Photo Upload News

I've decided to spring for a larger memory account at the photo sharing website, Flickr. You can click here to see the photos in a strictly photo format, now, instead of having to think back......"now, when was she in Nepal? Where was that picture.......what month archive should I look through?". I see the stats....I know that it's really my family and friends that actually read the site, most friends check it out periodically for photo updates. By saving the Flickr link, you can see new photos at any time withouth having to read my little musings and ramblings. And no, I don't plan on uploading the home repair type issues to that site....it's just a means to highlight what are some of my favorite photographs. Enjoy!

Calling All Landscapers.....

I've got a landscaping dilemma. When facing my house, the left side is horribly unbalanced with the right as far as visual landscaping action, flow, and color. I've solicited my mom for ideas, but if any gentle viewers (to borrow a phrase from a friend) have any suggestions on something not too maintenance-heavy to add some zing to the left side of the house, please suggest ideas via the comments button! Now, the tree in front of that window is a crabapple tree, and it becomes loaded with flowers in April. I understand the little berry things it's growing now turn red at some point, so that'll be a nice addition of color. Also, and I don't think you can see it well from here, there is a vine that should one day reach that willow trellis adjacent to the front porch. That vine is a firethorn and will, come autumn, have bright orange little berries visible. But, the next entry is the right side of my yard - it's a great little mishmash of plant life, colors, and undulating patterns (you may not be able to see the little 'hill' in the front right corner of the yard). But this side, it's got an english ivy that's just really slow to act, and some lilly of the valley that have already bloomed, all along the hitching post front fence. I don't know what that corner shrub will do - it's taking forever just to leaf out. So, any suggestions for adding a little visual punch here would be appreciated.

Here's the right side of the house (when facing it directly). Now, see how much is going on here? There's the purple maple that I'm just standing under to take the shot, whose leaves you can see at the top left of the page. Hidden behind the fence are the new surprise lillies, to the right of them but washed out by background light is the yucca, lots of those tall stalky things with yellow flowers, and along the house are the red and orange lillies. There is also, to the right of the yucca but hard to see here, a shrubby bush with reddish tipped leaves. It's a cornucopia of color on this side of the house. It's pukingly Strawberry Shortcake looking, but I love it.

Don't you wish you had one of these, right now? A frozen mojito with new shades of purple verbena on the back deck. 

Thank goodness - the previously parched verbena are coming back, and eager to bloom! 

More surprise lillies! Not sure what kind these are but their stalks have a handful of additional buds yet to open. 

I am not sure what this is. It bloomed at the top of what looks like a bushy weed, except it was in the landscaped section of the yard, so I figured the plant's presence was intentional. It looks a little like echinacea, a common cold-fighting ingredient, but not quite.  

My yucca is now in full bloom - I love this plant. I was disappointed to run into one just down the block...but it's not nearly as tall, flowered, or nice as mine. When I make my eventual westward migration, I wonder if I could uproot the house AND the landscaping, and just take it all with me!? 

These little pentas are doing just great. They are (so far) totally worry-free. 

Here's the branch that embedded itself in the yard during the last batch of storms. It was a pain to get out of the ground....

This is the post-extraction shot. The branch, which I later realized broke into 3 long pieces, was about 8 ft. It entered the ground with such force that it embedded itself almost 9 inches.  

On a Sunday drive today, I spied this hawk flying parallel to the road. I slowed down (dare not stop!), dug out the camera, rolled down the window, kept pace with the bird, and captured this shot. And this was the only one, though I tried several more times. This bird was massively large; probably the largest I've yet seen in Ohio. Note the beautiful corn! Can't wait until that's ripe.  

This is going to be reeeealy hard to see. Maybe you can click on the image and expand it. I don't have the patience to fool around with the photos after I shoot them. The big white dot is that hawk - and he's being chased (yes, chased!) by two smaller black birds - think they're just crows; they weren't big enough to be ravens. The one closest to the hawk (that's not a speck of dust on your screen) was actually doing little aerial dive-bombs on the hawk. I've never seen behavior like it. The hawk could have taken them both out, probably, with one clean swipe. Maybe he's old and lame.  

Rural Ohio Roadside Laundry. This was a drive-by shot, should have pulled over to get a better image. I wonder if Sunday was this family's day to do the blues. 

This is, technically and compositionally, a horrible photo. But - wow, look at my cat's markings! The black lines from his head to between his shoulder blades look like the tip of a fountain pen. Katman has, as yet, not failed to amaze me with some motion, antic, or just simple expression of his 'catness'.

I'll take Places, Alex, for $2000

(Friday update: Oh, my gosh. Turns out I am smart enough to figure out how to scale the html code to appropriately size the images! Watchout, blogworld...)

