Umbrellas of Raritan Avenue, watercolor by Leora Wenger, 2013
I have mixed feelings about my art work lately; it takes me a long time to do a painting, then I don’t care for my execution of the painting. But I am attracted to my original idea of Umbrellas on Raritan Avenue. So today in my art group I started a drawing for another painting, this time with a close up detail of the umbrellas:
My photos come out darker than the original, and despite playing a bit in Photoshop, it’s still too dark. But I like this composition. I won’t give up – maybe at some point I’ll say, yeah, that’s where I was aiming.
Here I am, posting rain imagery on a day that it snowed. Ah, well, snow is another subject to tackle.
I took this animal shelter video by mistake – I meant to take a photo of my daughter playing with a cat at the Somerset Regional Animal Shelter, and by mistake, I took a video. At some point I should look at my phone (it’s a Samsung Galaxy 4) and figure out how to take a video on purpose. Meanwhile, I thought it was rather fun, so I am sharing with you.
I must have too many things going on – I thought I was supposed to post the November Jewish Book Carnival tomorrow, but instead, it is not “due” until November 14th (I published it for a minute then sent it back to draft). I’ll post it next Sunday. And I do plan to do a JPiX (Jewish Photo Blogger Carnival) in late December, so feel free to send in any submissions. I have had more work than usual lately – I got one new additional client at Rutgers (School of Engineering) – it is really interesting work, but at the same time I’m trying to keep up with all my current clients as well. I’ve decided the way to handle this situation is focus on project at a time, though at times a client will want me to re-focus immediately on something *that* client needs, and such is the way in my business. I try my best to keep my clients happy.
About the Somerset Regional Animal Shelter in Bridgewater, New Jersey: you can play with cats or kittens. Sometimes they have bunnies or guinea pigs. The dogs aren’t playful – they mostly bark. We have gone twice, and people there ask as if we are coming to adopt a pet. No, I say, we have one guinea pig and that is enough (enough for me, not nearly enough for my daughter). The animal shelter is right next to the Kid Street Playground in Bridgewater (and near the police station). They close to visitors at 4 pm, so we went on Thursday because my daughter had off from school (faculty inservice day).
Feel free to tell me any of your too much at one time situations.
Note: if you can’t see the video, please let me know. I realized after I posted it that some may not be able to view in this format. I’m curious to know who can see what format.
University of Maryland Peace and Friendship Garden
We visited my eldest son this past weekend at University of Maryland. Because most of the events were at the Hillel, we walked back and forth numerous times between the Hillel and the hotel. On the way to the Hillel we saw this garden, and on Friday afternoon I had my camera with me so I took this photo. I was impressed by the “natural” looking sculpture that was part of the garden, and I love seeing well-cared for perennials. You can learn more about this Peace and Friendship garden. The sculpture is by Chinese artist Han Meilin and named The Peace Tree.
Here is the pond in Holmdel Park in New Jersey (photographed two weeks ago). Nearby is a lovely arboretum (I was too tired to take my big camera, but there was some great hawthorn trees with berries and some interesting evergreens). I photographed the pond with my Samsung Galaxy 4. There was a London plane tree on the other side of the pond – its “fruit” or nuts look like tennis balls.
Here’s a pig at Longstreet Farm (part of Holmdel Park in New Jersey). We also saw pigs at University of Maryland – there is a little farm on the campus for those studying animal science and also horses for the equestrian club. Both sets of pigs seemed to like to eat dirt. Explain that one to me. My daughter named the Longstreet Farm pig “Piggles.”
Last week I had the pleasure of visiting one of my favorite places in central New Jersey: Rutgers Gardens. Rutgers Gardens is maintained by staff, students and volunteers. You can learn more on the website for Rutgers Gardens.
There are various garden areas within Rutgers Gardens. The one above with the bench is part of the rain garden. Vegetation in a rain garden area needs to be acclimated to prolonged periods of inundation, followed by equally prolonged periods of drought. From the Rutgers Gardens website:
Rain gardens look attractive when newly planted, but can and often deteriorate over time with the invasion of unattractive weeds and a resulting decline in vigor from the ornamental plantings as they become ‘choked-out’. The intent at Rutgers Gardens was to design and develop a garden that had all the positive environmental aspects, yet remained attractive throughout the year with minimal maintenance.
These attractive yellow flowers are part of the Donald B. Lacy Display garden. Wish I knew the name of the yellow flowers (and those red pom ones as well – maybe a kind of Gomphrena – maybe Gomphrena globosa ‘Fireworks’). I believe the magenta/purple pom ones I showed last week are Gomphrena globosa. Some of the flowers and vegetables are grown inside a fence with a gate, and the public is not allowed to enter, but it is easy to peek in and view.
One of the great features of Rutgers Gardens are the hikes you can take – we like taking the walk that goes along the Raritan River. There was some colorful foliage but not a lot. I like the pretty colorful reflections in the river.
As I said on the Rutgers Gardens post last week, we saw two chipmunks. Here’s one more photo of the chipmunk in the woods:
Today I visited Rutgers Gardens with my friend Hannah Katsman. I don’t know the name of these delightful purple flowers, but I nicknamed them pom pom flowers (maybe Gomphrena globosa). My photograph originally had more blur in front; I cropped out some of the front flowers. Now you can see more of the blur of the background flowers.
Hannah has a good eye, and thus twice we saw chipmunks. Chipmunks are quick and thus a subject for movement. His eyes were white from my flash, so I toned them down a bit with some brown. I hope it doesn’t look unnatural.
This was the other chipmunk we saw. Here we have a little more of our theme: as the chipmunk moves away, I get blur in my photo.
Thursday Challenge theme is: “BLURRY” (Unfocused, Moving, Foggy,…)
Next Week: LANDSCAPE (Mountains, Trees, Forest, Lake,…)
I’ll post more photos from today’s trip next week for Nature Notes. See an older post of Rutgers Gardens (or click the tag at the bottom for many Rutgers Gardens posts).
