Hope Springs Eternal!

Howdy do folks!

Since the weather has gotten a bit warmer (thankfully) as of late, I was inspired to whip my handy dandy cheapo digital/video camera the other day. I took almost one dozen shots and I thought I would dust off this blog and share them with you.

All of the shots were taken either at my house or on the street next to Cedar Mountain (hence the tag, The Neighborhood) and all of them will be sans captions, since I would rather let you discover what the topic of choice is for each shot. There is no wrong interpertation here, so whatever you can come up with is perfectly acceptable.

I hope you enjoy this little slice of spring fever at the mountain.

Storm Nemo!!!

As most of you know, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island got their buttocks spanked until they were candy apple red this past weekend from the devil's spawn of the Blizzard of 1978.

For ha-ha's, I thought I would do an experiment by shooting before and after video's of my front yard and neighborhood. The video's that you're about to see should give you a sample on how badly Connecticut got bitch slapped from Storm Nemo. The first one was shot about 9a Friday morning, with the second being shot some 24 hours later on Saturday.

To put the second video in perspective, our esteemed Guv'nor closed the state to traveling around midnight on Friday, state DOT plows were actually pulled because they couldn't keep up with the snow, and late Saturday morning, a town plow that had chains on almost got stuck while plowing our street.

First, before Storm Nemo buried its butt ugly tentacles.

Second, after Storm Nemo had buried its ugly tentacles.

Autumn Near Cedar Mountain 2012 (4)

After a small, yet not entirely necessary hiatus (read: too freakin' lazy to create a post), we come now to the end of this picture series (betcha thinkin' that I was ending this blog, right? right?). I'm not sure when the next series of pics or video will be posted here, if only for the main reason of not having anything on tap or stashed away on the trusty ol' flashy drive.

So without further ado, here is the fourth and final part of "Autumn Near Cedar Mountain".



Trees! Lots of trees! Seriously though, these trees were seriously compromised last winter by Storm Alfred and this fall by Tropical Storm/Hurricane (depending on where you was) Sandy. But, we can definitely trip down memory lane by looking at this pic with awe about the ability of Mother and Father Nature to do good.




I was sitting on what passes for a bridge on this road. Seriously. We have two (count 'em) bridges on this street. I suppose back in the day, oh when gas was 55 cents a gallon, these bridges were useful in bridging the now tiny/infinitesimal streams that flowed down the mountain. Anyways, I decided to take a long exposure of the trees near the bridge, and as you can see, I got a backyard or two in the shot as well.




This is Sienna. Sienna belongs to John, the family friend/serious computer geek who lives in the suburban section of Hartford and comes up here daily to walk her around the mountain all year round. John is also heavily into the concept of "open space" in Newington and is a member of the organization called Save Cedar Mountain, which is devoted to the preservation of Cedar Mountain from developers. To learn more, please click on the link.




Halloweenie!!! This display was created by the residents of one of the oldest group homes that I know here in Newington. I say oldest as this sucker was around when I was my younger nephew's age some 43 years ago. Anyways, every year they put up some kind of display for a holiday, and this year, they chose to do Halloween.




And finally, we end our journey at the same place where we started it: home. In this case, the front sidewalk gave us the best viewpoint in which to shoot this lovely picture. As Fred Rogers would often say: