Cactus Fruit

I have posted several photos of the red claret cup cactus that I have in a big pot in my yard. This year it put on some nice fruit or seed pods. I am hoping they ripen so I can collect the seed and to try to grow some from the seed.

Jefferson, Ohio to Reading Center, New York

Tombstone Tuesday :: Harlow and Hazlette Burns

BURNS
DAD / HARLOW / 1880 - 1952
MOM / HAZLETTE / 1885 - 1977
Scott-Keister Cemetery, Etna-Troy Township, Whitley County, Indiana
photo taken July 14, ..
Hazlette Ann Wise was born on October 10, 1885 in Whitley County, Indiana. The youngest of the four children of William P. Wise and Sophia Dunfee, she is a sister of my great grandmother Maude Wise Brubaker Yontz. Hazlette was named after her great-grandmother Sophia Elizabeth (Hazlett) Dunfee.

On October 10, 1911 Hazlette Wise was married to Harlow Asher Burns, an up-and-coming farmer of Troy Township. They lived their entire married life on their farm in Troy Township. Harlow passed away on June 15, 1952. At the time of her death on October 9, 1977 (at the age of 91) Hazlette was living in a nursing home in Fort Wayne.

They were the parents of two children: Maurice Wise Burns, who died in infancy, and who is buried near Harlow and Hazlette, and Thagrus Asher Burns who passed away in October .. at the age of 91. This picture of Thag is one of my favorite family photos.

As a teenager, I remember "aunt" Hazlette attending family dinners and gatherings that were given by my grandmother. Aunt Hazlette was a woman of short stature who had, so I've been told, an "iron will" and great determination.

Lions, Tigers and Bears

Or maybe it is more panthers, otters and bears. I love that the Wildlife Refuge is right across the street. Even though it is quite small, it is great that I can scoot over there and visit for an hour or so and spend time watching animals. They are all so beautiful in their own way.

There were two bears, but only one would come out to let me take his picture.

I told Nathan that I was going to see if I could get the cats to talk to me here too, after my experience in Hershey's Zoo. Sure enough, the cat did the same thing here. I talked and it would talk back. I thought maybe there was something to me being a cat whisperer but then another lady walked up and the cat did the same thing to her. Guess that is not my superpower after all. I still enjoyed chatting with the cat, even if it was not exclusive.

What? You have problems with your male leaving his dirty socks on the floor too?

The otters were surprisingly lazy today.

I'm not a fan of the above animal, but they are everywhere so I have to include some shots of them. I am hoping to get over to visit this place more often this year, and hope to revisit the Lipizzaner horses too. We missed both of them last year since we weren't here.



Living the life in Florida!

Storm Shadow

Stormy is our Miniture Horse and Shetland cross.

Blue Window

Blue window frame with a huge dark pink crape myrtle blooming beside it.

Pike Run Dry Tooling

The small outcrops at Pike Run work great for dry tooling

East coast ice climbing has had another dismal week. Above average temperatures and rain are preventing the ice climbing season from getting underway. Locally we've had 40 degree rainy days with evening temps hovering around freezing. Yesterday Laura and I had some time to get out climbing and didn't want the lack of ice this season ruin our motivation. With possible rain in the forecast, we decided to hit a small local spot for some dry tooling. We decided to head over to Pike Run for some dry tool investigation. Pike Run is predominantly a bouldering area with a few 25' outcrops that offer a little top roped climbing. I installed a few bolt anchors on top of the outcrops in 2000 to help lessen the impact of anchoring off the small trees at the top. For those that don't know, I used to own a climbing shop and guide service located about 5 minutes down the road in Donegal. Pike Run offered folks a place to climb very close to my shop. Much to my surprise Pike Run is still being used on a regular basis.

Tim checking out the Citronella Cave V4 to V6

Laura getting ready to give it a go...

Laura on our 3rd climb

Enjoying the new opportunities

The approach trail has had some impressive work done to it. Someone also went as far as to build landings at the bottom of the Tower outcrop at the descent trail. My hat is off to those ambitious folks that took the effort to help maintain this local climbing resource. The rock at Pike Run is sandstone. Its coarse, not nearly as compact and solid as the sandstone located in most places on Chestnut Ridge. The outcrops at Pike Run offer some great dry tool options. Laura and I had a great time exploring and trying out some lines. We climbed 3 lines overall taking laps on each several times. The moves varied from easier M3/4 to M8 with the climbing being somewhat technical and not as straight forward as it looks from the ground. Rounded and sloping are the norm with a few usable cracks here and there. It was nice to revisit and take a serious thrashing at an area I haven't climbed in a few years. I'm sure we'll be back to pump ourselves silly soon enough.

