It’s been raining for more than 24 hours. I’ve just been out walking in the back yard, and found big mushrooms growing under the oak trees. Last week, I saw others of the same type out in the woods; those were even more gigantic – three times as big. Does anyone know what kind of mushrooms these are? The ones in our yard are usually very tiny, and grayish, and they carpet whole areas. Perhaps they are a springtime mushroom…
Aunt Elaine sent me this, a circulating email. I always check these out. This one is not a hoax. The email calls this the rarest of all atmostpheric phenomena, a “fire rainbow.” Clouds have to be cirrus, at least 20k feet in the air, with just the right amount of ice crystals and the sun has to hit the clouds at precisely 50 degrees. Yup, you get the right combination of conditions and – voila! beauty. From Snopes This is…
NASA has a composite picture of the earth at night. Note the concentrations of light! I wonder how far out the lights would be visible to the naked eye. Can you find your favorite country or city? Surprisingly, city lights make this task quite possible. Human-made lights highlight particularly developed or populated areas of the Earth’s surface, including the seaboards of Europe, the eastern United States, and Japan. Many large cities are located near rivers or oceans so that they…
All RIGHT! My Canon Powershot A610 has arrived! The only flaw in the package is that I’ll have to get a bigger memory card. Here’s what it could do right out of the box. I’ll learn all the options and settings later. This is a kind of lavendar-colored plant called Plectranthus. I have two, outside on the deck. It’s a pretty plant with fuzzy heart-shaped leaves, but I wanted them because of the beautiful detail of the tiny tubular flowers….