The Trip Home

Today was the trip home, in the rain.  We love taking the smaller roads through upstate New York because we love the land here.  This is Route 5 & 20.  We know not to travel on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, having made the mistake to do that many years ago.  So I chose Monday as the travel day knowing that the forecast was for rain.  I hoped for light rain, which we had for the first part of the trip.  Then we ran into heavy rain and clouds so thick it seemed that it was almost night.  Fortunately after about an hour the rain lightened and the rest of the trip was easy.

Cattails

 

I owe Vince big time for this photograph!  He was looking out the window after breakfast this morning and said:  "Look at how all the cattail hairs are blowing off the plants in the wind!"  So I got my camera and walked to the edge of the wetland behind their home.  It was like a snowstorm!  I always knew of these plants as "Cattails" or "Punks" as a kid.  When ripe, the heads disintegrate into a cottony fluff, from which the seeds disperse by wind.  There must have been a hundred of these in the wetland all within view.  Please click on the image to see it in more detail.  

So this is fun - I am friends with a neighbor of Vince and Jo Anne's and his name is Rick.  On other trips we have spent time talking about photography.  Rick is a really accomplished photographer.  After I came into the house from photographing the cattails, Vince got a photograph by email.  Rick had seen me out shooting, and we had a conversation, before I went back to photographing.  So what a fun thing to find he has snapped a shot of me at the edge of the marshland. with his phone.  This is fun, because I am an elusive photographer and am rarely photographed!

The Rising of the Moon

I was pleased and amazed this morning to awake to a brilliant blue sky!  I just figured it would stay overcast for the rest of our trip.  So I went out for my 2 mile walk at 2:30, and then thought to look at the Moon application on my iPhone and realized that the moon was going to rise at about 4:30 today.  So when my walk was over, I went to the car and got my tripod and telephoto lens, and then found a good spot to watch the moon rise.  This is the result.  I also brought along my binoculars, because it is always wonderful to watch the moon with my own eyes.

 

The Flight of the Geese

I have always found that seeing the flight of Geese in the sky in the Fall evokes powerful feelings in me.  I am not sure what it is exactly, but it is something deep inside me that responds to their flight.  Is it that they are leaving us?  Is it that Winter is coming?  It has something doing with the fact that the Geese are programmed by their DNA that come the right time, they are called by their nature to make the trip to warmer climates.  Whatever it is, it is beautiful to watch, and if they are low enough, and if we can hear their "honks" as they fly, it makes their passage an even more powerful experience.

 

We Hope You Had A Wonderful Thanksgiving

We are so glad we drove to Rochester to have Thanksgiving week with Vince and Jo Anne.  We have enjoyed hanging out together, inside for the most part, except for some walks around the complex.  We had a wonderful traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings, thanks to the hard work of Jo Anne and Kathy.  So here we are, before we ate dinner.  Even though this year has been difficult, we are still so thankful for all our blessings.

 

A Brother & Sister Walk

We have been sitting around way too much since we arrived at Vince & Jo Anne's.  So yesterday we started out doing some walking.  Kathy and Vince decided to go out for a short walk, so I decided to join them.  This photograph is the result.  I really love this portrait of brother and sister.  It is not easy to get a photograph where both subjects look their best, and also that you get them both smiling at the same time!  I was going to say "I was lucky" but the truth is that I worked at it, taking a lot of photographs to get this one, and I am proud of how good they both look.  Be sure to click on the image to see it in more detail!

No Dunkin' - Swan Song

I have been doing my Tuesday posts of "No Dunkin' Donuts" for 38 weeks now.  I had no idea when I started how long this would go on for.  But it feels as if I need to stop now.  I realized the last couple of weeks that instead of having a relaxing coffee and donut at the beach, I spend most of my time trying to find yet one more photograph.  So our Tuesday ritual has become something else, and so I have decided that this is the last post in this project.  I had done a photo of me holding one of these donuts between by thumb and forefinger months ago.  I wanted to make the ultimate version of the shot, so later on I brought two chopsticks with me, stuck them into the bottom of the donut and took this picture.  Then I carefully retouched the chopsticks out of the image, and here is my surrealistic image that I really love.  It may be my favorite photograph of the whole series!

So here are our empty chairs on the beach as a way of saying goodbye.  We will continue our weekly ritual, and things will be much more relaxed for me, not having to find a picture each week. I mean, if I do find something wonderful, then I will do a regular post on the blog.  I first learned of the term "swan song" when I was in my early years at Newsday.  Someone talked about one of the reporters who was leaving, as "writing his swan."  I had no idea what that meant.  This is what Wikipedia says about a swan song:  "The swan song is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement.  The phrase refers to an ancient belief that swans sing a beautiful song just before their death, having been silent during most of their lifetime.  This belief, whose basis in actuality is long-debated, had become proverbial in ancient Greece and was reiterated many times in later Western poetry and art."

