Pileated Wookdpecker

Photo from my brother Don in Sanibel.

Click to enlarge.

Playing with your food

clipped from www.nytimes.com

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Playing With Food

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Some culinary trend watchers say the current appetite for whimsical produce art may have started with Saxton Freymann's work in the 1997 book, "Play With Your Food." His brussels sprouts pigs, broccoli poodles and bok choy fish have been featured on greeting cards, calendars and in several subsequent books.

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Ordinary carrots become parrots in a sculpture by Jimmy Zhang, a chef and produce artist in San Francisco.

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Mr. Zhang, who is regarded as a master of this kind of art, transformed taro root into rats ...

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... and into a stallion. Jicama, daikon, rutabaga and taro are favored for carving three-dimensional figures because they are firm and don't brown.

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In the hands of James Parker, another of the leading talents in fruit and vegetable carving, a Meridol papaya turns into a flower.

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Golden beet butterflies sit on an intricate watermelon flower by Mr. Zhang.

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Mr. Parker creates centerpieces that cost thousands of dollars for restaurants, resorts, caterers and individual clients.

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Hugh McMahon uses watermelons to depict the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

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Mr. McMahon's work will be displayed in a photography exhibition at the James Beard Foundation next month.

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Many chefs, bored by the precisely defined tasks that often characterize their work at restaurants or catering operations, carve fruits and vegetables as a creative release. A work by Jimmy Zhang.

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Blessed

clipped from writersalmanac.publicradio.org

Beach Attitudes

by Robert Dana

Blessed is the beach, survivor of tides.

And blessed the litter of crown conchs and pen shells, the dead

blue crab in all its electric raiment.

Blessed the nunneries of skimmers,
scuttering and rising, wheeling and falling and settling, ruffling

their red and black-and-white habits.

And blessed be the pacemakers and the peacemakers,

the slow striders, the arthritic joggers, scarred and bent under

their histories, for they're here at last by the sunlit sea.

Blessed Peoria and Manhattan, Ottawa and Green Bay, Pittsburgh,

Dresden.

And blessed their children.

And blessed the lovers for they shall have one perfect day.

Blessed be the dolphin out beyond the furthest buoy,
slaughtering the bright leapers,

for they shall have full bellies.

Blessed, too, the cormorant and the osprey and the pelican

for they are the cherubim and seraphim and archangel.

And blessed be the gull, open throated, screeching, scolding

me to my face,

for he shall have his own place returned to him.
And the glossy lip of the long wave shall have the last kiss.

"Beach Attitudes" by Robert Dana, from The Other. © Anhinga Press, 2008.

Crocuses are in bloom in Portland

clipped from southeastmain.wordpress.com

Crocus

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By Jer

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Sanibel Alligator

We're visiting at Sanibel this week. We walked on the Bailey Tract looking for alligators. My brother took this photo of an alligator sunning itself about 12 feet off the path. Other walkers said it had been there for 3 days.