The previous post highlighted my favorite black and white pictures from 2014. This one deals with my favorite color pictures (again in no particular order). I’ve often said that I don’t naturally relate to color photography and this is still true. However, I looked back over my favorite color pictures from 2013 and I feel that this year’s batch is much better. Maybe I’m improving.

We are members of our local garden club and my wife had volunteered to help plant some flowers at the park near the entrance to the lake. A small group of garden club members were ably assisted by a number of girl guides. Here they are seen working as a reflection in a stream running out of the lake. I liked the impressionistic look.

Peekskill Sunset. I was coming home from a trip down to New York City and my train was pulling into Peekskill Station. The sun was going down and this magnificent sunset was starting to appear. I took this picture from the train, which luckily stayed long enough in the station.

The red dress. While exploring an old abandoned pumping station near to Pocantico Lake I came across this red dress hanging on a line. It seemed so out of place next to the rusting machinery and crumbling masonry and the bright red stood out against the dull colors of the remainder of the building. The thought that someone might actually be living in this building makes me feel sad too.

Red Shed. The shed is in our garden and one day I was walking by and I noticed the dark shadow cast by the light clothes pins. The contrast of the (almost) white and the (almost) black against the bright red appealed to me.

Taken at Motorcyclepedia in New Windsor NY. I liked small splashes of bright color set against the shiny, but almost monochromatic metal.

Agatha – a visiting friend. I just liked this picture with its subdued colors and her animated expression and movements. This might have worked in black and white too, but I didn’t have any ‘people’ pictures in color so here it is.

Jordan Pond in Fahnestock State Park in Putnam County, NY. Something ‘painterly’ about this picture that I liked.

Candles at Chuang Yen Monastery. Just loved the colors.

View from the Cliffs at Little Stony Point. Rocks, gnarly tree and the magnificent Hudson River in the background.

Flowers in a restaurant window. This is a very simple picture, but I really like it. We were eating in our local Japanese restaurant. They’d just renovated and I noticed that they had painted their window with colorful flowers. So I took a picture, and I really like it.

A recent post on our Garden Club refers to my “baked goods”. This seems to have surprised certain members of my family so I’m going to tell a little story:

There’s a scene I like in a otherwise fairly mediocre movie called “Quigley down under”. In case you’re not familiar with it it’s a western set in Australia starring Tom Selleck. He’s travelling around with a kind of fancy sniper’s rifle taking up lost causes. The villain is played by Alan Rickman (what a surprise). Rickman is a pistol aficionado and Quigley is a thorn in his side. He particularly seems to resent Quigley’s skill with the rifle and the fact that Quigley says he never cared for pistols. So in the final climactic scene he traps Selleck and forces him into a gunfight with pistols. They draw and Quigley pulls out his pistol and shoots the Rickman character. As he lies there dying the Rickman character says something along the lines of “But I thought….” and Quigley replies “I said I never cared for them. Never said I couldn’t use them”.

It’s the same with my baking. I never much cared for baking, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t know how to.

I decided to do more baking after we had our flood down in Briarcliff last year. In cleaning up we came across a stand mixer that, because Mrs. Dale didn’t have any space for it in the kitchen, had disappeared into our storage room downstairs. So I thought I’d give it a try. Since then I’ve made pizza, bread of various kinds (in fact I have some bread dough rising as we speak – see final product above); cookies; fruit pies; quiches; savory pies, banana bread (for which I received compliments from Germaine Chandelier who for many years was one of NY’s pre-eminent caterers) and, my piece de resistance: strawberry coconut cheescake.

So yes I can, indeed, bake

Eirah enjoys her Mother’s Day lunch.

Mother’s day lunch at the Clock Tower Grill in Brewster. It’s a farm to table restaurant in a new shopping area designed to look like a village square. The restaurant itself is in a renovated barn and has a nice outdoor seating area. The food was very good.

The Clock Tower

The Clock Tower Grill

Interior Shot