Japanese Pagoda Tree #ThursdayTreeLove

There aren't too many summer flowering trees here in the Southern Tier of New York State.  Crepe myrtles don't grow here (not hardy enough, although they will survive in the New York City area.) I don't consider Rose of Sharon as a tree, although maybe one could.

Several years ago, I started to notice a tree that was blooming in late July or early August.  Many of those I saw were in locations where I couldn't easily photograph them.  But I finally did, and a friend's sister (a plant expert) identified them as Japanese Pagoda trees (Styphnolobium japonicum), a native of China.

To my delight, I saw one of these trees on the grounds of the library in Endicott, New York.  For about ten years in the 80's and 90's, I worked in Endicott in walking distance of their library, and was a frequent visitor.  I don't remember this tree.  I wonder how old it is.

Here's a closeup of the flowers, which have a slight scent.  The tree is a member of the pea family, and is a good urban tree.  At this time it isn't thought of as invasive.

Here's more about this tree.

Joining Parul at Happiness and Food for her twice a month #ThursdayTreeLove.

Story Garden Flowers #WordlessWednesday

On August 20 I went to a garlic festival in Ross Park in Binghamton, New York.  On the same property there is a children's museum called The Discovery Center.  For several years, they've had a story garden. It's free and it's a wonderful place for both children and adults.

I've been there before but never in August.

Some pictures.

Let's go in.

A spot devoted to butterflies.

One of many mailboxes where children can leave letters to storybook characters, next to a planter of caladiums.

A hydrangea. 

How about another?

What a wonderful place to spend a few minutes, or, if you are young at heart, even longer.

Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for her #WordlessWednesday.

Facing the Future by Remembering The Past

A heads up: this post includes some discussion of a book that takes a deep dive into COVID's affect on those who experienced the pandemic, especially in the second part of the book.  It may hit too close to home for some.  The research this author did for this book, incidentally, is outstanding. So onward to my thoughts:

A few days ago, I finished reading a book by Jodi Picault called "Wish You Were Here". It's my first book by her, and if this is like her other works, it won't be my last. (I hope the next one doesn't disappoint - I've had that happen with prolific writers).  

In a nutshell (because if I revealed the plot, it would have to contain a major spoiler), two 30-somethings, Diana and Finn, have their entire lives planned.  They will marry, buy a house, get a particular breed of dog, have two children, and visit a list of places.  Diana is an associate art specialist at a major New York City auction house.  Finn is a surgical resident at a major Manhattan hospital. 

Their careers are both on track.

Diana and Finn have purchased tickets to visit the Galapagos Islands, where Diana suspects that Finn will propose to her. It's the trip of their lifetimes.  It took them four years to save up.  They are supposed to leave in mid-March, 2020.

And then....COVID.  Everything changes, and the book is an examination of life during the first months of the pandemic from several different angles.  The book, for me, was a wrenching, emotional experience.

I had forgotten so much about those months.  Perhaps we all have, in a kind of mutually agreed on amnesia.  We don't want to remember.  We think, perhaps, that forgetting will make it easier to move on.  Or maybe we still deny it never happened.  Denial can be a type of forgetting, too.

But we need to look inward and to document our experiences.  We should ask ourselves, in that review, if our actions are making the world, or at least our neighborhood, a better place.

Are we bringing happiness to others?  Do our words, our writing, our photography, our volunteer work, our paid work, bring meaning to us?  Joy, or another positive thing, perhaps, to others?

This book stayed with me after I turned the last page. I stayed in its world.  As harrowing as what was presented could be, I didn't want to let go.

Those books are the best kinds of books.

But other things happened while I was reading the book.

Hydrangeas, Ross Park, Binghamton, 8-20-22

While I was reading the book, I read a blog post by a fellow midlife (or later) blogger, Laura, who has written candidly on her blog about various challenges in her life.  She considers some of her health challenges a gift, teaching her to look at others with compassion.  One of her latest posts bluntly discusses "What It's Like to Age Faster than my Friends".

Here is the blog post, and I invite all my readers to read and ponder it.

