Tag Archives: Summer

Daily Catskills: 06/28/17

55F at 8am, sunny, wet from overnight rain, rising to 70F by mid-afternoon with a flotilla of chubby clouds.

© J.N. Urbanski – 3pm Usage prohibited without consent

Daily Catskills: 08/19/16

82F by 2pm with a mixture of sun and cloud.

© J.N. Urbanski 5.30pm

© J.N. Urbanski 5.30pm

Daily Catskills: 08/08/15

80F by noon, and fairly bright despite August’s thus far regular, multifarious cloud cover.

 

© J.N. Urbanski 4pm

© J.N. Urbanski 4pm

Daily Catskills: 08/07/15

70F at 9am rising to 75F by noon. A breezy morning waned to a still afternoon with scudding clouds.

© J.N. Urbanski 4pm

© J.N. Urbanski 4pm

Daily Catskills: 08/03/15

85F by the afternoon, hot and humid with multifarious cloud cover. Thunder and the barest sprinkle of rain at 3.30pm.

© J.N. Urbanski 3.50pm

© J.N. Urbanski 3.50pm

Catskills Sandwich: Goatie White’s

© J.N. Urbanski

© J.N. Urbanski

Fleischmanns’ Goatie White’s pork sandwich, on a light roll, made more moist and delicious by the addition of a generous helping of fried onions stuffed between the thinly-sliced pork and a thin layer of cheese. Not too heavy or greasy, it’s excellent pre-hike sustenance. A sandwich to love.

Daily Catskills: 07/31/15

70F at 8.30am with strong sunshine piercing the morning haze as the temperature quickly rises.

© J.N. Urbanski 8.20am

© J.N. Urbanski 8.20am

© J.N. Urbanski 1.30pm

© J.N. Urbanski 1.30pm

 

Daily Catskills: 07/28/15

63F at 7.30am with the rising sun quickly burning through the thick mist hovering over the mountains. Update: the morning mist cleared quickly and the day turned out to be a 85F scorcher with high humidity.

© J.N. Urbanski 7.30am

© J.N. Urbanski 7.30am

© J.N. Urbanski 8am

© J.N. Urbanski 8am

Daily Catskills: 07/27/15

An typically enigmatic mountain morning with thick fog nestling in the valleys like cotton wool, rising to 85F by 1.30pm with little respite from the scorching sun despite rolling cloud cover. Hot.

© J.N. Urbanski 8am

© J.N. Urbanski 8am

 

Daily Catskills: 07/26/15

73F at 9.30am with overnight heavy rains evaporating into the morning haze. Heavy grey and white cloud cover rolled through with thunder and stole the show mid-afternoon. Mostly sunny at 4pm.

© J.N. Urbanski 4pm

© J.N. Urbanski 4pm

Daily Catskills: 07/24/15

75F at 10am, bright sunshine with cotton wool clouds on the horizon becoming more burly as the day goes on. 78F by 2.30pm

© J.N. Urbanski 1.30pm

© J.N. Urbanski 1.30pm

 

Daily Catskills: 07/19/15

80F at 11am, hot and humid. A very sultry morning rising to 88F in the shade and very hot in the sun by 2pm. A scorcher.

© J.N. Urbanski 12.40pm

© J.N. Urbanski 12.40pm

 

Daily Catskills: 07/17/15

75F at 10am, with hazy sunshine burning through gossamer clouds. A hazy day and late afternoon rain.

© J.N. Urbanski 11am

© J.N. Urbanski 11am

Foraging: Wild Red Raspberries

Wild red raspberries are plump and juicy this year. Get them before the bears and slugs do. Look for low lying bushes with leaves that have serrated edges.

© J.N. Urbanski

© J.N. Urbanski

Daily Catskills: 07/14/15

72F by 10am, humid with heavy clouds. Update: showers after lunch, but moody cloud cover remained.

© J.N. Urbanski 10.30am

© J.N. Urbanski 10.30am

© J.N. Urbanski 12.15pm

© J.N. Urbanski 12.15pm

© J.N. Urbanski 7pm

© J.N. Urbanski 7pm

 

Daily Catskills: 07/13/15

68F by 8.30am, hazily overcast with wet ground. 80F and humid by 1pm.

© J.N. Urbanski 1pm

© J.N. Urbanski 1pm

Daily Catskills: 07/12/15

80F with hazy sunshine by noon.

© J.N. Urbanski 4.20pm

© J.N. Urbanski 4.20pm

 

More Wildflowers

© J.N. Urbanski 7/2/15

© J.N. Urbanski 7/2/15

Some of the wild flowers I’ve seen fade so quickly that catching them in their prime requires daily survey. I don’t know what these flowers are, but they are blooming and wilting in abundance. Update: this is crown vetch which was introducted to the United States in the 1950s, primarily for soil erosion control, from the Meditteranean region. According to the USDA: “crown vetch is a useful but overused erosion control plant. Its spreading growth habit, and strong root system provide soil holding ability and ground cover. The dark green foliage and profuse flower have aesthetic value. It is a good plant for road bank stabilization in areas where rocky conditions predominate, but… in general, however, crownvetch dominates other plants and tends toward a monoculture”.

