Tree Huggers

I guess I was looking for a challenge... And it was James' graduation day from Person of Interest. Their season has been going on since last July and it finally ended. Sooo! Cheesecake time.

Kind of time consuming with a lot of steps but on the whole, cheesecakemaking is not as intimidating as I first thought. I don't  have a spring form so I just used my glass pie form and made a half batch. I started by crushing 1/3 package of graham crackers. Melt 3 table spoons of butter and pour over the crackers along with 1 tablespoon of sugar and a pinch of salt. Mix it all together and bake in the oven for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

The filling: 1 1/2 packets of cream cheese, 3/4 cup of sugar, pinch of salt, 1 tablespoon of vanilla, 2 large eggs, 1/3 cup of sour cream, 1/3 cup of heavy cream. Put one ingredient in at a time and then beat it well.

Pour the mixture over the crust and put it in a pan with boiling water and then in the oven at 325 degrees for 1 hour. When it is done turn the oven off and crack the door an inch. Leave it like that until the oven is totally cool and then put the cheesecake in the fridge over night. 

To top it off I just put razzies and some sugar in the food processor and made a sauce. And I am not even lying a little bit when I say this is the best cheesecake I've ever had.

For lunch today we had BLT's with local bacon from Cheese Louise on Route 28 and homemade mayo. We drove up to the Woodstock area yesterday to get some trees at Woodstock Landscaping. 

 
 We ended up with a red maple.

A coral bark Maple.

And a weeping willow. This area gets really soggy because of an underground stream so the willow is going to love it!

We also looked around for bluebirds but only found this guy.

I don't think he was so happy to see us.

We've been wondering when to hang the hummingbird feeders. The trumpet vine is starting to pop and we thought we'd wait until it was a little greener. And then yesterday I looked out the window and there he was. First he went to where the feeder usually hangs and when it wasn't there he came up to the window and looked in.

He put the shame on us and 10 minutes later we had hung 3 feeders. These birds really have us on a short leash.

So I looked out the window the other morning and saw this guy. I thought I was still asleep for a second. When I realized I wasn't - we really did have a new guy visiting - I got the camera first. Guy is still hanging around. Then I got the book out. He is a rose-breasted Grosbeak and he was probably on his way up north. He stuck around all day and it was a great treat.

It's getting a little silly I know... all these feeders. And i just added two more of them. I was on a beautiful estate in Connecticut on a job last weekend and the land was not much different than ours. Tom Doyle the owner, a very cool sculptor and regular Ernest Hemingway, told me they got bluebirds. You just have to give them a house and they will come. The house has to be placed in the open. We have seen them up in the mountains and I'm gonna get'em here if I have to hunt them down, blindfold them and bring them myself. But I'm starting with some food.

James once saw an Oriole at 19 Maple Ave. We gotta just get more of them. The feeder looks like something out of fantastic planet.

They are attracted to orange and oranges and drink nectar like the hummingbirds.I'm starting to become a little self conscious about this bird thing.

Cold borscht with fixins is a definite summer favorite! 

Our rhododendrons didn't bloom for very long but they have almost doubled in size already this spring.

 

Our addition from last fall, a Kouza dogwood, is doing very well.

Azaleas and view.

This Swallowtail is enjoying our Azaleas. Please help yourself!

Relish (ing)

Angry Irene sky. We got seriously dumped on rain wise in Clintondale but the wind didn't kick as hard as we thought. James and I had power all Sunday long and I sprinted out of bed in the morning and started prepping THE MOVE.

We've been going back and forth on the yellow wall. I had the paint, Farrow and Ball's Citron, a recommendation from an interior design friend, the lovely Polly of Lewis Interiors.

I guess we just didn't know if it was going to be right. But we got brave. Well, I got brave, this is actually Zombie-James who is under my control painting. (He loves the wall now but would never admit it to the dudes...)

After this was dry we took the bed apart and moved it.

I just stopped by IKEA on my way to work today and picked up two of these night stands:

Next was the dresser and closets.

Hers.

And his.

And as on cue around 6.30pm - the power went out. We were well prepared and had been nursing romantic notions of card playing by candle light but when an invite came in via text to go hang out with the neighbors we jumped at the opportunity. They had power and booze.

Saturday night was our first night in the SUITE. It felt like sleeping in a hotel. I've lived in some small apartments but I've still never been this close to the bathroom. Wow. And the bathroom. OH MY the bathroom. 

It's so big and so sexy and so close to my bed and sosososo DONE! 

Mr Bones is here to make you feel good about yourself every morning when you look in the mirror and wonder how you  managed to age ten years overnight. AT LEAST you're in better shape than him.

