Tag Archives: photos

Photos taken by Raoul Pop

Events

C&O Canal photo on cover of poetry book

One of my photos from the C&O Canal has made it onto the cover of a poetry book to be published this year, written by Jean Wilbur. The book is called Walk the Towpath, and it can be pre-ordered from Finishing Line Press.

Here is the photo.

Here’s what it looks like on the cover of the book.

From Ms. Wilbur’s bio:

“Jean Gleason Stromberg, who writes under her maiden name, Jean Wilbur, has been writing most of her life, primarily in the service of others. She grew up in Northern California where she learned to love the outdoors, was educated at Wellesley College and Harvard Law, and practiced corporate law for many years. She is increasingly focused on writing, especially poetry, for herself. She walks on the C&O canal towpath in all seasons. She lives with her husband, Kurt Stromberg, in Washington DC and on a houseboat in Sausalito, California. Her sons have settled in Northern California.”

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Reviews

Sea kelp noodles with almond and mustard seed sauce

Part of the fun of being the husband of a raw food chef is that I get to eat interesting things. For example, our lunch yesterday was this: sea kelp noodles, with a sauce made of almonds, mustard seeds and tomatoes, and with assorted sea vegetables and sliced tomatoes on the side. The taste might have been a bit exotic for some, but I assure you it was delicious, nutritious, and 100% raw, which meant that all of the original nutrients in the vegetables were left intact.

Now I feel bad that I didn’t take the plate into our studio and photograph it properly. I was hungry, so I snapped a few pics with my smartphone and dug in. Shame on me.

If you’d like to learn more about raw foods and you can read Romanian, my wife Ligia writes about the raw food diet on her website at ligiapop.com. She’s writing a book of raw food recipes (also in Romanian) and I’m photographing each of those recipes for her — much better than I photographed our lunch…

For those of you who don’t understand Romanian, don’t worry, there are a TON of resources in English on the internet. Just search for “raw food diet” or “raw food recipes” and you’ll see what I mean.

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Places

Selected photos from Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens

The National Park Service now runs the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, located along the banks of the Anacostia River. The park was built by the Shaw and Fowler families, who knew the value of preserving wetlands long before the government caught onto it. In it, they preserved waterlilies and lotus flowers, and kept pristine the original tidal marsh — now the only remaining tidal marsh in Washington, DC.

The park is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna once native to the area, but since destroyed by deforestation and development. It houses hundreds of species of birds, animals, flowers and plants.

In the 1900s, the wetlands in the area had been destroyed, because they were thought to be worthless, and by the 1990s, the Anacostia River had silted in, making it quite clear that the wetlands at least played a role in preventing that. So the local government worked with various agencies to dredge the river and rebuild the wetlands, some of which abut the Kenilworth Gardens.

Walter Shaw, a Civil War veteran, purchased the original plot of land in the 1880s, started planting waterlilies, then added more species over the years. In 1912, he opened it to the public. In 1921, when he died, his daughter, Helen Shaw Fowler, took over the park. By this time, the Anacostia River had begun to silt in, so the Army Corps of Engineers was called in to dredge it, and this endangered the park. Mrs. Fowler fought to keep it open, until Congress approved the purchase of the gardens for $15,000 in 1938 in order to preserve it.

Over time, more adjacent lands were added to the park. Now its total area is over 700 acres. One such stage took place in 1992-1993, when 32 acres of mudflats were restored to tidal marshes and added to the park’s domain.

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Thoughts

That lovely sense of wonder

A kitten’s curiosity is such an endearing quality. They manage to look so adorable while exploring their surroundings, with their tiny, slender bodies, big heads and large ears. They’re so focused on what they’re doing, so concentrated on observing an insect, or why a leaf rustles when they paw it, that you can’t help loving them.

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Places

Larriland Farm, Maryland

Larriland Farm is a place where you can pick your own fruits and vegetables. It’s in Woodbine, Maryland, well into the countryside, so it’s a nice getaway from the city.

They use integrated pest management techniques to grow their crops, which means insecticides are only used as a last resort. This makes their fruits and vegies healthier than the stuff you generally find on supermarket shelves.

We went there to pick strawberries. That’s our MINI parked near the strawberry field.

If you’d rather not go out into the fields but would still like the benefit of farm-fresh produce, they do have ready-picked bushels available for you to buy. And they have a few goats for your kids to play with, too.

No self-respecting farm would do without a red barn, right?

I like farm machinery. Don’t you?

Continue reading →

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