It's Summer!

Rocks and Surf - Nauset Beach

Wow - we go from desert-like to monsoons, and now its summer - hot and sticky. Weather is like that!

Been doing some LF shooting - SPAC last week, and then yesterday, Linda and I drove out to Hanford Mills near Oneonta. A neat, fully restored and functional 19th century water and steam powered saw mill and grist mill. Fabulous collection of old tools that they still use for various functional things. Most of what they do is to maintain the mill, but the guy in the sawmill told me that they occasionally will take a contract to make speciality moulding. It takes two days to set up the moulding cutter, so the purchasere has to need a lot of finished product to make it worthwhile. They have a collection of over 900 cutters - there is evidence that the original mill ground their own blades, but they no longer have that ability.

Got the lights in the kitched changed out, and I finished off the ceiling repairs after the electrician was done. Normally, I would do any electrical work that needs to be done around the house, but in this instance the project required creating an opening into the attic over the garage, and then finding a way to get over the kitchen. That was more than I was prepared to take on.

This morning, before taking the ladder downstairs, I used it to clean up the fan in the downstairs half-bath. There was this string hanging down through the vent that was really unattractive - and that turned out to the the tail of a petrified mouse that had found its way into the fan box and then couldn't get out. Yuk!

Linda and I went to NYC last weekend with the group from her school. We had a fabulous day - spent almost the entire day in Chelsea just hanging around galleries. We must have visited at least 30! Saw some really great art (the best was some LF portraits done by Sharon Lockhart at the Gladstone Gallery. Also liked Jens Knigge's platinum prints at Photosphere. And the work at John Stevenson was excellent as always. Had a fabulous lunch at Empire Grill, a diner at the corner of 10th and 22nd.

Went to the second two session of the Art:21 program at the public library this month. I wish I had known about that earlier. The first session dealt with a scupltur whose work Linda and I saw in Chelsea when we were there a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, I won the raffle - the prize was a DVD of this years Art: 21 series on PBS. Also went to the free tour of the Tang offered to Art:21 participants.

Looking forward to Peters Valley - but the last word from Andy was that enrollment was slow that that there was a risk that the session wouldn't be held. I really hope that is not the case, but if it is, I hope they tell us soon enough to be able to get into an alternate class.

The lawn is coming along nicely. The patched areas are slowly filling in - actually, a lot slower in some areas than I like. And it seems that there was a lot of week content in that last package of Scott's seed that I put out. Hopefully, that will correct itself as Green Thumb does their thing.

This image is from our week at the Cape last year - 210mm lens with orange filter.