Guess where I am

Busch Gardens? The Mary Selby Botanical Garden? The garden center at Wal-mart?

All excellent guesses, but actually these gorgeous plants are growing in a mid-town Manhattan park. It's amazing what can be accomplished on a huge budget in a deer-free environment.

Mark, Ethan and Zack went to the Little League World Series yesterday and I did

NOT!

I went to New York instead. Naturally. If you go to ABC Carpet and Home by Union Square (and of course you will) and you are hungry you might find it nice to know that the Zaro's bakery (on Broadway and one block up) has spacious seating upstairs! I know that doesn't sound exciting to people who live in normal parts of the world where of course you can sit down while you eat your sandwich, but an inexpensive sandwich AND a seat to eat it in are hard to come by in New York.

Anyway, back to ABC Carpet, I'm begging you, be sure to go up to the bedding floor. Today. Because they have a gorgeous display of Libeco linen pillows and duvets casually tossed in the most artful rumbled pile on an antique French chaise which I was only able to tear myself away from by lying to myself that I was actually walking away to ask for an application so I could start working in that department, specifically at the post closest to the display. (It was a couple thousand dollars of casual elegance, it wasn't like I was going to take it home.)

The children's department is cute too but instead I suggest you rush up to MOMA to see the SECTION3 prefab house currently on display. I noticed that people stay in the Cellophane house longer, but can't stop touching the SECTION3 house in all its natural wood glory. If anyone else saw it and wondered how much one cost I searched around on the Internet (for both of us) and believe me it wasn't easy, but I found out the base price is $130,000. Not bad. I wish I needed a house.

This fountain is outside one of the many companies I applied to work for after college that foolishly turned me down (note to regular readers: this was at the same time that Saks foolishly DID hire me as a temp.) I'm not going to name names, because I don't want them to be sad about their obvious mistake. Begins with an "M".