Tag Archives: trees

Closeup Photos of Dogwood Blooms in Spring

19 Mar

dogwood buds

I didn’t really think about it like that until this year, but life seems so fragile sometimes, even if we live out the average life span for this country, we will only see, or recognize, this time comes around 50-80 times on average, if we are lucky.  I think the first 5-10 Spring season changes don’t really count since we can’t comprehend what we are looking at, but I have already experienced 37 Spring’s in my life, so as the flowers bloom and leaves start to fill the trees again, I am keenly aware I have about 35 down and 35 to go, so to speak.

I am amazed at God’s symphony that we call Spring.  Almost so slowly we don’t notice, the buds on the trees come out and things go from brown to green in a blink of an eye.  Last week in what I hope is winter’s last hurrah, I shot some photos of the Dogwood blooms on a tree in front of our house.  It survived the snow, the ice, the cold, to bring us the images below.  Of course down here in the south, no Spring is complete without the bloom of the yellow pollen from the pines.  I took the other shot a few days ago just before all the pods started to release gallons of yellow pollen that now covers every square inch of everything.

These photos are of the Dogwood in bloom just outside out living room window.  Just the smallest blooms, waiting for a warmer day to arrive.  The closeup of the pine tree below covers us in a bath of yellow pollen for several weeks, but it is still a beautiful sight when you know warmer weather is on its way.

dogwood buds

dogwood buds

Pine Cone Buds

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Going Low Tech with Lopi to Heat the House

20 Dec

lopi-wood-burning-stove

Most things in our house are high tech as we can get, except when it comes to heating the house.  When we built this house a few years ago we put in a wood burning stove (see Lopi, Lopi, and Lopi).  Heating our home with a wood burning stove is great, except… you have to have wood of course.  Since Deb likes the house to be WARM, we certainly save quite a bit on electricity over the winter (bill runs around $65 in the winter), it just takes a lot of labor to get it to the point of burning as you see below.

So, we spend many a Saturday afternoon in what turns out to be pretty tough work of cutting up wood, splitting, and stacking.  Theoretically we should be working on seasoning our wood about a year out from when we are burning it, but so far we haven’t been able to catch up with the seasons and come summer time we really don’t want to be out there doing this type of work, so, we are doing it now.

This isn’t much of a technological post, other than the fact that I do have my phone out there with me, but this is what we did today.  You will have to excuse the quality of the photos, all the images below were taken with my phone.

We have this sort of disaster area in the adjacent property our here.  Early this year the logging trucks came in and clear cut the 40+ acres and left a huge mess of wood scrap bio-mass (mostly hard wood trees they didn’t want), and in the process gave us an almost endless supply of wood for our stove.  Luckily we can’t see the mess next door from our house, and the owner of the property (which use to be a nice deer lease) was thrilled was wanted to clean it up a bit.

Hunting for Wood

Deborah Collecting Wood

Scott Resting

Scott Resting

Splitting Wood

Split Wood

It was a totally exhausting day, but the end result is heat for the house.

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Red Crape Myrtles and a Weeping Willow Today

11 May

Planting Crape Myrtles

Wow, what a busy weekend (including Friday here). We stared off the weekend Friday night with the most wonderful thunderstorm. Since we hadn’t seen any rain here in what feels likes years it was a pleasant site. I took several photos of the lightening, one is in my post, Lightening in the Sky Tonight, and another is just above here. What a great site for an area of the country that hasn’t seen a lot of rain lately.

One of my favorite types of photography, just not one that you can go outside and say, ok, today I am shooting lightening shots. To see the larger version just click on the image above. The bolt actually started out of the top of the clouds in the upper left corner and winded its way to the ground.

Saturday – Trees, Trees, and Trees

Saturday was a pre-Mother’s Day tree planting day. Deborah and I had planned to pick out several Crape Myrtles trees to plant along the driveway (which is about a 1/4 mile long), and a Weeping Willow tree at the end where the driveway turns up to the house.

We went to our local Plant World which usually has a huge selection. They didn’t. There was a great Weeping Willow we would come back to get, but it was off to Lowes (in the rain) to check on the other possibilities. We found 8 red Crape Myrtles that were going to look just great planted on the driveway.

After discovering how hard it was to plant trees in rock hard dry ground we were looking forward to something a little easier. So, off to plant the Azaleas we got on Friday for the walkway. It was a long and exhausting day, but in a few years the driveway should be very pretty. In total, we planted 8 Crape Myrtles, 6 Azaleas, 1 Weeping Willow, and left of bunch for the next day.

