After my first of four photography classes last week, I wanted to put into practice what I had learned.

My main goal was working with depth of field (either shallow or lots of depth) since I have struggled with this in the past. I also had this “capture the light” thing going round and round in my head. In so many instances I have previously been disappointed when trying to capture a certain mood, or light.

Of course I headed straight to Skylands for my practice session!

Here are a few I was happy with given the goals I had in mind for myself.

Light coming through leaves.

Soft light on an yet-to-bloom flower.

Even though this photo may look hazy to you, I captured the light perfectly because this is exactly the way it looked. It was very humid, hence the haze. This photo was also taken to get maximum depth of field which was also achieved as you can see the statues all the way at the end of Crabapple Lane.

I was down on the ground for this shot. I was going for the play of light on the petals.

Most of the flowers were in the shade, but there were a few that the sun was hitting. I focused on the flowers in the foreground in the light and used a shallow depth of field. Kind of a strange shot, I know, but there is something about it I like. You might not! For me it gives more depth to the shot, whereas it could have looked flat if everything was in focus.

Again, working with a shallow depth of field for interest.

I am proud to report that all photos were taken on either aperture priority or shutter priority, no programmed modes!

The old toll house next to the covered bridge in West Cornwall.

I just wanted to touch again on how state boundaries are funny things. Here in New Jersey we live within a few miles of the New York border. We are constantly going back and forth between the two states. You wouldn’t even know when you were in New Jersey or New York.

The border between New York and Connecticut was palpable. Not only did the countryside change, but the architecture did too. As I mentioned before, houses suddenly sprouted elaborate weathervanes, and were covered in shingle siding and plenty of wood. Large horse properties bounded by white fences were everywhere we looked. Private schools with beautiful stately old buildings and immaculately tended grounds were numerous.

Like I said before, it all read money with a capital M.

Chatting with the piano player in our hotel bar was interesting. I started up a conversation with him after listening to his rendition of “Riders on the Storm.” I couldn’t remember the artist (The Doors). He told us that Michael J. Fox had a house right down the road from there in Sharon; Meryl Streep lived in Salisbury; and Kevin Bacon had a place right around there too. Who knew? I certainly didn’t.

Now at odds with all that was the whole casual atmosphere. Maybe it was all those people from New York City playing at being “in the country” but we were over dressed compared to everyone else. I would not even think of going to a restaurant in my bathing suit and cover-up, I don’t care if it was outside patio dining! Yet we saw many people doing just that. Even in our fancier hotel restaurant people had on shorts or ratty jeans. Very strange. Maybe we were just seeing the “tourists” but I don’t think so because people seemed to know one another like they lived in the area.

The border between Connecticut and Massachusetts was also unmistakeable. Road signs changed immediately. Signs pointing to “Joey’s Auto Repair” and “Country Furniture Store” appeared on corners. These weren’t just signs that someone had put up, but actual street signs. We wondered if people living in Massachusetts were directionally challenged.

The best sign we saw in Massachusetts was before the town of Great Barrington. I wish I had snapped a photo of it, but the first time we were already past it, and the second time I missed it completely. It read “Thickly Settled.” Hmmm … thickly settled. We knew what they meant, but still we couldn’t help but get a visual image of a town with a muffin top around its middle!

The architecture changed again and now we saw many salt-box style houses that we didn’t see in Connecticut. It all looked more New England-y.

Rick really enjoyed his two day course. It wasn’t about driving fast around a race track, but a course to achieve better and safer driving habits. They made them spin out on a wet track and learn how to recover from it, how to swerve to avoid hitting something and still maintain control. Practical things like that.

Another reason he took the course was to learn how to drive Ms Mia better.

I tried my hand at panning and failed miserably at getting a truly clean image! But after my photo class yesterday I now know what I did wrong. No follow-through!!

When class was over the instructors gave rides to the students on the autocross track to show them how a pro would do it. If you want to see the video, go to Rick’s blog here. It’s worth watching! The students drove the same course but at a much reduced speed. Rick later told me that they were also giving rides to the guests as well as the students and if I had come over I could have gotten a ride too. Since Rick thought it was a white-knuckle ride I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it!

On Saturday, I tried again to amuse myself. I had to check out of the hotel by noon so hanging out by the pool was out. Plus it was just too darned hot to do much of anything outside.

I drove back to Sheffield and Great Barrington again. I went in several antique shops (Sheffield seems to be the Queen city of antiquing!) and visited yet another covered bridge. This one is in Sheffield. Here is the Upper Sheffield Bridge.

This one was rebuilt in 1998. Worth preserving!

I drove on up to Stockbridge (home of Norman Rockwell) but the town was so crowded, there was no place to park, and it was HOT and HUMID. I ended up just driving around in a circle and headed out of there.

I ended up back at the race track around 2:30 with lots of time on my hands until Rick was finished at four. I mostly just sat in the blissful air conditioned track house and read (oblivious of my opportunity to be scared silly). Maybe you think it was a waste of time, but honestly I had had enough driving around and heat for one day.

We drove home on a road I was hoping was the roller coaster road, but it wasn’t, so I can scratch that one off my list. I was disappointed. Next time we are in that area we’ll try a different one. It’s there somewhere. Trouble is, if I manage to find it will it really be the same as I remember?

