Politics, Jersey Style

So Karen, you remember being serenaded by our neighbors friend the very first weekend we stayed at our new condo two years ago? Remember the nice house next door with the koi pond and wooden deck? Both houses are owned by one, Mariano Vega, the Council Chair of Jersey City. Our lovely, noisy neighbor was caught in the recent dragnet through Jersey politics: he was arrested by the FBI for taking a $10,000 bribe: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/nyregion/24jersey.html?hp

Flora and Fauna of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Continuing with the theme of Posts About Nature, Stephen and I spent the afternoon showing his parents around the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

While we expected to see many gorgeous flowers:


Coreopsis tinctoria


The BBG has an amazing collection of water lilies. We were looking out for dragonflies, of course!

..and the occasional fauna:


...we did not expect to see a red-tailed hawk dining on a smaller bird on top of a pergola in the Shakespeare Garden:





The hawk seems relatively non-plussed by the attention and "posed" for us for almost 5 minute before flying off to eat his prey in peace.

Speaking of Nature...

...run, do not walk, to see the images in this post. The best part is the slideshow (which uses some ajax-ey technology that I need to figure how how to do 'cause it's cool).