Memorial Day Parade 2

Being a former band geek myself, I appreciate marching bands. Even when they don’t start playing until they’ve marched 100 feet past where I’m standing. (I’m not bitter. AT ALL.)

It’s interesting to see what the norm is for different marching bands. This band only fastened the top button of their jackets, and let the back zipper hang open, unzipped. (It seemed a little sloppy, but they were all wearing matching maroon t-shirts underneath, so I guess it was planned. But why not forgo the jacket entirely, and just wear the matching maroon t-shirts?) Plus, a lot of them carried their own little knapsacks/ mini backpacks through the parade. I wish we’d been allowed to do that when I was in band. (sulk sulk sulk)

Memorial Day Parade

I know this is obvious for most of you, but today is Memorial Day in the United States. A lot of us have the day off from work so we can celebrate the memory of those who died in wars.

One of the ways we celebrate is… parades!

Every town has its own local parade, mostly. So I watched New Providence’s! It’s sponsored by our local American Legion chapter.

The guard, shown in the top photo, was much less busy before the parade started:

I’ve never photographed a parade before. It’s hard to get good photos of a parade! I’ll need to figure out some better techniques for next time.

Honeybees

This year, the Summit Farmer’s Market got started a month earlier than usual. While the vendors are happy to have an extra month of business, most crops aren’t ripe yet, so the produce stands are only selling garden plants, lettuces, root vegetables, and sad-looking strawberries.

This means the non-fresh-produce stands are really interesting right now.

Tassot Apiaries [site] brings a honeycomb with live bees to the market! The queen bee is included, too. She’s got a white dot painted on her back (for identification purposes; apparently it needs to be repainted a lot) and she’s a little bigger than the other bees. It’s fun to try to find her in the swarm!

Garden show 2!

As portraits go, this is a pretty terrible one. I am lousy at clicking my shutter at the right time!

But these lovely ladies were hanging out in a tent at the Spring Garden Fair and Plant Sale, encouraging kids like me to plant ourselves a sunflower!

I got as far as putting the soil into a little newspaper pot before I mentioned that I live in an apartment, and I was gently informed that sunflowers + apartments = a bad idea.

I pouted and gave my dirt back.

Ohhhh well.

Garden show!

This past Sunday was the 23rd Annual Spring Garden Fair and Plant Sale, featuring Union County Master Gardeners!

A section of the Watchung Reservation is dedicated to their Master Gardener demo garden anyway, so they just set up some tables and tents, and put out a whole lotta plants, and called it a fair.

Everywhere you looked, there were gardeners standing by ready to spring to action! And plants! Plants as far as the eye could see! (The plants weren’t ready to spring to action, though. No action plants.)

Every green-thumber’s dream, really.

…Well. Even for someone with a brown thumb (like me), it was a lovely opportunity to see all these beautifully cared-for plants in one spot. (Oh my poor stevia. Sigh.)

Carnival 3!

Continuing with the OLP fair… everyone loves the swing ride!

Carnival!

It’s that time of year again for Our Lady of Peace (a Catholic church/school in downtown New Providence) to put on its annual fair! (They called it a country fair last year, they’re calling it a carnival this year… whatever, same thing.)

It runs Wednesday through Saturday, presumably because it’s hosted by good Catholics who don’t want to work on Sunday. So yes, it’s over now, but I’m still gonna regale you with a few days’ worth of photos. Carnivals at night are way too much fun to photograph!

(I know I’ve shown you a merry-go-round before, but… well, I’ve shown you more than one flower, too, so what’s the harm in repeating myself a little?)

I was once told that a merry-go-round rotates clockwise, and a carousel rotates counter-clockwise, or something… but according to Wikipedia, this seems to be a regional distinction more than anything, and carousels and merry-go-rounds are the same dang thing.

Supermarket garden

It’s almost summertime, which means… it’s time for suburbanites to buy garden plants from supermarkets!

All across New Jersey (and possibly the entire United States), plants in front of grocery stores are a common sight. I’m not sure whether most people buy these plants on impulse (“Let’s see, milk, bread, eggs… oh! They have petunias! I’ll get some petunias,”) or whether supermarkets are just known convenient sources (“We could really use some geraniums out here. Hey sweetie, next time you go to the A&P, could you pick up some geraniums?”).

Have you ever bought plants from a supermarket? Why or why not?

 

(FYI: I was standing in an obvious place [blocking the store entrance, in fact] and using that plant to frame my shot. I was NOT hiding behind a bush and taking sneaky paparazzi photos. Just to clarify.)

Bike bridge

If you’re standing in the middle of a bike path to take a photo of a bridge, remember to stay alert for oncoming bicycles.

Concert

The Chatham Community Band had a concert yesterday!

The theme of the concert was “A Tribute to the Movies” (which is, incidentally, a recurring joke on one of my favorite podcasts. [FYI, they get to it within the first 3 minutes of that particular episode.] They enjoy mocking the multitudes of ways that Oscar ceremonies can waste time.)

For the whole movie tribute, they played songs derived from movies, and played clips from those movies on a projection screen in front of the band.

Pretty fun!