gardening block overcome, rewards subsequently reaped

 

Everyone, including beans I'm stripping
to get bean plant to resume production.

Mostly cherry toms + 2 ancho peppers.

Tomatillos 'n' little peppers (some sweet, some hot).

A few of the tomatillos are as big as regular tomatoes.
Apparently these pups thrive on neglect.
That and an accidentally deep planting bed,
probably 'cause it catches & keeps more water.

Some of the tomatillos w/husks look like
little green jack o' lanterns to me, so it's kinda seasonally apt.

Anyhow, I'm loving all this color.

Happy Halloween, everyone! =)

xoxobb

where the Ahwahnee meadow web cam lives...

 

From among the various webcams in Yosemite,

here's the view that the Ahwahnee meadow webcam

generally provides (tho' it's down right now):

I took this pic this weekend.

This is the house where it lives.

I don't think it's a secret, 'cause I noticed all on my own, and thought, hey, that must be "that webcam." So, I'm thinkin' it's okay to share this. Officially this is my guess, but I'm betting I'm right. What a cute HOUSE!! And what a view.

Anyhow, my few pics from the east side are pretty underwhelming (got out really late when light was low, and then early, same thing), so in lieu of glamorous photos is today's contribution: data. =)

xoxobb

I'm not dead... I think I'll go for a walk!

 

Pretty much over the flu,
back from weekend travels & recovery,
now back to editing.

In the meantime, this guy was on our screen, outside.
He looks armored, like the knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail*.

Blends in pretty spectacularly well with the grey metal screen.

But has much more personality....

Super wild guess is a hemipteran,
tho' I've not stared at it very closely, yet.

bb

*Post title is lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, wherein a thin, old man is being offered prematurely to the man who gathers dead bodies off of the street. And the subject line are a few of the things he interjects into the conversation between the man who wants to get rid of him, and the dead body collector ("It's against regulations.")

P.S. have a reservation in Lee Vining for this Saturday, so apparently biobabbler WILL get some nature this weekend, & bring Nikon. YAY!!!

Swampy & stylish

 

Apparently I never posted this pic of a swamp in Louisiana:

I loved the freaky lighting.

Spent so long in a very dry climate, I'm still kind of
fascinated by fresh water just sitting there. =)

And on the boardwalk, was this green anole,

a.k.a. Carolina anole, a.k.a. Anolis carolinensis,
a.k.a. charming creature.

xobb

I wanna' live! And other thoughts on the flu

 
I'll post something normal once I'm better enough that checking e-mail isn't disorienting.

Just moments ago I looked at the list of messages in my inbox. And stared.

"Uh...how do I do this? Which one do I read first? The bold ones, right? And why are they wiggling?"

Eating 2 meals in 3 days is NOT good for your IQ. Or your eyesight, apparently.

FYI, if you find yourself in your undies, curled up in the fetal position on bathroom tile at 3 a.m., and then ask (between moans and "ow"s) for a pillow and a blanket, you are not well.

This is the first time the flu has ever scared me. I can see how it's killed so many people.

Jeeze.

So teetering around the house today, trying to get re-oriented to my life. Not exaggerating.

Had to ask Bear yesterday "When was I really sick, was it last night?" "No, the night before." "Oh." I really had no idea. That's a new symptom.

I feel like I must have fried some brain cells, 'cause I keep not knowing what to do.

"What do I usually do when I'm getting over the flu?"
(p.s. imagine long pauses between each thought, with NOTHING in between. Just dead air = bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)
"Should I nap?"
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
"Make toast?"
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
"Do the dishes?"
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
"Plant lettuce?"
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Annnd she stares out the window. For a while. Then gets a glass of water. Hooray!

The one thing I do know I should not do is work. This brain is not in any state to edit other conscious people's text. If they had eaten within 24 hours of writing their papers they're way ahead of me.

xo

bb

p.s. Case in point, 1st draft of last sentence above I wrote "paper's"!!! I committed the ever-more-popular writing tic of adding apostrophes everywhere possible and completely unnecessary (as in your basic plural). My #1 pet peeve, of late. Not well.
p.p.s. And "dead air" took me 5 minutes to come up with.
"Blank air?" bzzzz "Flat air?" bzzzzzzzzzzzz
"Blank air?" bzzzzzzzzz "Flat air??" bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Thilent Thurthday: October in Yosemite, or Yosemite in October?

 

 
 

Tactiturn Tuesday at Grand Canyon NP

 

Flitting through photos, saw this, & wondered,

hmmm, is this at Grand Canyon?

Next photos:

Yes, that could be Grand Canyon.

Or, the local dog park.

Hard to say.

xoxobb

lawn art: a cryptic post

 

Before:

After:

It's amazing the degree to which deer can disappear,
just by settling down in the grass.

