A Better Moon

I'm getting a bit better. Waning Gibbous 97% of FULL 10/15/08 11/:27 pm. 1/250 sec. F/3.5 67 mm.

Full Moon

It got cloudy last night, but I got to play with the full moon a little with long exposures.

Worm Composting

Before I built an outdoor compost bin I tried worm composting. Worm composting requires a plastic bin with some holes drilled in the side and top. You half fill it with damp shredded newspaper, add red worms, and they theoretically eat your veggie garbage. They turn it into worm castings, some of the best type of fertilizer for plants. Eventually they eat all the newspaper, so you slide the dirt to the side, and refill half with newspaper and food to get an many worms to migrate as possible to the new bedding. Then the worm castings go out to the garden, hopefully worm free. I have a 3 foot by 18 inch worm bin in the basement. I've been heavily neglecting it since spring when I built an outdoor compost bin. I checked on them today, and no newspaper left, no food either. An entire bin of worm castings. Now if I can just get the worms to migrate, great garden fertilizer. It does look nasty in there. But I've never noticed any smell, and no fruit flies, which plague the outside one.

Numb Arms

It never fails. I always put off closing up the pond until the water is so frigid I can't get all the plants up without waiting to thaw. This year After I caught the fish the plants all got dropped back down, and hopefully I'll have an even better lily show next summer. The real reason I'm so slow at it is setting up the winter tank for the fish. Each year they get whatever tank I have empty. Some years They've just gotten big tubs in the basement. They lucked out with a 55 gallon tank. I had 5 goldfish survive this summer, and I think that may actually have been the number I put out. The Paradise Fish was a no show, but he was getting several years old. Plenty of mosquito fish survived as well, but I'm down to one male. Since I'm going to actually be able to see the fish this winter, they got names.

Moon Attempt

Waxing Gibbous 96% full 10/12/08 11:52 pm Took a number of pictures. Turns out an almost full moon is pretty bright. Ended up at 1/250 sec. Anything much longer turned into a white blob. This was handheld on the S3, Focus set to infinity, Image Stabilization set to off...

Cat Shelves

A few weeks ago I decided I was tired of my cat being afraid to come down the stairs to my first floor. I let my first dog get away with guarding the stairs, and the second went right along. They also constantly tormented the cat if she did get downstairs. After a few years I got tired of it. The cat didn't actually seem to mind much. Step one was training them to leave her alone upstairs, which has gone fairly well. I realized years ago, that it's my attention the dogs want. If I'm not in the room they completely ignore the cat. I've got them to mostly ignore the cat now, though the stairs are still a point on contention. To entertain the cat I put up some shelves in my living room. I adapted the idea from moderncat. Eventually there will be another wider shelf higher up to lay on, these are just the stairs. However I finally got her to jump from the lower one to the higher one with liberal use of cat treats.

Tired... Dog Hiking

Went on two hikes this morning. I bought a flea comb yesterday, hoping to avoid the bathing of the dogs when I got home. I didn't find any ticks, but haven't seen any either, so there might just have been less ticks where I went this time. First hike was to Wilson Mountain Reservation in Dedham MA. I checked it out Friday, making completely sure dogs were allowed. I also wanted to check out the map as I haven't found one anywhere online. Below is an enlarged photo of the map as it was posted in the parking lot. I walked the 2 mile green dot trail. Overall it was a nice flat walk, with a few climbs. There was one swampy area that needs a new boardwalk piece, so I wouldn't expect to get through dry in the spring. Toka got over all of it fine, but the board walk would have been a deal breaker for my nervous dog seen above on his first hike. The trail did have the same basic off-leash dog problems, and no one was cleaning up after their dogs, another sticking point for me. After the successful hike at Wilson Mountain I decided to test Boomer on trails. He isn't a big fan of other dogs invading his space, so I needed a less used trail. Ended up on Little Blue Hill in the Blue Hills Reservation. You have to park in the Park and Ride lot on the other side of the street from the Trailside Museum on rt 138. The Trailside Museum lots are packed on Sundays. I took the Skyline trail to where it intersected with the Green Dot Loop. Nice trail, lots of slipper orchids I'll be back to see in May. Saw one deer who wasn't happy to see us. Boomer was remarkably good for his first hike, and again I haven't seen any ticks yet.

Confetti

Just playing with some musical note confetti at a birthday party.

Day Off

My free day inspired me to go on a hike somewhere new that dogs were allowed. I love hiking with my dogs (well only one of them) but I've been limiting myself to winter hiking due to ticks. My hiking buddy came up with Lyme last year, and it was a pain to treat, so I've been avoiding it. I decided a few weeks ago I would just bathe her as soon as I got back, and today was the first opportunity I've had. We went to Signal Hill in Canton. It was great. Since it was Thursday mid-afternoon, we were alone. There's a little overlook you can see Boston from, and even this late in the year, I saw a garter snake, and several darner dragonflies. I'm not even mentioning the hundreds of grasshoppers that kept trying to escape us. There is also a canoe launch into the Neponset River. It isn't big. It was odd that there was a porta-potty in the parking lot, but no trash can. Kind of odd when they allow dogs. I was also quite impressed with Toka, she really is a dream to hike with due to training I did years ago, but very rarely use. She remembered all the commands I taught her, and now that she's a bit older, she was much more likely to obey them. Quite a joy actually. The after hike bath was fun, only seven ticks. Thankfully, only one was on me, and the ones that inevitably fell off in the car will get cooked tomorrow when it sits in the sun at work.

Backup Camera Found...

