Tragedy in the kitchen

96/365

While Craig and I were out of town for a few days, one of my pans of seedlings met it's demise to drought. I lost all of my cilantro babies, but have at least since planted more so we can have plenty of it this summer.

I used the on camera flash (point and shoot camera, not my good one) to try to give this a stark feeling, to accent the death in the scene. I was very sad.

Atlantic Yards

95/365
A quick google search of "Atlantic Yards" should give you plenty of news stories about the area. It's near where we live and an area that has been taken over for new developments, including a giant sports stadium. Most people who live in the surrounding area are very unhappy with this, especially those who got kicked out of their homes as part of the project after years of fighting Bruce Ratner, the developer. Personally, I think the stadium is a bad addition because it doesn't fit into the architecture of charm of the area and the related traffic is going to make an already crowded area worse.

I snapped this through/under the fenced off area.

It's everywhere

94/365
The pollen was in full-force while I was in southern Arkansas. While sitting in the Atlanta airport on my way home, I noticed that a fair amount of it was traveling with me. My camera was covered and the seams of my jeans had a bright green line like the one here. On the way to the LR airport, we even saw big swirling clouds of pollen along the interstate, which was kind of cool looking.

Pollen monsters

93/365
I can never get too many pictures of trees and sky. This was taken on an evening walk in White Hall, AR. The trees were sprouting new leaves and everything was covered in a very thick layer of pollen.

Foot rub

92/365
This is Princess, and her name is very fitting. She was a lurker at my folks' house for a long time and then suddenly decided it was time to make contact. Years later she now spends a lot of time in the house and likes to be rubbed by feet, not hands. Dad sits in his chair and she rolls around his feet getting rubbed in the evenings. This seems to be a staple of their routine.

Tea Party

91/365
While in Arkansas, I went to a Tea Party, the political kind tea party, put on by the Tea Party Express at the state capitol in Little Rock. There were tons of signs and shirts to take pictures of and you can see more pictures I took of those on my flickr page.

I picked this picture to post here because I like the juxtaposition of the sweet boy and the sign about dictators. The whole event seemed more like a promotion for the speakers to sell their books and cds than a movement, rally, or protest.

Off to Arkansas

90/365
Deadlines for finals had passed and Craig flew off to Kentucky the night before, so heading to visit my folks was a nice escape from the mess in the basement.

I got as early of a flight as I could. We boarded quickly and I could still see the moon out of my window before we left the gate. Both flights left on time and arrived early. Yay!



After a day of travel, eating El Porton, and visiting, I took a walk behind the house with the dogs before the mosquitos came out in full force.

Fern doggy

89/365
My mom gave me this dog planter for Christmas and I finally got a plant for it-a fern to make it a shaggy dog.

Bitters

88/365
Craig loves his bitters. He even puts it on ice-cream sometimes.

No picture today.

87/365
I was desperately trying to catch up on the finals (take home essays) I was supposed to work on the day of the flood so there is no picture today. I think this is forgivable.

Our nightmare

86/365
This is a dark, wet corner of the basement here. In the middle of the night (March 28/29) we awoke to the sound of water, and not the record rainfall happening outside. It was rushing out of the drain of the sink in the basement. It was a long night and day of waiting for plumbers and hauling buckets of nastiness up the stairs and out to the street in the downpour. The gutters feed into the waste water line here, so the heavy rain supplied a steady flow of water to mix with the house waste water and flood the basement. We learned the value of a submersible pump.

"What caused this mess?" you might ask. That pile that looks like rags is the culprit. The second plumber (don't ask) got a massive amount of baby wipes out of the drain. Apparently the neighbors were using wipes that are labeled as flushable, and using a lot of them. The plumber said it was one of the largest amounts of junk he's gotten out of a drain. These things are thicker than paper towels, and according to the plumber, excellent drain cloggers.

Cake!

85/365
Apple cake is a favorite of Craig's and mine. The effort is well worth the outcome.

Roasted goodness

84/365
One of our favorite things to grill is peppers. You just cook them until they look like these, then peel them, add garlic powder/salt, and eat! We can easily put away 7 or 8 peppers with a meal.

Sunset

83/365
A typical view out of our back window, down the block.

Does this look pixelated to y'all? For some reason the shrunken version blogger shows here looks weird to me, but if I click on it to see it full size, it's looks fine.

Scaring Shep

82/365
Sometimes our walks take us over an expressway. It requires us to walk by chain-link fences so we can see the cars speeding below. This totally freaks Shep out because he doesn't understand that they are not going to hit us. I'm okay with him having some fear of moving cars so I usually run across instead of encouraging him to get used to it.

Oh no, it's bedtime & I haven't taken a picture today.

81/365
I almost forgot today, but luckily I remembered and you get this lovely action shot! This is a bowl of rice pudding from a fancy rice pudding shop (Rice to Riches) and the matching spoon, which I flicked so that it's rocking back and forth.

For the record, banana is not a good rice pudding flavor.

Homemade Pizza Success!

80/365
This was a delicious pizza. I did not take much time to take pictures because I wanted to eat it right out of the oven. Craig's had cheese, for those of you horrified by cheese-less pizza. The dough was pretty easy and I think next time I try it, I will make more and freeze some. The sauce took a while mainly because I was trying to cook a fair amount of moisture out of it. I topped it with onion, garlic, and bell pepper.

A sign of things to come

79/365
We've seen a lot of rain lately, which seems to be the norm for this time of year here. A later picture will show how the rain really "got" us.

Lighting

78/365
Okay, another flower picture. I like flowers; I am my mother's daughter.

Anyway, this picture looks flat to me. I think it just highlights two things. One, the lighting in our kitchen is not great despite the fact that there are 4 sets (2-4 fixtures each) of lights, but all very low wattage. Two, I have a lot to learn about artificial lighting. I love working with natural light but I need to do some reading and experimenting with flashes and lamps and such.

Stairs

77/365
The stairs in our apartment, painted brown and with carpet glued to them. It was a slow picture day.

Grow, little plants, grow.

76/365
My cilantro and other herbs are growing like crazy!

Shep

75/365

DST

74/365

Taken from the F train on my way HOME from school. The train goes above ground for two stations before my stop, and starting sometime in the fall, it's always dark this time of day. As the days get longer and with the time change it is now this light when I get home! I love getting home while it's still light out.

Park sites

73/365
Prospect Park, my beloved park, has all kinds of sites and terrain. I'm not sure what this is actually called but it's on the eastern side of the park, near the roads. The structure is pretty as is, but I'd love to see it all cleaned up. I like how the ornate details of the structure are kind of mimicked in the bare tree branches.

A blustery day

72/365
One of the windiest storms in a while downed around 50 trees in Prospect Park, our park. The very wet weeks before the windy day definitely contributed by making the ground nice and soft. Fences were crushed, paths closed, and there were limbs everywhere. This is of the 3rd St. Playground (the park has a lot of playgrounds around it). One tree fell, taking out another, so that they both crashed into the playground. The parks staff has been swamped trying to deal with this. You can read a short news release from the park here.

Those were pretty big tress, by the way and so were lots of the trees that fell.