Tuesday, 5 September 2017
Proof I can get outside myself: this is a Florida Gulf Coast beach south of Tallahassee, last January.
We’ve got another hurricane headed our way, although the current money is on it coming up the east coast of Florida and not fully entering the Gulf. But these things do change.
UPDATE: This evening I’m seeing more models with tracks up the west side of the peninsula. Either way, bad for Florida.
Friday, 25 August 2017
NASA is projecting that Hurricane Harvey will be parked over this stretch of the Texas coast for a couple of days, raining, raining, and raining. This is flat land, at low elevations, especially vulnerable to that much rain…. In a few places, they predict Harvey may drop 35 inches of rain…. Whew!
With elevation maps and rainfall predictions, along with storm surge/tides, NASA can merge the spatial data and map flooding potentials…. [Website visitors can zoom in far more than this….]
I suspect the calculations behind this are as complex as the eclipse models I looked at earlier this week. They’re just exclusively on this planet.
And none of this discussion is about wind effects. ☔️
UPDATE: And, just a few minutes after I posted this, I read that Harvey is now a Category 4 storm. 💨
Thursday, 13 July 2017
We’ve had so much rain lately that the foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) has become horizontal. Not hard rain, mostly, but precipitation just keeps oozing from the sky. The branches on the trees and more downturned and the grasses are a bit smooshed in some places, in part from the wind—lodged.
Tuesday, 11 July 2017
We’re getting toward the end of the lupine, with many fully in seed pods. A few are still opening at the tips, however.
Farm news: ML and DL have installed a new dock! It’s a beaut! Smells like fresh lumber.
I channeled Diana the Huntress (21st century version) and stalked the shallows for the lithe and limber lacustrine annelids, finding eight in about ten minutes and removing them from the breeding pool. And the lake. It may have been the perfect stick I found for catching them and tossing them into the brush that brought me luck. But not them.
The late afternoon became overcast and waves of drippy rain, straight down, so the windows all could remain open.
Monday, 10 July 2017
On warm days like this, we are taking advantage of the insulation that this cottage now has that it didn’t when I was a youngster. By that I mean that we close the windows late morning and “keep the cool in” until late afternoon. The temperature on the porch, with the lovely new ceiling fan (last summer?, I think), does drift with the day, being cooler than the house in the early morning, and much warmer by late afternoon, when the sun streams in. Today’s popup storms brought the temps down for a while in the mid-afternoon, but the skies cleared and all was soon toasty as normal.
BTW, I’m pretty sure this is feverfew; it’s not from our place.
Wednesday, 31 May 2017
The wind (more than the rain) is bringing down the apple petals. They are reminiscent of snow on the grass.
This lupine is developing color, but still tight-closed.
Love the purple shades that develop in the blossoms. Some tend a bit toward lavender, and we have a small minority that are white or pink.
I just checked the lilacs, and ours have color but the buds are unopened. I smelled, and no scent yet. ;-(
Friday, 19 May 2017
I thought this was our “last” high cross of the trip, and then we saw a replica in a museum. Does that count?
Also at Ardboe (no ruins of the monastery that was here), we found grave monument setters at work, and this lilac. Can you see the white spots in the first photo? And a couple of flies in this picture? Many bugs…a hatch. They weren’t house flies. Still annoying, however.
Haven’t noticed L-shaped stoplights before….
Strange that all these sheep turned their tails toward us—and they have tails. Lots of that here, but plenty are docked.
Last stone circles of the trip. These are the Beaghmore group.
JCB and the drone captured some fine shots. This is just part of the area of circles, alignments, cairns, etc. Further, this valley is peppered with stone features. And without a doubt more are undiscovered beneath the peat. The peat is covered by brown and grey vegetation in the drone photo.
On to the last ring fort occupied into the 1600s. This is a famous spot, as one of the last Gaelic kings (sub-king I’d say) was inaugurated here in 1593; his name was Aodh Mór Ó Néill. Aodh is Hugh in English. Mór means great. Aodh would have called this place Tulach Óc; today it’s Tullyhogue. Someone lived here in a wooden building into the 1600s. This is the entrance and the original entrance probably required a Z-shaped path between wooden palisades.
We’ve been seeing these blooming hawthorns everywhere—down hedgerows and here at Tulach Óc. The scent is strong.
In Belfast! Here’s the formal façade of Queens University Belfast.
Next to the core buildings of the Univ is the Ulster Botanic Gardens.
This is the door to the Palm House. The plants were ho-hum. There was a HOT room, that made my chest feel compressed.
A metal Lord Kelvin stands inside the main entrance to the BotGarden.
This is a sculpture outside the Ulster Museum.
Just periodic overcast, no sprinkles. Is this really Ireland?
Tuesday, 25 April 2017
This morning’s low temp…and maybe not again until autumn. Around here, we have a heightened awareness of the under-60 category….
Sunday, 23 April 2017
We had several waves of rain and wind come through—not too much wind, thankfully. We needed the rain.
And, things have cooled off.
Time to go find some plants and start the garden. Herbs, I think. And maybe just herbs. Thai basil. Italian basil. Hmmmm.
Saturday, 8 April 2017
This resulted from the last cold spell…took a while. The present cold spell isn’t very cold, as cold goes, but I notice it….
Anyway, poor azalea. Bloomed before its time. I’m not saying climate warming. But [climate warming].