Author Archives: Ginger

Views near Golden Grove

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The astute reader may have noticed that yesterday’s post included sunsets from November 11, 12, and 14, but not November 13. While it’s not exactly accurate to say that there was no sunset on November 13, it’s entirely true that the sunset was not visible from my house here on Block Island. Instead, we had a day of glorious wind and clouds and even an occasional bit of rain as a cold front moved through. The swiftly moving and changing clouds danced with the light on ocean and lighthouse and winter landscape to create breathtaking vistas, all clouds and cold, as the day went on. And so… just to prove that I don’t post only sunsets, I present… November 13, 2012 on Block Island!

   

Views near Golden Grove

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I’ve been on the island for several days now…really busy with work, writing and editing, and getting a lot accomplished, too. But I’ve begun to notice in myself–something not quite so obvious on shorter visits–that I am a real deep-in-the-gut sunset fanatic. (Well, duh! I can hear you saying. Eighty-eight posts of photographs on this thread, and you’re only just now noticing how many of them are sunsets? Photographs taken from the very same house?)

But listen, it isn’t just that I take all these photographs of sunsets, and it isn’t even that they’re all beautiful. It’s that every one of them is different. It’s the mystery of these sunsets that has me by the gut, that drives me up from my chair and makes me prowl around the house, camera in hand, heart beating rapidly, taking pictures from windows and decks and the path to the beach. I never know what each sunset is going to be like, in what way it’s going to be uniquely beautiful. I never even know from minute to minute how each one is going to change, how its beauty is going to evolve ten minutes from now, compared to now. Let me show you. Please allow me to present, in close proximity, the sunsets of November 11, November 12, and November 14, 2012.

  

And so I want to capture every minute of every sunset. I order my days around being home for this event. I have, dear readers, hundreds, maybe thousands, of sunset photographs in my archives, and every one of them is special. I am–I will confess it now–a sunset addict.

Views near Golden Grove

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It’s been a month since we were on the island–and how good to be back again!

The house survived Sandy very well. There were just a few loose roof shingles, and yesterday Dan climbed up there and nailed them back again.

Then…a lot earlier than it used to be, and a lot farther to the south…there was another glorious sunset.

Life is good, here in the island. I’m glad to be here all this week.

Views near Golden Grove

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After a long, hot summer, it’s great to be back at our home on Block Island again. It’s warm, humid, cloudy, a bit rainy today, and beautiful. As always.

The sunsets the last two days have been lovely.

As always.

Here’s September 2, 2012.

   

I’m assuming you all saw my nifty new tripod in the immediately previous post, with which I took this last photo!

 

Not a new camera

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“How would you like a new camera for your birthday?” Dan asked me shortly before my birthday in July. This was obviously a follow-up question to the question he’d asked me shortly before Christmas last year, namely, “How would you like a new camera for Christmas?”

“Why?” I responded both times. “I like my camera.”

To be clear, my current camera is a nifty little Canon that weighs about two grams and fits absolutely anywhere. It’s full of fancy controls, more than half of which I’ve never used, but which I’m sure would help me take better pictures if only I knew how to use them.

My camera is an old 3- or 4-megapixel camera that I bought for Dan for Christmas in December 2002, and which I inherited when I replaced it with a new 7- or 8-megapixel camera he wanted in 2006. Like me, it’s steady and reliable; It’s good at what it does; and it ain’t getting any younger.

“You take really good pictures,” Dan said now, “but some of them come out kind of blurry or grainy sometimes. I thought a new camera would help.”

Hey, my eyesight comes out kind of blurry a lot of the time.

I think about the kind of blurry, grainy, low resolution, bad pictures I take. Some of them come about because I put the camera on “manual” to adjust for dim lighting indoors and then forget to put it back on “automatic” when I go outside again. Or the other way around. I forget. “Most of my bad pictures are not because of a defective camera,” I told Dan. “They’re because of a defective photographer.”

Other blurry pictures result from my trying to take pictures with the lens all zoomed out, after sunset, without a flash. “What I really need is not a new camera, it’s a tripod.”I concluded this in both conversations, but I guess Santa didn’t believe me back at Christmastime. “A portable, lightweight tripod that I can easily take with me wherever I go.”

And voila! I received, for my birthday, the world’s cutest little portable tripod that looks like it was invented to take pictures on Mars.

It took a while before I had the need to try it out, but now that I have, I can say that this tripod, in addition to being an inherently funny object, works really great after sunset, too!

 

 

 

Today’s garden harvest

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Things are beginning to get under control in the garden. Almost.