It seems to me (and many other people I've read) that we in the United States have become more selfish.  Less caring of our neighbors and community.  Some have turned to social media with posts and thoughts that will terrify you.

Finally, a man I went to high school with, the life partner of a friend of many years, and a man who fought his years long battle with cancer with grace and courage, would have turned 69 on Sunday.  But he passed away recently, so, instead, his birthday was marked with remembering the good man he was.

We are all granted a number, the number of breaths we will take in our individual gardens of life.  Most of us don't know that number.  But some of us do. I have been blessed by a lifetime longer than that of many people on this Earth, including my mother, and several "in real life" friends who passed in their 50's and 60's.  In a couple of years, I will be as old as my father was.  

Both my parents passed suddenly.  Here one day and gone the next. Both had health challenges that impacted their life spans.

So what am I doing with the years and health I've been blessed with?  Have I tended my garden of life?  Or is it getting overgrown with weeds, drooping in a drought brought on by not enough of the rain called self love?

We live in perilous times.  Anxious times.  But that makes self care, and finding meaning, even more important.

It may be time to reexamine our lives once again, and remember what we've been through in the pandemic times.

If we forget the past, we won't have a roadmap to the future.  History teaches us that without a roadmap, things never end well.  

What road will we choose?

Heard It On the Radio #MusicMovesMe

It's Monday and it's time for music!

Who are the Music Moves Me bloggers? We are bloggers who blog about music each Sunday or Monday and if you have music to share with us, you are most welcome to join! (Music Posts Only-meaning at least one music video, please!)   Our head hostess is Cathy from Curious as a Cathy,  and she is joined by the knowledgeable Stacy of Stacy Uncorked and (last but not least) me.

Why not join our music loving folks?  It's so easy. All you have to do is join the linky above with a music post that contains at least one music video (there must be a music video or your post will be subject to removal or labeling "No Music").That's all it takes!

Each month, except December, we have a guest host. For August, we again welcome Adventures in Weseland.

His theme for this week is "Songs You Remember from the Radio".  This has been a fun post for me to put together and I hope it brings back a lot of memories for you, my dear reader.

I'm old enough to remember lots and lots of songs from the radio.  Today, I'd like to take a trip with you through my childhood and early adulthood.

I grew up in New York City.  In those days, I would carry around a transistor radio, which had terrible music quality.  But who cared?  Music videos? They didn't exist back then, although we had Dick Clark's American Bandstand on the black and white TV showing us live (or maybe taped live) performances.

Let's set the mood.

770, WABC (AM of course, because that's what we had back in the 50's and 60's) was my main station and I breathlessly waited for Tuesday evenings when the new music survey would be released.   This is a compilation of recordings from various New York City stations of the 1960's.

There was also WMCA, where The Good Guys reigned, but WMCA would not survive the advent of FM radio.  But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Some of my favorite songs are from the late 1950's and 1960's. Of course, I heard them first on the radio.

Tequila - the Champs, from 1958.

Michael, Row The Boat Ashore - the Highwaymen, from 1960.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)- The Tokens, from 1961.

Then, the times started to change.

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones, from 1964.  Oh, how we loved to listen to one particular lyric, and I think WABC censored it by cutting an entire verse from the song (I'll let you guess which one.)  Oh yes, radio censorship.  There was plenty of it.

This song wasn't censored; it was just too long for a lot of stations.  This is the whole song: Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone.

Moving ahead to 1968, length no longer seemed to matter.  "Hey Jude" by the Beatles ruled the New York airwaves. 

I think the last song I may have heard on WMCA was Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Waters, which brings us to the 1970's.

The 1970's brought FM radio, and I switched my listening to stations like WNEW-FM and WCBS-FM, until I left New York City in 1974.  Let's get some songs from the 1970's.  Again, all of these were heard first on the radio.

Angie - The Rolling Stones,from 1973.

From 1975, Black Water - the Doobie Brothers.

