Gladiator Alliums

Each house I live in I try to grow Gladiator Alliums because they are so tall and spherical and because I can shout "Maximus" at them just like in the film.

Even since these pictures were taken last week, these alliums have gotten taller and the flowers large in diameter.


The bulbs for these plants missed last November's planting date, so we put them in as soon as we could in February of this year. It seems to have done them no harm. Let's see what happens next year.

Screaming Yellow

These perennials are called Screaming Yellow. They are Baptisia sphaerocarpa.



Planted last year, they are doing well this year. Supposedly they do poorly in the year they are planted but then perk up as shown. We are big perennial fans for the simple reason that you don't have to plant them each year, and many of them look great.

Late Spring Flowers - Peonies smell so good

I wish there was a Sniffr(tm) just like Flickr where you could upload the smell of something. These peonies smell even better than they look. You will just have to go outside and smell your own or just imagine as you look at these pictures.


The ants love them


Three in a row.

Hubble captures transit of Saturn's moons

The Hubble telescope has taken some very nice pictures of four of Saturn's moons transiting at once.



Titan is the largest visible at the top. Enceladus, Dione, and their shadows on Saturn are on the left, while Mimas is visible on the right. The moons, Saturn and Earth with the Hubble telescope orbiting it have to be aligned just right to get these images. Someone had to do the calculations of place and time so that Hubble could be pointed at Saturn to catch it.

More pictures and videos are available at the HubbleSite.

More crocuses poke up through the leaves

The crocuses in the yard think that Spring is coming. Having helped to free some of them this week from the leaf piles that encroach on their area, they are now bursting forth at every location.

I also like to get closeups of the inside.


These are crocuses of a different color that haven't quite opened yet. Can you tell that purple is my favorite color.


Finally some snowdrops that I planted. Last year these didn't do much; I am hoping for better this year.


Spring is springing.

Crocuses and Snowdrops out before Spring

In flagrant defiance of the calendar, these crocuses and snow drops in the garden have decided to show their blooms even before the first day of Spring.

Yellow Crocus


White snowdrops.


Spring is coming! Prepare yourself.

Avoid being the truck in the ditch

This truck being pulled from a ditch slowed my travels up Interstate 95 today. One of my goals in driving is to avoid being the truck in the ditch. I don't drive a truck so I have it half covered. I also try to keep my vehicle on the road.

It appears that this truck went in before the guard rail began rather than over it, but for some reason they were pulling it out this way. It is sometimes hard to figure out what happened in an accident when you only get to see the aftermath.

The best view I ever had from a toilet

The Mail online ran an article on the toilets with the best views in the world. Many are on the peaks of mountains or the edge of beautiful ocean vistas. Most would be worth visiting.

It reminded me of one outdoor toilet on Easter Island. It was at the ranch where we stayed the night during our horseback riding trip around the entire island. This ranch was within walking distance of Terevaka which contains Rana Raraku, the volcanic crater and quarry where the special stone for the moai (the stone heads) comes from. You could see the volcano dotted with moai that never made it to there final locations. Unfortunately some of these pictures were only taken with the old crappy Treo camera, so they'll never be in a glossy magazine.


The Toilet


The View.


The Moai on the volcano closeup.




Mostly carved but unfinished moai in the quarry itself.




The view of camp and the toilet from the volcano. The toilet is next to the red house. Click on the picture for larger.

Simpsons invade the backyard

I wish my mom liked or just knew of the Simpsons as much as this mom does. Apparently she made all of these Simpsons cutouts from scratch and then placed them in the yard of the family home as a present for her son who just graduated from high school. The yard, in Whycocomagh, Nova Scotia, looks like the shot in the beginning Simspons credits where the camera pans quickly across all of the Simspons characters.



The whole set of pictures of the Simspons characters is on flickr.

Scrabble Letter Therapy

You are a special tile.



(Z must have had to miss this session for some reason)

(via PhotoBasement)

They really mean the airport hotel

Staying at a hotel close to the airport in LA. They weren't kidding when they said it was near the hotel. This is the view of LAX from the window of my room. Don't worry I can't hear them, just see them. I wish I brought my better camera instead of the crappy Treo.

Huge spider

My wife (Little Miss Muffet) took this picture of a very large spider. Unfortunately the crappy Treo camera phone doesn't do closeups very well. On the other hand the fuzziness of the image lessens the immediacy of the image for any arachnophobes viewing it.

That is a rather large spider. Anybody know what kind it is?

Spotting nuclear power plants from the sky - Limerick and Three Mile Island

I ended up with a window seat on this week's plane flight which went west from Philadelphia out over southern Pennsylvania. I love to try to figure out what the plane is flying over, and I usually find that nuclear power plants with their distinctive cooling towers are easy to spot and use as landmarks. Previously I did this with the Hope Creek and Salem power plant south of the airport in New Jersey.

The first landmark that I could make out was the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant (DOE listing) on the Schuylkill River in Limerick, Pennsylvania which is north of the travel of the plane flight. You can just make out the white plume from the cooling towers right in the middle of the picture. Eyes definitely have better image recognition and light sensitivity than my crappy Treo camera, even after autobalancing the photo. Google maps has a better shot, but they have better cameras and planes than I do.

The next landmark was a closer and better shot of the infamous Three Mile Island (DOE listing).


The cooling towers are visible in the middle of this picture, on the right bank of the Susquehanna. I was unsure of my location so I snapped a picture of the bridge farther down stream. Three Mile Island is still visible as a faint white smudge in the top middle of the picture on the river.