While browsing my local overpriced big box store I wandered over to cameras. I'm quite attached to canons, even though plenty of other brands seem to take perfectly fine pictures. I'm still stuck on canon. So I poked around with the cheaper Canons. I looked at the clearance cams, decided they weren't for me and spotted a funny shaped Canon in the ultra compact area. Unlike just about every ultra compact out there is wasn't a perfect unadorned rectangle. It was as several people have described a rounded brick. It was a Canon Powershot A470. In slight fiddling with the back I discovered that it had no viewfinder and no aperture or shutter speed control. Slight problem, but workable. I turned it to manual to see how the macro worked, and discovered it has SUPER MACRO...I haven't seen that feature in anything but the Canon S series, and the SX10IS that is coming out this month. Three days later after numbers of reviews, and a few searches on flickr for cloud pics taken by this camera I got one from Amazon for $30 bucks less than the local big box. I've had it 3 days. I was somewhat limited yesterday by working, but today I had off. I meandered taking okay cloud pics (not the camera's fault, the clouds weren't great, but I was curious) and found in addition to super macro, it has an infinity focus, which is handy since it has no manual focus at all. It's focusing modes more than make up for its very slow refresh rate from flash photos, and the glare problem it has in sunlight due to no viewfinder. So far I'm quite happy with my new backup camera, at least until I get my hands on the new Canon Powershot SX10IS.

New Babies

Saturday I went to the Reptile Expo in NH. If you have any interest in reptiles I highly suggest the trip. The only thing you have to keep in mind if you're from MA is that a number of the animals for sale, most notably chameleons and monitor lizards are illegal in MA. I've been planning to go for a few years, but always forgot the dates and missed it. This year I promised myself in September I'd remember to go. It was great. The only place I've seen thousands of reptiles and only one or two injured or ill, unlike most stores with tons of injured and ill on display for sale. I mostly bought food (500 crickets for $6.00!!!), but I got two new critters. A baby crested gecko (hopefully female) and a female Okeetee corn snake hatchling. Both are already eating heartily.

Light Diffusers - Cheap

I've been doing basic experiments with homemade light diffusers with mixed results. The first thing that stuck out was it is time for some glass cleanings before I try to shoot through water spots again, but I did get a few halfway decent experiment pics. My goal is to remove the horrible green and red eye I almost always get when using a flash indoors with the critters. Most notably one of my dogs with gold eyes and my cat. Neither can be photographed with the standard flash on my camera, and before I buy a slave flash I thought I would play with some cheap diffusers. One was just white paper wrapped around the flash, which was okay, but not great. The better one used plastic from a make your own stencil kit. It is slightly opaque, but lets most light through, with a matte finish on one side, which bounces the light nicely. It does have a slightly yellow cast that needs to be edited out later though, so i might have to stick to white paper until I'm interested enough in something else.

Laziness and Cold...

I think I'll go with laziness as to why I haven't been out and about taking pics of things. I just don't like the arrival of Fall. Not a real big fan of Fall either, but I like wearing t-shirts, and dislike coats, so summer is wonderful, but fall is just freaking cold, so I have a tendency to clean inside and not venture out for anything but work and groceries... My house is approaching as clean as it's been ever, but there are still the random piles of stuff that I obviously don't need, (or it wouldn't stay there for 6 months) but apparently can't throw away either. It might be useful someday. Someday being the next time I want to torture a small fish by making it live in a 6 inch by 6 inch cube, rather than any of the many large tanks I have. I have lots of tiny useless fish tanks, that I really need to stop collecting then keeping. I really need to stop trying to make them miniature terrariums with plants, unless I can figure out covers and lights better than my previous attempts. The kitchen is clean, I managed to get the table clear enough to wash it before I started piling projects on it again. Of course with the cooler weather all the plants that summered outside are now cluttering up my kitchen floor while I puzzle over how they multiplied while outside. The Critter Room is clean one day, messy the next, though the cages are fairly clean right now. My cricket farm thing is kind of working, but not as easily as I hoped. I need to find some way to heat all of them, so their lifespan doesn't take quite so long. The snakes have been enjoying their periodic strolls across my lap during computer time.

Veggies

I will admit I'm not a well organized gardener. This year I got better at actually getting stuff planted, but I will never be living off the grid and surviving on my own foodstuffs. Especially since I just like growing stuff, not actually eating any of it. Last year I tried Little Finger carrots, which grew but were king of a pathetic feeling harvest. This year I diversified. "Thumbelina" and some Nantes type I'm too lazy to look up. Both performed quite well with my lazy gardening. I couldn't be bothered this year to put out the drip irrigation hose, so have been hauling water from rain buckets for weeks. Here's an example of my efforts paying off. I'm quite proud even though both are pathetically small carrots.

Happy Labor Day

Well, happy late Labor Day. I spent the day doing chunks of little jobs, mostly potting things, and buying a tree I don't quite have a spot for yet. I have ideas for a spot, but no actual spot, and have to find one this week. I was rather violent toward one of my rose bushes today. I have two miniature rose bushes. I got them as those little rose plants the supermarkets sell in early spring. I have a pink and an orange. I have one planting bed I really like, and started with shade plants, then didn't plan and this year didn't really get to see any of my favorite plants because everything in the front is now too tall. So, one of the rosebushes came out. A real advantage with miniature roses is they are on their own rootstock, not grafted on to another. I have several roses that obviously the graft died, and the rootstock took over. Does not happen with miniature roses. As I was very impatient about it there was yanking rather than digging, and I ended up with 4 plants. Now that I look, I started with 4 plants, and they were much too close together. Now each got trimmed a bit, and potted up, and hopefully will survive. Two will likely have to be trimmed more, I left too much and the tops started wilting from my less than kind care. Start of next year I have a full size rosebush I need to remove from the same planting bed, and move my clematis to it's spot. I also have the other miniature rose. I might just keep them in large pots rather than planting them back out anywhere. They attract aphids in amazing quantities each spring. The flowers are worth it.