August Night Views

As regular readers of this blog may know, we live in a former textile mill. Our apartment is on the top (5th) floor and faces the Nashua River directly below. 

This vantage point provides a great wonderful source of photo opportunities, even if not on a daily basis. That said, two evenings earlier this week provided an exception to that statement. 

On a night with no wind and a flat water surface, this view was looking downtown towards Main Street. The lights are from a restaurant, The Irish Peddler's Daughter. In the center of the photo is the Main St bridge which looks like this ↓ in daytime hours.

Below is another night view looking directly across the river from our apartment. The large brick building in the background is another repurposed building. Now called Lofts 34, this building was formerly the Nashua Corporation, which made labels, specialty papers and imaging products. This apartment building has 200 apartments ranging from 1-4 bedrooms.

The white Greek revival style house shown above ↑ was built in 1835 for Joseph Greeley II and his wife, who was not related to other Greeleys in Nashua history. The lot, purchased for $450, was previously owned by the Nashua Manufacturing Company. After a 1936 flood, the house was filled with 5 feet of water. The cost of repairing mud and debris damage cleared using a fire hose was $5,244. The house has had several owners and is currently vacant.

August arrived this past weekend and, so far, it has brought a very pleasant weather pattern to Nashua, NH. Daytime temps have ranged from the mid 70s to low 80s with a couple of light overnight rainfalls. Maybe this pleasant weather contributed to the very colorful after sunset views this week. 

The building shown on the left side and reflected in the Nashua River was part of the former Nashua Manufacturing Company. Years ago, the building was used to store cotton used in the manufacture of blankets. It's now called Cotton Mill Apartments and houses 109 apartments.

Our weather will be changing over the next few days with rain predicted today. Afterwards, temps will climb into the high 80s to near 90 degrees, Friday to Saturday, followed by rain again on Sunday and then warmer days. Seems we will be in a pattern for a while.

This spectacular sky show continued for nearly 10 minutes. Of course, I took many images, but have edited them down to a handful, thankfully for myself and everyone else. These captures were straight out of camera (SOOC) which in this case was an iPhone 10x. I was planning to use a digital camera, but too late found out that the battery + backup needed a charge Note to self, make sure camera batteries are always charged.

End of Day Tapestry

Driving along a NH highway this afternoon, we watched this beautiful scene. The sky colors intensified as the sun sank further below the horizon creating  a colorful sky of many colors.

Using the “vivid” setting on my Canon PowerShot SX130 IS digital camera produced these results.

Selecting several shots and selecting multiple exposure collage in Picasa produced the result below.

For those of you not familiar with Picasa, it’s a FREE digital image organizer and image viewer that includes an integrated photo-sharing website. The program was created by Idealab in 2002 and acquired by Google in 2004. “Picasa” is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa (“my house”) and “pic” for pictures (personalized art) – from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.

“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.” Henry David Thoreau

“A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.” Eudora Welty

Sky and Water Drama

Today was a phenomenal day for dramatic clouds. Since pictures are so much better I’ll keep the words to a minimum. Today we traveled south towards Camden Maine but got side tracked at Camden Hills State Park, home of Mount Battie.

The clouds, early morning sun and water from the top of Mount Battie all seemed to meld together.

Looking south towards Camden showed off the famous rocky Maine coastline and the crashing wave of the incoming tide. In the distance you see the Town of Camden looking like the picture perfect New England coastal village.

Looking west we saw the changing colors, the mountains, monuments, and trees all from the Shore line walk.

The beautiful clouds stayed with us while in Camden. The harbor  made the perfect foreground for the clouds. The contrasts were what made it so dramatic.

And of course we found water. This waterway flows through downtown Camden and once powered manufacturing mills and saw mills which cut the timbers for the sailing ships of yesteryear.

We finally headed back to Searsport for a Turkey Dinner at the Searsport Methodist Church. They hold this dinner every second Saturday evening year round, and it’s open to the public. Beatrice will tell you more on this. After dinner we went to the town park which over looks the harbor. It was low tide so the brown you see is tidal mud. In just 6 hours at high tide it will all be under water. Dusk added dramatic effect to the clouds.