Continuing the flower series – I was very much attracted to this colorful clump of Irises in a neighbors garden.
Irises
Planting Time
We’re members of the local garden club and every year those who run it ask for volunteers to help plant at ‘Two bridges park’ near the beginning of Lake Shore Road and my wife volunteered. This year the girl scouts turned up in force to help with the planting.
The two pictures below show some of the girl scouts at work. The shots are actually of reflections in the stream that passes through the park. They’ve been flipped to make them look as if they’re the right way up. I like both of them. The first seems to show more activity, while in the second they seem more ‘at rest’.
Incidentally the scouts have been doing a wonderful job around the lake. In addition to the work of the girl scouts the eagle scouts constructed a new seating area, with gravel paths, a new bridge (which they built themselves) and a picnic area complete with picnic table. Well done to all of scouts (both male and female) who contributed to this!
Orange Mill Historic District: Algonquin Park Newburgh
No it’s not somewhere a hobbit might live. It’s the former main powder mill building.
According to Wikipedia:
The Orange Mill Historic District…takes its name from the old gunpowder mill complex, built by Asa Taylor in 1816 and operated by the Laflin & Rand Powder Company after 1869. It is located along the unnamed Orange Lake outlet brook which flows through the park just above its outlet at Quassaick Creek.
While it primarily produced powder for local residents’ use in hunting and shooting sports, during the Civil War the Union Army procured some higher quality material. In the years before that conflict, local historian Edward Ruttenber claimed the mills were “the most complete and extensive works in the country” when they were under the ownership of a man named Daniel Rodgers.
After production stopped in the early 20th century, developers began building on houses on some of the property. Col. Frederic Adrian Delano (1863–1953), uncle of future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, purchased the remaining land, which included the core of the manufacturing operation, for use as a public park.
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Today the historic district includes 14 of these buildings which formerly were the core of the manufacturing operation as contributing properties. It was designed to incorporate the old buildings as an essential feature, and many of the roofless stone structures still stand next to the park’s barbecue pits and picnic grounds. It is today the only remaining 19th-century gunpowder production facility in New York. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
Abandoned House on Secor Road
Travelling north on the Taconic State Parkway you’ll come to an exit to Bryant Pond Road. Turn right and you’re on Secor Road. Go down a block and, almost opposite the Mobil Station, you’ll see this fine old house now abandoned and beginning to deteriorate. It’s a large house that must have been impressive at one time. I wonder what the story behind this is? Why is it being left to fall apart?
Front porch and door. Note the greenery now starting to grow all over the exterior.
Columns and vines.
Wider view of the front of the house.
Rear of the house.
Lost and found: Camera returned to owner 2 years after shipwreck
Amazing! I guess that modern technology is more resilient than I thought – at least in the case of memory cards. I can’t imagine that the camera was working.
A camera lost in the Pacific Ocean during a shipwreck two years ago was found by chance earlier this month by a pair of university students on a research dive off the coast of Vancouver Island and then reunited with its owner thanks to a still-functional memory card and an old-fashioned community bulletin board.
via Lost and found: Camera returned to owner 2 years after shipwreck.