These turn out to be the Rt 30 and the Rt 462 bridges over the Susquehanna. In the Google Maps shot below, Three Mile Island is in the top left and the Rt 30 bridge is in the lower right.

Here is a cool closeup of the plant itself.


Perhaps I will bring my better camera with me on future trips, though I usually prefer and get aisle seats instead of window ones.

Pretty flowers for mid spring

We planted a clematis last year to wind up the lamppost and it did alright and then died to sticks over the winter. It has made its Spring debut in a big way this year. The flowers are almost as big as my hand.





A clump of flowers:



The Kousa dogwood did not flower last year and I gave it this year to flower or be cut down (there's a similar ultimatum given to trees in the bible). It flowered and thus its life is spared for another year.



The rose bush planted last spring is also beginning its display this year. Plants are so much more vigorous after they get a season to adjust.



A pretty dahlia planted this year.

Trinity Stained Glass Window on Trinity Sunday at Immaculate Heart of Mary

Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic church in Wilmington, Delaware has a large stained glass window behind the altar that is supposed to represent the Trinity. Since Sunday was Trinity Sunday it is a good time to explore the imagery in the window. (click any image for larger)


The plaque at the back of the church describes the window but does not credit the artist.

Immaculate Heart of Mary Church

Window Design

There are a number of traditional symbols of the Holy Trinity, based on various geometric forms. The “triquetra”, however was chosen because its curves lend themselves to harmonizing with the shape of the arched window; its symbolic meanings are even more significant.

The triquetra is a mystical symbol, quite simple in form yet full of meaning. The three equal arcs of the circle express the equality of the Three Divine persons, their unison expresses the unity of divine essence, their continuous form symbolizes eternity, and the fact that they are interwoven denotes the indivisibility of the Blessed Trinity. Each pair of arcs forms a vesica, the symbol of glory. Thus, the one simple figure reminds us of many important truths.

In this design the inner form of the triquetra is repeated in a wider one (basically of deep blues) and again in a narrower one of light blues. This parallelism gives the feeling of infinity, repeating itself throughout space and beyond.

The hand of God is shown at the top, interwoven with a large star, as though acting in the process of creation. Grey-violet clouds move in around the hand, thus the symbol of the father.

The Son is symbolized by the cross which extends through the whole, melting into infinity.

The Holy Spirit is symbolized by flames moving in a dynamic upward motion.
Throughout the design all of the symbols have been interwoven into a kind of giant tapestry, a synchronous movement that relates all of the elements.

I spend a lot of time staring at the window and trying to see different figures in it, some of which are described above and some are not.

Here is the outline of the triquetra. The triquetra appears in Celtic art as well as early christian art.

The intertwining of the triquetra forms oval leaf shapes called the vesica piscis (from fish bladder) and forms the familiar fish shape that early Christians used as a symbol for their faith. It is current fashion among modern evangelicals as well. My favorite fish is the right hand one in which a bit of Holy Spirit fire makes an eye. The vesica piscis was a favorite of early mathematicians, especially the Pythagoreans. Christians love to co-opt or were influenced by pagan symbols throughout history.


Here are the symbols of the Father (hand in yellow outline), Son (cross in purple outline), and Holy Spirit (flames in red outline), mentioned in the description above.


I can see the star on top of the hand, but the clouds at the top of the window look more like a snake head to me.


If you stare to long you will see anything, you can even see Spongebob Squarepaints just below the cross beams of the cross. I really think the colors and the yellow head and brown pants are intentional with some inside colors to represent his eyes.


I think it is strange that a church named for the Immaculate Heart of Mary does not have a stained glass window that reflects that theme. Before I read the plaque and not knowing what the theme of the window was, I was still able to guess the Father, Son and Holy spirit theme, and the intertwining figure for the trinity. I always though the whole window was Mary and the triquetra was a very non-traditional representation of the Immaculate Heart. That would make the hand her hand (though you only ever see Mary point to her heart with her right hand). That would make all the blue her traditional vestments, and the snake would be the devil that you usually see crushed underfoot, but makes an appearance higher up in this view. Turns out I was dead wrong. Yet the window still gives a focal point for contemplation (except for the Spongebob Squarepants part).

Are there any sharp eyed readers that see other images in this stained glass window?

Driver helpfully rearranges Stoney Creek street sign

I am assuming that a driver helpfully rearranged the Stoney Creek lane sign with their car last Thursday, but neglected to tell any of the residents of the street.








At least they propped the sign up in the stand of trees by the road, although they picked trees covered with both safe and poison ivy. Perhaps they think the sign was too close to the street and posed a safety hazard. maybe even now the poison ivy they touched is a constant reminder of their good deed. They were so helpful. Thanks, random hit and run driver.

Tree Crushes House on Shipley Road In Wilmington

On the way home from work I saw this tree down because of the wind and wet weather we have been having lately. It made me rush home to see if my trees were still standing (no problems).

Crews were there taking the fallen tree the rest of the way down.


It looks like the tree sheared the roof away as it fell on the front of the house. From the ground it did look like there were holes in the roof and crushed areas due to the tree.


This is my fear - more than a tree breaking in half and falling, sometimes they just uproot and fall over. I don't remember anything remarkable about this tree except that it was a tall maple of some sort. Google Maps street view has the before picture.

This wasn't the only tree that fell in Delaware.

Any tree experts or Rangers out there know how to predict when this will happen and prevent it (I guess by cutting the tree before it cuts you)?