The day of the peony

Today three peonies opened wide. My dear wife Karen and I said aah! We know the blooming period is short for these beauties at the corner of the front garden of our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood, so we always count down their arrival and admire their dramatic full effect. Most happily,…

Mulch to remember on Memorial Day Weekend

My dear wife Karen wielded her mighty little hand shovel to place the two Gerber daisies we’d purchased Friday night — the only color she’d found at the apparently picked-over big box — into the hourglass shaped front garden. I pulled out the bags of red mulch and poured liberally. Karen placed and patted, lovingly,…

A wheelie good time at the park

Sometimes when you take a lot of pictures, a really good one can get away. This image from my walk last week at Onondaga Lake Park was among my 100. It shows a woman and children enjoying a wheeled ride on a pleasant afternoon on the fitness trail, front, center and behind. I do believe…

I might even give it a catchy new nickname …

When I enjoyed my Saturday stretch with Ellie B, aka Dogamous Pyle, at Onondaga Lake Park last Saturday, I had ulterior motives. I wanted to take pictures for today’s installment of my weekly community blog for Syracuse Public Media site waer.org. I happen to think the facilities at Onondaga Lake Park deserves some boasting. The…

Sometimes it feels like a whole new course

For some dozen years now, my Tuesday nights in the warm months have been reserved for nine holes of golf with good friends. Weather was beautiful at Northern Pines for week two of our informal little formal golf league. In the beginning, four foursomes of workers at The Post-Standard newspaper hustled to arrive for tee…

Come out and play

Winter held on. Spring was sleepy. The Robinson flowering crabapple in the front yard of our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood shook all that off and made its grand entrance, as far as I’m concerned, this very morning. Hello to summer two, you hardy and hearty blooming beauty.

A dirty job no matter how you look at it

Four plants now are ready to sprout in the new section of our hourglass front-yard garden in our Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood, the portion I dug out last fall. My dear wife Karen and I teamed this glorious and sunny Sunday to dig in the dirt. I used a spade to make holes for…

Syracuse Dreamin’

This is not my beautiful lawn. This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful yard. This is not where I hang out with my beautiful friends. I have showed you all of those places in the days gone by, people. Here we have Bellevue Country Club, on the grounds of which I…