Southern Rorschach Test

Sometimes you see animals, sometimes landscapes, sometimes ruined castles (particularly creepy on moonlit nights, when you can hear the leaves whispering in the wind). Kudzu grows a foot a day in summer—but it never moves while you're watching, so keep a sharp lookout! It'll swallow up trees and houses and occupied lawn chairs if unchecked. Flamethrowers are recommended.

Personally, I'm hoping they can make biofuel out of the stuff. To heck with corn or switchgrass; making ethanol out of kudzu is the only way we'll be safe.

Hatless Elf Alert

I was just testing the capabilities of the el cheapo designed-for-idiots camera, set to macro. The shiny background was a black filing cabinet. Sometimes the throwaway “let's see what happens if I do this” photos look better than the ones I plan.

Except for the forgetting-to-turn-off-the-datestamp part.

The Cruelest Month

Yep, it’s April, but I don’t know if T.S. Eliot ever came to the Southeast in the springtime. I look out the window and see glorious sunshine, deep blue sky, and vivid colors everywhere. I love flowers, even weeds—here are a few things from my yard that I love:

The light—oh, the light! Even the air seems to be luminous, a magical pale gold…well, kind of a greenish shade of gold.

Um…it’s pollen.

In the spring we have clouds of pollen that can be seen—blowing and drifting pollen with yellow-out conditions. Newcomers see yellow dust on their cars and think it is fallout from a chemical plant. And on beautiful spring days with low humidity and perfect temperatures, windows are shut fast against the piles of pollen. Dust your furniture in the morning and in the afternoon you can balance your checkbook with your bare hands.

Officially, a pollen count of over 120 is considered extremely high. This is ludicrous--in springtime it's rarely under four digits, unless it’s actually raining.

This April seems to be fairly average.

(Today the count on the radio was 28-oh-something, but I couldn't be sure because their website -- www.atlantaallergy.com--was down. Probably buried in the pollen.)

Last year was extraordinary because we didn’t have just a 100-year drought, we had a “Good Lord, I hope it doesn’t do THIS again, I’m having a picnic so it’ll rain on me” drought. I think we went all of March without any rain. One of the effects was this—

I was going to sell when it hit 6,000.

At this point allergy drops and antihistamines can do nothing—all you can do is drink lots of water, and every now and then take your eyeballs out and rinse them in the spin cycle.

Weeping Cherry

It never bloomed in ten years. Not one petal, not even a bud. Nothing but leaves, year after year.

By an amazing coincidence, it bloomed the very year after my mother said we would cut it down if there weren’t any blooms next year.

And people say plants aren’t intelligent.

PS--the tree that I thought was a crabapple in this post
is actually a cherry tree. Which is why I never went for a degree in horticulture.

Easter Eggs

If you think a paintball gun set on “Rapid Fire Random” is a great way to decorate easter eggs, You Might Be A Redneck. (Apologies to Jeff Foxworthy.)

I colored these with a little spinning gadget that uses specially formulated liquid egg dye. It was the most fun I’d ever had decorating eggs: much more fun than dipping them, and I have no patience with the little crayon thingie. Naturally, when I checked the stores the next Easter, I found no sign that they had ever made such a thing.

Using standard food coloring didn't work nearly as well as you think it might.

Crabapple

This tree is in my neighbor’s yard. Every spring it has a huge mass of pale blooms, but it is so much more beautiful up close. I wonder what my neighbor thinks, if he looks out the window and sees me standing on tiptoe, shooting pictures from inside his tree?
I love looking at flowers close up. And here *is* a close up!

Yoicks

No, I did not give up blogging for Lent; just had a little touch of Murphy.

Because it is cold and rainy today, here's a teaser for summer's coming attractions:

If it's a butterfly bush, why is the crop so small? Should we fertilize?

One of the compensations for a long, hot, humid summer is watching butterflies dance overhead on a summer evening.

(Oh, good grief, it's raining harder. Yes, we need it....)

