Cool Bloggers Walking Club
Mostly pictures for Elisabeth’s Cool Bloggers Walking Club are beautiful, of nature, of walks with dogs and children and so on. Today we are keeping it real, and I’m sharing pictures from the suburbs, from my morning walk to a local grocery store to get some eggs and probiotics.
This is our local BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station, which is about a block away from our house. Very convenient for Maya, who works in San Francisco 3 days a week, or when we want to go to the airport. If you look carefully in the lower(ish) left of the picture, you can see the mailbox, which is where I mail postcards and such. I don’t put mail out for my postal carrier anymore, people sometimes steal things.
Walking through some office buildings. In the reflection you can see some wisteria vines on an arbor, but the wisteria blossoms are almost all gone by now. I somehow missed most of them this year. They are common near office buildings and grocery stores and I love them, but they are a fleeting joy for sure.
Crossing the bridge over the freeway, looking down at the traffic and reminding myself yet again how fortunate I am to work from home.
Gas and psychic prices.
These little flowers are at the end of their bloom as well. The grocery store is in the background. Some of you have posted pictures of tulips and daffodils in your neighborhoods, we are well past that phase of spring.
Eggs! My favorite eggs are a pretty good price at Sprouts, $7.99 a dozen for pasture raised, vs. $9.99 or $10.99 for the same brand at two other stores. They’re only $7.99 at Whole Foods too, but I haven’t been to WF since Bezos made his shitty editorial decision at the Washington Post, so off to Sprouts I go.
I’m going to pretend that there is no way in hell that I am going to try deep fried avocado wedges.
Every time I pass this little street with the canopy of trees, it reminds me of a painting I saw at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento with my cousin a few years ago. It was part of an exhibit of art from the Dixon Art Gallery in Nashville, I think.
I love this picture. I didn’t remember the artist, but just did a reverse image search on google (my first time doing such a thing), and boy, that was easy.
Road to Puteaux – Maurice Utrillo – Dixon Gallery and Gardens
“Description: For Maurice Utrillo, art was a way of life instilled in him from his birth in the bohemian Montmartre section of Paris. His mother was Suzanne Valadon, one of the most popular artist’s models in the city and a favorite of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Though his free-spirited mother’s profession exposed Utrillo to avant-garde art at an early age, he grew to be a troubled young man, and by the age of twenty-one he was deeply afflicted by alcoholism and mental illness. To divert him, Valadon encouraged her son to paint, and he soon become popular for his unique views of Paris, particularly his native Montmartre. Painted between 1913 and 1914, Road to Puteaux is a picturesque view of the tree-lined street that leads to Puteaux, a commune in the western suburbs of Paris. In depicting the streets of the city that in many ways raised him, Utrillo showed remarkable gentility and exceptional skill, influenced by the Impressionists that were such a part of his early life.”
Are there any scenes in your neighborhood that remind you of paintings? Is your daily walk prettier than my trek for eggs? Have you ever had deep fried avocados?
18 Comments
PocoBrat
Omigosh! The similarity between the painting and your street is amazing! Love it!
And I envy your proximity to city life.
J
The city life is nice, and there is nature around here as well, but we have to get in a car to get to it. Sometimes I envy the bloggers who live right next to the woods.
nance
You have a very nice metropolitan walk to gather your eggs and mail your postcards. I’d definitely nip in and get an order of avocado fries to go, telling myself that they’re much better for me than regular fries and after all, I’m walking and eating, so really, it’s like I’m not eating them at all.
Please get some and tell us how they are.
It’s astonishing how much that street looks like the painting. I’d want to show/tell everyone on that street about it!
J
I will definitely be trying them at some point soonish…I think they’re a limited item, so I can’t dilly dally too long.
AC
WE HAVE A VARIETY (caps lock) of walks. The dullest is our neighbourhood except the park part, but that is short and nothing much has been in the pond recently.
J
Yes, if I get in the car and go somewhere, there are definitely more variety here too. This is one of the less pretty walks, but it ends with eggs, so that’s a good thing.
Ernie
I so love a tree lined street, and that view and the painting are so pretty. Sadly a tornado ripped out many trees in our neighborhood that promised to be so beautiful. It really changed the landscape of our neighborhood. New ones have been plants, so we wait for them to mature.
I’ve never tasted avodado fries. I don’t get to eat much that’s been deep fried, because usually places use the same oil for things with gluten.
I took some photos of my very boring and ugly views when I walked outside my hotel in Indianpolis a few weeks ago. Blah. But it was a beautful day. I love seeing the views on your daily walk. So cool to be that near the tranist station.
J
Oh goodness, how horrible about the tornado in your neighborhood! My picture is of an apartment complex with a few buildings. When we moved here in 1998, it was a parking lot.
I’m pretty sure the avocados are battered and then deep fried, so they are definitely not for those with celiac!
Ally Bean
Our gas prices are lower than yours, but our egg prices are about the same. I’ve not had a deep fried avocado, not sure I’d enjoy that particular delicacy.
J
California has really high gas prices. We have additives and such to improve mileage and reduce emissions, and we have a lot of taxes on the gas as well. I always vote for these things, I approve of them…until it’s time to fill up my tank. Kind of like voting for new programs or improvements and then grumbling when it’s time to pay my taxes, which I also do.
Elisabeth
That street comparison is lovely!
I’ve never had a deep-friend avocado. I feel like I’ve not had very many deep-fried things, to be honest. It just not very common where I live in Nova Scotia. But I have heard deep-fried pickles are delicious. They don’t sound delicious, but I’ll have to try them some day.
J
I’ve never had deep fried pickles either, and yes, I hear they are delicious. I Iike a few deep fried things…fried chicken, fried zucchini, and fried green beans – all delicious!
I tried a deep fried snickers bar at a state fair once, it was not worth the hype. But fun to have tried it I guess.
Tobia | craftaliciousme
Oh wow did that artist sit in your spot and do the painting. Its eerily similar.
My walks would have looked like you egg track three years ago when I still lived down town the city. Now its a whole different scene with lots of trees and pretty suberbia. Maybe i should show that too.
J
Regarding the painting, I sometimes wonder whether the people who designed the apartment buildings knew the painting? I mean, it was painted in Paris about 100 years before our apartment buildings, so it would have to be that way.
I love that you live in a more rural area now with a lot of lovely nature. Though of course living in a neighborhood where you can walk to the grocery store or a coffee shop or a bar or a restaurant is a different kind of good thing.
Birchie
Thanks for taking us along for a walk in your neighborhood!
I do have some neat things in my own hood. The grocery store is over a mile away, and between the load that I know I’ll be bringing back and a huge hill that’s on the way I can’t say that I’ve ever walked for groceries. If there was one thing that I could change about where I live, it would be to wave a magic wand and make the distance just a little shorter/more walkable.
J
We have another grocery store that is that way around here, and for a while there I used to ride my bike. Uphill was with empty baskets, downhill they were full. I enjoyed it, but the bike itself was pretty heavy. I stopped when I got Rheumatoid Arthritis and my wrists couldn’t handle the pressure of bike riding anymore, and then we got Mulder and my morning bike ride time turned into morning walk Mulder time. Should I get a new bike and start up again? Not sure on that one. I like my current routine.
Margaret
I love that view and the painting. I’ve never heard of the artist! My walk is mostly trees so I don’t often post pictures of it. 🙂 I do sometimes get partial views of Rainier though.
J
I’ve never heard of the artist before either! I love this painting though, it’s lovely.