This is what a -8 magnitude Iridium flare looks like (brightest point in the south south east sky).
Pretty neat and pretty bright. The brighter they are the shorter duration they are. This should have been less than 1 or 2 seconds.
Friday June 29th, 2012 is the first game of the regular season for
the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the worst team in the league last year.
Things can only get better, right?
Today is research day. google: football snack food ideas
Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip – ick
Creamy Deviled Eggs – ok .. for a couple
Spicy Orange Bison Meatballs – skip the bison, substitute angus beef
Salami-Pops – Cream Cheese and Salami-Rolled Breadsticks – this sounds interesting!
Lots more ideas where these came from!
Yesterday was Thursday June 21st, 2012 and again we visited the Napanee Community Food Bank Garden and spent some time weeding and watering the four rows that we look after.
It was hot. Somewhere over 30 deg C.
Some big picture pictures:
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And some individual row images
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No tomato hornworms seen, not a lot of potato bugs either.
It was pretty dry and it took two x 20L water for each of four rows., each about 16 meters long. Remember to bring gloves next time.
The Lennox and Addington Horticultural Society aka The Napanee Garden Club, met on Wednesday June 20th, 2012 for a pot luck dinner that coincided with the summer solstice (at 19:09 EDT).
38 members and guests were in attendance and being in a modern air conditioned space was quite a hit as it was over 30 deg C outside.
A powerpoint presentation ran in the background with appropriate summer gardening music playing along, showing the activities of the last two months including:
The May garden tour in Bloomfield
The May Plant Sale
A visit to the Food Bank Garden
A visit to the Napanee Library
The meeting started at 18:00 and was over by 20:00 with some food leftover. We cleaned up and headed back out into the heat and humidity.
The latest issue of the newsletter Bittersweet Muse, was released last night as well.
And already, only in mid-June, the Napanee Food Bank garden is producing produce.
This morning (Tuesday June 19th) 1/2 bushel peas, 1/2 bushel onions and 1 bushel of lettuce were delivered to the Food Bank.
Yesterday (Monday June 18th) 1/2 bushels of beets were delivered.
Way to go Susan!
Two more mice have met their ends.
The most recent last night was seen making great squeaking noises as Dora bounced it around the house with Peyton looking on from the side. This was one ejected from the house.
The previous ones was a week ago and occurred when we were not home. This was the bad one… Dora decided to try it out as a nutritional supplement and it was in pieces scattered about the floor. She had a sore tummy to boot and was very slow the rest of the day.
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On the left was the existing state of the 20cm LX200gps of the RASC-KC. The wooden cover had to be slid off from left to right and then manually dropped to the ground carefully. It was pretty thik plywood to keep the total weight down, but that made it flimsy as well.
Enough was enough and this past week we attached it to the pier with hinges. (image centre) Now it it much easier to rotate off with the aid of various handgrips and lower it to rest on the ground (image right).
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We were assigned rows 5-8 last week and showed up for our first regular, weekly visit to weed and water and otherwise tend to three rows of peas and one row of beets for the Napanee Food Bank Garden.
These rows were pretty bad.. infested with weeds.. some taller than the peas themselves. Luckily we had a good amount of rain two days back so that pulling them out by hand went very well.
We ended up spending an hour on those four rows and were done.
There is nothing quite like working through your holidays. We took two weeks off, started a daily garden log of getting up at sunrise and working as long as we could, usually five or six hours, before it got too hot, we got too tired and broke for lunch.
In the afternoon it was other chores and projects in the shade or indoors.
It is unbelievable how long it takes to weed and degrass a flower bed. We have ten of various sizes in the front yard and it took all 14 days to finish them off… and actually, one of them is not yet done.
The five yards of cedar mulch we had disappeared. And here we thought it would last through the back yard beds as well.
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Today at least we have had a good rain.. 16mm so far, with a chance of a thunderstorm later tonight.
Then 5 solid days of sun.. good grass pulling weather!
The Transit of Venus 2012 has come and gone.
It was a great astronomical event. We had lots of equipment and things in general went well.
Some preliminary images:
Kim taking images with the Canon Powershot A495 camera.
Kevin taking images with the older Canon Powershot A540 camera.
Today finished the planting of all the items started in the greenhouse. The peppers have been planted, the extra tomatoes from the plant sale, and the Batchelor buttons and marigolds are in the ground. Had to scurry to find room for all the peppers. They fought so hard to grow, they were being planted. Everything is full, and I cannot squeeze in another plant.
Some of the peppers where put in where lettuce varities did not come up. Replanted some radishes and lettuce to eat. Also replanted The Student-Parsnip, all the seed I had from FireFox farms (Robert & Carol), the first planting did not come up. Not uncommon for parsnip, as the germination rate is low.
Now, have to get ready for the Transit of Venus and gather up all the equipment. The clouds are moving in but they are cummulus, and moving at a pretty good rate. Weather prospects are good with some cloud, with more cloud overnight, with rain tomorrow.
Feels good to have all the plants in the ground. The Black Mustard plants were cut and turned over in vegie 5. Ordered more black mustard, but Richters did not send it, probably waiting for more themselves, may be too late to plant again this year. This is for bad nemitodes in the ground. This is a organism that effects garlic. We are being proactive, and planting it in the area, the garlic will go next year. Also, will dense plant more garlic next year.
Copyright board to charge for music at weddings, parades
The Canadian Press
Posted: Jun 1, 2012 9:33 AM ET
From
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/06/01/music-tariff-recorded-copyright-board.html
>Money can’t buy love — but if you want some great tunes playing at your >wedding, it’s going to cost you.
>The Copyright Board of Canada has certified new tariffs that apply to >recorded music used at live events including conventions, karaoke bars, ice >shows, fairs and, yes, weddings. The fees will be collected by a >not-for->profit called Re:Sound.
>The new tariffs apply to recorded music used at live events, including >conventions, karaoke bars, weddings and parades with floats playing >music.The new tariffs apply to recorded music used at live events, including >conventions, karaoke bars, weddings and parades with floats playing music. >(Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press)
>While the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada >(otherwise known as SOCAN) already collects money from many of these events >for the songwriters, Re:Sound will represent the record labels and >performers who contributed to the music.
Two words.. Screw you. This is so absolutely ridiculous and insanely stupid and in my humble opinion no better than a mafia shakedown.
Who is on this Copyright Board? Fire their asses.
The basic rationale.. music is bought once. Everyone gets paid. This simply forces you to pay and pay again.
Just say no!
One of the very few lawyers that I actually have respect for has been fighting for openness and fairness to consumer rights…
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/
I suspect there will be some comments on this shortly.
Friday. Light rain. We need this but it is preventing more work in the gardens. We have completed two flower beds but still have another ten or more to go.
But we need the rain. And it will help a lot in the pulling of unwanted plant stuff out of the ground later on.
Thursday. Errands to run later in the day so all we had were about 3 hours to finish weeding the driveway north flower bed and cover it in a dozen or more wheelbarrel loads of mulch. Looks *much* better now.
Later on, more potato bug picking and squishing and another weeding pass through the garlic beds.