Author: Harry Bartlett

Raspberries

This is a little fresh raspberries from the garden and yogurt with a couple of fresh mint leaves from the garden too. The Cousins Community garden has a raspberry co-op where people chip in with weeding, pruning, and fertilizing as well as other tasks. It’s a productive crop compared to the blueberries nearby that are more finicky and don’t produce a lot. These raspberries produce 2 crops one in early summer and another late summer. Very tasty though they do get infected with drosophila and it’s hard to even see that’s happened. Better to not even think about it and enjoy the tasty fruit!

These raspberries are mixed with a Bulgarian-styled yogurt called White Mountain I buy at Debra’s Natural Gourmet. It’s not sweet at all, more like a Greek Style yogurt but don’t say that to someone from Bulgaria!

Mint as most people know is native to this area though there are quite a few different varieties. It’s an amazing plant – fragrant and tough – springs up early in the season and stays good late into fall. It’s not used as often as it should in food, though Indian food uses it a lot. I mostly use it in a drink of freshly squeezed lemon, seltzer water, and maple syrup.

Steve Kane

Steve Kane is an entrepreneur, author, and gadfly. Steve and I went to Andover but only met more recently. Steve started Gamesville, one of the early online gaming websites. By 1999 it was the ‘stickiest’ site online with eBay in second place. Steve wrote a clever and funny book called F***  It. Get a Divorce – a Guide for Optimists. This photo was taken in Boston with a stellar view of downtown.

Snowdrop

Little did I know the first flowers to bloom are the Snowdrops. I came across them a few years ago in mid-March, still winter and along a south-facing bank of the Assabet River, there they were – dozens of them. Even before the first sprouting of Skunk Cabbage, these Snowdrops were in bloom. Quite fragile after picking them and they don’t last long in water back home, but they are troopers, blooming even while it’s still snow season.

Leaf

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”]I started photographing leaves a few years ago. They’re interesting, kind of like people with individual personalities and different types. Photographing on snow gives a strong figure-ground emphasizing the shape. Also, leaves are older when there is snow and show more character with age.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

Glass Window Bridge

Located on the north end of Eleuthera, Glass Window Bridge is referred to as where the Atlantic meets the Caribbean. The water to the east is a dark blue from the Atlantic and to the west a light blue of the Caribbean.

This bridge is also called the ‘narrowest place on earth’ and since the slight channel is unprotected by reefs and exposed to the Atlantic, rogue waves can sometimes shoot up to 100′ as they funnel through the gorge under the bridge even during calm weather making for a precarious tourist stop indeed.

This photo was taken en route back from the island of Spanish Wells after a day of no luck fishing and swimming with pigs. A fun day exploring the very interesting island of Spanish Wells and North Eleuthera.

I feel lucky to have captured the expression of this young fashionable lad who I just happened to see while briefly walking around. His gesture is fitting for a place that splits two oceans as if he is asking a profound yet silent question.

Dead Bird

This was taken in the South End of Boston, the SoWa (South of Washington Street) district, in old industrial building on Harrison Avenue on a stairwell.

Coming across a dead bird is supposed to be an omen of change, probably something coming to an end, maybe something bad. I try not to be superstitious but am and when I saw this a feeling of dread took over. Having recently reunited with a flame that had burned bright and hot with several breakups this preceded another breakup and an eventual end to a 3 year, off-and-on relationship.

Trains

There’s a train yard in Queens next to the Billie Jean King Tennis Center. Looks like mostly subway trains but I’m not sure – could be commuter rail as well. You can take the subway to the US Open and the station is right next to the train yard.

Queens is an interesting city that I know little about except – it’s home to the US Open, it’s supposedly the most diverse city in the world, it’s becoming popular and more gentrified, and it’s where Trump is from. I think to understand Trump you have to understand Queens, a tall order. I like to think if he didn’t become the real estate guy he became he’d be one of those guys on the street corner with a jacket filled with watches trying to sell you a fake watch, you know one of those classic New Yorker types.

Anyways the train yard is impressive – the pattern and reflective light off the steel, not only graphic and modernist but also the gritty essence and industrial faceless massiveness of New York.

Making Pesto

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.4.6″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”]Each summer I plant basil between the tomatoes. Pesto is a great way to use up all the basil. There are some varieties like citrus basil that have a fresh fragrance otherwise the standard basil you see in grocery stores is very good especially for pesto.

The basil recipe I use is lots of basil, olive oil, garlic, asiago or any hard cheese, walnuts or pine nuts if you want to splurge, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, and lemon. I’m not strict about measuring the ingredients just add them proportionally to a food processor and adjust to taste.

Pesto works well with most everything – here are stuffed portabellos with tomato.

 

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