Upstate Skies

We left Long Island this morning enroute to Rochester, NY where we will be staying with Vince and Jo Anne for Thanksgiving week.  Not to worry, we have been hunkered down for 38 weeks, and Vince and Jo Anne have been doing the same.  So we will all be safe together.  We knew we were upstate when we drove from sunny conditions into overcast clouds, which is kind of a signature of the weather here.  The clouds are a beautiful silver gray, the only problem is when you see cloudy skies for weeks at a time.

 

Facetime with California

We decided to do a Facetime with Amy and Liz and Gus and Vivian this afternoon!  It was so nice to have a conversation in real life and and to see Vivian in real time.  She was good for a while, but then it was her nap time and she was tired, so I didn't get a smile from her.  But everyone else looks great, don't you think?  One of the reasons we wanted to chat with them was that we have decided to cancel our JetBlue flight reservations for Christmas.  The Covid infection rate is climbing through the roof in California and we think it is just a risk we don't want to take.  But we were SO looking forward to the trip!

 

Big Leaves, Little Leaves

I spent a few days trying to get this shot.  The driveway was covered with leaves from all the trees around here and I was trying to find a nicely designed picture that included the beautiful little yellow leaves from the Japanese maple tree and the larger brown leaves from the Hickory tree.  I must have taken my Nikon with the close up lens, out to the driveway at least four times, trying to get the best shot.  The rain was really helpful - I tried two different times when it was not raining, and those photographs were not as interesting as this one.

 

The Crescent Moon

I went out to photograph the crescent moon tonight all by itself.  The moon was one of the three objects in my photograph that included two planets that I posted the other day.  So tonight I celebrate just the moon.  Our moon.  It is such a wonderful thing to look at, either with our naked eyes, or binoculars or a telescope.  I think my favorite way to view the moon is with high power, through a telescope.  You would not believe  how battered the surface of the moon is.  It is battered because the surface was smashed by all the small rocks, and some not so small ones, that were left over after the formation of the solar system.  It is astounding thing to see.

 

Industrial Architectural at Sunset

At 44 degrees it seemed a bit too cool to do a bike ride this afternoon, so I decided to do my walk down to the old power plant, which is now demolished.  The walk is 2.7 miles and I do that in an hour, plus stopping times to take photographs.  This is part of the power system down there that is still running.  It is a gas turbine "peaking plant" and it starts up later in the day when electric usage goes up, both in summer and winter.  Today, with the setting sun on the wall and the stacks from the turbine, and seen against the leaden sky, I thought it was quite beautiful, in its way.

 

The Moon, Jupiter and Saturn

There was a conjunction in the sky this evening, involving the crescent Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn (going from lower right in the photograph to upper left.)  Saturn is the faintest dot.  I went down to the beach at 5:15 and photographed for about half an hour.  It is such a spectacular thing to see - I hope some of you got to witness this in person.  There is something about something this beautiful that says to me "This is how the universe works."  What makes this photograph interesting are the Sycamore trees all along shore road that have such distinctive shapes.

 

No Dunkin' Donuts - Week 37

I was definitely not looking forward to something to shoot at our Dunkin' Donuts at the Beach day.  The beach is empty now and it is just us and the birds.  I think I have already posted photographs of seagulls.  So I thought I would bring my extreme wide-angle lens for my Canon T7i and I figured that I could make an interesting photograph of the snow fence that was different from last week's image.  So here it is.  It helps that the sky is threatening.  We thought we might get rained on, but the few sprinkles stopped.  It was cold and there was a breeze off the water, so we hurried through out coffee and donuts and then bailed out.

 

Yellow Leaves, and Then None

My second favorite tree where we live, is this Hickory tree in the front yard.  It becomes spectacular in late fall when all of its leaves turn a stunning yellow, as you can see here.

We had strong winds last night, and when I went out to get the newspaper this morning, every single yellow leaf was off the Hickory tree!  Such a dramatic change in the landscape.  But it is the cycle of seasons that matters to me - I have lived my life here in the northeast and my life is connected to the cycle of the seasons.

 

Looking at Leaves

So I showed you all the driveway covered with a billion leaves.  (I wonder how many leaves there are in the driveway actually.)  Hmm...  Maybe if I marked off a square foot, and then counted the number of leaves in that, then I could extrapolate that to the size of the driveway.  Maybe I will do that next year.  I took the Nikon with the closeup lens out to photograph the leaves more closely.  This photograph of the leaves on one of the front steps grabbed me.  I like that because the steps are gray, the leaves stand out more from the background.  There is something I like about this photograph - maybe the color scheme, that I can't explain.  Oh well...