Narrow Way

The illusion of being in a quiet park is ruined by the end of the fence on the far right, and the glimpses of parking lot through the trees.

It Never Snows Here

We hardly ever get snow here, but since it's leap year and we were predicted to have a warmer than normal winter, of course it had to snow. (Twice). The first one was a bit of a surprise, since we weren't supposed to see any snow at all, but there was a chance of freezing rain later.

So when I walked outside to go home that Wednesday afternoon and saw snowflakes, I had one of those brain-lurching flashbacks to the last time they predicted no snow. Okay, it probably wasn't the very last time, but Snowjam is the reason I have kept food and long johns in my filing cabinet at work for more than twenty years. (Never. Again.)

Here, thousands flee in terror from the oncoming juggernaut of unpredicted snow at rush hour:

If you have very good vision, you might be able to see a tiny blurry thing that I think is a snowflake. Really, it was snowing a lot harder a couple of minutes before I took this picture, but by the time I got my camera out and turned it on and charged the CMOS chip...oh, never mind.

It snowed off and on all the way home, and melted on impact. When I got home, it wasn't snowing, but by the time I got out of my car it had begun.

This is a magnolia, and that is a snowflake. Do I have to say how very wrong that is?

Within a few minutes, it was actually starting to stick to the ground. Umm, that wasn't supposed to happen....



Here the intrepid photographer takes an action shot of a showflake landing on the car:
On my deck, it had begun to sleet. This looks like nearly half an inch of “no accumulation expected” has accumulated. Okay, more like a quarter inch...but it's ice.

Wow.



Fortunately, even though we were completely unready for a bread, milk, and toilet paper emergency, no loss of life was reported. The power stayed on, we stayed home, and the next day the roads were (still) clear.

It snowed again on Saturday. This time lots of big drama and preparation for no big problem. However, the kids next door to me built a snowman which had not completely finished melting a week later. (This is the South; snow that lasts 48 hours is...is...words fail me.)

Anyway, that could be it until next Leap Year. We'll see.

New Kanji

Tokyo, Japan: Forensic linguists in Japan's Ministry of History have announced that a new Kanji symbol has been discovered. Experts say that it is pronounced “bahkohn”. The meaning is still to be determined.

UPDATE: This discovery is now suspected of being a hoax when linguists were unable to provide any proof of the new symbol. This reporter is following the story closely and it smells...good.

Worthless Furball #3

Yes, this is my cat. She's on the couch here, but usually she likes to sit on my counter and shed hairs in my food prep area. The lady I adopted her from had a dog as well, and the only way to feed the kitten and be sure the kitten got to eat was to put the kitten and her food on a table. So in addition to the normal cat instinct to take over high places, she's trained to hop onto the table at meal times. It doesn't help that my mother thinks pet animals should be hand fed from her own plate at dinnertime.

However, we're not thrilled about little kitty feet on the dinner table. I've gotten very good with a squirt bottle, and will fire a few rounds into her flank before going for the ear. My mom, when she has had enough, will fire a warning shot directly in the face. I don't think it's deliberate.

Worthless Furball #2

he’s not my cat, but he is a sweetheart—a fluffy friendly kitty who doesn't like being picked up and cuddled, but will tolerate it. Better than my cat does.

Water Snake!

They call the wake behind a ship a “water snake”, which makes more sense if you see what one looks like when the ship isn’t on cruise control (the “Iron Mike”). I love to stare at them stretching out to the horizon.

What do you look at to relax?

Sheep-Zorro!

It was hard enough making the costume. Learning how to fight with a sword was darned near impossible. But after all that work, people insisted that it was not an “S”, it was a “5”. Heartbroken, SheepZorro disappeared. Rumor had it that he joined a monastery and donated all his wool to the poor.

Rocket Garden

Twilight in the rocket garden. The one in the middle looks really strange. Can a rocket fly with a (whatever that payload is) attached to the top?