I found it very difficult last week to capture any particularly interesting shots of the many beautiful buildings in historic Savannah; I had more luck with the plants I encountered in our walks.

The first image above is of Spanish Moss hanging from the branches of one of the centuries-old Live Oaks on the grounds of the extraordinary Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation south of the city along the Altamaha RIver. The second is of the base of a thistle plant which I saw there at the side of a path. The third is of an ancient rock wall below Factors Walk across from Factors Row back in the city.

The colors of these greens are true to life, even though I found it especially difficult to believe my eyes when I was standing by that wall at the bottom.

untitled (neon) 2008

This is a large detail of the underside of the the Trustees Theater, a beautiful 1946 movie palace restored by the Susannah College of Art and Design.

The theater is host to the Savannah Film Festival, which opens this Saturday.

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This fence is at the crest of the beach at Tybee Island outside Savannah. We drove out to past the saltwater marshes to the ocean late Tuesday afternoon.

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This grassy clump is growing at the top of the stairs of a subway entrance on Bowery.

Who says Manhattan's lost its edge? Ask any European or Japanese visitor what s/he thinks about the appearance of our infrastructure - after twenty years of killer prosperity for the city. I'm afraid of what may lie ahead, even if it could mean the return of affordable apartments for artists and those who love them.

In any case, it looks like we haven't lost our heart. I like the grafitto, "I love you", in the background.

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The elegantly-minimal Polish-language sign reads "haircutter, ladies and gentlemen". I saw it this afternoon mounted on this colorful blank wall near the extremely tidy intersection of Nassau and Humboldt streets in Greenpoint.

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Only, it isn't trompe-l'oeil. It is what it appears to be.

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Ten days ago while I was in D.U.M.B.O. I casually snapped this detail of an old brick wall. I was intrigued by the weeds growing out of cracks in the worn masonry and rusted iron of the dignified mid-nineteenth-century former warehouse of which it was a part. The massive structure had long ago lost its purpose and it now hovered above a neat lawn on a Brooklyn shore being made safe for investors and young families.

Only as I looked at the picture just now while I was putting it up, remembering what the huge pattern of brick and shuttered openings looked like on that drizzly day, did it occur to me to relate it (the scene, not my photograph) to Piranesi's "Vedute di Roma", which described the weedier walls of a much more ancient city 250 years ago.