Spider machine

I thought this web looked interesting, spun into a corner of an old piece of machinery out among the artsy organized neighbor's collection of stuff. The web is tiny, probably not taking up more than a cubic inch of space.

The little web has a very obvious spiral shape to it, leading into a dark corner. Danger!

We had some pretty strong wind gusts on Monday and I noticed one edge of the metal roof of our carport starting to flap wildly. A couple of screws that hold it down had come loose. I went out with a ladder and put four or five big logs on top to try to stabilize it, but within an hour the wind had lifted the roof enough to roll the logs over, and the wild flapping continued. I'll have to get out there and see if I can get the thing screwed back down, maybe today. I hate wind.

The first cut

Even in the rain, pruning continues out in the vineyards. Around us, there are often three passes. The first pass is to cut; workers with battery-powered secateurs snip through the vine canes, often leaving one long cane still attached. In the next pass, the workers pull the cut canes off the wires and line them up on the ground between the rows. Finally, a tractor pulls a grinding attachment over the lined up canes and mulches them into fertilizer.

Thousands of cuts are made this time of year in the vineyards. Thank goodness for powered cutters, eh?

Some of the smaller growers do the first two steps in one pass, cutting and lining up the trimmings at the same time. Then they do the grinding once that's all done. They used to burn the trimmings as they went when we first moved here, but I think that that's been prohibited now for environmental reasons.

Thistle be fun

Today's lunch will be a roasted capon with stuffing and sweet potatoes. Like a mini Thanksgiving. We got and froze the bird around Christmas time and, with a combination of sale prices and frequent shopper points, it was essentially free. So today it will become Ken's birthday lunch.

Last season's thistles, dry and brown.

I'm planning to make one of Ken's favorite desserts: a pear-almond tart. I'd better get busy!

It ain't over 'till it's over

But I'm ready. I'm anxiously awaiting the end of fire season. So far, in the last couple of weeks, I've bruised my shin when a piece of a log I was splitting went flying, I've burned a painful hole in one of my knuckles while adding a log to the hot fire, and most of my fingers are sore from frequent wood splinters. I'm sick of splitting logs in the cold rain; I'm tired of lugging a heavy sack of logs up the stairs every day. I've also had it with emptying the cold ashes every morning and cleaning up the fine layer of ash that covers everything near the stove.

A section of grape vine trunk covered by dead woody ivy stems. Burnable!

It's that time of year. I really enjoy the beginning of fire season, in the fall, when the leaves are turning and the holidays are approaching. The daily fire is warm and pretty. But the fun wears off in February and by March it's just a chore. It'll be over soon. Vivement le printemps !

Fat buds

I've been noticing the buds this week. On the trees and shrubs. Our ornamental cherry is covered with purple buds, and some of them are starting to open. One variety of plum is very close as well, its deep red buds are showing just a little of the white blossom petals ready to burst out. Our big lilac is sporting fat green buds, and this is a "flower year" (it blooms every other year), so I'm looking forward to that.

I have no bud photos yet, but several "osiers" (a variety of willow) are showing bright yellow stems as spring approaches.

The grape vine buds are also fattening, but it will be a while before we see leaves out there. We're expecting a relatively warm day today, then the temperature will fall again to a more seasonable level over the weekend.

IV

The roman numeral four. Intravenous. And, in this case, the misspelling of ivy. That's a silly way of introducing yet another picture of ivy leaves. This one was, as you might have guessed, taken with one of the new magnifying filters I just got. It's part of the first batch of photos I've done with the +4 filter.

As spring approaches, the ivy starts to climb. 50mm +4 mag, f/4.5, 1/125s, ISO 2000.

One of my readers, CHM, made a comment on Tuesday that got me thinking about focus stacking. That's a technique used to make macro images (although not exclusively) come fully into focus. It involves taking multiple images, each focused on a different part of the subject, and combining them so that the whole subject is in focus. It's an effect that's nearly impossible to achieve with a single image because depth-of-field is very shallow in macro (and other close-up) photography. The multiple images are then blended, or "stacked," in post-processing using software like Photoshop. The technique requires using a tripod and being very careful not to move the camera in between each image. Maybe I'll play around with it. One of these days.

In like a lion

The weather is unsettled. Stormy, even. We're having rain and wind, again. So March is officially coming in like the proverbial lion. Let's hope it goes out like the proverbial lamb.

The bottoms of several of our neighbor's fence posts have rotted away, like this one. Another photo with the new mag +4 filter.

Speaking of lamb, it's what's on the menu for today's lunch. We're making a cous-cous, a traditional north African dish adopted and loved by the French. It's essentially a lamb stew, with some poultry, spicy lamb sausages called merguez, lots of vegetables (we will have carrots, turnips, rutabagas, and zucchini), and chick peas. It's served with the tiny pasta called cous-cous, which gives the dish its name.