Peaceable Street

 Peaceable Street is one of the nicest streets in Ridgefield.  It runs westward from High Ridge Avenue, just out of the downtown, into hilly and wooded countryside.  (Notice that each house has a stone wall but that each is different; I have a fascinating book about the stone walls in New England.)

Many of the houses are architectural eye candy and superbly maintained.

Potpourri

 Some random photos that won't get a day of their own.

An unusual chicken at The Hickories Farm, an organic farm in Ridgefield with a long family heritage.

A car whose driver has many opinions he wants to share.

Hayfields, a charming restaurant in North Salem, New York, just over the border from Ridgefield.

A bucolic scene at a horse farm near Hayfields.

Daylily season.

Books on the Common celebrated its 40th year in town last week.

Steve Hergenrother

 Remember the painted sneakers lining Ridgefield's Main Street this summer?  Here is one in front of CVS, painted in the orange-and-black stripes of Ridgefield High School's Tigers.  Across the Tiger paw insignia, the sneaker bears the name Steve Hergenrother.  Hergenrother just graduated from RHS after a stellar running career. 

Last month Hergenrother set the Connecticut high school record for the mile at 4:03.46 (sixth in the USA this year) and with teammates set a new Connecticut record in the 4x800 meter relay.  He finished first academically in his high school class and will attend Princeton in the fall to study physics.  His father, mother, sister, grandfather and aunts and uncles all graduated from Princeton . . . same colors and Tigers!

A Prosaic Photo?

 Agreed.  This photograph is not very fancy.

But I want to applaud the town of Ridgefield for planting many new trees on Main Street this summer.   As old trees decay and die and have to be cut down for residents' safety, some cities and towns do nothing or they plant very young and small trees.  But, Ridgefield has been aggressively planting big replacements. 

 These substantial, healthy trees will fill this 1-1/2 mile stretch of Main Street with leafy beauty before many years.  Good for the environment.  Good for maintaining the beauty of the street that welcomes visitors to town.  Well done, Ridgefield.

House Wrens

 

There are at least two house wren nestlings in my bird house, maybe more.  Their bodies are reaching further and further out of the house.  I think fledging will occur soon.

Baby birds reach out and show mama an open mouth.

This is usually rewarded.

Anderson Mansion

 The 1882 Anderson Mansion is thought to be the most expensive house built in New Haven at the time.

Built in 1882 by John C. Anderson, the son of a wealthy New York tobacconist, the 17,000 square-foot mansion is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places.  It is in the Second Empire style with detailed cornice brackets, fluted Corinthian columns, brownstone trim, and a slate-tiled Mansard roof.

In the past it was a school and office building.  Currently it houses an organization that hosts global Jewish and non-Jewish speakers.

It is unfortunate that the power lines obscure the fabulous details of the mansion.

Cirque du Soleil

 Cirque du Soleil performs in Hartford from time to time.  Most recently, they were here in April-May.  

The mural artist Corey Pane had painted two previous Cirque du Soleil murals in Hartford, and they asked him to paint another in the parking lot near the place where the bigtop is erected.

The mural is so long that it needs to be viewed and appreciated segment by segment.

Today's post is shared with Monday Murals.

Christ Presbyterian Church

 This church is down the street from Yale's Peabody Museum.  The distinctive feature is a Gothic Revival structure (also called Carpenter Gothic) designed in the 1850s by the prominent architect Andrew Jackson Downing.

It is a new church, formed here in the 1990s.  This cottage was modified into the church's first sanctuary.

Ten years later, an extension and new sanctuary were built.

Make Music Day 2024

 Yesterday was Ridgfield's seventh year participating in Make Music Day.

Willow Bradford is a junior in high school in the adjoining town of Redding.  She played rock and jazz classics on the keyboard in front of Ridgefield Town Hall.

The singer/songwriter Kai Fozouni also performed at Town Hall.  He is a recent graduate of Ridgefield High School.

The Noreen Mola Quartet performed in front of Ridgefield Running Company.  

Two young boys felt the music and began dancing.

Charlotte Roth grew up in Ridgefield and graduated from college in Virginia.  She is a composer/singer/songwriter/actor and played an acoustic guitar on the grounds of Ridgefield Library.

Cintia Maio played the guitar in front of Ridgefield Building Supply.  I felt badly for her; that location is out of the downtown and doesn't draw much of a crowd.  A tall guy is reflected in the window behind her and we see a woman looking for paints in the same window.

I saw Daniel Madeson sing on the Ridgefield Library lawn.  He has a nice voice and performed rock classics.

Peabody Museum

We took the granddaughters to Yale's Peabody Museum on Wednesday..  The museum re-opened recently after a four-year renovation.  It was magical.  I don't know if the children or grandpa enjoyed it more.

One walks along a path embossed with dinosaur footprints to approach the natural history museum, passing by a 2005 sculpture of a Torosaurus Latus by Michael Anderson.

Torosaurus Latus was a herbivorous dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous period, some 66 million years ago. It has great significance to the Peabody Museum as it was described and named by O.C. Marsh, world-famous dinosaur collector, Yale's first professor of paleontology, and one of the three original curators of the Museum.

I will probably show photographs from inside the museum in future days and weeks if I can figure out which ones I took and which ones were taken by the nine year old granddaughter who took my iPhone.

First Congregational Church of Ridgefield

 

The side of the church, lit well both inside and outside, looked great to me.

Rose Weekend

 

I have visited Elizabeth Park when the roses are at peak for more than forty years.

Two Dancers

 I visited Elizabeth Park on Saturday.  

Two young women danced in the rose garden.

Reading

 

This is a new mural by Michael Rice on the back side of a  parking garage on Asylum Avenue in Hartford.

Linked to Monday Mural.

New Neighbors

While I was away, new neighbors moved in.

They keep coming to my front door, but whenever they see me approach, they leave fast.

Looks like they are about to have children.

 Until the births, I will be using the garage door to go in and out.