What's on tv

This week our television magazine highlights one of my favorite genres: the documentary. The main article surveys a collection of this month's best docs, be they nature, science, sociology, or history programs. I'm looking forward to seeing some of these!

We get many American and British adventure shows masquerading as documentaries. Bleh. But there is some good stuff out there.

What not to watch this week. Our tv magazine rates shows and movies using a star system: one star is ok, four stars is best. They use another symbol for really bad movies: the red dot. It means "à zapper" (change the channel!). The editors often include comments about the movie that make me laugh.

This week we have a disaster of a disaster film: "Meteor Storm."

Meteor Storm. American made-for-tv movie. Directed by Tibor Takács, 2010.
With Kari Matchett, Michael Trucco, Kirsten Prout, and Brett Dier.
Meteors pound San Francisco. An astrophysicist is charged with dealing with the disaster while her husband directs the evacuation of the city's population.
► The storyline offers nothing new, the special effects don't work, and the actors all seem to be wondering what they're doing in this film.
For adults and teenagers.

We got mooned

I mentioned last week that the full moon was setting in a place where I couldn't get a good shot. Two days after full, on Saturday morning, the moon's position had shifted and I got this photo out the bedroom window.

The moon was just past full. Details: f/16, 1/30s, ISO 160, focal length 300mm.

The sun had still not risen and the sky was that deep blue that you get in the twilight hour. I set the camera on its tripod with the zoom lens maxed out.

Thorny

As spring approaches, I notice a lot of shrubs and tree branches turning a dark shade of red. I wonder if it isn't the sap rising? Whatever it is, it means that the plants are preparing to blossom and/or put out leaves. The flowers on the forsythia in our garden are opening now, and the plum trees have fat pink buds on them.

Notice the reddish tint in the lateral stems. It's more pronounced now than it has been all winter.

This is either a wild rose or blackberry out on the edge of a wood in between vineyard parcels. I think that its thorns are amazing looking. Today will be our last "warm" day before a weather system moves in, bringing temperatures back down for the weekend. I hope we don't get a freeze, but that is certainly a possibility this time of year.

A boring post

Get it? Ha ha. This is one of the "posts" at the end of a row of grape vines where the guide wires are anchored. These are thicker than the intermediate posts and usually driven into the ground at an angle for strength. In places where newer posts are made of galvanized steel, the end posts are still these bigger wooden ones.

The rising sun shines on one side of this post. You can see frost on the top surface.

I was surprised to hear rain on our roof windows last night. We didn't get much, but I wasn't expecting any. Callie heard something at four o'clock this morning and ran barking down the stairs, so I had to get up to see what it was and calm her down. As usual, I saw nothing. I was able to get back to sleep for a couple of hours.

It's not this cold

Last week we were still having morning low temperatures around freezing. That meant frost, and sometimes a little ice forming on the puddles. It wasn't cold enough for the puddles to freeze through as they often do, but they started to before the sun came up and melted the ice.

Ice patterns forming on the surface of a puddle.

I dug up most of the rhubarb in the garden so that I can divide and relocate it. I did that last week. The ground was a muddy mess and I made a mess of the job. I didn't realize how deep the tubers had gone and ended up chopping through most of them with the shovel. But yesterday I noticed that a lot of the chunks have the beginnings of sprouts, so now I can see where to divide them and get them back into the ground today or tomorrow. I won't have usable rhubarb until next year or the year after, but that's ok.

And the clouds rolled in

It happened over night. While I was sleeping. The sky covered over and there's no moon this morning. A quick check of the forecast shows all clouds for the next few days where yesterday it was all sun. Lovely. But no rain is predicted and it's expected to stay relatively warm.

A recent sunny morning (not today) with fog in the river valley.

I have no plan for what to get working on first while Ken is gone. On Sunday I moved the living room furniture and carpet and cleaned the floor. The spirit moved me. So we'll see what the spirit has in store today, other than tracking Ken's flight to the US on the internet.

Periodic puppy pics

Callie was looking the other way, so I called her name and she turned her head around to look at me. That's a strange expression on her face! I liked the way she was back-lit in the morning sun. The grass was frosty, but we still ended up with muddy paws.

Callie in the vines. These vines have been pruned to a single cane. The canes will be bent over and attached to the guide wires before they sprout.

Ken leaves today for Paris, then flies out early Monday morning for the US to visit his family in North Carolina. Callie, Bertie, and I will stay home and putter around. There's work to be done!