Jo Edgett

I didn’t take many photos on this trip, but I’m about to bombard you with the handfuls I did take. Keep in mind that B is tricky to photograph (he hates having his picture taken and always manages to dodge out of the frame at the last second), and as the principal photographer, I favour trees and gardens and critters and buildings and old paintings over people-shots and self-portraiture, which means the following may be boring beyond belief for some viewers. But that’s just a warning, not an apology. We had a great vacation!

Red velvet cupcakes at the Brooklyn flea market.

Brooklyn brownstones.

The elusive B, caught on ‘film’ shopping the Sunday flea market near our hotel.

My favourite Upper West Side house, clad in wisteria. Imagine what this looked like a couple of months ago.

View from the 16th floor balcony of our hotel on the Upper West Side.

Same balcony, looking towards the Museum of Natural History and Central Park.

Griffin gargoyle.

Classic NYC view from our hotel room window.

B in Central Park.

One of hundreds of turtles in the algae water.

What I saw when I looked up from the bench I was sitting on while waiting for B inside the Apple store on 5th.

Inside the Guggenheim Museum.

This little Central Park nutter hung upside down eating berries and threw the pits at us while we rested on a bench below.

Our subway station.

Central Park, Upper West Side apartment buildings.

Some other Canadians.

A bridge in Central Park and one of about a million oak-leaf hydrangeas that grow there.

Part of a garden maintained entirely by volunteers in Riverside Park.

Riverside Park, 2 blocks from the hotel.

South Street Seaport, lower Manhattan.

The Brooklyn part of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Looking uptown toward the Empire State Building (from somewhere around 5th and 17th).

Union Square had THE best green market I’ve ever seen. And the Strand bookstore is right near here (love, love, love that place).

Doh! I had hoped that at some point on this trip we would just wander onto a Law & Order set…too bad there was going to be one right outside our hotel two days after we left. Bah!

Bethesda fountain in Central Park.

Close-up of Bethesda fountain.

Right after I took this shot of a carriage-pulling horse (who was walking slowly, despite what those action-photo legs suggest), a random, young New York jogger passed B and I for the second time that evening and said, “You two make a really nice couple.” We laughed, because it seemed like he thought he was giving a first-date couple the thumbs-up, encouraging us to go on a second date. It was really sweet. I know I speak for B when I say this: we love New Yorkers even more than we love New York. And we really love New York.

John Lennon memorial in Strawberry Fields, an area of Central Park close to the Dakota.

(PS I decided to break up my photographs and put the museum and art stuff on my other blog. Check there for more if you’re feeling up to it.)

We’re off to NYC in two days, and I’ve been so excited about going away that I’m already packed and organized and caught up on all my work-work, and so now I find myself with some free time to kill. That means time to blog.

My little friend Sophie, modeling the plush viking-style flag hat I took to the Soloy’s annual Canada Day celebration. I hope the hat survived the night and can come to next year’s shindig. Last I saw, it was in the midst of a free-for-all tug of war between three young and very exuberant tow-headed brothers. I’ll bet the horns are gone.

Erin and I took Griffin for a while, so Lauren could play hostess and have a free arm or two for eating and drinking. Griffin was quite charmed by Erin, and it was clearly mutual. Looks like I caught her in mid-coo! He does like a good cooing. Aw. He’s so small!

Sunna & Griffin. The picture I really wanted and tried so hard to get was one of Sunna licking Griffin’s head. Small people move too fast, though, so I got this cute pose in between the licks instead.

Another difficult thing to photograph? Fireworks. And yet I try, year after year. Hats off to Bridgetown for another great show, and for not letting the threat of constant rain postpone the event.

Like a little taste of home. I love when the dogwoods bloom in the Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens.

But this is the best bloom of all, and we’re just now past the peak of the honeysuckle blossoms. This is the plant that grows up the side of our woodshed, and it’s heavenly. I like to stand amongst it and just breathe.

One of our window boxes, looking pretty good, even after three weeks of wet.

The line of boxes along the driveway. Note the absurdly tall yellow snapdragons in the second box from the left.

A collection of bits and pieces I found while walking the driveway between roofing days. Nails are one thing, but cigarette butts? In my gravel driveway? Gah! I didn’t photograph them, but I also found two wads of blue chewing gum. In my gravel driveway. Bah!

The roofers finished up on Monday, and B and I thought it might be prudent to rent a magnetic sweeper from the local hardware store, just in case, you know, there were a few stray nails in the driveway. It was $12 well spent. This isn’t even all of them; I estimate we got 250-300 nails.

The magnet was so strong it even unearthed some really old nails. At least, I don’t think these are the type the roofers used.

Speaking of old nails, this is the decorative old-nail finial on a rusty art-trellis I bought a few years ago. Check out the moth! So pretty. It creeped B out so much he had to go inside while I photographed it, but I think it’s beautiful.

The final shot is of a cocktail, to put me in vacation mode. B and I took our friends Philip & Angela for brunch at the Port Pub in Port Williams. It’s the best pub around and the only micro-brewery I’ve seen in rural NS. They also brew their own root beer and ginger ale and I can highly recommend both. And they make a bacon-infused vodka, to create their masterpiece: the BLT Caesar. Garnished with a leaf of romaine lettuce, a garlic scape, a slice of lemon, and, but of course, a slice of bacon. B was in heaven. He had two.

Cheers!