Wednesday, 25 December 2019
Pansy season here in ATL. BTW, we celebrated today with neither goose nor turkey. Tofu only…in a lovely melange with Thai curry sauce, veg, mint, and fresh cilantro. The two of us…and a beautiful sunny day perfect for a long walk down streets normally too busy with cars to enjoy. 🚶♀️
I am darned ignorant of architectural detail design memes, and have no idea what the elements of this mean/represent/indicate, especially the center.
Saturday, 21 December 2019
So, Christmas—headlined in the banner—is about Jesus, and facts about his life are slim. As I understand it, the drummer boy is singular, and added to the mythology L-O-N-G after the man died. So, that here there are twins wearing outfits modeled on modern military uniforms means…this is an example of sociopolitical evolution.
WDM? [Meaning, what doesn’t match?]
Friday, 6 December 2019
Billy the Kid was incarcerated here at the combo courthouse/jail in Lincoln County, New Mexico, in 1881. He managed to escape, and was murdered by a “friend” about ten weeks later.
That gap is Capitán Gap. It’s where a singed bear cub was found in 1950. He soon was named Smokey the Bear. And the rest was history.
Saw feeding sandhills by the dozen, plus ducks and geese of various sorts at Bosque del Apache, in the Rio Grande valley. We didn’t ask officials about this strange dark coloration; that creature clearly had the red details on the head, however.
We did enjoy the arboretum etc walk by the Bosque visitor center. I will spare you from any more of the dozens of photos we shot there.
Stopped at the Harvey House Museum in Belen. Businesses all around the area each sponsored the decorating of a tree or a room. It was great to see the community support, but I found it difficult to imagine this as the dining room back when it was a Harvey House. The waitresses had rooms upstairs.
Special night at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque. We got to see the Apache Dancers and hear their caller/singer, who also drummed. How special. This was the before-dark performance.
The second, after-dark performance was super-charged. The fire made a huge difference. We got ashes from the fire afterward to keep with us in the pickup for good luck, as directed by the chanter, along with most of the folks who stayed until the end (cold, about 40°F, brr). Actually, these are religious and spiritual events, not presentations or performances. I liked that.
This entry might have been better titled “Hinge points,” but I couldn’t resist “Swing nose frog.” It refers to a particular switcher set-up for rails. Thank you, Harvey House.
Wednesday, 4 December 2019
A relic loblolly pine forest…so unexpected to me in my ignorance. Scientists have looked at the genetics, and these trees are closely related to others to the east. Thus, this is the westernmost stand of the eastern forest in this part of North America.
Of course, over a century ago, a big forest meant that loggers showed up. And the mills were built in Bastrop, and many people there became wealthy. Now the town seems bent on being uber-charming, to attract visitors (with credit cards and puffy pocketbooks) from nearby Austin, especially, and elsewhere.
Bastrop’s mills were powered by the water of the Colorado River, and here’s the old vehicle bridge (current one to the right), which is supposed to be a pedestrian bridge, but is closed presently.
Onward. Look: traffic. And more traffic. Look: a capital. Yes: Austin.
Post-dinner stroll: hey, Stevie Ray Vaughan, a man from a line of three-named men.
Riffles from passing crewing skulls. Yes, in the dark. And, yes, there’s a Goooooooogle “G” on the building opposite.
Playing with computational photography in the darkness under the railroad bridge over the Colorado. In between taking this and the previous photo, I was looking up for the lone star, but I saw more than one.
Thursday, 28 November 2019
The parallel I’m suggesting is that these are the dessicating seedheads of our fennel. They succeed the plant’s main event—the green phase.
Today, we followed our main event—Wednesday early T-day dinner—with lovely, wonderful, tasty left-overs.
Of course, some people might argue that left-over day is its own version of a main event—sooo, sooo easy!
Monday, 25 November 2019
Lots of leaves on the ground…
and in the trees, still.
Pretty sure: this is not a proper haiku syllable count.
Wednesday, 20 November 2019
Hmm. Poorly framed, so just a snapshot. I do like what I was going for, however. Blue, blue sky.
This Acer is golden orange, in contrast to the red of yesterday’s specimen.
On one stretch of trail, I saw many of these leaves—sycamore, I think. These are among the largest. Interestingly, most were “face-down.” I hypothesize that the asymmetric weight of the stems must tip them that way.
Tuesday, 19 November 2019
Acer palmatum: distinctive lacy, delicate leaves. And so red today.
Gingko biloba: this tree is “holding” its leaves, but most have dropped. Strange, but true.
Lagerstroemia: you may know it as crape myrtle (has alternate spellings). When the plants are repeatedly pruned of their upper branches (quite the fashion in some quarters), they desperately put up forests of thin shoots seeking to compensate for the diminishment in nutrition from the loss of leaves.
Thursday, 14 November 2019
Maple leaves. Don’t know which maple. Silver? Heh—probably orange, no?
Ginkgo leaves. This tree has lost them ALL. Other ginkgo have most of theirs…seemingly, indicating that ALL trees don’t lose ALL their leaves at the same time (as is often claimed).
Big leaf magnolia leaves, I theorize. A deciduous magnolia, at minimum.
Bald cypress. They look like needles, but really are leaves. If you’re into details (and WikiPee is correct).
Sunday, 10 November 2019
Sun playing peekaboo. [It’s a perspective Thang.] We wound through some valleys, and spent our last hurrah-miles up on a long ridge. I liked the views down into the piedmont. All blue, as in blue-ridge-y.
Oaks overhead. The press release on the weekend of the prime leaf color must have come out, and, with the coming weather changes, the meteorologists on the morning news shows kept repeating it. So as not to miss It, we headed out to see the leaves! But these southern mountains are mostly vegetated with oaks and evergreens, and not so pretty as maples. Still: darned lovely!