My cedar sage (salvia roemeriana) is starting to bloom in the yard. It is one of my favorite native perennials. It likes the shade. And I love its shade of red.
Tag: photography
Keeping it real.
The world out there seems to be going nuts. Kids are home for weeks. States and entire countries are on lockdown. Countries are closing their borders. The market is in the tank. We are on the front end of an exponential infection curve. People are hoarding things that other people need. There will be many more people who will die from this pandemic, sadly. But, it’s not the end of the world. Life must go on. What matters is how we feel inside, how we treat others, and trying to think about the good things we share.
Today is Monte’s birthday. So, today, we’re celebrating that. 🙂 Be well, and stay home if you can manage it.
Redbud.
My favorite flowering tree is the Texas Redbud (Cercis canadensis var. texensis). Their blooms are fleeting but gorgeous, some of the first of the year. This bee likes them, too.
Out and about.
Last night I ventured downtown to celebrate Lori’s birthday. It was nice to catch up with everyone that could make it. In the midst of the state of emergency declarations and the cancellation of SXSW, it felt odd to be walking along not-busy streets of South Congress where it would have otherwise been packed shoulder-to-shoulder with crowds. We are living through some weird times.
Happy Birthday Lori!
Escape.
The societal and financial market upheaval caused by the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is mounting at a feverish pitch (pardon the pun). It is incredible to watch it unfold.
To get away from it, I retreated to the outdoors for some much-needed weeding and gardening. About 3 years ago I started a small bed in the backyard intended for butterflies, bees, and birds. Yesterday, I rummaged through it a square foot at a time, removing unwanted weeds, leaving the perennials that I want to see bloom again. The bed is mostly sage, salvia, purple coneflower, scabiosa, and a few volunteers that I will have to wait a bit to correctly identify. It doesn’t look like much today, but soon it will be filled again with blooms and flying fauna.
Rainy day project.
I knocked out a quick project today as rain soaked the yard. It’s a bag to hold a 3L boxed-wine bladder. Boats don’t much like things made out of cardboard; roaches do. So we don’t bring cardboard on-board. This bag will hold, hang, and dispense the wine instead, so we can toss the box for recycling. Yes, that’s right, I just ooze class. 🙂
Hanging in there.
I planted this impatiens last spring. I typically lose my annuals over the winter and just plant new ones in the spring. I babied this one through our warm winter and it has rewarded me with these beautiful late-winter blooms.
Swing into spring.
I just finished a new canopy cover for my friend, Irene’s, garden swing. I popped over this morning and we put it on. Looks great!
Aloft!
Okay, I’m a tiny bit ecstatic. I finished the mainsail repairs today. And the slow, endless rain of the last week or so has moved on. So we drove out to the marina and tied the main back on, then took Nirvana out for a sail for the first time in about 3 months. We hoisted both the main and the jib. It was the first time taking Nirvana out since I repaired each of the sails. The winds were light, but I loved seeing them out and in the wind.
Love bugs.
Valentine’s Day Crawfish! Yummmmm…
Ready to sail.
Time has flown by since we took Nirvana’s mainsail home at the beginning of December. But we’ve not been idle. We’ve had a lot going on; a few visits from family and friends, an Atlantic coast boat delivery, the holidays, the bathroom remodel, yardwork, life, etc. But I think I’m almost ready to start repairing the main.
I’ve made a scale drawing of the sail and all its detail (including seams, layers of dacron, batten pockets, luff and leech tape, direction of the warp & weft/fill – or weave – of each piece of the sail’s construction, etc). On top of that, I marked the location of the damaged areas that need to be repaired. Using this, I can figure out a strategy of what pieces to replace, the dimension of each piece, and then lay them out on scale drawings of 54″ wide dacron yardage so I can figure out how much I need to cut out all the pieces with the weave in the required direction.
Nirvana’s sail is a bit unusual – at least for a US boat – in that it has a furling boom (a Forespar LeisureFurl furling boom). It’s a very nice upgrade that is reportedly prevalent in Australia and New Zealand sailboats. We like the convenience and the fact that our furling boom allows us to have full battens in our main. As I’m preparing to repair the mainsail, I’ve learned that sails for LeisureFurl booms are built with multiple layers, or plies, toward the leech end of the sail, which is required to ensure proper furling of the main. It just makes things a bit more interesting (complicated), as that is where the majority of the damage is. I’ve also spent time on the phone with Sailrite and Forespar to ensure I use the right weight of dacron for the replacement pieces.
The repairs I plan to make to the mainsail include:
– Replacing the bolt rope tape on the luff of the sail. This goes into a track on the aft-side of the mainmast as the sail is raised and lowered. It is well worn due to wear and UV damage.
– Replacing the dacron tape along the leech of the sail. This is well worn and cracking due to wear and UV damage.
– Replacing areas of varying widths along the entire leech of the sail where UV damage has degraded much of the top ply of dacron. The previous owner neglected to replace a worn sail cover before selling her, probably for a couple of years, resulting in a wide swath of cracked and torn dacron that remained exposed to the sun when the main was furled.
I’ve been taking my time, as sail work is new to me, and I have a lot to learn. The first 2 sets of repairs are straightforward. The third set of repairs is non-trivial and essentially requires replacement of much of the top 2 plies of the sail.
The picture below shows the drawing I’ve made of the port-side of Nirvana’s approximately 13 1/2′ x 38′ mainsail. The brown lines represent the batten pockets that are on top of all the layers of dacron and the luff & leech tape. I essentially need to remove and replace the pink and blue layers of dacron on the aft-end of the sail.
Because of the order in which the parts of the mainsail are sewn, I’ll have to pull up the existing batten pockets to remove the worn pieces of the sail, then sew in the new pieces of dacron, and then sew the batten pockets back down, before sewing the luff and leech tape on. I’ll also have to replace a couple of the numbers on the sail when all the repairs are done, as some of the sections that need replacement are under the sail numbers.
This is definitely more complicated than the repairs I made to the jib a few months back. But, I’m cautiously optimistic that I can do this. Stay tuned to see how it turns out.
Tower Girl 2020.
I’m in my 3rd year of remotely stalking Tower Girl, the Peregrine Falcon that lives atop the University of Texas at Austin Tower. The University has a live-streamed webcam pointed at her nest box on the northwest corner of the clocktower. And they recently upgraded it, so it now also has audio. Be careful with that audio volume, though. The UT clock tower chimes every 15 minutes and it is LOUD. This is a snap from about 5 minutes ago. She has reportedly had a male hanging around lately, too. February/March is the time she has been laying eggs, so I’ll be tuning in to see how it goes this year.
As long as I’ve been watching, none of the eggs she lays each year have hatched. I hold out hope that this is the year for baby falcons!
Friday fun.
Michael & Amber gifted us several tickets to see an Austin band with them and a bunch of their friends tonight, Extreme Heat. They are a self-described funk and soul band that’s been playing in Austin since 1977. And they are one of the Austin Music Award nominees for Hall of Fame artist this year. I really enjoyed the show. They were great! We asked Mike and Joel to join the party as well. Nice venue, great tunes, a little dancing. Very nice.
Powers of 10.
Some stats from yesterday:
The Subaru turned 100,000 miles.
And we loaded another 1,000 lbs of rock into the trailer. It’s much nicer to do in the winter than in the dead of summer. We’re getting closer to our goal of removing the river rock from the beds around the house.
Susanne is visiting us this week and she has been a big help as we knock off some of our yard projects.
Sheila365 