© J.N. Urbanski 7/2/15

© J.N. Urbanski 7/2/15

 

Catskills Art Event: Doodle with Ohiso

doodle_email

This Saturday Ohiso is curating a public art event called Doodle. It’s no secret that the arts are employed as therapy and the specific benefits of doodling have also been examined in media outlets like PBS, Wall Street Journal and Huffington Post . Doodling is therapeutic. I once worked with the executive assistant of a prominent British CEO who continually worked on an intricate doodle on a large piece of cardboard whenever she had to be on the phone and her masterpiece grew to enormous proportions. It was her lifeline in a very stressful environment and it was something I’ll never forget.

I asked Ellie Ohiso what inspired her to found a doodle event. She says “we took to the doodling notion because sometimes as you do more art-focused events, you realize that some who are not in the traditional art world see it to the exclusion of themselves. Art becomes this kind of intimidating notion. Doodling is for everyone. It’s universal, non-judgmental, free. You don’t need to know anything about art, or art history, or even to be good at it for it to be classified as a doodle”.

Daily Catskills: 07/06/15

61F at 8.30am, partly cloudy with some bright sunshine, rising to 71F by noon.

Evening Catskills: 07/04/15 Bees Bedding Down

The rain stopped at 2.30pm and the sun burned through the hazy cloud. As the golden raspberries have blossomed and begun to fruit, the bumble bees have moved in. As dusk quiets the Catskills, the bees bed down underneath the leaves and in the fruit, buzzing the bushes to sleep. We have about thirty or forty bumble bees now asleep in on the farm.

© J.N. Urbanski 7.20pm

© J.N. Urbanski 7.20pm

© J.N. Urbanski 7.15pm

© J.N. Urbanski 7.15pm

© J.N. Urbanski 7.30pm

© J.N. Urbanski 7.30pm

Daily Catskills: 07/04/15

Morning rain leading to 64F by noon and more rain. Happy 4th!

© J.N. Urbanski 1pm

© J.N. Urbanski 1pm

© J.N. Urbanski 3pm

© J.N. Urbanski 3pm

Daily Catskills: 07/03/15

64F at 9am with clear and sunny skies. A crisp, sunny morning rising to 76F by 2pm with blue skies dissipating into a white haze onto the horizon.

© J.N. Urbanski 3.15pm

© J.N. Urbanski 3.15pm

© J.N. Urbanski 4.40pm

© J.N. Urbanski 4.40pm

 

Daily Catskills: 07/02/15

62F by 8.30am and overcast with mist rising off the mountains and dewy leaves. 72F by 2pm.

© J.N. Urbanski 1pm

© J.N. Urbanski 1pm

Daily Catskills: 07/01/15

65F at 9am with a sodden landscape and mist over the mountains. A light breeze whips rain out of dripping trees. Update: Sun! 74F with hazy sunshine over the lunchtime period, although more showers expected.

© J.N. Urbanski 9am

© J.N. Urbanski 9am

© J.N. Urbanski 2.15pm

© J.N. Urbanski 2.15pm

 

Daily Catskills: 06/30/15

60F at 8am, overcast with streaky cloud cover. A crisp morning. Update: Rain just before noon and intermittently for the rest of the day.

© J.N. Urbanski 8.15am

© J.N. Urbanski 8.15am

© J.N. Urbanski 6pm

© J.N. Urbanski 6pm

Daily Catskills: 06/26/15

63F at 8.30am, hazy sunshine and breezy, rising to 70F by noon with afternoon cloud cover rolling in.

© J.N. Urbanski 10.50am

© J.N. Urbanski 10.50am

Daily Catskills: 06/25/15

56F at 8am, clear blue skies. A crisp morning. 74F and rolling grey cloud cover by afternoon. Heavy rains late afternoon/evening.

© J.N. Urbanski 7.45am

© J.N. Urbanski 7.45am

© J.N. Urbanski 2pm

© J.N. Urbanski 2pm

 

Daily Catskills: 06/24/15

60F at 8.30am, partly sunny, cloudy and breezy, rising to 74F by noon.

© J.N. Urbanski 10.40am

© J.N. Urbanski 10.40am

© J.N. Urbanski 11am

© J.N. Urbanski 11am

Daily Catskills: 06/22/15

64F at 8am, partly cloudy but warm in the sun. Last night’s rain drying in the sunshine.

© J.N. Urbanski 8.34am

© J.N. Urbanski 8.30am

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Farm Report 06/13/15

The old asparagus plant that was planted three years ago is now over six feet tall as is the rhubarb. Only a few spears were cut in its second year and this year we harvested over twenty spears. The point of letting the asparagus go wild in its third year is to allow the long stalks and buds to transfer nutrients to the roots which will improve yield for forthcoming years.

