I’m sure that everyone who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the foothills are very glad that the winter’s first snow fell on a Sunday morning. There’s no excuse for leaving home.
Category: The house
Still life with roses
Eight days ago at Trader Joe’s, on impulse, I bought a bundle of 20 roses because the price was agreeable. I expected them to last four or five days at best. But, more than a week later, they’ve opened nicely and are still going strong.
Pots of flowers always remind me of San Francisco. If you rode a bus home from downtown on a Friday, half the people heading home on the bus would have a bundle of flowers in their lap — especially the guys taking them home to their girlfriends and boyfriends. It was a tradition in San Francisco — fresh flowers for the weekend.
I think I will put fresh flowers on my shopping list each week. It’s amazing how they light up the house during the winter.
You mean you can cook with fire??
My first primitive efforts at cooking with fire
The abbey’s back deck has been woefully underused in the seven years that the abbey has been occupied. This is because there was no furniture and no creature comforts. I had been on the lookout for deck furniture, but I never seemed to come across something that was simple, reasonably tasteful, reasonably durable, and reasonably affordable. Plus the projects list was always so long. And then today at Lowe’s hardware I came across a bistro set, on sale. I bought it. Then I went to a local store that had big umbrellas on sale. Suddenly the deck was furnished.
The temperature reached 96 degrees today. And yet I was extremely surprised to find the deck entirely habitable. The umbrella keeping the sun off, of course, made a huge difference. Plus, the woods are very close. If any breeze at all is stirring, cool air washes out of the woods.
As I sat at the bistro table drinking fresh-made lemonade and eating canteloupe, I realized that another dream was suddenly within reach: the dream of cooking outside with fire. I already knew the price of gas grills because I already had admired them at Lowe’s. The abbey is a small establishment. A modest two-burner grill would certainly do. And so back to Lowe’s I went.
I am a total novice at cooking with fire. My condo in San Francisco had a communal gas grill in the solarium on the roof, and I used it occasionally. But still I’m a novice. I didn’t really have proper roasting vegetables on hand, but I made do with potatoes, onions, and the last ear of the three-for-a-dollar Whole Foods corn.
Holy smoke! What is it about the primitive taste of fire cooking that speaks to our primitive natures? Was it Michael Pollan who called human beings “the cooking apes”? These covered gas grills are interesting devices. They can serve as ovens, and there’s a thermometer on it. It won’t be long before I experiment with baking bread in it — probably sourdough.
And on my next primitive trip to Whole Foods, I will certainly concentrate on roastable foods.
There’s a very practical side to fire cooking in this hot weather. It keeps all that heat outside the house.
Just as my roasted vegetables and veggie burger got done, a light rain began to fall. As often happens, the bulk of the storm went to the north. But a light rain and a refreshing breeze were making soothing ocean sounds in the woods, and the on-sale umbrella was keeping me completely dry at the on-sale bistro table.
I think I may spend the rest of the summer outdoors.
Wild persimmon blossom
They’re very shy and try to hide behind leaves. They’re small, and they don’t last long. The abbey has lots of young wild persimmon trees that volunteered in the ditch along the roadside after the old pine trees came down seven years ago.
The new painting is on the wall
Some months ago, Ken commissioned a painting of Acorn Abbey from Frank Duncan, a local artist. The painting is now hanging on the wall at the abbey. It’s a large piece — 56 inches wide. We put a lot of thought into the painting, and we chose to submerge the house into the woods and emphasize the fecundity of the setting. There are lots of little details hidden in the painting — a black cat on the front porch and lots of little animals hidden in the foliage.
I still intend to write a book about the building of Acorn Abbey, and I’ll use this painting for the book’s cover. But the sequel to Fugue in Ursa Major, now in progress, must come first.
And a Happy New Year too
The abbey in oil: a work in progress
Frank at work
Several months ago, Ken commissioned a painting of Acorn Abbey from a local artist, Frank Duncan. Frank is a celebrity in these parts. He’s also a neighbor. We asked Frank to unapologetically get in touch with his inner Thomas Kinkade and do interesting things with light and imagination. The painting will go in a rather large and very empty space above the mantel. The painting is coming along nicely.
The watercolor “sketch,” which is a kind of blueprint for the oil painting. We chose a composition that emphasizes life and exuberance by putting the garden and orchard in the foreground and letting the house risk getting lost in the woods. Lots of little animals will be hidden here and there in the painting, like Easter eggs.
The photograph that was used to lay in the painting’s composition and perspective
A Frank Duncan painting
Abbey photography update
The abbey’s venerable Nikon D1X was starting to have occasional shutter malfunctions, so I went on eBay and bought a D2X, the model of professional camera that succeeded the D1X in 2004. The pros have moved on to D3’s and D4’s, so the D2X is now an affordable camera. I found a practically new one on eBay, with barely 3,000 shutter actuations. My D1X is now a backup camera.
It always seems shocking to me that, no matter how much professionals pay for their professional cameras, lenses can easily cost as much as the camera, or more. Those of us who don’t make money from photography but who take photography seriously must make do with the best lenses we can afford. I was greatly in need of a wide-angle lens, and I recently added a Nikkor 28-70mm lens to my camera kit. I also have a 50-200mm lens that gets a lot of use. And of course everyone has a 50mm so-called “prime lens,” which has the virtue of having a large pupil and the ability to see in low light, but which otherwise is pretty limited.
You’ll find as many opinions about cameras as there are photographers, but my preference is for Nikon professional cameras. They’re heavy, and they’re outrageously expensive when they’re new, but after they’re eight or so years old, when the pros have moved on to the newest model, the previous generation of cameras becomes easy to find on eBay. And if you watch the auctions carefully for a while, you can find a like-new camera that spent most of its life in a box, unused.
It’s amazing what the new digital cameras can do. But I remind myself that, even 50 years ago and more, photographers managed to get incredible shots with cameras, slow film, and lenses that we could consider hopelessly obsolete today. My D2X seems like a miracle, and it is so well-behaved, fast, and logical that it starts to feel like a part of your eye and brain.
At last, a free day
I apologize for the long absence from the blog, and I appreciate the emails asking if everything is OK. I’m heavily involved in a local political campaign, trying to bring a little progress to Stokes County. Things will get back to normal after the election.
Today was the first day in many days that I didn’t have to go out. It was a perfect day for that. Reading Ivanhoe in my room, all I could hear was the cat purring under the blanket, the rain dripping from the eaves, and a crow over on the ridge.
First snow of the winter
