I have several large pots filled with dirt in various spots in the back yard. They are leftovers from plants that have either died or been replanted, and I haven’t gotten around to planting something new in them yet. Two years ago (or maybe 3?) I noticed a shoot growing in one of these pots. Another volunteer. I let it go for a while and realized it was a crepe myrtle. The first year it grew a bit and leafed out. The second year, it had a few more shoots and it even had a few flowers. This year I want to start to shape it into a taller tree, rather than a bushy shrub. So, a couple of weeks ago, I pruned it back to two bare, woody stalks about 3 feet high.
In the shot above, you can see some of the big buds that have popped out along the main branches. Glad to see that I didn’t kill it. 🙂
First day of spring! It rained buckets overnight. The front passed through here about 1:30AM this morning. It dumped a ton of rain in the Hill Country, so the lakes are on the rise! As of right now, Lake Travis has risen 4′ since this time yesterday (@ 636.7′), and is expected to rise another couple of feet, as they have the flood gates open on Lake LBJ and Lake Marble Falls, to let their overflow pass through.
After work tonight I took a walk out back to see what I could see. One of the birdbaths caught my eye. The water was so calm, like glass. There were leaves in the bottom of it, but I didn’t want to disturb the surface of the water, so I just took it as is. I like how the cedar elm tree above it is reflected in the surface.
The shot above is after I changed it to black & white. The original is below. I like the B&W better. It seems to show much more detail of the reflection. How about you?
We met Doray & Tom at BB Rover’s tonight for dinner and to play a few rounds of pinochle. The ladies won a tightly contested best-of-three match.
Today is the last day of winter. Spring will officially be upon us at 12:14 AM local time tomorrow morning.
I have a couple of unrelated other shots I wanted to post… one is of a deer that has taken to laying outside the guest bedroom window. He’s got an injured foreleg, and has been back here a couple of times. This shot is from the bedroom window. He’s only inches away. Forgive the crummy shot through the solar screen on the window. You get the idea.
Oh deer!
And this is a shot of a bunch of Texas Mountain Laurel seeds that I harvested from a bush growing in the greenbelt when we were there on Saturday afternoon. I looked online to learn how to prepare the seeds for germination. These seeds are from last season, they are hard and red and have shrunk a bit. Conventional wisdom says to knick them and then soak them till they swell a bit, and then plant them about an inch deep. The little dimples on the seeds in the picture below are where I cut through the shell of the seed. The seeds soaked for about 8 hours, so they are plumped up a bit from when I knicked them. I’ve got these guys in pots in the back room now so that I can tend them. I hope they take! We want to plant a bunch of mountain laurels along the back fence line. I’ll let you know how they turn out… FYI these are supposed to be poisonous, so if you try this at home… don’t eat them 🙂
Texas Mountain Laurel seeds.
There is rain in the forecast…it’s been slow getting here. But as I type this post, there’s a big red line just moving into our area. I’ll have to sign off now to watch the weather channel (my favorite).
It’s hard to believe we will ever have a nice lawn again. The weeds rule this spring.
Oh well, you know what they say:
If you can’t beat ’em….
Take a picture of ’em!
🙂
I’m enjoying this last weekend of winter. It’s in the 70’s… very humid, though, with rain in the forecast (yay!).
Yesterday afternoon we ran to the lake for a sail in nice winds for a couple of hours. Saw Kurt, Wally & Kevin as we were leaving the marina. We decided to head in early, and topped off a lovely St Patrick’s day with a beer and corned beef and cabbage at BB Rover’s. Slainte!
I made it home last night at 11:45, so I was able to give Monte a birthday hug before it was over, after all.
We’re having a lovely Saturday, so far. I love being home.
I enjoyed walking around the yard this morning to see what had changed in the last week. Just 7 days ago monte planted some rows of lettuce seed. As you can see in the shot above, by this morning they’ve formed little green lines of lettuce seedlings.
We took a walk through the park at the end of our street this morning and ended up looking for one geocache there that has eluded us several times. We couldn’t find it again today. (darnit!) When we got home I looked it up again to read recent comments from people who had found it. It bugged me so much that we decided to go back to try to find it again. We also checked the magnetic declination (the difference between magnetic and true north) for our area and updated the GPS. And this time we took our bikes. We ended up finding it… FINALLY… and then went on to look for (and found) two others in another park nearby. Whew. What a relief.
Now we’re plotting how to spend the rest of St Patrick’s Day.