© J.N. Urbanski 6/13/15 2pm

© J.N. Urbanski 6/13/15 2pm

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Girls’ Night: Drinks at Phoenicia Diner

© J.N. Urbanski

© J.N. Urbanski

If the most excellent Phoenicia Diner gets any hotter it will start sizzling such is the expanse of its popularity, having been featured everywhere recently in publications like Conde Nast Traveler, Vogue, Elle and my country’s Daily Mail and Telegraph. I told Mike Cioffi, the Diner’s owner, that he could put ten diners up and down Route 28 and they would still be full to bursting every weekend. I’m sad to say that I’m severely behind in my New Year’s Resolution of eating my way through the outstanding menu and am usually banging my head against the desk on Mondays when I look at my watch and realize it has closed until Thursday.

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Catskills Conversations: Jeff Vincent

Photo Courtesy of Jeff Vincent

Photo Courtesy of Jeff Vincent

Jeff Vincent is proprietor of the new mountain guide business Catskill Mountain Wild, in Catskill, New York.

JN: How long have you lived in the Catskills?

JV: I was born in the town of Catskill 28 years ago.

So you’re a born and bred mountain man. You never wanted to leave? Usually young people leave here by the thousand every year.

I have left a few times and I came back. I lived in Denver for a year or so. I was in San Diego for a little while, but I really, really love this area, now that I’ve grown up and got all of that out of my system. I through-hiked the Appalachian Trail last year, so that got me away for six months.

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Daily Catskills: The Edits

© J.N. Urbanski 5/18/15 12.30pm

© J.N. Urbanski 5/18/15 12.30pm

I’m eight months into my Daily Catskills project, in which I take one image a day and publish it on the day. There’s such an incredible abundance of life to record here though, that sometimes I spend all day deciding on one image. I take anywhere from one to 100 images a day on the days that I haven’t hired another photographer to do the job. A couple of weeks ago, I took 95 images of the same cherry tree stand at different angles and I didn’t like a single one of those images I took. I reluctantly published the image that I thought was the best, but changed my mind – and it – several times and eventually gave up and moved on. The whole process took four hours. Needless to say, I have thousands of unpublished images and there are plenty of vantage points in these mountains from which I’ve taken a picture many times, capturing snow, rain, mist and sun from the same location.

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En Plein Air

© J.N. Urbanski Noon 5/07/15

© J.N. Urbanski Noon 5/07/15

The summer comes alive for artists when the En Plein Air group reconvenes for the season. Gracious homeowners kindly let our group gather every week in some of the most picturesque spots across the mountains and it’s difficult not to be stunned by the extraordinary beauty of the countryside. This year, May 7th was the group’s earliest meeting on record because of the extraordinary high temperatures for the day, but the landscape was still bare and it seemed like we were able to watch the leaves pop before our eyes. The sun had become so strong by noon on May 7th, however, that whomever didn’t have an umbrella had to move to the shade. Taking part of the day out to paint really clears the mind. To focus closely and solely on the landscape for a few hours is much-needed therapy after the long, arduous winter. All worries dissipate into the air with the drying watercolour and if the homeowner is home, we make a new friend. Today, we had a gorgeous view of the mountains.

© J.N. Urbanski Noon 5/19/15

© J.N. Urbanski Noon 5/19/15

Daily Catskills: 05/17/15

75F at 10.30, overcast but still rather bright, light winds and damp from overnight showers. 80F, scudding cotton wool clouds and hot in the sunshine by 1pm.

© J.N. Urbanski 1pm

© J.N. Urbanski 1pm

© J.N. Urbanski 1pm

© J.N. Urbanski 1pm

 

Daily Catskills: 05/14/15

36F at 6.30am, rising to 61F at 1pm with sunny skies. Too early to say if this morning’s frost ruined the blossoms. Burn ban extended to May 21st.

Daily Catskills: 05/13/15

54F and cloudy at 10.30am. Update: Frost forecast for the evening, threatening blossoms and seedlings. Lows of 30F are predicted for the early hours of tomorrow morning (4am to 6am).

Daily Catskills: 05/12/15

64F at 8.30am, with a mix of sun and cloud. Much-needed rain expected this afternoon. The landscape is thirsty. Update: Rain! Late afternoon.

 

 

Asparagus Update

On May 1st, we planted a long bed of twenty new asparagus and in less than ten days we already had a six-inch tall shoot from one of the mounds (bottom middle of the picture). All the other roots planted have shoots of about an inch. The image of the “tall poppy” below was taken yesterday morning.

© J.N. Urbanski 5/11/15

© J.N. Urbanski 5/11/15

 

Daily Catskills: 05/11/15

76F at 8am. Warm and sunny with no breeze. Asparagus acting like a sundial will be later eaten for breakfast. Update: they were juicy. The crab apple tree in full bloom.

© J.N. Urbanski 8.30am

© J.N. Urbanski 8.30am

© J.N. Urbanski 9am

© J.N. Urbanski 9am

© J.N. Urbanski 9.30am

© J.N. Urbanski 9.30am