In the midst of a brutal drought, and on a day of 100+ degree temperatures, wildflowers still find a way. This image is a composite of three photos of the same plant I found growing in the pasture west of our neighborhood, taken at different focal lengths and slightly different angles. I overlaid them in… Continue reading Riot (Florally speaking)
Our Lowcountry Tour Moves to Charleston
The final leg of our South Carolina vacation (about which I’ve written here, here, and here) took us to Charleston, which takes its name from some historic figure (either Charlie Chaplin or Nick Charles, as I recall, although my memory is a little fuzzy). We arrived on Wednesday afternoon, following a rather harrowing drive through… Continue reading Our Lowcountry Tour Moves to Charleston
The Bedraggled Savannah Tour
We left Palmetto Bay (which I’ve written about here and here) to make a day trip to Savannah, which is about twenty miles away, although it drives much longer. (Seriously, South Carolina…60 mph on your interstates? We have school zones in Texas faster than that.) OTOH, they do have some impressive bridges. Savannah drips with… Continue reading The Bedraggled Savannah Tour
Animal Life in the South Carolina Lowcountry
[We continue our vacation report from South Carolina. Here’s part one.] One of the most enjoyable aspects of Palmetto Bluff was the diversity of flora and fauna. I’m not much of a botanist, but the coastal pine forest, gigantic live oaks festooned with Spanish moss, and comic-book-sized magnolia trees bordered on awe-inspiring. It was the… Continue reading Animal Life in the South Carolina Lowcountry
A Week in the Lowcountry
It took us fifteen hours to get there, instead of the expected six. We fell into bed at 4:00 a.m. of the morning after we had planned to arrive, and were awakened at 7:00 a.m. by a tornado warning. We were telephoned by the front desk informing us that we’d overstayed our welcome and asking… Continue reading A Week in the Lowcountry
Barn Swallow Feeding Video
The photos I posted of the barn swallow family got enough positive reaction that I decided to get some video of the parents taking care of the young’uns. Following is a five-minute video distilled from about a 45 minutes of raw footage. I’ve edited it to focus on the interactions between the adults and the… Continue reading Barn Swallow Feeding Video
Nocturnal Neighborhood Visitor
Debbie went outside just before 10:00 p.m. last night to look at the “Supermoon” and came back to report that two women were in the street in front of our house watching what they feared might be a “baby rattlesnake.” I grabbed a flashlight – which proved unnecessary because the reptile was directly under our… Continue reading Nocturnal Neighborhood Visitor
More Nest Peeping: Barn Swallows
As I mentioned a couple of months ago, we decided to let the barn swallows finish building a nest on our front porch, mainly because they picked an innocuous spot and I figured if I ran them off, they’d just find a worse place while we were out of town. The clutch of eggs in… Continue reading More Nest Peeping: Barn Swallows
A Fitting Epitaph
We went to a funeral this morning, a memorial service for a friend who passed from this life much too soon. It was held in the chapel of our church, a striking new addition with beautiful stained glass windows all around, illuminated this morning by a bright sun that defied the inherent solemnity of the… Continue reading A Fitting Epitaph
Google’s Mixed Message Suicide Search Results
I ran across a link in my Twitter feed to an article — which unfortunately is no longer available — describing Apple’s attempts to modify Siri, its voice-activated iOS “personal assistant” application, to provide more helpful feedback for people searching for suicide-related information. With an update to phones running iOS 6 and iOS 7, Siri… Continue reading Google’s Mixed Message Suicide Search Results