Next up were drapes and shades. Rosemary had 3 pairs of these draperies so we used 2 pairs as is for this wall. 

And from the 3rd pair and for the east wall she sewed these gorgeous Roman shades. Peeeerfect.

We'll be putting the finishing touches on this room here and there but it feels pretty much done already. It's our new bedroom. It's been over 1 1/2 years in the making. Since James first put that sledgehammer through that green wall on New Years eve with guests arriving in an hour. Just a quick reminder...

The only "problem" now is that we have TOO much space. Rooms galore. When James comes in the house and calls "where are you" I don't know what to answer him anymore. 

Finishing the upstairs is giving a superboost to getting the downstairs done as well. Blue room is next!!! And then on to the outside.

Speaking of outside... We took breaks here and there to enjoy the crazy gorgeous post hurricane weather on Monday and at one point we had 4 humming birds buzzing around the feeder. 

These three ladies were fighting over one poor dude. I think he ended up leaving first. 

I've had it with these pushy broads. I'm going home to mom.

The trumpet vine is still blooming and is still attracting hungry hummers.

...and mustard

My sister has been asking for the mustard and here it finally is!


It got so very busy and somehow I haven't been up to Clintondale in over a month. Apparently is was very hot the last time I was here. This picture of cold cucumber dill soup has been hanging around my desktop since then. 

And I must have become temporarily possessed by a housewife from the 50's because there is also a picture of home baked WHITE BREAD lingering on the desktop. Hmmmm...

The recipe is Julia Childs' and I will link rather than write it out!

I managed to have only 2 days off between then and now and those were spent trying to relax in the city. Where we also have a life and a home. Sometimes we forget and then a day off there seems like a vacation. We go to the movies - Tree of Life finally. Pure flippin poetry! (The bad reviews of this movie are amazing entertainment though. Stories of people walking out during the birth of the world sequence... Either you are a fundamentalist idiot with blinders or you hate beautiful things (????). But on the other hand non spiritualists also hate this movie for being too preachy... Make up your minds, people. Or let's just all agree on the fact that you were bored and YOU DIDN'T get it! EVERYTHING is in there. Love, loss, redemption, forgiveness... and almost without saying a word. Go on Mr. Malick. Go on.) And eat Korean BBQ. And quiche and baguette and Croque Monsieur at a happenstance French joint in the Lower East Side, La French Diner. And get a haircut. By a kinda scary but sweet hairdresser named Honey, who was from Yemen. She could talk!!!





But she could also cut hair! I LOVE IT!!!


So quickly - what HAVE I been doing with my time? When I last left here I had just come back from an awesome crazy cool week in Schenectady. What, you say? That is not possible. Well, if you are working on Derek Cianfrance's new movie you will say differently. Not a dull moment, ladies and gents. It's Ryan Gosling's playground and he will surprise you!

This is me in ONE of the moving vehicles from that week. An ATV with the camera rigged on it that was going VERY FAST through the woods following a stunt motorcycle. Sometimes. I love my job.

Then off to Wisconsin for more B roll for Alex Gibney's new project.

Somewhere in the middle I shot a dance film with my friend Rich. He's a choreographer with a lot of great vision and we had 2 intense days of shooting. 

Screen capture from our Central Park day. Amy and Andrea are our talented dancers!

Then some futuristic madness about robots taking over the world for the Discovery Channel. This lovely photo of our minimal crew was taken by Amie LeeKing.

Then I quit coffee and I feel like a million bucks.

AND THEN. Out of the blue, my good friend Kate hooked me up with my dream job. I am doing stills on an untitled movie starring Guy Pearce (who needs NO introduction in my book) and Amy Ryan. (We know her as Beadie from the Wire, but you may know her as Holly Flax from The Office, either way she's flippin dynamite!). At the helm is director Drake Doremus, who's last film Like Crazy did muy bueno at this year's Sundance. Check out the trailer! It doesn't feel like a job to have to take pictures of Guy Pearce all day long but it is. And it's mine! 


12 days in to the movie we had already filmed through an earthquake and now here is IRENE! There was just no filming through Irene. She was going to put us all on hold. I feel bad of course, but on the hush hush I couldn't be more thrilled about a 3 day weekend. While I've been cuckoooo crazy with work James has been finishing up the bedroom and bathroom and this weekend it's finally here!!! Power or no power.

We came up yesterday morning, both mega mega tired, but before sleep - prepare for the worst. James hooked up the genny and I went food shopping. We filled up water buckets and got the flash lights out. Secretly we are wishing for a power outage. We haven't used that genny yet (since we bought it in the winter storm of 2010) and playing cards by candle light and eating PB and J's sounds aaaaaaaallright in my book. 

