“Life In The So-Called Space Age”
We went to Rochester for a couple of days to visit J & J. We played some games and I probably sent you a silly postcard!
Last night we had a cookout and let off the remainder of the fireworks I bought two months ago. Here’s some photos…
That last one is a magnesium-based flashing device which shines brighter than the sun. I couldn’t even look at it since it hurt my eye…
Fireworks are always fun! I’m already looking forward to next year 🙂
We planted some seeds. How did they turn out? Let’s look!
That’s the ‘left’ planter on the back patio (this is a rare post from my computer so you can click on the images to see them in higher resolution). The whiskey barrel is old and falling apart so it may be it’s final year, and we planted morning glory seeds in it. These photos were taken over an approximately 4 month period, about one a week. You can see a few (purple) flowers in the second last photo, but it’s starting to look a bit ragged probably due to the excessive heat it receives during the day.
That’s the ‘right’ planter, and you can easily see the dilapidation of this barrel (not to mention the no-longer-functional palantir in the middle). As with the other barrel we planted morning glories and you can see they flourished in this one since it is partially shaded by the tree above. However they are still showing sun damage in the final few shots. Had I taken any of these photos during the early hours you would see more flowers; they are mostly closed during the day.
And here we have close to the full life cycle of marigolds from seeds. I bought the seed packet for next-to-nothing at Walmart, and planted all the seeds in two cheap pots. Sue told me that this was a bad idea since they’d compete for nutrients and it seems she was correct. Even though I tried to thin them out when they (all!) sprouted, their roots had entangled a bit and this was difficult so I decided to leave them to their own devices. As you can see they started promisingly but quickly became weeds. They were not helped by a rogue chipmunk hell-bent on digging out the soil and monsoonal rains that kept knocking them over for days at a time. Basically these plants were cursed, and their ruinous lives led to a wretched final state. If we actually see flowers I’ll deem it a miracle!
So there you go. Some success and some failure, but mostly more the former. Lessons were learned, and next time the marigold seeds will fare better 🙂
I got this for my birthday (Thanks J & J!) and about a month ago started to build it:
It’s a massive kit, with 3000+ pieces and a 428 page manual with 894 assembly steps.
I like to build these things slowly, a few hours at a time, and this kit was well suited to that. The first part I finished was the trunk:
Note the little touches like the swing and birdhouse. The engineering that went into the LEGO pieces wrapping around the trunk with the studs facing out is very clever, and the whole thing is rock-solid strong to support the weight of the rest of the structure.
Next came the three ‘houses’:
These were the most fun to build due to the incredible detail inside. Here’s closeups of one of the bedrooms and the bathroom:
Next came the (detachable) roofs and some detail at ground level:
It’s a little obscured in the photo but the winding staircase from the ground up to the treehouse level is extraordinary. See also the ‘suspended’ walkway that wraps around the trunk connecting two of the houses.
Here’s a detail of the table at ground level:
The final step was to add the canopy:
The leaves are made of recycled plants; a preview of LEGO of the future perhaps (since they want to move away from plastic). The set comes with summer and fall leaf colours, and can be changed with the seasons:
This is an amazing kit. The engineering is first-class, it’s great fun to build and it looks incredible on display. This is the sort of kit that would have kept Bernard and I busy for months as kids, and I dare say there’s a lot of younglings enjoying the hell out of this today!
If you like LEGO and have some cash needing to be spent, you can’t go wrong with this one 🙂