I've often wondered, or suspected, if something like this was out there. Today, I serendipitously found it while responding to a comment on one of my flickr photos. How lucky! My mind sees the world (outside of memory context) in this way, and while passports and lists are great for identifying visited places, this works best for my primitive thought process. Now I can start planning, from a clear mental image, where my next adventures should be.



create your own visited states map



create your own visited countries map

And now, for something completely different.....

That title really only works when read with John Cleese's voice in mind. So, I've decided to update the blog with some yard photos. Well, really, they're not even of the yard - they're more of a work and flower detail. This one I really like - it's part of a gerber daisy plant that I have in a planter along the front porch railing. It's interesting because this plant - one plant - has generated yellow, orange, and red gerber daisy flowers over the last few months. Almost prolifically so. I don't pretend to know enough about plants to understand how one can generate blooms of different colors other than to assume some fantastic genetic mutation has taken place. But this flower is intriguiging - it seems to be having a color identity crisis. Is it red, orange, or did it just become so flustered in its growth that it started off as orange or yellow even, only to mutate into a mottled reddish color? And hey - is that a worm right on the head!!!?

In an interesting tangent - I noticed fireflies in the yard tonite. How great. In Texas, they have pretty much become non-existant; driven out by fire ants. The fire ants are burrowers who feed on lightning bug larvae. Thank goodness there are no fire ants in Ohio. Mostly because the world could live without fire ants, but also because there should be a little flying lightning magic in everyone's yard. That the world could do with more of. As John Couger Mellancamp Cougar whatever he's called today says, "but my bed is in a small town, oh, and that's good enough for me."

Ay, carumba! Recent roofing repair job scaffolding. The roof is fully repaired now on that side - apparently the previous owners opted to extend the roof line a little further than the rafters, but put up shims to hold the roof edge up, not bothering to extend the rafters. On top of that they applied no sheeting - just shingles, and those in one spot left a small gap just before the roof edge. Fresh extended rafter edges have been added, rotted material stripped out, double-ply sheeting added to match the thickness of the existing layer (at least that was done right!), new shingles, and starter shingles all around were added during this project. The most interesting thing about it was that, somehow, in the eaves, we found a number of little treasures: a love note, folded in a manner circa early 1980's was especially sweet. There was also a bottle of "Sperm Sewingmachine Oil" dating to the late 1800s (the oil from the brains of sperm whales was a high quality lubricant back in the day). That bottle had the cork intact, though was empty. I've seen others that look like it on e-bay, minus the cork, going for $30. There was another bottle that looked like it might have been an aftershave bottle with a neat cap with small cork internal dispenser intact - approximate age, early 1900s; approximate value, $20, and a few other interesting bottles. There was also a jar of Resinol, which is still available as a skin cream product for rashes, etc. In the time frame of the jar style that I found in the roof, the concoction contained cocaine (love the alliteration). Approximate time frame was early 1900s, approx. value, $20. The best find was an old hand-forged horseshoe with nails intact, bent flat - this had wear indicative of actual use vs. household decoration, which it has since become, above the wood stove. While each of these little treasures was an interesting find during the project, unfortunately, if auctioned off right now, they wouldn't come close to paying for the roof work. How great would it be to have some remodeling work done, find a treasure, and learn it was worth the cost of the remodeling - or more! One can always dream....now if I can only find some treasures, somehow, under the furnace when that gets ripped out!!! 

This is one of the verbena plants out front that, thankfully, is not only coming back to life, but resuming flowering activity. This one and the one on the other side of the steps suffered severe dehydration while I was on vacation somehow despite several days of rain. 

This is one of the favorites in the yard - a yucca plant. I have no idea how it lives here - they're a southwestern desert plant - but even in the winter snows the leaves above snow level remained green. Now it's got four stalks loaded with buds that are just beginning to open. Now, if I could only get a young aspen tree for the back yard.... 

I'm not sure what kind of lillies these are, but they just sprouted up this weekend, and just opened today.  

I'm not sure what these plants are, but the little flowers are star shaped. When you cut a few stalks to put in a vase with some water, the flowers apparently get stressed and do a hari kari dive for the floor. But even in their suicide attempts, they make a pretty spread. 

Mint - it grows in several place in the yard. Which is great, because I cut it to make mint tea, or my favorite, fresh mojitos! 

One of the wildflowers in my experimental wildflower patch. 

One of the wildflowers in my wildflower patch. 

Earlier this year, I bought three bags of wildflower seeds that were supposed to be indigenous to this region. I scattered the contents of all three bags in this area around the cherry willow tree, watered them in good, and let them go. Now, they're knee high. There are several more types of wildflowers blooming every day. There should be - I dumped approximately 60,000 seeds into this area. At least it's no longer bare dirt! 

Looks like I have better luck planting things in the ground than keeping them in planters and making them reliant upon my watering skills.