Category: Nature

Jun 21, 2011

Rain!

Finally, finally, finally – we have some much needed rain in the forecast.  The front arrived right before midnight.  Yay!

Today is the Summer Solstice of 2011 – Summer arrived at 12:16 pm local time.   Now it ought to REALLY get hot (!)

Google sez the word solstice comes from the Latin words for “sun” and “to stop,” due to the fact that the Sun appears to stop in the sky.  On the solstice the sun reaches its highest point in the sky and stays above the horizon for the longest amount of time all year (14h 06m 08s for us in Austin).  Shorter days are ahead.  However, the earliest sunrise and latest sunset do not coincide with the summer solstice.  The earliest sunrise actually occurred on June 14 in Austin, while the latest sunset is not due until June 27.

Now you know.

Jun 4, 2011

Searing.

Ooooo-weee it’s hot out.   We’ve had a number of 100+ degree days.  There is no escaping it.  I shudder to think what the rest of the summer holds for record heat, record drought.

I happily did as little as possible today – a mental health day, so to speak.

This is  a shot of the neighbor’s century plant, that I first posted about last month, now in bloom.   I intentionally took it into the sun, hoping to get a nice silhouette.  I like the color of the sky here.

Can’t you just hear the ground sizzling in this shot?

May 19, 2011

The mountain is out.

I was able to catch Francine’s soccer game tonight.  This is a shot of Mount Rainier that I snapped as I was driving to the game.  I can’t look away when the mountain is out.

May 18, 2011

Timber.

Many years ago, a friend of mine came home with me for christmas holidays, and looking out the window as the airplane approached for landing at SeaTac declared this place to be “the land of giant christmas trees.”  It’s true.  Forget about 5 or 10 or 40 foot tall evergreens.   These trees are more like 100′ feet tall.

Amazing, awesome and humbling all at the same time.

Ok.  Now for something a little different.  I am experimenting with a photographic processing technique called the orton effect.  I’ve never done this before, and am not exactly sure if I’m doing it right, but i’ll give it a shot.  I used Gimp to manipulate the image.   I think it’s a tad on the overexposed side, but here goes….

Orton effect.

May 13, 2011

Friday the 13th.

Mom is doing really well.   They are still not letting her eat/drink anything other than clear liquids – going on 72 hours now (!)

I had a full calendar of meetings today but went up after work, eastern time, and visited with her.   Just as I got up there the nurses came in to change the location of her IV.  After 2 attempts by the student nurse (grr) and 1 attempt by the real nurse (Grr), they gave up and said they’d need to call someone else in.  After 3 hours of waiting (GRRR) someone came in and inserted the IV and plugged her back into her saline, antibiotic meds and pain medicine pump-thingie.   She didn’t seem bothered by it, but I sure was.

I’ve extended my stay through next week.  Tonight I’m going to stay at Noreen’s house.  I caught some nice glimpses of the Olympics in the usual places on my drive to Seabeck.

May 6, 2011

Wild hair.

This is a shot of a sago palm that I bought a month or so ago.  This one blade on the frond is different than all the rest.  Gone its own way.  Most interesting part, i think. 🙂

I’ll be heading up to Seattle to visit my mom for a week or so.

More later.

May 5, 2011

It's alive!

It’s 2 weeks to the day since I planted the Chinquipin Oak sapling for Earth Day.  I’ve been careful to water it and have been watching it for signs of life every day or two.

It has 8-10 buds on it now, and growing !

May 2, 2011

Once in a lifetime.

The neighbors two houses down have a huge agave plant in their front yard. It has been there for about 40 years.  It is also known as a century plant, because it blooms once in its lifetime.  It takes so much energy to put up a stalk this size that it saps all the life out of the plant, and after it blooms, the plant dies.

We have always admired this agave because it is so huge.  This is a shot of the remarkable stalk that is growing out of the middle of the plant.   To get a sense of scale, note the power line at the right of the frame – it is at least as tall as the power line now, and still has more to grow.

It’s an amazing thing to witness.   I’m sure the bloom will be a sight to see.

All of a sudden I have a craving for asparagus  🙂

Apr 21, 2011

Chinquipin oak.

Tomorrow is Earth Day.  Yesterday at work  they were giving away tree saplings to plant for the occasion.  Monte brought home this Chinquipin Oak tree.  This morning I put it in the earth.  Hopefully it will be a keeper.

We have 4 or 5 cedar trees that have died from drought on our back property line.  We need to take them down, but I hope we can plant some newbies in their place over the next few weeks.

Apr 7, 2011

Not bad.

This is the view from outside my mom’s front door.  These peaks are the Olympic Mountain range.   When we moved here in 1974 the trees were MUCH shorter and the view was unobstructed.

Though the trees and branches screen the view, it still makes me pause and stare each time I walk outside on a clear day.   Snowcapped mountains as far as you can see.

Apr 5, 2011

Cherry tree redux.

Here ya go.  Same cherry tree, different vantage point.  Amazing isnt’ it?!

Mar 9, 2011

Sequel.

It’s funny, really.   I looked out the front window today and saw that all of a sudden the ornamental pear tree out front had burst into bloom.  I looked back through the photos I took last spring, because I recall taking a photo of the entire tree full of white flowers.   It turns out I took that picture last year on the same day as today – March 9th.

Amazing how all this works.

Mar 8, 2011

Happy 1st blogoversary!

Today is the 1 year anniversary of my starting this blog.   To mark the occasion, I made a collage using all 365 of the moments that I’ve posted here.

I can recall taking each one.   🙂

I started this in early March last year, in time to capture the signs of Spring, and into the Summer as things began to warm up and as we spend so much time on the lake… then through the changes in Fall and Winter when we spend more of our time on projects and playing with friends on land.  I’ve come full circle, and am looking forward all the moments from the coming year.

Happy Mardi Gras!   and  HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Lori and to Mary!

Mar 7, 2011

Day #365!!!

Today’s post makes the 365th moment that I have shared with you.  This is a shot of one of the geraniums I planted yesterday that I took today during a break between conference calls.

I’m very pleased that I have stuck with this post-a-photo-per-day-for-a-year project.  There were some days that I found it difficult to see something worth sharing.   But I have to say that most days I looked forward to toting my camera around with me, and was usually pleased to find a moment that was either a photo that I liked or at least made for a nice story to share.

Wow, a year.   365 moments.   It goes by fast.

I look forward to keeping my blog going.  I don’t know that I will be posting something every day, but I am definitely looking forward to posting more moments worth sharing.

A colleague of mine passed away over the weekend after a fight with cancer.  He was only 51.

I can only hope that you all have many more years left on this earth to share with your friends and family.   But since we never know when our time will be up, we have to take the time to enjoy and be thankful for each and every day that we get to spend with them.   I have done that for a year.   And I hope to from here on out…