It's so nice to be able to attend events once again.
Earlier this spring, I attended a special "Evening of Wine" at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts - not far from my Bedford, New York farm. Caramoor is a 90-acre estate where Lucie and Walter Rosen built an Italianate-style villa and gardens to entertain their friends from around the world. In 1946, the Rosens opened their property as a performing arts center which hosts summer concert series, historic house tours, and other outdoor affairs and performances. "Evening of Wine" is an annual celebration supporting Caramoor’s dedication to the arts. The theme included wines and music from the 1960s and 1970s. The delicious menu was created by Chef Dan Barber and prepared by his team from Blue Hill at Stone Barns - all paired with rare wines from the area’s best private cellars.
Enjoy these photos, and please visit the web site at caramoor.org to see what events are being offered during the LIVE music summer season beginning June 19th.
On the Caramoor grounds, guests saw this newly commissioned sound art sculpture, in”C”, created by Trimpin. Born Gerhard Trimpin, Trimpin is a kinetic sculptor, sound artist, and musician. His work integrates sculpture and sound across a variety of media. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
Guests were directed to the Pavilion Patio where they could mingle and enjoy refreshments and hors d’oeuvres. The evening was so pleasant – perfect for a safe outdoor gathering. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
Guests were welcomed to the party with champagnes including this Moet & Chandon Nectar Imperial. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
Some of the small bites included fresh, young vegetables from Stone Barns gardens. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
In another area, guests sat in for the first set of music – a musical trip through the 1960s and 1970s with the Stella Blue’s Band, a Grateful Dead cover group. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
The band includes lead guitarist Bill Bonacci, rhythm guitarist Steve Liesman, Clare Maloney on vocals, and Ken Aigen on keyboard. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
The band, which performs around the New York tristate area, played until the sun set. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
These are some of the rare and on-theme wine bottles that went up for auction, raising funds for Caramoor’s community outreach and education programs. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
Here is another selection of rare wines up for auction. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
The dinner menu, carefully planned by Chef Dan Barber and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, listed several courses, each paired with a specially selected wine from various years in the Grateful Dead history.
The tables were all set for dinner – and, of course, lots of tasting wines. During a tasting, the first wines are generally the light, crisp white wines followed by the reds. Since white wines don’t have the same level of tannins as red, tasting white first will leave the palate primed for sampling darker options.
Here are some of the vintages of wines from the 1960s and 1970s we enjoyed. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
This is a 2013 François Raveneau Chablis
1er Cru Montée de Tonnerre. It was paired with the First Course of Crab Salad with panther soy beans and hakurei turnip.
Here is a 2016 E. Guigal Condrieu La Doriane, paired with the Second course of This Morning’s Farm Egg with morel mushrooms, green garlic, and new potatoes.
This is a 1961 Chateau Beycheville that was tasted side by side with a 1975 Chateau Haut Brion during the Third Course – Blue Hill Farm Pork.
And here is the label of the 1975 Chateau Haut Brion. Front wine labels indicate the winery name, grape variety and origin, the vintage year, and the alcohol content.
This is the Third Course – Blue Hill Farm Pork with eight row flint corn polenta and Donko shiitake. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
During the Fourth Course, we tasted this 1970 R. López de Heredia Rioja Reserva Viña Tondonia alongside a 1970 Chateau Latour.
The course included tender Stone Barns Grass Fed beef with shelling beans and tomatoes.
And here I am with Caramoor President and CEO Ed Lewis III and Caramoor Chairman of the Board Jim Attwood. It was an enjoyable evening for all. If you’re in the area this summer, attend an event at the Caramoor – you’ll have a great time. (Photo by Gabe Palacio for Caramoor)
Whenever I go to Skylands, my home in Seal Harbor, Maine, the days are always filled with lots of great activities - shopping and touring local gardens and nurseries are often on my list. And of course, spending time with good friends while sharing delicious meals.
Every time I go up to Maine, Kevin Sharkey always creates the most gorgeous flower arrangements. Here I am behind a giant collection of lilacs from my garden. One of three beautiful and fragrant arrangements, and follow Kevin made on our first day up at Skylands.
Here are my good friends, Hannah and Douglas, with all the lilacs cut and ready for Kevin to arrange – the fragrance of all these blooms is intoxicating.