Wiki's post on camouflage has some cool photos,
if you want to explore the subject a bit more.

=)

bb

the giant hole in all of our heads, a HUGE CAVE of space

 

otherwise known as the sinus cavity.

Sounds mundane, but LOOK AT THIS X-RAY!

Photo by Mnolf

HUGE empty space IN OUR HEAD!

I realize there are lots of sensors,
soft tissue, etc. there,
but the first time I saw something like this
during a college lecture, my jaw dropped.

No WONDER my voice resonates in my head
and sounds so different than what everyone else hears.
It's like in my head is the acoustic equivalent
of a small, tiled bathroom.

WARNING: a little gross, but not super gross.

This came to mind, so to speak, today
because I made some really lovely,
light-as-air, fluffy scrambled eggs.

And then walked while eating them.

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

So, yes, aspirated the eggs.

After much coughing and spluttering and honking,
something novel occurred.

Bright, fluffy, happy-looking,
perfect scrambled eggs, in small portions,
appeared in my tissue when I blew my nose.

Incredulous, I blew my nose again.
1. needed to, but, really,
2. to be sure it just wasn't some
rogue food that'd attached to my hand
or shirt and fell into said tissue
(i.e., science dork question: "Is it repeatable?").

Yup. There was more where that came from.

So, this freaky occurrence reminded me
that in our heads is a GIANT interconnected CAVITY.

For some reason, it freaks me out.

You?

xobb

okay, that was weird: Steve Jobs dies, I write a 5 hr post, & get nothing done

 

Spent about 100 hours today writing a post on Steve Jobs
and life with a dad who has cancer
(been there, done that)
& now I'm not even sure I'm gonna post it.

Maybe I can chalk it up to therapy?

Short version:
cancer sucks, but if a parent of young kids is diagnosed,
and then survives for a few additional years,
it can render a good parent great
re: life lessons taught to the kid.

By example.

Long version:
is epic.
A tome.
As in the-Illiad-is-really-just-a-poem kinda long.

And no pictures.

So, not sure it'll get posted,
and now I'm behind re: work,
so gotta go grad-school, drink coffee, and work late.

Anyhow, my deepest sympathies to the Jobs family
and everyone else who's suffered such a loss.

I do know this sort of thing has changed me,
so that I stare longer at beautiful, mysterious things,

and just soak them up,

because I can.

New quiz, plus last hints 4 old aerial photo quiz...

 

This is the old quiz, and we have a few guesses:

Where is this? Name nearby town and state.

Hint # 1:

This is a photo I took moments before I took the above picture:

Hint #2:

It's not in Utah, Colorado, or the Dakotas...
And remember, I took it flying from Sacramento, CA
to Minneapolis, MN.

=) New quiz:

What is the cause of this pattern:

the land areas are different shades of brown,

connected by perfectly straight boundaries?

Mind you, the answer is something I've inferred,

but I bet it's right.

=)

xobb

isn't a broccoli plant supposed to make broccoli?

 

This lovely plant has not made any broccoli looking thing EVER.

I planted it way too late last fall, it was TINY all winter long (say, 3 inches??), then in spring, I'd almost forgotten about it, and it GREW, saying, in effect, "We are here! We are here!"

Okay, then.

Watered, fertilized a bit, the usual. Grew like mad.

But, no broccoli. No little sprouts anywhere.

Gorgeous blue silver leaves, yes, so aesthetically,

it's already pulling its weight.

However, shouldn't FOOD arrive at some point?

And it's now October... it's almost a year old.

This happen to anyone else, out there?

Scratching Head,

biobabbler

Seeing stars that are seldom seen

 
via Philip Plait at Google+, and can also be watched here.

The wagging pole - Night watch from Graham Gaunt on Vimeo.

Great stuff, and I was particularly struck by the image starting at 1:49. WOW!

I'm kind of a freak for shots looking UP at land that is quite near, & just the sky behind it is visible, so you have no idea what's beyond that hill.

Sort of like driving across a flat intersection in some of the steepest hills in San Francisco, but in reverse. As you edge toward the crazy DROP of the block ahead of you, you see your car's hood ahead of you, and SF dropping precipitously all around, but you cannot actually see the road that your car is, in theory, going to land on/drive upon. Yow!!

Anyhow, apparently what's most exciting about the above video is that this part of England is seldom cloud free, so it was a special treat to see the stars traveling by in that part of the world.

Nice.

QUIZ QUIZ QUIZ

Hey, btw, down a few posts is a geology quiz (shot taken from 30k feet in the American west) that you can answer by zooming around in Google Earth. If I get no more guesses by Monday, I'll post another hint.

And remember, your reward is the GLORY of being GENIUS in a public forum. =)

Hooray, you!! =)

corn porn

 

Yeah, baby!

=)

bb