Woke up Sunday morning and the downpour IS ON! I checked the basement and there is minimal wetness right now. I'm sorry to say our neighbors are not as lucky. And I shouldn't speak too soon, the rain is showing NO SIGN of slowing down. So far the wind, which is our worst enemy with all of our old trees, has not been so bad yet.

The first fatality. There goes my flip flop.

Truck passing by Tom's house on Maple Ave.

The project with burying our power lines is done, the landscaping is another story (I'm just gonna say that Irene will turn our yard in to the greatest most spectacular mud wrestling field in the Hudson Valley. Come on over!!!)  but talk about superb timing! We've sat and watched our trees sway over the lines in the tiniest gusts and Irene will have no mercy when it comes to old gran daddy Sugar Maple. 

Brave little bugger in the rain!

I fell off the wagon this morning and had a cup of coffee so now the only real hurricane is me and here I go. MOVING DAY!!! 


To be continued...

Backyard Explosion!

It's time to take this blog on the road again. I'm leaving for Sweden tonight and as much as I have time this blog will go from designing my dream house/cooking madness/garden porn to production journal during the shooting of a limited budget horror short film in Sweden. 

As my job in Mexico proved, filmmaking is pretty much universal but our cultural differences lend themselves to interesting and funny situations. Also I will be shooting which is still a novelty for me and I'm so ready to jump right in and create. Lovisa, the director and I see eye to eye on most things and have had a long relationship as friends, travel buddies and partners in film crime and I am super ecstatic for this opportunity to work together again. For those of you who haven't been to the Buster site (what?!) please visit cause this is what we do.

So the last post is about the yard. That decided to go crazy a few weeks ago. I think that you can literally sit and watch the knot weed grow. 

It's outrageous. But other things are growing too. This is last weekend.

And this is this weekend. With a new camera mind you, so they are looking extra FINE. Yes, I finally did it. I bought a 7D and now I fancy myself (even more of) a photographer. Who is available for your special occasions. Babies and pets and parties and you name its.

Little Hostas are thriving as well.

Inherited creeping Phlox that is getting bigger and better.

Happy happy Hydrageas. I fertilized them about a month ago and today I saw little bud clusters. Praying for big blue flowers!

The lovely dogwood tree.

Rhododendrons came into their own but the flowers only lasted about a week unfortunately. Will they bloom again? They are looking very healthy and are sprouting new leaves like crazy though.

The first Azalea to pop was the powder pink one.

Cheery cheeky pansies in a pot.

So this guy still hasn't found his way home. I think he may have moved in for good. Is anybody missing a rooster?

My cousin Åsa makes these incredible cakes and pastries (her blog here) and on her page I found a link to the ultimate pastry porn blog. Linda writes in Swedish and English and if you speak neither you can just enjoy the photos. Most of her stuff is way too advanced for me, but there was a recipe for caramel that I remember from being a kid and making Christmas candy. We tossed some together last weekend just to drown our ice cream in. Super yums.

Boil 2 deciliters of sugar until it becomes brown and bubbly. Be careful not to burn it, it will take on the taste immediately. Add 1 stick of butter cut into small pieces. Finally 150 milliliters of cream and stir until you have the perfect consistency.   

I've been obsessing about my black bean soup and decided to make that our last meal together in the house for about a month. I think it's the tastiest soup I have made so far. Buuut I always want to take the opportunity to try something new even if it's just a little side thingy and I decided on corn fritters.

They are tasty just the way they are but can stand to be more savory OR more sweet so it's what you're in the mood for.

1 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp. baking powder
1 can of corn

Drop spoonfuls in to hot oil and fry until done. 

The hummingbirds are back with a vengeance. We saw more dudes yesterday than we saw all of last summer. They are incredible to watch.

They don't take many breaks but we've seen a lot of them perch this weekend. I would be tired too if I flew all the way from Mexico on those tiny wings.

These photos are quite bad but they are hard little buggers to catch and I have all summer to get some good shots.

I will leave you with a house for sale. This one has a twist to it! I am linking you back to one of my earliest posts so you can read about our history with this absolute turkey!

Weston Road has finally been vacated and is going for $74,000. Here's the amazing listing! Look at the photos - these people left in the middle of the night. Notice the open drawers in the kitchen and one dish glove on the counter and one on the floor. The only details missing are some raccoons going through left over garbage and a tumble weed rolling across the floor. I love how they describe it as a "summer project". Oh boy, more like all year round for many years. I CAN vouch for the amazing property though. That is what we really fell in love with. But sometimes James and I look at each other and at our beautiful house and and say "Thank gawd. Thank somebody that we didn't buy that house."

Instead we bought 19 Maple Ave. I'm at the airport and I already miss it. But on to great things!