On our first evening in Maine, we drove by the Asticou Azalea Garden in Northeast Harbor – it is a beautiful place to visit. The light was perfect for a few photos, so we just had to stop. Asticou Azalea Garden was created in 1956 by lifelong Maine resident, Charles Kenneth Savage, who was inspired by his love of native plants and his study of Japanese garden design. The Garden and its pond are open to the public from May to October each year. Styled after a Japanese stroll garden, Asticou features a wonderful selection of rhododendrons and azaleas, a sand garden, and a meandering collection of fine gravel pathways.
Look at the beautiful reflection in the still water – simply gorgeous. Asticou Azalea Garden was built for quiet enjoyment, and intended for relaxation and contemplation.
Here’s a photo of our group from across the pond. I try to visit Asticou at least once or twice each year when I am in the area.
During the weekend, we had some delicious meals. Chef Lazaro Morales from PS Tailored Events joined us and prepared the most wonderful lunches and dinners. Here he is with a platter of fresh broccoli and green beans.
The vegetables were served with pork chops, steak, and potatoes – a good meal after a busy first day of traveling and gardening.
For dessert, we had baked apricots and peaches from Frog Hollow Farm in Brentwood, California. These fruits are baked with just a sprinkling of sugar in buttered dishes and then served with a dollop of creme fraiche.
The next evening, we enjoyed some ROE caviar and chips. The caviar was gifted to me by Douglas Friedman. Follow his Instagram page and see more photos from the weekend @DouglasFriedman.
We also had gougeres – those delicious baked savory choux pastries made of choux dough and mixed with cheese.
Here is a fun snapshot of Ryan and Kevin after another long day planting the terrace.
Later that night for dinner, my friend Scott Koniecko came over with a bag of fresh oysters. He also brought his shucking glove and knife. The best oysters shucking gloves are the ones that provide the highest level of protection. Aside from being cut-resistant, oyster shucking gloves should also be comfortable, easy to clean, and have a good grip. The knife should be very sharp in order to remove the top shell and reveal the beautiful meat inside.
He shucked all the oysters for us himself. To shuck, he holds the oyster firmly in the gloved hand and the oyster shucking knife in the other. He places the tip of the shucking knife at the base of the hinge to open, and then loosens the meat.
Here they are served on a bed of seaweed ready to devour – and devour we did.
They were served with a bowl of pasta bolognese topped with lobster and parsley.
Pete and Fernando from my outdoor grounds crew at my Bedford, New York farm were also up at Skylands for the weekend. Here they are ready for dinner! It’s a lot of work for everyone at Maine, but we all work very hard and then eat well.
At night, we played competitive games of gozo – a card game similar to rummy.
And early in the morning, we do some yoga and stretching.
For lunch on the next day, we enjoyed these mouth watering barbecued ribs. The meat came from D’Artagnan. They were steamed first and then roasted to perfection.
Chef Lazaro cut each of the ribs and served them on a large platter – the meat just fell off the bone.
The ribs were served with a delicious green salad – with lettuce from my gardens. Everything was so delicious.
Here’s a photo of Carlos with my gardeners and outdoor grounds crew up at Skylands – Porter, Mike, Carlos, Wendy, Rick, and Peter.
And here I am on my West Terrace. Despite the rain, it was such an enjoyable weekend. I can’t wait to return this summer. And please check out more of my photos on my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48.
The terraces at Skylands are brimming with plant life and color once again.
I spent the Memorial Day weekend at my home in Maine to carry out my annual task of planting the large urns, pots, and planters that adorn the exterior of the house. It’s quite an undertaking, but I always enjoy the time, especially with the group that accompanies me from year to year. The greenhouse at Skylands isn’t large enough to accommodate the big plants during winter, so many of the tropical and exotic specimens are stored in a hoop house at my Bedford, New York farm, and then carefully loaded onto a trailer and delivered to Maine for the summer months. As soon as I get there, I design the layout of where things should go, and then we get right to work.
It's always a wonderful time - enjoy these photos.
It’s a tedious job to get everything planted over one weekend, but it’s a trip I look forward to every spring. Here I am starting with this agave. Once it’s out of the pot, I trim off any spent or damaged leaves. Caring for agaves is easy when planted in the right location. Agaves need full sun – my large terrace here at Skylands is the perfect place.
