Spring has sprung at Sebago! 3 weeks of flowers at the club.

Blogger's new interface continues to be broken. If you click on the first photo, hit the back button on your browser, and repeat that a few times (4 or 5 for me tonight), you may get the old slideshow view with thumbnails. Blogger's new interface is actually part of why I haven't been posting as much lately - it's a constant exercise in frustration where the old interface was so simple. In good news, though, these 3 weeks of flowers do mean that I've gotten in 3 weekend paddles in a row. And my fingers are crossed for 4! Crocuses are from weeks 1 and 2, everything else from last weekend. Great time to be getting back to the club!

Floral Friday

Another quiet week of working from home for me, so no new adventures, but here are some of the flowers that are blooming at the Sebago Canoe Club here in July. Chicory (grows wild all over the club), Queen Anne's Lace (the garden plots, left untended, have become a field of lace), milkweed (we have a pretty good bed of this in hopes of encouraging monarch butterflies), purple coneflower, and, uh, something pretty in the bed in front of the clubhouse. Anybody know what that is?

Lilies have had their time, as you can see in the last photo. But the club's still blooming. 

Sebago Summer Lilies & Wildflower Field

Just a couple of pictures from the club that didn't quite fit in with my trip reports. The lilies at the club are beautiful in June (this was June 24th, I think). And then I think I shared a picture of my own little plot growing however it wanted to - but here's the entire Sebago community garden going wild and it's just turned into a wildflower meadow! The bees must be SO happy this year. 

How Does My Garden Grow?

How does my garden grow? 

With wild abandon and however it wants! 

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The very tall plant I'm holding here? That's what Swiss Chard does in Year 2!

I used to shut the bed down in the fall, but stopped a couple of years back after a number of gardener friends shared an article that said leaving things in throung the winter was helpful for insects and birds. 

Club access is still quite restrained right now. After a lot of hard work from our Commodore and board with NYC Parks, use has expanded from exclusively people with all their own gear to including group paddles using club boats. This is GREAT, there's a pretty good chunk of members who don't own their own boat and there was a point when it was looking like this was going to be The Year Without a Kayak Club for them, which really sucked. Still not perfect but much better.

It's still arrive, paddle, go home, though, no hanging out, so no gardening. Thanks to fellow sailor and gardener Tracy Kornrich for the photo!

Tulip Time!

As promised/threatened in my Sheepshead Bay post, here is a random assortment of tulips in the Ditmas Park/Midwood neighborhood. Tulip time doesn't last too long, and boy, did I enjoy my tulip safari on the weekend before last.

And I just don't have anything more to say about tulips that they don't say for themselves way better. Click on the first photo for a slideshow view. 

Brooklyn in Bloom

Still thoroughly enjoying watching Spring unfold this year! I went for walks both days this weekend, a shorter one combined with grocery shopping on Saturday and then a nice long one (5 miles plus) today. Yesterday was overcast, today breezy & sunny although clouding over a bit in the afternoon.

I always love sharing pictures of my neighborhood because it just doesn't look like what people think NYC is supposed to look like - and right now I'm really glad that I live in such a great neighborhood for long walks.

Click on any photo for a slideshow view. 

Garden Update - end of season fried rice

Haven't done a garden update in ages - well, I pretty much neglected it horribly all summer and yet somehow it still grew things to eat. Aren't these carrots beautiful? "Carnival Blend" from a Colorado company, Botanical Interests. Sadly, the purple on the purple carrots is only skin-deep, once you peel 'em they're just orange. They were all good to eat, though.

Carrots were a new experiment, they worked pretty well. I pulled these ones the day we got home from vacation, completely ignoring the tall grass that was all over the place. 

Finally made it out to attend to the weeding on Sunday. Brought home more carrots (eaten before this picture), onions (lots more than this, the onions are the ONLY thing in the garden that goes all the way back to 2007, when the Sebago community gardening got going - yes, they even survived Sandy, I took a break from eating them for a long time after that - and they need regular thinning), and the green cherry tomatoes. Nice haul, and there's more out there still. 

Beet tops and green tomatoes may not be traditional fried rice ingredients, and the Russian sausage TQ picked up at a Coney Island grocery store when he had to go to the DMV out there is definitely an unusual ingredient - but it turns out "ljubitelskaja" is an acceptable substitute for Spam in a pinch. With Canarsie and Coney Island represented, this was some serious Brooklyn fried rice - came out good, too! Of course the funny thing is that when I started cooking I thought I was making a little bit of fried rice. Ha ha!