I've had Year of the Cat, from 1976 - Al Stewart on my blog before but it deserves to be in this post, too.  I associate this song with several long trips we took in the 1976/77 time period, and listening to this song on the car radio as the miles rolled past.

Nowadays, if I listen to radio, it's satellite radio.  It's commercial free, but I can still miss the radio of my youth and early adulthood.  Of course, satellite radio can satisfy that need, but still...

Finally, it's time to honor with RIPs to my favorite DJ's from WABC, including Dan Ingram.  Another WABC DJ of my childhood, Bruce Morrow, is still active (at the age of 86), with a four hour podcast every Saturday night.  He's made the circle back to WABC, which is no longer a music station.

Finally, RIP to the Nightbird, Alison Steele, of WNEW-FM, who died from cancer at the young age of 58.

And that is a nostalgic wrap!

Join me again next Monday for another episode of Music Moves Me.

A Cruise-In Showstopper

For me, anyway.

At a recent cruise-in held at a supermarket in our area, I saw this car.  This is a Saturn Sky, a roadster Saturn (remember Saturn?  We actually owned one years ago) made between 2006 and 2010, according to information online.  Neither spouse nor I knew that Saturn ever made a car like this.

But not with those doors.

I couldn't get close enough (especially as it was threatening rain and we were getting ready to leave) to take a really good picture of this.    It's a bit amazing to me how some people will modify their cars, but it's definitely a mod that draws attention.

I don't go to these cruise-ins often, but when I do, I'm normally looking for classic cars (like the 1949 Cadillac I saw at this same cruise-in, and I'll get that picture out another time).  For now, I'm just amazed, knowing I have a lot to learn.

 Now, I'm in the mood for a song mentioning Saturns. Here's Brad Paisley and She's Everything.

In the mood for more music? Join me tomorrow for Music Moves Me.

Garlic Festival 2022

 We've had a garlic festival held by the American Civic Association (ACA) in Binghamton, New York, for many years.

It's a fundraiser for the Association, which has many programs to benefit immigrants, and was (sadly) the site of a 2009 mass shooting, which I've blogged about before. (No links today. I've blogged about it too many times.)

That festival even helped the community heal.

Here is a post from the 2011 festival.

This year, for the first time, the festival isn't on the grounds of the ACA but, rather, at our historic zoo.

Sad to say, the festival has been declining in recent years, and COVID didn't help matters.  The sponsors hoped the change in location would help.

Well, a lot of people showed up for the food, the entertainment, and, yes, the garlic.

I am not going to complain about the drought or the relative lack of garlic for sale (We got there an hour after it opened and vendors were already selling out) or anything else (like the lack of parking, which was a little surprising). 

I'm just going to show you the garlic.

There's a whole world of garlic out there, and it's nice to be surprised. (We bought one of these bags) 

German white is more common than some of these other varieties.

We did not pat the farmer, who sold us some Ukranian garlic.

Ah, that beautiful garlic. I could just wish there were more vendors, but it was a nice fundraiser and people were enjoying another summer day outside.

You can't go wrong with that.

Rain At Last #SkywatchFriday

Where I live in the Southern Tier of New York, it's been much drier than usual.  We've been hoping for rain but it seemed like storms were avoiding where I live.

August 15, though, clouds became more numerous.

By August 16, rain was in the forecast for the next day (August 17). Later that day, we saw a fisherman standing in the middle of the river. No surprise - we've seen geese standing in it, too, during this dry year.

Normally, this path would be lush green and overgrown so we wouldn't want to walk in it, for fear of ticks.  But now, the grass has gone dormant and even the weeds are stunted. 

Wednesday, some rains came (not pictured) and were the plants happy!  

I didn't take a picture, but by Thursday afternoon, it was looking threatening again.

First, we got a heavy, unexpected shower in early afternoon.  By about 4:30, when we went to a small cruise-in at our local supermarket, it definitely looked like rain, and we got a drizzle a few minutes later.

We'll take whatever we can get.  And yes, I'll post some cruise in pictures one of these days.

Joining Yogi and other skywatchers each Friday for #SkywatchFriday.