Red Beach Chair at Asbury Park Beach

Asbury Park beach red chair
This red beach chair photo may make it appear that there is hardly anyone at the Asbury Park Beach on July 4th, but in truth it was quite crowded on the beach. I hope to write a pictorial, historical post on Asbury Park in an upcoming post.

Rudbeckia with American Flag

American flag among rudbeckia
I was in the mood to do something creative this morning, so I took a photo of an American flag (similar to this U.S. flag photograph, both shots were taken at the Asbury Park boardwalk last year) and imposed it over a recent shot that I took of the rudbeckia in my garden. I used a mask in Photoshop to get the background of flowers to appear under the flag. The difficult part is the edges – one carefully has to go around and eliminate all the sky edges from the original photograph.

Happy Fourth of July.

Here are the two original photos used to create the image above:
rudbeckia front yard

flag on Asbury Park boardwalk
The top one of rudbeckia or black eyed susans was taken in my front yard. The bottom one depicts a U.S. flag flying on the Asbury Park boardwalk.

Bird with Speckled Breast

bird with speckled breast
What kind of a bird has a speckled breast? I found out that some thrushes do, but this bird is a juvenile robin. Makes sense, since last summer I asked the same question about the speckled breast. Thanks, Michelle, for identifying my young robin.

bird on wire speckled breast
Just last week I saw baby robins in a nest; when my daughter and I checked on Saturday, they were still in the nest, cawing away, and just a bit bigger. She counted four baby robins.

Do you know of a bird with speckled breast?

blue eggs in a robin's nest
The photo shows a blue robin egg. Then the robin babies are born, and they depend on mama and papa robin. After a while, the baby robins get more feathers and fly off from the nest. A young robin is a bird with speckled breast. The mature robin has a red breast. I’ve seen robins with worms in their mouths. I’ve also seen them eating my raspberries.

Review with Raritan Avenue Traffic

raritan avenue traffic
Raritan Avenue traffic on a June morning, 2012

The skies were glorious the morning I photographed Raritan Avenue traffic.

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

Wooden Fence at Battle of Monmouth

fence at monmouth battlefield
I was driving down to Manalapan, NJ (carpooling my teenage son and friends to a counselor orientation) and decided to drive by the Battle of Monmouth. This battle was fought on June 28, 1778 between the British and the Americans. There is not much to see other than this pretty field with a wooden fence; somewhere nearby there is a visitor center that is open on the weekends. Supposedly, every year on the last week in June, the battle is re-enacted here in Monmouth Battlefield State Park. I think I may have seen the Sutfin House in the distance from my car. My previous post showed purple vetch growing in the field. I did find orchards (Battleview Orchards) nearby.

wooden fence at Battle of Monmouth
Due to the wooden fence, I get to share my battlefield adventure as part of Thursday Challenge.

And I just discovered another meme: Rural Thursday. (If you saw the rest of Manalapan, you would say, gee, this battlefield park is the only rural area left).

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