Spring == Yard work + baby animals

I showed you the time lapse photos of redoing the main part of the 'flower' bed in front of the garage, where we removed the stones, removed and discarded the old lansdcape fabric and replaced it with new fabric (two layers with big overlaps between them), and then replaced the stones after screening them to eliminate the dirt and plant material that contaminated the stones and gave lots of places for weeds to grow in.

The following photos show the completion of the project.

This is the 'before' photo. You can see the fabric is sticking up in a few places. Except for the weeds, the few plants are not too lively (okay I admit it, they are dead!). In general, it doesn't look very good.

This photo was taken after removing the stones. I pulled off the top layer of stones onto the pathway. However, the stones were too contaminated with dirt and plant material so I ended up screening all the stones and then dumping them into the garbage can. Some of the stones were so dirty (since they were embedded in the dirt) that I had to hose them off.

This is after the landscape fabric was put down and the stones were replaced. I got two large rocks to make the garden appear more interesting. We are planning on putting a large pot on top of the stones between the two rocks. Nothing really grows well in this spot, since it is in shade all the time and it gets a lot of wind. That's a shame since the soil in this garden bed is nice and rich!

Okay, springtime is time for baby animals. Here is a photo of some tiny calves and their mommas, I presume.

Spring = New Growth!

One of the nice things about spring is enjoying the nice weather, after a long winter, and seeing the pretty flowers and the new growth. The deer don't seem to have discovered the tulips yet this year, which is nice, so we are able to enjoy them for a few more days.



Freda has started her sweet peas inside. They are sprouting nicely.

And the peonies are coming up outside. Hmmm, love those peonies!

Pano Saturday

Pano Saturday March 7, 2009

I took this series of 12 photos (stitched to make this pano) this morning before we left to do our grocery shopping. This pano is taken from our driveway, looking towards the lake. If you look at the lower left branches of the tree in the center of the photo, you can see that there is a birds nest snuggled in the branches there that has taken all the nasty winds, snow, and freezing rain that winter could throw at it, and is still hanging in there. Amazing!

We put stones around the tree to hold back the dirt when we had the topsoil brought in afterwards for the lawn. That was filled up with snow and is now filled up with water too.

It was at least 9C today, not sure if it made it to 13C as predicted, but it was a nice almost spring day, with the dirty snow melting.


Pano Saturday March 7, 2009

I took this series of 27 photos (stitched into one pano) around 5pm today. The stitching software reports that the photo spans 113.1 degrees horizontally and 39.9 degrees vertically (I don't know how it figures that out!)

Compare these two pano photos and you can see a difference since the morning - there are larger areas of water on the ice on the lake and the snow on the lawn has receded somewhat. I took the red Christmas lights by the driveway down today, but the rebar I hammered into the ground by the driveway last November is still frozen in place.


This image is a zoomed in section of a photo I took today. I discovered that when I take a photo where the lens is zoomed out all the way, the photo seems to be almost all white! (I guess my camera is starting to be flaky. :(() To figure out what was going on, I enhanced the contrast before I zoomed in for this photo and you can see that the photo almost seems to just have every second "scan" line recorded. The photo seems to be a lot more greenish than it should, so I don't know if it means the red and blue sensors are hampered in some way, or if the green sensors are overwhelmed. It's very strange that this happens only when the lens is zoomed to the widest angle (shortest focal length).