Here in Highland Park, New Jersey

I put four art cards for sale here:
http://www.cafepress.com/leoraw/
This is rather experimental; if I make some sales, maybe I will think about how to develop this further. If you want to offer any marketing advice, I’ll be happy to read. Can’t say I’ll take it, but I’ll read.

Thanks for reading my blog; that’s really what I enjoy most, sharing with the public and exchanging ideas. I don’t expect this to take over my web work as a means of income, but rather a fun, experimental supplement.

Update: Thanks to triLcat, I added two shirts, one 3/4 sleeve, one long-sleeved. With garlic.
Broccoli Update: I added a broccoli t-shirt, especially for nutrition nerds.

These photos were taken in Ocean, New Jersey, Teaneck, New Jersey and Highland Park, New Jersey over the past two weeks. Click on any thumbnail to enlarge.

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I hate shopping for school supplies. I hate picking out all the notebooks. I hate it, I do, I do.

For the past few years, I’ve taken my sons. They hate it, too. This year, I left my eldest home, and my middle son was traveling on a bus home from camp (he’s now back), so I took my daughter. She didn’t seem to mind it that much, though when I asked if she wanted to look at skirts, she clearly just wanted to get out of the store.

Since we were close to my favorite plant nursery, Livingston Park Nursery on How Lane near Livingston Avenue in North Brunswick, we rewarded ourselves by going plant shopping. And taking photographs.

One of the reasons my daughter is happy is I bought her that purple costume she is wearing, a belated birthday present. Among my plant purchases were two of those little evergreen bushes behind her. Hopefully, we’ll have something green in our backyard in the dead of winter.

This is how the nursery looks:

I could have held unto this one until next Tuesday, so I could post it for Ruby Tuesday, a fun photography meme in which you post a photo that has red, but I like it too much to wait:

Finally, one good purpose for going to nurseries is that you find out the names of the plants that you already own. I don’t think I will forget Andromeda now:

On the other hand, I’ve already forgotten the name of the tall purple perennial I planted in my backyard. Is it loosestrife? lobelia? salvia? penstemmon? If it lives through September, I’ll take a photo of it and post it with a “please identify”.

How do you deal with school-supply season?

Oh, peach, how I love thy juiciness.
I will miss thee come fall.
You provide nourishment for my eldest son
And decorate my window sills with your yellows and reds.

As the peaches in New Jersey are luscious and seem to be almost red in late August, I present this peach as my Ruby Tuesday post.

Spencer Rockman, a friend and a wonderful local soccer coach who also runs clinics in Israel, was recently on PBS (public television). He starts:

I am a soccer coach. I am also an observant Jew. It was God’s plan for me to be a soccer coach.

In the video, he shows how he leads diverse groups of children here in New Jersey, teaching them not just soccer but values. Two of my friend’s sons are shown (quickly, the scenes change often in the video). He makes us proud!

Watch the whole video.

Featured is also his wife, who talks about the foster children they have had in their home.

Here’s a photo I took of him at a recent shul picnic:

I don’t really mean to freak my readers out with the first two photos, but the New Jersey turnpike around Elizabeth, Newark and Linden is really what gives New Jersey a bad name. These don’t even show the worst of it, which we passed when I was driving my son to the bus stop for sleepaway camp last week. He took the photos.

Just to prove that our state is actually mostly much prettier than this, I took these in Hope, New Jersey in a wonderful little amusement park, water park and outdoor theatre in which the audience can participate:

My daughter, husband and I participated in a play in the front of this castle. She was a princess, he was the dragon (a major role!), and I played the skunk:

After I took the above photo, it did rain on us. But not too much.

Since the sky was glorious blue this morning, I’ll finish up with these two photos taken in front of my home:

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