It was kind of a strange weekend weather-wise. Saturday dawned murky and humid. The sky was a washed-out gray. We took Mia down to Wayne to the farm stand to buy the ingredients for our veggie-loaded menu. They have the best sweet corn and Jersey tomatoes. It was so humid and hazy that as we drove, drops of moisture collected on the windshield and it was not raining. The air was that dense.

We came home and took advantage of the pool for a little while, just sitting out there reading while Robby the Robot cleaned the pool. I looked at the radar and saw that a storm was headed our way, so we got the robot out of the pool and came inside. And just in time too. The heavens parted and rain poured down from the sky. And it just kept coming. We got over an inch of rain in very little time. It rained on and off for the rest of the day and was still drizzling when we went to bed.

Dinner was delicious! We tried a new recipe: Corn Fritters with Roasted Tomatoes.

The tomatoes were slow roasted in the oven for about an hour and half, melting them down to intensely flavored rounds. The fritters were light and fluffy. The recipe called for topping it with a slice of prosciutto, but we thought it was basically not necessary. In fact, next time we’d probably leave it off and also make a different aioli to dress it with.

Prosciutto is pretty though, isn’t it?

We had fritters leftover, so breakfast also featured fritters under our over-easy eggs. I can’t tell you how good this was!

Sunday morning kind of looked the same way that Saturday morning looked: hazy and gray. It didn’t stop us from taking Mia again, this time up to Warwick for the farmer’s market. We had originally thought to buy ingredients for a simple salad, but we realized that we had bought a watermelon at the farm stand that we needed to use up.

I had seen a recipe for a Watermelon Gazpacho but couldn’t remember exactly what went into it. Thank goodness for technology as Rick looked it up on his iPhone right then and there at the market. We bought bread, (not in the gazpacho recipe!) a gorgeous cucumber, a jalapeño pepper, flat leaf parsley and shallots. No red peppers were available at the market so we had to stop at the grocery to pick one up.

It was so refreshing! Delicious!

Half of the ingredients were pureed in the food processor, but some were kept out to stir in for texture.

We ate out by the pool and it was lovely. I cut a couple of hydrangea blossoms to put on the table and stuck them in one of my favorite little vases.

Just as we finished up our lunch it started to rain. At first it was just a light rain and we were under the umbrella so it didn’t bother us. Then it started to rain hard and the dogs didn’t all fit under the protection of the umbrella and they were getting soaked, so we packed up and came inside not trusting it to stop anytime soon.

It rained for a bit, then the sun came out. We went back to the pool and in the pool. Another round of clouds came by. We got out of the pool. The sun came out. We got back in the pool.

By that time it was time to start on guess what? More food! It does seem like all we do is eat!

I was mostly in charge of the risotto.

Rick was completely in charge of the chicken done on the grill with indirect heat. Chickens cook faster when they are spatchcocked. (I know it sounds a bit nasty but all it means is it’s split down the middle of the back and flattened.)

The weather cooperated and it was a nice evening complete with a swim. The cicadas started in as we completed our swim and nearly sang us to sleep as we sat and watched night fall more deeply around us.

Breakfast:

Bacon corn hash from Smitten Kitchen! We had this two days in a row. Really tasty. The corn added sweetness that was kind of unexpected.

On Saturday we dragged the Booster Bath out into the driveway and gave all three dogs a much needed bath. It was not too hot and overcast so it was perfect weather for dog bathing. None of them were really excited about it but I know they feel better when they are clean, and god knows they certainly smell better than they did!

We bobbed around the pool in the afternoon after running errands (pool store, grocery, liquor store) and the weather was beautiful by then. Not too hot; not too humid with a nice breeze. The pool had cooled off by four degrees with all the rain and cooler nighttime temps of the past few days, so we didn’t swim. Dinner was a very disappointing pizza that I had remembered was better the first time we tried it. Blech!

After walking the dogs on Sunday morning we headed to the Warwick Farmers Market per usual. We needed pesto and goat cheese but came back with beautiful orange beets, a french baguette and some beef jerky too.

Instead of buying ingredients for our lunch we opted to eat the Warwick Valley Winery instead. I still had not satisfied my pizza craving, so pizza it was! And a bottle of wine of course.

When we got home we realized we had had a visitor in our absence. One of the deck flower pots was off the railing, the potted petunias laying on their sides on the deck and the bird feeder hanger was bent all to heck. A bear. Nice. My Squirrel-Buster bird feeder held up pretty well, but the bear managed to poke a few holes in the heavy duty plastic … again. The iron hanger did not fare as well. It even bent the bolt! We haven’t had any bear activity since just before my sister’s visit, so we were kind of surprised. And all the way up on our deck!

A little more pooling (we both fell asleep on our floats) and grilled tequila-jalapeno shrimp for dinner and our weekend was done! The bear, by the way, did not make a return visit.

Coolness. Air conditioning off. Windows open.

Finally. A rainy day. A welcome relief from the dry, hot weather we’ve been experiencing.

From drops softly splashing into puddles, to drops angrily pelleting the roof.
It’s all good.

The thirsty ground greedily drinks in the welcome moisture. —slurp!—

The flowers bow under the weight of the drops, grateful to be washed clean.

Trees softly stir in the light breeze, shedding water from their leaves like a dog shaking after a bath.

Rivulets of water run down the incline of our driveway.

The gutters on the house gurgle and splash.

And I am renewed with every drop that falls.

Reflection of water lilies: Skylands Botanical Garden.