Pic(k) of the Week: Riparian tree in winter

Roots stretched down the bank;

Arms twisted up, some yet frocked. 

Calm tenacity. 

Winter of 2018/2019, on Sugar Creek, in the Kirkwood neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Dead end for tiny park

Lanier Gardens Park, Decatur, Georgia. 4 February 2019.

Not much of a park, at a fifth of a mile long and a few yards wide, and this ignominious end along the side of a road. Not quite a garden(s) either, unless a few shrubberies comprise such.

That being said, the bricked sidewalk and pleasant landscaping were suffused with the warm glow of a winter 'golden hour.'

As the late, great Hall of Famer Frank Robinson (1935-2019) once said:

When you come to the end of the road and it looks like there's an obstacle there to stop you, just take the time to look on the other side. There're better things there.

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• In this shot, I experimented, just a bit, with HDR (high dynamic range), a photographic look currently in vogue. Thus, after the fact, I brought the sky highlights 'down' while bringing the foreground shadows 'up.' That was not exactly what my camera 'saw,' but, as is the idea with HDR, it was more to what my eyes actually saw.


• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of photos taken (or noted) by me, posted on Saturdays, and occasionally, but not always (as is the case today), with a good fermentable as the subject.
• See the photo on Flickr: here.
• Camera: Olympus Pen E-PL1. Lens: Olympus M.14-42mm F3.5-5.6 II R (w/ wide converter).
• Settings: 22 mm | 1/320 | ISO 200 | f/5.0
• Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.


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Pic(k) of the Week: Farewell, hydrangea

Farewell, hydrangea,
Erstwhile companion.

Dead in winter,

Your corymbs tattered

Yet hanging on.

Atlanta (Edgewood), Georgia. 20 January 2019.

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Happy Brewsters' Day!

I should like a great lake of ale, for the King of the Kings. I should like the family of Heaven to be drinking it through time eternal.

— Opening line of a poem attributed to Saint Brigid of Kildare

On 1 February, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast day of Saint Brigid of Kildare (c. 451 – 525 AD): a patron saint of brewers and one of three patron saints of Ireland (in league with Saints Patrick and Columba). Brigid herself was a brewer: one miracle attributed to her was turning (bath) water into beer, a gift she has since bequeathed to many brewsters and brewers alike (if without that spritz of sitz).

"Probably the best known Irish saint after Patrick is Saint Brigid (b. 457, d. 525). Known as 'the Mary of the Gael,' Brigid founded the monastery of Kildare, in Ireland. She was a generous, beer-loving woman, known for her spirituality, charity, and compassion.

Brigid worked in a leper colony which once found itself without beer. "For when the lepers she nursed implored her for beer, and there was none to be had, she changed the water, which was used for the bath, into an excellent beer, by the sheer strength of her blessing and dealt it out to the thirsty in plenty."

She also is reputed to have supplied beer out of one barrel to eighteen churches, which sufficed from Maundy Thursday [Holy Thursday] to the end of paschal time [52 days]. Obviously, this trait would endear her to many a beer-lover.

— Via the Brews Brothers: "Saints of Suds (When The Saints Go Malting In)."

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VeggieDag Thursday: Lynda's Mock 'Tuna' Salad Sandwich

In communion with the fine people of Ghent, Belgium, VeggieDag Thursday (DonderDag) is a series of occasional Thursday posts on an animal-free diet and the ecology. Today, the former.

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Lynda's Mock 'Tuna' Salad Sandwich

• 15 ounces canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed, fork-smashed. (Save that aquafaba!)
• 1 celery stalk, diced or grated
• 2 tbsp dill pickle, diced
• 1 spring onion (or ramp), diced
• 2 tsp nutritional yeast
• 1 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
• 2 tbsp vegan 'mayonnaise'
• 1 tsp kelp powder (optional)
• ½ tsp dry mustard powder
• ½ tsp onion flakes
• 1 tsp fresh lemon juice, or more to taste.
• S&P, to taste

Assemble. Eat. Enjoy.

— Recipe via Lynda Howard
(with adaptations from Happy Herbivore).

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