Here are some of the bigger plants taken out of the trailer and placed on the driveway. I decide where each plant will go before they are moved – staying organized saves lots of time and energy.
I always bring the doggies with me whenever I go to Maine – they all love it up here. Here are my four dogs – Bete Noire, Creme Brulee, Empress Qin, and Emperor Han. “Which way do we go?”
Here are some of the smaller potted agaves on the West Terrace. Agaves are long-leafed succulents with shallow roots and showy, spiked leaves.
We had a varied selection of plant material for all of the urns. Some of these plants were grown in my greenhouses. Propagating this way saves a lot of cost.
Ryan carries this agave out to the large terrace. A little extra care should be taken whenever working with sharp plants.
The plants are lined up by type and then placed near their designated urns and pots. Everyone takes turns doing everything – from moving and preparing the plants to moistening the potting mix, to filling the pots, to planting.
Look at all the plants waiting – agaves, alocasias, palms, ferns, and so many more. This day was cool, but still very comfortable for gardening.
This container is filled with clay shards to use at the bottom of the pots for drainage. Before we start planting, we make sure all the supplies are ready – the urns, pots and planters, the tools, the potting mix, and of course the plants.
For planting, we use Pro-Mix BX Biofungicide + Mycorrhizae – a general-purpose growing medium that is great for a wide variety of plants and transplanting applications. A good potting mix will include a mix of sterile soil, very well rotted leaf mold, and compost.
It’s always a good idea to prepare a tarp for catching any soil and trimmed foliage. This will save a lot of time cleaning up in the end.
Here’s Wendy Norling, one of our gardeners at Skylands. She’s planting the stone trough I bought at Trade Secrets several years ago. It has worked perfectly here at Skylands, and looks beautiful planted up with succulents.
To protect the rather porous and fragile pots, I like to line them with garbage bags, so the pots don’t soak up too much water. The garbage bags have drain holes at the bottom and are neatly tucked inside the pot, so they are not visible. I also put in a layer of bubble wrap – this is a great way to reuse and repurpose all that bubble wrap that may have accumulated over the winter months from package deliveries. Filling the bottom of large planters with something other than soil also benefits plantings in several ways – it is more economical, easier to move, and better for drainage and root growth.
Here it is all finished in this Eric Ellis Soderholtz pot.
Here is my handsome Emperor Han watching over all the activity.
The Frenchies are on the lookout from the West Terrace for any small creatures running to and fro.
Here’s the finished planted trough. Echeveria species are popular as ornamental garden plants. They are drought-resistant, although they do better with regular deep watering and fertilizing. This will fill out so nicely over the summer.
This is one of two giant Soderholtz pots – Eric Ellis Soderholtz was a pioneer in American garden pottery at the turn of the last century, turning concrete into these gorgeous vessels. I planted it with Bird of Paradise. The Bird of Paradise is best known for its banana shaped leaves and bird shaped tropical flowers.
The Western Terrace is among my favorite summer meal spots. The pergola is covered with kiwi vines that are original to the home. The faux bois pots are planted with Bismark palm, Bismarckia nobilis, which grows from a solitary trunk, gray to tan in color, and slightly bulging at the base. The nearly rounded leaves are divided to a third its length into 20 or more stiff, once-folded segments. The entire area begins to take on more life with all the planted specimens.
Here is a potted blue agave with its beautiful gray-blue spiky fleshy leaves. Do you know… tequila is actually distilled from the sap of the blue agave? Tequila is produced by removing the heart of the plant in its seventh to 14th year, depending on its growth rate.
Here are more kiwi vines growing on my home. Kiwi vines can tolerate a lot of different light conditions, but more exposure to sun brings out better colors in the leaves, some of which can be variegated. On both sides of the planter are my glazed terra-cotta sphinxes watching over the terrace. These sphinxes were designed by Emile Muller.
On the back porch, we filled all these planters with ferns – and ferns also hang from above. Ferns can add dramatic beauty to any planter. A fern is a member of a group of roughly 12-thousand species of vascular plants. In general, ferns are low-maintenance, hardy plants. They require lots of shade and ambient sunlight.
It is always so much fun planting at Skylands. Here is the terrace after a hard day’s work. It is looking excellent – I can’t wait to see it all filled out – bold and lush later in the season. In my next blog, I’ll share photos from all the great foods we ate and places we visited during this trip to Maine.
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