From Rockwood Hall to Sleepy Hollow – Lunch at the Bridgeview Tavern

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It was a rather warm day and after walking for some time I was tired; my feet were sore, and I was thirsty and very hungry. My walk had taken me to the bottom of Beekman Ave. in Sleepy Hollow just a block or two from one of my favorite hangouts: The Bridge View Tavern. It has a good selection of beers, food which is decent if not spectacular (fairly typical put style food in fact), a cozy atmosphere and a nice view across the Hudson to the Tappan Zee Bridge. I found myself wondering, however how long the view would last. The restaurant overlooks a former General Motors Assembly Plant. When that facility was demolished in 1999, it left the River View Tavern with a broad, unobstructed view of the bridge. However, the site is now being developed and buildings (condominiums) are popping up all over it. I imagine it won’t be too long before you can’t see the river at all.

From there, refreshed if a little sleepy, I headed home.

Taken with a Sony RX100 M3

Eirah’s Roses

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I thought I had already posted about this, but after checking I believe I didn’t.

The “Eirah” in the title was my wife.

She enjoyed gardening of all kinds, but her first love was growing roses. She was particularly fond of old roses, especially those from the English grower, David Austin.

She also participated actively in a number of Facebook groups related to this topic and naturally she wanted to post pictures of her roses. As I’m an avid amateur photographer I was tasked with taking the pictures.

Initially she posted individual pictures, but after a while decided to combine a number of pictures so that they could be seen as a whole. For some reason this became known as the “calendar” even though it really wasn’t. While this was a good way of sharing a lot of pictures at once it had a major problem: the pictures were really small, and you couldn’t see the individual roses well.

So, we decided to do a photobook instead. I would provide the pictures and she would provide some text to go with them.

I dutifully took the pictures (mostly because she reminded me to do so), but she was a very busy person and never got around to providing the text. She passed away unexpectedly in 2020 after a thankfully brief illness.

Even though I lacked her text, I decided to go ahead with the book anyway after her passing. Since I don’t know much about roses I borrowed text from the David Austin web site.

So, this is very much in memory of my lovely wife of forty odd years.

You can see more pictures of her roses here.

Kensico Dam – Contemplating the Reservoir

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I wanted to take a picture of the reservoir but needed to something in the foreground to stop it from looking totally boring. I saw this guy leaning on the wall and asked him if I could take a picture with him in it. He was initially reluctant, but I explained that it would be taken from behind and nobody would know who the figure was. He agreed and I took the photograph. I showed it to him afterwards and he seemed content. I thanked him and moved on.

I liked the way it came out – exactly what I wanted.

Taken with a Panasonic Lumix GX85 and Lumix G Vario 14-140 f3.5-5.6