The Subtle Colors of Fall

I like that I am out shooting the landscape again.  I have been photographing architecture and some other things, so it is nice to go for a long walk, and see and photograph the harbor.  I love the fall colors at the beach - colors are more subtle, and I like that.  The bright green marsh grasses turn yellow and brown - the colors of fall.  The harbor and the shoreline are the gift that just keeps on giving!

I Can't Get Down the Driveway!

The driveway is full of leaves!  I can't get down the driveway!  It's like being trapped by a blizzard!  OK, so I can get down the driveway - I just wanted a catchy way to start the blog!  I think it is beautiful to see the whole driveway under the Japanese maple covered with leaves.  Just beautiful.  Of course it is raining so the leaves will get mashed down and won't look pretty at all.  As soon as the leaves are dry I will have to get the blower and clean them all up and bag them.  But they are pretty now.

This is a photograph of the grasses in the garden by our front steps.  I thought they were pretty but I never could have made this picture of them because the background is the driveway.  Only the driveway is covered in leaves now.

 

Armistice Day

That was the name of the holiday originally, when I was growing up.  The holiday marks the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I.  The date is still a national holiday in France, and was declared a national holiday in many Allied nations. However, many Western countries have since changed the name of the holiday from Armistice Day.  In England, it is called Remembrance Day, and the United States opted for Veterans Day to commemorate all Veterans and all the wars after WW I.  So here's a funny story.  My grandmother was born on Armistice day, maybe before it was called that.  So when I was in college, and it was May, and Memorial day was coming, I thought I better send my grandmother a birthday card.  Because it was Memorial Day.  So I did.  When I got home from college that summer, my Memorial Day birthday card for my grandmother's Armistice Day birthday was the laugh that kept on giving.  Everyone in the family thought that it was hysterical I did that!

 

A Fisherman After Dusk

It was raining lightly really late this afternoon and I decided to take a walk with my camera to where the old power plant was.  Fortunately I brought a small umbrella, because after I left the house, the rain increased.  I walked the two miles down and back, and by the time I got to the end of our street it was nearly dark.  But I saw a tiny figure out in the water, under threatening clouds and thought that would make a decent shot.  This photograph is all about mood I think, and of course color.

No Dunkin' Donuts - Week 36

A change in the landscape!  I was worried about my subject for a blog post this week, but the second I pulled into the parking lot I knew I was saved.  They changed the landscape.  I don't remember seeing this drift fences, or snow fences installed on the beach in other years.  But of course we never came to the beach in the wintertime.  So my job was easy today - just find something with a nice composition, which should be relatively easy to do.  I took some photographs when we arrived, and then I did this picture when we were leaving, about an hour later.  The shadows of the fence on the sand in the foreground made this shot more interesting I thought.  I think they install these fences to keep all the sand from the beach, from blowing into the parking lot and making sand dunes.

 

A Nice Place to Ride a Bike...

I guess if I had to pick a season, I would choose Fall as my favorite time of year, although Spring is a close second place.  This is one of the roads I ride on every day and it is in Roslyn Harbor.  And with the Sun lower in the sky it does a wonderful job of backlighting the colorful leaves on all the trees, and because the Sun is lower, it casts longer shadows.  Hard not to find something beautiful under these circumstances.  And since it will soon be cold, requiring me to bundle up for a bike ride, that makes these warm days even more precious when I can ride with just a jersey and shorts.

 

The Return of Sunspots

The Sun goes through an 11 year sunspot cycle, where it starts out with no sunspots at all on the disk.  Then the spots begin to appear and then there are lots of spots, and then the number begins to diminish until there are no spots at all.  Cycle 24 peaked in 2014 and then the number of spots decreased and about 3 years ago, there were no spots at all.  That has lasted until now, and a few spots have started to appear in the last few months.  This is the start of Cycle 25.  The other day, this complex of sunspots came around the limb of the sun and started across the face.  This group will be in view for about 7 days and will probably change some.  Some spots may get larger and others may get smaller and disappear.  An amazing thing to watch the Sun.  The detail below shows the sunspot group enlarged - please click on it to see more detail.

 

BLAM!