Well, I didn’t harvest any of the arugula or the basil, which I probably should have. And I didn’t scrummage around through the bean patch, either. It’s the beginning of the end of tomato season, alas. But on the other hand, despite being cruelly crowded out by the green beans, the basil, and the zucchini, the peppers are now starting to come in. This is our first.

Lake Tahoe

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Lake Tahoe is one of the world’s strange places. Once a drop of water finds its way into the lake, it takes…well, compare this with, let’s say, Lake Michigan. Once a drop of water finds its way into Lake Michigan, it takes on average about two years for that drop of water to work its way out of the lake. Once a drop of water finds its way into Lake Tahoe, by comparison, it takes on average some seven hundred years for that drop to get out. This lake requires a long-term commitment.

And besides for evaporation, there’s only one way out: the Truckee River, which heads out almost due west but ultimately disgorges to the east into Pyramid Lake in Nevada.

As nearly as we can tell–a totally subjective observation–the main purpose of the Truckee River these days is to provide an ecstatic floating experience to crowds of visiting tourists, culminating in heart-pounding Class 0.2 rapids, after which they make you disembark and return your rafts. It’s way fun.

There’s other fun around Lake Tahoe, too, and plenty of it: there is, for example, the early morning wake-up at Tahoe House Bakery with excellent caffeine-rich coffee and fresh, delicious baked goods just a short walk from our rental house; hiking trails everywhere, including a trailhead also within easy walking distance; and a cute little town with a perennial traffic jam that just can’t be beat. Neither can the scenery.

   

And restaurants with bars out on piers by the lake, where the sunsets beg to be watched.

 

And sunrises from the bedroom window. In Tahoe, it all seems beyond compare

Dealing with the garden, part 2

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You know the garden situation is getting out of hand when you turn down an invitation from friends to go out for dinner because you *must* *keep* *eating* *salads*.

Really, really good salads.

But today for lunch I made a zucchini frittata with one of the (er, many) garden zucchinis. Thanks to my friend Vicki Rowland for the idea!

Zucchini Frittata

Ingredients

  • about a half of a medium onion, sliced thin and then roughly chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • Olive oil, for sauteing
  • 1 medium zucchini, * thinly sliced into rounds
  • about half a red pepper, thinly sliced into rounds and then roughly chopped (quartered, perhaps)
  • a bunch of chopped herbs from the garden: oregano, rosemary, thyme, basil
  • 6 eggs
  • a tablespoon or two of milk
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1/4 cup grated fresh parmesan
  • 1/2 cup grated mozzarella

Ingredient note: 

* Our “medium” zucchini is equivalent to someone else’s “large” zucchini. Our large zucchini can be used for batting practice.

Directions

Preheat the broiler.

If you haven’t already thinly sliced the zucchini and the red pepper, I’d suggest using a mandoline. It’s really fast and easy!

Heat the olive oil in a medium nonstick saute pan on the stove. Add the onion and saute till transparent. Add the garlic. Saute for a short time and then add the herbs, the sliced zucchini, and the sliced red pepper. Cook until the zucchini is tender, but not cooked through, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Blend eggs in a blender with a little bit of milk and some salt and pepper.

Pour the egg mixture into saute pan and let it sit for a minute or three, or until there isn’t much loose egg left in the pan, or until you don’t want to cook the bottom any more without cooking the top too. Add grated Parmesan and mozzarella on top, and place pan in the broiler for a minute or two–until the top is beautifully brown.

Take pan out of broiler, let it cool and set in the pan for 5 minutes. When cool invert a plate on top of pan and turn over. Take photographs (alas, I didn’t–but I should have!). Slice and serve.

The problem with the garden these days

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Since there’s not enough sunny garden area around our house for growing vegetables, that’s what we use the community garden for. And again this year, we’ve been lucky enough to be given one of the unclaimed plots as well. Despite this wealth of sunny land, we had to pack things kind of close in order to fit in everything we wanted to grow: tomatoes and cucumbers, of course; arugula, basil, peppers, eggplants, broccoli, zucchini (that space hog!), and this year kohlrabi and beans. A lot to grow in a limited space, and let’s just say that it’s our own private jungle out there. The vegetable jungle.

And it’s finally that wonderful time of year when the tomatoes are ripening. I am eating two tomatoes a day–two wonderful, sweet, homegrown garden tomatoes–and I’m falling behind.

Can you see the problem? The bowl on the right contains yesterday’s harvest. The one in front, the day before. The one on the left, the old ones we have to use up first.

Tomato salad for dinner, anyone?