I have been coming to Raleigh on business for many years. I’m staying in the same hotel that I usually do, right around the corner from the office. In all that time this hotel property has changed ownership at least 3 times. This time it’s a newly refurbished Hilton Garden Inn. It has that “new hotel” smell, even though it’s the same old building. They are doing their best to offer perks to make the stay more pleasant… a brand new hairdryer to replace the one that died on me yesterday…warm cookies in the lobby…a little store downstairs where you can buy drinks and snacks… a lovely breakfast buffet….and a great view of this morning’s sunrise from my room. 🙂
Don’t forget that daylight savings time begins today!
We’ve had a few days of slow, light rain, which is fantastic. We need lots more of it if the lake is going to recover. It’s at about 631.5′ – up less than a foot this weekend. About 50 more feet would be better.
I took a stroll around the yard after the dry line blew through this afternoon. The way-back has lots of this incredibly tiny pink flowers. I like this shot with a little bit of water droplet on the petal… and some bokeh effect.
I made crepes for breakfast. Always delicious! As I was getting the pan ready, I flicked water into it to see if it was at the right temperature. As the water danced and sizzled, I thought I would try to capture some of that later in a picture.
So after breakfast I set up my camera on a tripod next to the stovetop and gave it a try. The water was moving too fast for my little camera to get a good shot. I tried several different things. I have an ISO 3200 setting, so I tried that and was able to capture a few clearer images. I had quite a bit of water in the pan by this time, but it still looked cool.
A single image didn’t show much, so I looked on the web for a tool to create animated GIFs quickly and found Picasion.com. It is a web-based tool that will upload up to 10 images, convert them to a GIF, and then give you the URL to the resulting file. The animation above is the result.
So. There ya go. A creative way to waste a half hour or so. 🙂
Well, it wasn’t completely wasted. Now I know how to display animated gifs on my wordpress.com-hosted blog. The trick was to upload and insert it into my post without scaling it down, not display it at less than full size. So, before I created the gif, I reduced the size of the images to make each one smaller. Then I made the gif. Then uploaded and attached it. Voila.
Last weekend we spent all afternoon in the yard, weeding flower beds, trimming shrubs, and WEEDING the poor excuse of a lawn that we are left with after last year’s drought. Monte and I have divvied up the one bed along the fenceline that gets good sun all day. Monte plants basil, tomatoes, thyme, chives and zinnias in his half. In my half I plant flowers, many of which are perennials which come back every year. I fill in with other flowers each spring.
Sometimes I get “volunteers” that grow from seeds that make their way to my flower bed one way or the other. Two years ago, I had planted a really pretty red geranium in this same bed, but it kicked the bucket after the first year during the very cold winter we had in early 2011. As I was weeding last weekend, I saw this little guy. It’s actually not too little, it’s probably about 9 inches high. I think (hope) it is a volunteer geranium. I’m not sure though, could be a melon or veggie seedling. Last time I had a mystery volunteer, I nurtured it until it had grown into a good size shrub. Only to eventually find out that it was a poisonous weed called nightshade, which I quickly disposed of.
Between rain showers today, i went outside and snapped this picture, so that I could look at it as I compared it to geranium seedling images on the web, and this *could* be one. It has the fuzzy stalks and leaves that geraniums do, too. It has the big oval nurse leaves. I even tore a little bit of the leaf on the left off to smell it, to see if it had that pungent smell that geraniums do. But I couldn’t smell anything. Maybe it’s too little? Or maybe it’s not a geranium.
Two years ago today sheila365 came to be. As I did last year, today I’m posting a collage out of the photos from the last year’s posts. In year 2, I didn’t actually post every day, but most days. I’m still enjoying it. And I’m looking forward to capturing and posting more moments in the year ahead
If the years really must fly by so quickly, I’m very happy to be able to look back through these images to enjoy some of the moments that flew by — all over again.
Busy day. Marty dropped this rose off with some other post-BVI-trip items the other day for us. It’s a very pretty color of pink. I don’t think this shot does it justice.
We spent much of yesterday in the yard – weeding, whacking and watering. Our lawn is in bad shape (unless you count the johnson grass). But the shrubs and flowers are starting to pop.
I didn’t get a chance to sort through my photos from the trip yet, so, today you get another Keeto shot 🙂
Doray and Tom bird-sat for us while we were out of town. We got home too late to get him last night. So, as soon as my last meeting was over today, i buzzed over there to pick him up. He’s such a sweet bird. Thank you Uncle Tom & Aunt Doray !
We estimate that this week he is about 6 months old. His cere is most definitely blue now. He’s wrapping up his first molt. His flight feathers have grown in enough for him to get some lift. And his eyes are changing a bit… no longer solid black, but have a little ring gray around the outside.
Sheila365 