Saturday, 10 April 2021
Some rain overnight and through mid-day, fortunately bringing down the pollen levels.
Oak overstory, dogwood understory. Is this the start of a poem? Anyway, not my story.
Title refers to my standard response when “Only Connect” produces words and phrases that mean nothing to me. Plus they’re talking about rugby on the rerun of “As Time Goes By” that’s rolling now.
Friday, 9 April 2021
I tried to do some computational photography magic (messiness?) with this and…Could…Not. Still don’t know why, other than the broad category of operator error.
How could I mess up these beauties, however?
Why should I be glad it’s Friday? After all, I just bumble in Covid-avoidance through each day, pretty much the same as yesterday and tomorrow. Still, Friday has magical connotations, and even did when I had to work weekends.
Tuesday, 6 April 2021
I gotta get this post up because my Guru is recommending we watch “Debris.” I heard this long after I picked this photo for your viewing pleasure today.
In one day, these petals went from droopy to horizontal. Don’t know what this is called, but it’s a healthy volunteering species.
Monday, 5 April 2021
As it happened, I walked after dinner, and saw the late sun…
…and the later sun.
Saturday, 3 April 2021
Enjoying the last cool days I expect we’ll have until next autumn…sooooo nice, sooooo un-sweaty.
One of my favorites…I think of this as a wild azalea, although I’m not sure this isn’t a cultivar. Still, it has the delicate, almost lacey quality that I find captivating. None in my garden, however; perhaps it’s time to change this?
Friday, 2 April 2021
I’m told it was power guys who said it was okay for the Guru to turn on the electric again yesterday. I was a bit garbled. The two houses behind the truck both did not have power last night, hence workers returned to string more wire. Or whatever it took.
Photo from this morning. However, they’re busy aloft again right now. Difficult fix?
Here’s a smoketree (Cotinus spp.) with the smoky part just emerging. I’ve never noted this stage before. I saw the shadow of the flower-spike, (on leaf, right), and then looked inside the leaf-nest.
Thursday, 1 April 2021
Just after 10am we heard a crash, on this windy but otherwise beautiful day. Not the kind of sound you like to hear when you’re browsing the internet from the safety of your home. I could hear that it wasn’t the giant oak next door, but the noise came from out front. Yup, a tree went down.
It missed the pickup and definitely didn’t reach the house. Yay!
But, it did swish a power line affecting us, and brought down the feeder line for a neighbor. We had a couple of surges, and then the Guru shut off the power to the house at the breaker box. There was a teeny hot electrical smell, and that’s never a good thing, but we couldn’t quite localize it. Not the TV. Not the upstairs furnace.
After no-show by the power company, the Guru called the non-emergency number for the fire department…and was told it was a 911 situation, yes sir. So, he called 911. And soon a fire truck showed up. Not from the station around the corner, but one from a bit farther away. Why? Because they have the high crane/ladder (not needed, but, hey, am I a fire-person? do I know these things? nope).
Firemen are good guys and gals (just guys on our street, today). After plenty of phone time and standing around, they donned safety gear and fired up a chain saw and cleared the street. And took down most of the yellow plastic warning tape.
They also told the Guru that he could turn the breakers back on. Several had switched. It turned out that two surge protectors had done their final work, saving the TV and my desktop machine (and producing smells). There’s at least one more breaker that isn’t happy (bathroom fan upstairs), and the Guru relit the downstairs furnace, but it won’t turn on. It’s cool and will be cold tomorrow morning, but then it’ll warm up!
Later, I saw a contractor truck working on the overhead lines, not one with a Georgia Power logo on the side, so I assume our neighbor has power again.
And how was your day?
Friday, 26 March 2021
Last night we got rain and we got wind; here we didn’t get any tornadoes, happily. Pollen and redbud blossoms floated on the pickup bed’s pond…until I drained it.
This Acer palmatum is aggressively moving towards summer mode, just 5/6 days after spring began.
Also, by my observation, today is day one of what I seem to recall is the approximately three-day push-to-bloom of the azaleas…when they really open in force…. Bushes everywhere in the neighborhood were half open or, more commonly, covered in fat buds that will open…tomorrow?
Tuesday, 23 March 2021
Branches today…after terra firma specimens yesterday. Fringetree, in white.
The other day, before these blooms had opened, I was trying to photograph the buds (classic wouldn’t focus problem), and the lady of the house came out on her porch to ask me if I knew what it was. White redbud, I said, surprising her. She called it a whitebud, yet we knew we were talking about the same thing.
For some reason, although the green breaks up the canopy/mantle of the delicate pale, pale pink of the petals, I like to see the leaves and the blossoms together.
Always forget the name of this…kinda junky shrubby tree. Shrub, perhaps…hard to walk under it if it isn’t pruned back.
Saturday, 20 March 2021
I was quite surprised to see this plane flying an advertising banner circling, I think, Piedmont Park. I wouldn’t have thought, even though it was a fine SPRING day, that there were enough people there (in these COVID times) to make the flight worth the cost. I couldn’t read a single word from where I was, so I don’t know what was being pitched.
Strong natural backlighting. Nice!