FRESH was the prompt for the first story I got to tell at The Moth . For the better part of the day I thought how I’d craft my story of finding RhODy with this inspirational direction: Prepare a five-minute story about the crispest and cleanest of life’s offerings. A new zip code, spouse, haircut or nose. Out with the stale, and in with the freshly baked. Tales of reinvention, from love life shakeups to a test drive of the new and improved you!
But then…the way best laid plans go – askew, I had a fun little happening later that afternoon I thought for sure would surely constitute as a Fresh tale…SO
I finished showing a nearly $2M 1BR, 1.5 bath apt when I found myself ogling & shunning tourists taking selfies in front of various greenery sculptures and the ivy walls of the 1Hotel on Ave. & 58th St. when I noticed ‘Men at work’. This I paid attention to. A guy in a medium sized cherry picker was replacing winter weary small pots of ivy with new ones. A few guys on the ground were shoveling the discarded pots of ivy into large heavy duty, industrial strength garbage bags. Now I stopped and approached the Shoveler.
“Hey, can I ask you something? Is that ivy there destined for landfill? I’ve been looking for ivy for the past few weeks. You’ve got to hear this story. He stops to hear me out while the other guy on the ground continues to gather up the discarded pots the guy in cherry picker drops down while replacing the new pots of ivy onto the corner wall of the hotel.
I begin; I’ve had a mourning dove’s nest on my kitchen window sill for the past two years now, in the East Village! Imagine the surprise, joy, and wonder I experienced the first time, seeing two eggs in the nest, observing the birds, taking turns sitting on the eggs, I read online and called the Audubon society to learn all that I could about mourning doves and of course their presence was known and followed on my Facebook page.
But just the other morning I noticed a mourning dove marching on my windowsill and he flew away but what I also noticed was that my once ivy covered window was now crystal clear, stripped naked and sterile of the lush (invasive) ivy that grew on the east, garden facing wall of my building. The new uber management company repointed the building over the building. Sad, but truth behold, I hadn’t’ noticed the absence of the ivy until ‘my dove’ marched away. Now I was enraged. I talked about it for days, “I’m gonna get a window box, I’m gonna grow ivy, etc, etc. This was all going on around my birthday which was just last week.
Then I noticed this morning that a friend placed a medium sized terra cotta window box with some soil in it on my windowsill while I was away this weekend. This morning I talked all about the morning dove appearing last week and flying off and I’d be getting ivy – post hast.
I didn’t get as far into my ‘story’ as I have here before the guys started picking out ‘good pots’ of ivy. I was being given them even before I went into telling him all that I just shared with you. They asked how many I wanted. I asked for 3 or four but now I needed a bag to cary them in.
The guy that sorta heard my story out pointed out a small deli just across 58th St. The coolest little deli I’ve never been in before. The deli was bustling. Now it’s my favorite. Construction workers, secretaries if they call ’em that any more but the girls helping behind the counters were hipsters, tatooed, clearly not Americans and working at a fever pitch all with smiles on, enjoying themselves and their customers. When I asked for a bag, of the lead coordinator behind the counter scene she never stopped what she was doing and with a smile asked how she could help me and happily gave me a bag.
When I returned the guy that ‘sorta heard my story out’ had a neat pile of about a half dozen ivy plants. I asked the name of the nursery they worked for and how I’d thank them with a mention in a piece I’d write about this when the guy who hadn’t been much help but didn’t do anything to deter the goings on said, “Hey, make sure you mention you didn’t get new ivy.”
I assured him that!
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