Lightning in the Sky

Sunday – Choosing our Words and Some Veggies

Sunday started off about 3am with a wild bit of lightening and then the power went off. Don’t mind right now, but come summer that will be a hot hot night. It was off for about 2 hours, finally came back on right before we got up. Good thing, we are on a well system, so without power, we have no water. We had a wonderful service on Sunday, see Acceptable Words in Your Sight, and tried to spend the day relaxing. What was left the Saturday was to get the Sweet Potatoes in the ground. We picked up about 16 plants on Saturday and had to get them in the ground.

Everything Else

I did receive a bit of new music on Friday. Sort of a strange mix today, but on the list for this batch was:

  • Sting – The Soul Cages
  • Green Day – American Idiot
  • Nickelback – The Long Road

These all came from my music trading pals over at lala. A bit of an administrative note for this blog. I have decided to post a daily digest of my Twitter conversations here on this blog. Simply for me to see what transpired throughout the day. This information will not be posted on any of my other blogs. This week promises to be a busy one with work and a few other things going on in the middle of the week.

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Sunday is Our Day of “Rest” with a Husqvarna Chainsaw

20 Apr

Scott's Chain Saw

Today was going to be one of those relaxing days of doing nothing and enjoying this unbelievably beautiful weather. Well, the weather was gorgeous today. I was looking forward to our worship time today since we have been out of town the last few Sunday’s, and it was incredible. A series on missions, which I was told ahead of time to expect something “different”. Well it was different all right, and very uplifting and challenging (see The Mission Field is Fluid for details) service.

Before we left for church I was able to work on some photo scans of old family members and add them to an older blog post piece. I love looking at and working with images of all kinds so this was an enjoyable start to the day.

There is Always a Tree to Move and Grass to Cut

I started working on a blog post over on scottfillmer.com and stopped to do some of my daily walk about. Short today, only about 2 miles but after lunch it was decided that a fallen tree on the road needed to be cut up and moved for fire wood for next winter.

I like getting the chance to work with my dad and working outside so we cut up the tree that Alabama Power deemed un-necessary and a bother for power lines. It still needs to be split up for fire wood, but it is better than rotting on the side of our driveway.

Scott and Larry Picking Up Tree

Of course once the tractor is out, better cut some more grass, there is always grass to cut.

Nature in View

This morning before we left for church we had 4 deer drink from the pond and then walk across a shallow section of the pond. This was about 8:30am, not when it was dark at all. We often have deer come by at night but not usually during the day. Probably has to do with the missing 100 acres of trees that was taken down last week bordering our property. It was nice to see the deer in the day light. We did have a visit by a very large woodpecker who found our Dogwood sapling a nice place to sit. The woodpeckers are all over the place now.

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Lifting Books for Amazon and Some Clear Cut Logging

16 Apr

Lifting Books for Amazon and Some Clear Cut Logging

It finally warmed up a little bit, just in time for me to do some heavy hauling. What I felt like I did all day was carry boxes up and down the stairs, that’s about it.  It is a real workout to carry 50-70 pound boxes of books up and down a full flight of stairs all day, but that is what the work requires right now.  My legs have grown much stronger (and more tired).

A Day for Boxes and Books

Today was a day for moving boxes and books. We finally picked up our last load of book/boxes and did not have the energy last night to bring them into the house. So, after going through my daily email and minor work items (and some food) it was off to unload the trailer. Probably about 1000 pounds in total, which I brought up our flight of stairs to fill the landing area, the last bare spot in the house.

Boxes and Books and more Boxes

The house is now completely full of boxes of books. Probably over a years worth of boxes to go through and list, sort, sell, shelve, and so on. It was a great blessing to receive such a large supply but also an eye sore that will be with us for a while now. Deb can only go through and list about 50 books in a day, twice a week, it is just a very time consuming thing to do. The other days we have to package and ship said books that have sold. At least as far as inventory goes, we are greatly blessed.

Images Transfer Continues and Blogging

I am still trying to transfer over all my stored images on disc, to my large HDD. I can only do a few a day but I am cranking through them when I have time. I have about 75-100 CD/DVD’s in total, which is I guess about 250 GB’s of images to be moved over. I started working on the blog for my mother in-law, Georgia, which is where this journal blog got its start. I posted the first journal entry, Sunday, June 2, 1991, which should go through 3-4 years of posts, if I can keep up with it. I doing one journal entry per post, when I get a chance. Suddenly I have way more things to do than I have time to do.

A day I was finally able to get in a full walk about. I got in a full hour of walking at about 5 miles (and a little hoops as well). My daily walk, once around the beautiful trees of green now has the view below. I think they are finished clearing this one area, must be, not much left. They are supposed to replant at some point.

Logging for the Mill

There is Work To Do Too

Of course, my daily routine of work items continues each day. This varies from day to day but I finished up some consulting work and hopefully will start to bid on some projects on Elance.

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Fall Colors in the Apen Groves in Creede

28 Sep

Here are some of Scott’s most recent photos of the local area. Enjoy.

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