Laura practicing climbing in ice boots without tools

On a non climbing note:

On the way home from Pike Run we were pleasantly surprised to see a pair of Northern Goshawks near Acme Dam on county line road. One was actively hunting and perching while the other perched the whole time far off on a field edged by forest. It will be interesting to see if they are herewintering or passing through to other territory. Goshawks are our largest accipiter and are irregular visitors to our region. They live in the colder, northern climates of Canada during summer and migrate south for the winter. The Goshawk is related to our summer resident Sharp-Shinned and Coopers hawks. Here's a photo we shot of one perched on a dead snag.

Northern Goshawk Accipiter gentilis

near Acme Dam, Dec. 16,

Cool Stuff - Alltop and Kronomy

footnoteMaven has been instrumental in getting a Genealogy category created at a new online service called Alltop.com, which the developers bill as a “digital magazine rack” for the Internet. I am honored to be amongst those listed. The site was formally announced in March of this year by Guy Kawasaki. One comment he made in the announcement was to think of Alltop as "aggregation without the aggravation.” For those who don't understand RSS Feeds or don't want to be bothered with setting up a feed reader, this may be a good solution. Of course, for those on facebook, using the Blog Network and/or facebook's, still in Beta, feature the "News Wall" is a more personalized solution.
I checked out some of the other posts on Guy Kawasaki's blog, and noticed something that really caught my interest. Something that could be fun and useful for genealogists and family historians.

First read his post Make Your Life Flash Before Your Eyes. Cool isn't it. Think of the possibilities. Create a timeline of your life, one of your ancestors, or one of your family lines using photographs and digital images of documents. Not just timelines, it is also a social networking site. Just what we need right? But this one looks different. The Kronomy - Share your life website is still in Beta and open only by invitation though you can submit your email address to be notified when it goes public.
Thanks to footnoteMaven and her post All The Cool Kids (And Me) for the heads up on Alltop.com and to Kathryn Doyle for the link to Mr. Kawasaki's blog.

What is it?

Speaking of foals. An email friend sent me a photo recently of a foal that is a cross between a zebra and a donkey. Now that critter is really cute. I WANT ONE.

BestBug

What strange little insects, that looked like miniature beetles with longish snouts. Turns out, that's more or less the definition of weevils.

These are in the subfamily Baridinae, probably Odontocorynus scutellumalbum. What a mouthful of a name! It may change though, because according to Wiki, "the higher classification of weevils is in a state of flux". I imagine it's an exciting time for entomologists.

Several were feeding on Rudbeckia. Not being familiar with weevils yet, I'd temporarily named the photo files "besbug" as shorthand for black-eyed-susan-bug. It started me thinking, what if people were as interested in insects as in electronics. When showing off your creepy-crawlies, you could tell your friends that you got a really good deal at BestBug.



Anyway, I found another one on a daisy.

I didn't notice until processing the photos back home, that there was something sinister lurking below.



Eek! I think that little weevil is in for a big surprise.

I wish I'd realized the whole picture when I was there. I wonder who came out alive. Who won Best Bug? In hopes of the preservation of local wildflowers, I think I'd have to root for the spider.

-----

Update:
In case you've got a dark computer screen, let me lighten that last picture up for you.



Eek!

Back of Morning Glory

Archery Range Fun

Since Aric arrived here, he has wanted to try out the archery range. We finally got down there to try it yesterday. One of the best aspects of The Villages is that there is a group for almost anything and everything you could want to do, and that means you can try a bunch of new things.



I would not ever think to do archery on my own and even if I had an interest, like Aric, rarely would I be somewhere where it would be so easily available with volunteers willing to teach me.





Since we had all of that available to us, we soaked it up. The volunteer instructor has been doing this for five years and she was a great teacher.



In the two hours we were there, different groups came and went, so I got to see many different people try archery. Aric was the most accurate out of all of those people. He seemed to have a natural talent for it.








I did not seem to have a natural talent for it and worse than that, managed to hurt myself by hitting my arm with the bow string. Over and over again because I didn't realize how badly it hurt until after an hour or so of doing it. I would love to try this sport again, without the pain, because I think I'd really enjoy it.



So glad we did get out and try this. It showed me that even though new things can seem intimidating to begin with, they are great to push the limits of what I think I am capable of and get me out of my comfort zone.

