Jubilee Celebration

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It’s Spring, time for planting and my wife has been acquiring new roses. This is particularly so because she has located some good local sources for David Austin roses. He was the great guru of roses. Recently deceased his company continues the tradition.

This one is called “Jubilee Celebration” and according to the David Austin website:

We were honored to name this rose in commemoration of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee. The large, domed flowers are a lovely rich pink with tints of soft gold on the underside of the petals, each bloom being elegantly held well above the foliage. Despite the size of the flowers, they are produced with exceptional freedom and continuity. The growth is vigorous, building up into a fine shrub. Very healthy and reliable. It has attractive, glossy foliage. The scent of the young flower is almost pure lemon zest, later becoming a delicious, fruity rose fragrance with hints of fresh lemon and raspberry. Excellent throughout the US including the challenging hot and humid climate of the south east.

It’s just emerging from its bud.

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Taken with a Sony A77II and newly acquired Minolta Maxxum AF Macro 50mm f2.8.

A walk around Irvington – A winding path in Matthiessen Park

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irvington-MatthiessenPark-1

Formerly the home of Erard A. Matthiessen, today known as ‘Matthiessen Park,’ Irvington, New York. Mr. Matthiessen was a successful architect. The area of Matthiessen Park adjacent to the Hudson River was donated to the Village of Irvington by the Matthiessen family.

I’ve also heard (but so far haven’t been able to verify) that ‘Matthiessen Park’ was formerly known as ‘Tiffany Park’ and was owned by Charles Lewis Tiffany, the founder of ‘Tiffany’s’ and father of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Taken with a Minolta XD and Minolta MD Rokkor-X 50mm f1.7.

A walk around Irvington – Railway Station

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According to Wikipedia:

The Hudson River Railroad reached the settlement by 1849; the first passengers on a regularly scheduled run through the village paid fifty cents to travel from Peekskill to Chambers Street in Manhattan on September 29, 1849. The community was in the process of renaming itself after author Washington Irving, despite the fact that he was still alive at the time. In 1852, Irvington was also named for the first coal-fueled steam locomotive of the Hudson River Railroad. The HRR was acquired by the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad in 1869, and the New York Central Railroad in 1913.

The existing station house was built in 1889 and designed by the Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge architectural firm. As with most of the stations along the Hudson Line, it was transformed into a Penn Central station when New York Central merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968. Bankruptcy of the company followed by 1970, and Penn Central eventually turned passenger service over to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York, who made it part of Metro-North in 1983.

Irvington’s former New York Central Railroad station, built in 1889, has been a contributing property of the Irvington Historic District since January 15, 2014. Since being retired as a ticket office in 1957, it has been utilized as an art and curio shop, an office for the Weyerhauser lumber yard which was located on the other side of the tracks – now Scenic Hudson Park[6] – and the office of an architectural firm. In 2016, with the addition of an outdoor garden, it was converted into a 20-seat café serving frozen yogurt.

The large brick building behind the station is the Lord & Burnham Building. According to Wikipedia:

The Lord & Burnham Building, located at the corner of Main and Astor Streets in Irvington, New York, United States, is a brick building in the Queen Anne architectural style built in the 1880s. In 1999 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and was added as a contributing property to the Irvington Historic District in 2014.

From 1870 on it had been home to Lord’s Horticultural Works, a builder of boilers and conservatories that had relocated to Irvington to better serve the owners of the many Hudson Valley estates who were its main clients. A fire destroyed the original building; it was replaced by the current structure. As Lord & Burnham, it continued its business until 1988. The building currently houses condominium apartments and the village’s public library.

Taken with a Minolta XD and Minolta MD Rokkor-X 50mm f1.7.