Greenleaf Park is at the corner of New York Avenue, Mt. Tabor Way and Mt. Carmel Way. Paul Goldfinger photograph © 7/17/17. Ocean Grove, NJ. Click to enlarge the magic.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger. Re-post from July, 2017.
In a prior Blogfinger post I said this about the park above:
“Another park which has puzzled me is the one bounded by New York Avenue, Mt. Carmel Way and Mt. Tabor Way. I like to walk through it on the way past the tents to arrive by the Beersheba Fountain, near the Great Auditorium. It’s a beautiful shady place, but what’s its name? It turns out that it is “Greenleaf Park.”
I went there today at 5:30 pm during a warm Monday twilight in July. The light was dappled as it trickled through the leaves, moving with the breezes.
Monday early evening is quiet and peaceful. There is little traffic and plenty of parking. If you walk past the tents, as I did on the way through this park, I could hear Gordon Turk playing the Hope Jones organ. The music carried from the Great Auditorium and was soft and sweet.
In the park I was attracted to a Victorian house with blue siding. The color was soft in that light, but there was no magic. A National Geographic photographer once told me that he would stay still in a beautiful location hoping that something would happen to add “magic” to the image. Usually that would be the arrival of a person.
Just then a woman came by with her dog. She was walking quickly, but there was something about her presence. All I got was one exposure.
As she came by I said to her, “I just took your picture.”
She was pleased by that news. She commented on how lovely the park was just then. It seems that she is a new Grover who came here to start a new life.
She said, “It’s magical here. I love this town. It saved me.”
I said, “You have to actually live here or spend some time to understand that there are moments like this that are alive and wonderful.”
I gave her a BF card hoping that one exposure would be good, and it was.
But, if our town is at its most magical when it is quiet and dreamy and inspirational and beautiful, then why in the world would we allow the Neptuners, the Chamber of Commerce, and the CMA to encourage us to be overrun with tourists and crowds and cars and condominiums and commercialism?
THE MAVERICKS:
An amusing fact about Ocean Grove parks: some are maintained by the CMA, and others by Neptune Township. I have not been able to figure out the logic as to why, but Greenleaf Park is a Neptune park, therefore there is no smoking allowed. There is one small sign at the southwest corner with the ordinance number on it. How I wish the CMA would ban smoking in the places it maintains.
Editor’s note: Here is a link to our article on this subject:
https://blogfinger.net/2014/01/25/ocean-grove-parks-why-are-their-names-so-confusing/
The CMA is rightfully fearful of a fire at the Great Auditorium, but they don’t even ban smoking in the Auditorium Square Park—-PG