Park, then head uptown on the elevated walkway as far as 23rd Street before descending and heading to the office. If there’s time enough I go all the way to the end of the park at 30th Street.

Even in October and early November there are asters, coneflowers, cattails and other plants to be enjoyed. (Can anyone tell me what the plant below might be? It looks like something out of H.P. Lovecraft.)