Afternoon Shadows, Badlands National Park

Here is one more shot from the Badlands. Taken on the same trip as the last two night shots I posted, this one was taken in late afternoon near Sheep Mountain. The long shadows really intrigued me on this formation and I had to work the scene quite a bit to get just the right composition that I was looking for. I love the fact that there are animal tracks leading into the scene from the lower left :-)

The Catharsis of Seasonal Change

"It's over. Step away from the roadbike" I said to myself as gently as possible while watching the snow from the window. I was going to publish this over the weekend and title the post "The End." But then I decided that was far too dramatic, and that when titles like this come to mind the prudent thing to do is take a couple of days off from the blog. It's snow for goodness sake, not the end of the world. In fact, it is quite beautiful.And in retrospect I see that it has been cathartic - a resolution to a state of uncertainty.





After a productive and well-organised December I naïvely expected to keep going at the same rate in the new year. But January started out slow and difficult, and only grew more so as the weeks wore on. After the holidays there was suddenly a pile of work due all at once, which is a situation I never handle well. And the move to the new art studio proved more effortful to organise than I anticipated (How did I accumulate so many jars of congealed ...stuff? why do I never throw anything away? and why did I need such enormous canvases, and so many of them??). In the midst of this we had a special occasion to celebrate, and some financial decisions to make. My immune system kept faltering. I felt as if I were moving in slow motion while everything else spun around me faster and faster.







It took me a while to connect this unsettled, disorganised state of mind to a decrease in cycling. Soon after the holidays the roads had turned icy, so I hadn't been riding as much as during the previous month. Of course! I was coming down from a long endorphin high, and not in the midst of an existential crisis. What made it worse, was that since it hadn't started snowing yet, I kept thinking that I could/should be cycling. I kept waiting for the idyl of December to return, not willing to put my bike on the trainer just yet, stuck in limbo.






With the snow's arrival, the limbo finally ended and things became more clear-cut: "Right then. Bike on the trainer and you are done for the season. Now stop checking the weather obsessively, ride indoors while watching all the movies you've been meaning to catch up on,and get on with your life!" (Is it a bad sign when the snow speaks to you? No, no, don't answer that...)






This might sound strange coming from someone with a daily blog about bicycles, but I tend to downplay the importance of cycling in my "real" life, particularly roadcycling. It is my anti-athletic, anti-"jock" bias - a holdover from my teenage days as the angsty weird arty girl, for whom jocks were the enemy. Not very open-minded of me to carry that over, but at least I admit it. Cycling, important? Oh no, it means nothing to me compared to things like art and (real, not bloggery) writing. Oh this little blog? It's just some light-hearted stress relief. Hours a day in the saddle? It's just physical activity; it means nothing.But of course it can't possibly mean nothing. I need to admit to myself that cycling is important to me and that it integrates with the rest of my life whether I want to acknowledge it or not. Likewise, when I drastically decrease my time on the bike it will impact other aspects of my life. It will affect my mood, creativity and productivity. I was going through withdrawal, plain and simple.






The human mind is a funny thing, and once I became aware of all this, I felt better. Swiftly, we got me all moved into the new studio - thanks to the Co-Habitant's formidable lifting prowess and a magnificent zipcar pick-up truck. I even got a workout from carrying stuff up and down 3 flights of stairs, as the freight elevator in the building is not operational over the weekend. My calves are still hurting today from all that stair-climbing and it feels kind of nice. Maybe I should do this for fun in addition to walking and riding on the trainer, and all together that might keep me in shape till spring. Of course I could also cycle inside the studio(as demonstrated by the lovelybikeyface). Indoor mini-velodrome à laInterbike ?






As I write this, the heaps of snow are already half-gone and temperatures are mild again. It is possible that the roads will clear up completely and we will have a continuation of our mild winter. But I am going to take a break from roadcycling anyhow, because all the back-and-forth and the increasing concerns about icy roads on descents are making me way too neurotic and it's time to stop. Of course, transportation cycling continues as usual. Seasonal change is good, winter is beautiful, and finally I feel that the year is off to a good start. Now, could somebody please tell me what those purple berries are?..

Dutch town: Wijchen in Gelderland

Wijchen is located in the eastern part of the Netherlands in the Gelderland province, just beside the city of Nijmegen and very close to the German border.



Wijchen Castle











‘Wijchen Castle’ circa 1392. The castle underwent major developments and annexation which led to the now castle in renaissance gothic architecture style. Kasteel van Wijchen (in Dutch) is now a museum and is partly being used by the city hall (i.e., renting out the castle rooms for events, parties, etcetera).



Wijchen Centrum









A quick peek into the town’s centre... a bit quiet for a late afternoon.



De Oude Molen (Windmill)







Windmill ‘De Oude Molen’ circa 1799. Like the castle, she also underwent several restorations.



Visit Period: March

Destination: Wijchen (Gelderland), The Netherlands