It also has a cherry blossom mode, with pink flowers, that I’ll probably make in the spring.
Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category
LEGO Bonsai
Tuesday, January 26th, 2021Let’s Call It A Christmas Tree
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020I bought a multi pack of crystal tree growing kits recently and gave some of you one for Christmas. Who got one? I don’t remember! If it was you, here’s what you have to look forward to…
I believe all four kits were different colours, and we ended up with pink. It takes only moments to assemble it, and when you’re done be sure to put it somewhere it won’t be disturbed.
The above three shots are right after making it, then 1 and 2 hours later. You can see the tree saturates quickly, but the growth takes a while to begin.
Here we have 3, 4 and 5 hours after assembly. As you can see this is a high quality kit! I’ve blogged about these before and if you’re interested how they work go have a read.
And lastly we have 6 and 7 hours and then the final image is the next day (about 18 hours after assembly). What a lovely tree!
That’s a detailed shot of the crystals themselves. They’re very fragile so we keep it in a curio. In time they get stronger, but they will also fade as the food coloring evaporates. The white thing in the background of the photo is one we set up years ago.
If you get one from me for Christmas please set it up and send me a photo when it’s done. I’d like to see the colours 🙂
Too Much Snow
Thursday, December 17th, 2020Woke to this:
That’s a shot of my driveway and the neighbors tree. You can’t see the driveway? Neither could I!
We knew we were getting a big storm, but even when we went to bed last night the forecasts said the worst would be south of here (around NYC) and we’d only get about 6 inches. We got a lot more than that!
You know you’ve got hard work ahead of you when the snow is deeper than your giant-sized snowthrower! Luckily it was light enough the machine could clear it, but it was very slow going. Here’s my view heading to the end of the driveway:
After one pass:
And after some progress:
It was terribly difficult work and took a long time – over 90 minutes – but it was made all the more difficult by the fact it was damn cold! When I started it was 15 F (-9 C) and even with three hats and two pairs of gloves on I was cold. I started to feel my fingers freeze and for the first time ever ended up putting ‘hot hands’ (chemical heat packets) into my gloves, which helped a lot.
Here’s before and afters on the driveway and front steps:
And a shot of the edge of the driveway with a normal sized soap bar box for scale:
The officially tally as of 7 am was 17.5 inches. It’s still falling now as I write (around 10 am) but will taper off soon. We’ll probably end up with about 20 inches, which is a colossal fall for less than 24 hours.
As you can imagine the world seems to have stopped. Everything is closed and there’s a ‘state of emergency’ in effect keeping vehicles off the road. Not that there needs to be: our street hasn’t been plowed yet and it would be virtually impossible to drive through this:
The good news of the forecast is for frigid conditions to continue for at least the next two weeks. It seems 2020 will be a white Christmas 🙂
Day Trip
Tuesday, August 18th, 2020Today we drove 90 minutes north…
To visit Bigfoot…
Although just a metal statue, he was pretty impressive…
But the souvenir shop behind him didn’t sell anything good…
After a brief stop in Vermont we then drove over near Lake George and visited souvenir shops…
And some more souvenir shops…
And even bought a souvenir or two…
And then stopped for groceries on the way home…
And ultimately, many hours later, found probably the strangest thing we’d seen all day just down the street from our home…
It was a good day 🙂
Wildlife XVI: The Dead Of Night
Saturday, April 25th, 2020Maybe you’ve heard the stories of nature encroaching as man stays home? I was wondering if that was happening even in our own backyard, and dragged out the (old, borderline obsolete) wildlife camera for another bout of surveilling. Here’s what I found…
The usual suspects were of course represented. As you know by know squirrels are so abundant I sometimes wonder if they own this house and we just rent. The deer (with baby) photo I had to adjust since it was near pitch black. The nights have been dark recently and the animals have skulked with abandon.
KLS and I were just debating the difference between doves and pigeons but we’re 99% sure this dude is a dove since we’ve recently had one lurking. When they sing – or rather make their dove noises – it really carries and it can be difficult to tell where they are. Yesterday there was one on our roof (I think?) and his cooing filled the house.
We’ve had rabbits living in our backyard for years and they’re a common sight during the day nibbling at the edge of our lawn. Sometimes they’ll come up onto the patio in the middle of the day and make good viewing for the kitties. Apparently they hop around at night as well.
So with the expected visitors out of the way, time for some not-so-common ones:
A racoon! There were several shots of this guy over a few nights. Aside from some rock-hard break (see below) we hadn’t put food out so he was probably just exploring. In a few photos it looked like he was even grooming. I guess he’s comfortable on our patio.
There were only a couple of shots of this possum, and they were separated by over a week. He’s decently sized (about as big as a small cat). I wonder where he lives?
This one is a mystery. See that black thing at the edge of the yard? We’re not sure what it is! The likely culprit is a fat dog with a tiny tail looking away from us, but in all the aeons we have lived here we have never seen a dog running wild (which is not allowed in NY State). Therefore I’m inclined to think it’s either a giant unidentified black cat like the Beast of Exmoor. What do you think?
This last pic is even more mysterious! See that half-blurred thing flying by? Is it a bumblebee? A wasp? A hummingbird? A goldfinch? The camera doesn’t have a super-fast shutter speed so whatever it was is flying somewhat slowly, but the size seems to preclude an insect since it isn’t that close to the lens. A genuine mystery. What do you think?
Incidentally you can see one of our doorstop-breadrolls in the above pic, just at the edge of the patio on the right. I was hoping for some evidence of who took them but there was none. Between two empty daytime photos separated by 23 minutes the roll had just disappeared. The rolls were (we think) too big and heavy for a squirrel, so whatever took them was too fast for the camera! Another mystery unsolved…