About one month ago Hurricane Isaias brushed our area with 70 mph wind gusts carrying an abundance of salt water onto vulnerable trees and shrubs. Our Red Maple Tree suffered a significant loss of foliage facing the east side.
BELOW: One week after storm, 8/4/2000
BELOW: Five weeks after storm, 9/8/2000
Below: Normal view at this time of year, (from a previous year.) Original leaves would already have been losing color saturation.
Forty-eight years ago this month, the wrecking ball had begun its work marking the end of decades of fun and amusement at this iconic park perched high atop the New Jersey Palisades overlooking New York City.
Thanks for viewing. Comments are always welcome and zoom in for a closer look. M 🙂
Seventeen came with the privilege to drive – a legal license for liberation, freedom, wondrous opportunities to explore with friends or a date, and a major lifestyle advantage. But it would take 20 months before I would actually buy my very own car, a 1958 Thunderbird.
Unfortunatly with this particular great looking coupe, I had quickly become owner of an aging, poorly maintined chasis with unsettling grinding sounds, clunks and bumps and serious (expensive) mechanical failures deemed likely. Bought relativelty inexpensively for $500, partly financed by my older brother, I parted unscathed with a slight profit a month later.
But for those few springtime days of happily cleaning and waxing …while ambitious aspirations and fanciful daydreams played along with its radio, this beautiful classic car was mine.
I wish I had it today.
As usual, click on the image for a closer look, and thanks for viewing. Comments are always welcome. M 🙂
The Perseid meteor shower occurs around August 12th every year. EVERY YEAR.
Above, a so so “capture” from the NJ Pinelands of a Perseid meteor last year (8/13/15 – 18mm ISO 4000, 15″, f/4, enlarged)
This morning, while watching for and seeing a few impressive Perseid meteors, I tried thinking of the first time I ever saw a meteor. My memory brought me back to a family vacation in Barnegat Light, New Jersey – a rental property near the beach with a flat roof accessible by outside stairs. Years later, while scanning old B&W pictures, I failed to establish an accurate date for that particulal week, but at 4:30 AM this morning, out there in the night, I recalled as a young boy being “scared” at the frequent fast moving streaks in the dark sky during that vacation. Dad was introducing my brother and me to ‘meteors.’
I pondered that memory and the timely annual recurrence of meteor showers… and realized (as an aside,) that I finally had an accurate date frame for that early Jersey Shore vacation! All in all pretty insignificant, but…how neat!
Above, Dad on the roof – town of Barnegat Light, NJ.
Below, my older brother and me on the beach, with Barnegat Lighthouse beyond.
As usual, comments and inquiries are welcomed. Thanks for viewing. M 🙂