 

I have been riding every day for the last four days because the weather has been so nice.  Yesterday, when I was almost home I was riding on Shore road which I ride on every day.  Suddenly in front of me was this Grand Canyon of a hole across the whole lane I was riding in!  I saw it too late to go around it or to stop, so I did what's called a "bunny hop" which involves yanking up on my handlebars, and lifting the front wheel off the ground.  So my front wheel was in the air going over this crater, but unfortunately my back wheel was on the ground and BLAM! it smashed into the hole!  I thought "Oh no...  A flat tire!"  And indeed, the air started leaking out.  So I was able to ride my bike for a quarter mile until all the air was out, and then I walked it the rest of the way home.  I could have replaced the tube where I was but it was easier to do it on the bike stand at home.  I was lucky that the wheel was not damaged.  Man, this is a SERIOUS hole in the road!

Speaking of Architecture...

Speaking of architecture, I have ridden by this small garage 4 or 5 days a week since I started riding my new route.  It is about 4 or 5 houses away from the house I photographed yesterday.  Finally, today, I stopped to photograph it.  It has been on my list for several weeks, but it was daylight savings time that gave me the lighting I needed, where most of the garage was in shadow, which is better than the top half of the garage illuminated and the bottom in shadow.  I think this was originally a garage, based on the two doors on the left, but the mystery is the very large door in the middle of the photograph.  There is probably a two-foot drop from the bottom of the door to the ground.  Even if this was a stable, you wouldn't want horses to have to step over such a barrier.  Another mystery.

 

Only Slightly Haunted

I have been riding by this house for several months now.  They were milling one of the main roads I ride on and I had to find a different route for a couple of weeks.  I saw this house on my new route which is actually much better than my old route because it is through a lovely residential neighborhood on smaller roads.  This home is so beautiful and especially so seen in the late afternoon sunlight. Anyhow, they decorated this home with two skeletons - one hanging off the front porch, and a skeleton of a dog on the front porch!  One day I will see someone outside and I will stop and ask about how old this house is.  With the small windows just under the roof line, I am thinking that perhaps this house was built before the 20th century.  Stay tuned for more information.

 

The Best Haunted House!

This is the best and most creative haunted house in Sea Cliff.  It is an old Victorian, completely restored 15 years ago or more.  So it is beautiful to look at as architecture.  But at Halloween the owners do a wonderful job haunting it!  If you click on the image, I hope it enlarges enough to see the bicycles on the porch roof and the skeleton trying to peer into a window on the second story.

And on the front porch, they have done a spectacular job, populating it with all kinds of scary creatures, like these two.  I am guessing a werewolf, and a ghost.  It makes me smile every time I drive by the house during the day, and at night it is the coolest thing!

 

No Dunkin' Donuts - Week 34

We thought we might set up our chairs and tiny table in the sand again, but it was cool, and very windy, so we thought better of it.  We had our breakfast in the car where it was warmer.  So of course I am looking around for SOMETHING for the blog, and I was getting desperate.  So I put my coffee on the dashboard thinking I would shoot the sky.  Then I noticed a faint reflection in the windshield of my cup, so I added Kathy's cup and I found my photograph of coffee and tea in the sky!

It is election day, and we had tried early voting last week, but the lines in another village were more than an hour long and it was rainy and windy.  We tried again a couple of days later and the line was still long so we waited until today.  We have never had a line at our voting place at the elementary school.  But the line moved quickly and we were done in 15 minutes, which was nice, because there are reports of hour long lines in the New York area.  The photo below shows people filling out their ballots.  Now the wait for the outcome, which I fear will be long...

 

The Ghost in Our House

 

This guy lives hanging on the closet door in our front hallway.  He comes out every Halloween, and I think this is his third year here.  We got him at Home Depot.  He's dressed in a black robe, and his hands are crossed.  If you squeeze the orange circle on the back of one of his hands, you hear a church bell chime twice, his eyes light up bright red, his jaw starts moving and then he says: "Welcome.  Don't be afraid. Aaahhhhhhaaaaaaa..."  Every time we go by him we press the button, and this adds to the richness of our Halloween.  He makes us laugh!

Requiem for a Jack-O-Lantern

We have had a Jack-O-Lantern on our front porch I believe, every Halloween since we bought our house in 1971.  When our daughters were younger, they were the ones who carved the pumpkin.  After they were no longer here, I was the one who carved the Jack-O-Lantern every year, and I loved doing that.  But not this year - this is a photograph of a Jack-O-Lantern from several years ago.   We always bought our pumpkins from a sale in the yard of the Methodist church a few blocks away.  They bought the pumpkins from an Indian tribe out west, which is why we always bought them at the church.  Well, because of Covid there was no pumpkin sale this year.  So we were going to get one at the store, but ended up forgetting.  I feel sad that we did not have a Jack-O-Lantern on the porch, lit with a candle this year, even though there were no trick-or-treaters.  I hate to miss the yearly ritual.