Rudbeckia, More Hickory Nut Shell piles

I downloaded some new scrapbook backgrounds and my computer told me I had low disk space. I guess it is possible to eventually use up all of those gigs of disk space - go figure. So instead of scrapbooking and showing Laura one of my simple pages, I’ve been working on gaining some free gigs back. And the reason why I’ve been lounging around on my computer is thanks to a dental procedure I had today which left the right side of mouth sore. I like my dentist, except for the fact he said when the procedure was done “well that was easy, wasn’t it?” Yeah, maybe for you man.

I found eight more separate hickory nut husk piles along my driveway and out in the road. And I saw a squirrel carrying a hickory nut in it’s mouth. Now I have to sweep my driveway. Sorry no photos of the little piles due to the above low disk space thing and the sore mouth thing.

And because I don’t like to make photo-less blog entries, here’s a photo I took a couple of years ago of my Rudbeckia:

Shagbark Hickory, Norway Spruce, Tansy

I have an old Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata) at the back of my yard, actually it belongs to The State of New York since it’s on their property, but I like to think it’s mine. I love this Shagbark Hickory, because I grew up with one just like it outside of our picture windows. It used to puzzle me why it didn’t have low branches so I could climb it, and that bark - ohhh, not very good for climbing even if it did have low branches. So I left it alone except to admire it. For an ecology class I took, we had to pick a niche, observe things happening in our niche, and then write a paper, and I chose the area around my present Shagbark Hickory. I also had to pick a species in my niche and write another paper about it, so I chose, yup, the Shagbark Hickory. Why am I discussing this?

Today I’ve been hearing the nuts from the Shagbark Hickory dropping through the understory, and then watching squirrels scrambling down after them. I also discovered little pieces of hickory shell, next to a Norway Spruce cone. The cones are usually stripped right down.  This one must be too green  yet.  I’ve seen the squirrels carrying both nuts and cones in their mouths. I guess I’m expected to clean this little mess up.

I would like to try a hickory nut, just one hickory nut, while I’m alive if only the squirrels wouldn’t eat them all up. I hear they taste really good. I wouldn’t know - yet.

Speaking of Norway Spruce cones, here they are, bigger and greener:

And here’s a bee on my Tansy:

I love the smell of Tansy when I rub the leaves between my fingers. And I love their little yellow flowers.

Sonnenberg Gardens

We visited Sonnenberg Gardens & Manion State Historical Park in Canandaigua today, as we have done for the last 20+ years. Recently the State of New York Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation purchased the mansion and gardens. After having seen Sonnenberg decline over the years, it is good to see things are improving by being cleaned and repaired. I only wish they would work on preserving the very old trees, some of which are in decline there. However, we look forward to future improvements!

I have taken many photos of the place over the years, and I won’t show the typical photos now (of the mansion, gardens), but I will show some of the things I look forward to seeing when I go there. I love watching the ducks, especially when they dunk for food putting their butts straight up in the air and paddling with their feet:

I love watching ducks take baths (didn’t see one doing that today) and preening themselves:

I love the shape of the conservatory:

I love all of the old trees there, I picked this Purple Beech (Fagus sylvatica ‘atropurpurea’) to show you:

And here’s its huge trunk - I love the roots:

We saw two frogs in the Japanese Garden. One on a rock:

And one in an evergreen on the bank of the pond:

When I walked by this Hosta I smelled the most wonderful smell, so I had to capture a photo its beautiful flowers:

I finally captured a butterfly fully open in the Colonial Garden:

And I love ferns tucked into little places, and love all of the moss and lichens on the rocks in the rock garden:

We usually see at least one turtle, but today we didn’t see any around. Today was Arts in the Gardens, so we saw some phenomenal arts and crafts, too. All around, it was a great day!

Help for my Old Photographs

I went to work for OHA yesterday with website / Photoshop guru Karen (we’re launching a new website for OHA Sept. 1), and she gave me some great tips on how to restore old photos in Photoshop. The photo we worked on is the farm in Vermont where my Great Grandfather Henry C. Stebbins was born. This is how the photo looked after I scanned it in at 300 dpi:

Yucky, huh? This is the way the photo looks after Karen showed me some of her PhotoShop tips - and she showed me what I still need to do with it, but I was so excited I had to show you the way it looks now:

I have a ton of old photos that need this type of help. This is definitely a winter-time project. For now, I’m off to visit another one of my favorite gardens with my Mom.

Big Old Trees and Hills

I love going to Onondaga County to do and see several things. As I was driving down the hill on Rt. 20 going west from LaFayette to Cardiff - one very steep hill - I took some photos. This one is near the top of the hill, going down the part where it isn’t too steep - yet:

Here I am about 1/3 of the way down the hill:

Please excuse the blue windshield at the top. Here I am about 1/2 way down the hill:

This hill just continues forever. It’s not very nice on the vehicle brakes. I didn’t capture a photo at the bottom looking up at the hills - they’re wonderful - maybe another day! I’ll have to stop and get out - it’s very tricky at the bottom because the road curves.
Another thing I love is the South Onondaga Cemetery because several of my family members are buried there, it’s out in the country, I like doing genealogy, and I love the very old trees there. These are all Sugar Maples, and they are absolutely gorgeous in the fall:

Here’s another very old Sugar Maple:

This garden dedicated to Harold Abbott has been added near the rear of the cemetery:

Harold Abbott lived in South Onondaga and was the caretaker of the cemetery for many years until he died just recently.

Yup, I love this county. As I was driving along today I saw several trees just starting to turn color. Very pretty! I love fall, almost as much as spring and summer!

Cooking, Baking, Digital Scrapbooking

Today I was in the mood to cook and bake because I’m sick of sandwiches for lunch. So I made some cornbread out of blue cornmeal (I saw that first and I was too lazy to look for yellow cornmeal). I used the recipe out of Laurel’s Kitchen cookbook. And I made some veggie soup out of the Fit for Life cookbook. And I have a pot of baked beans baking in the oven - Mom’s recipe using my Grandmother’s old-fashioned bean pot. Now I’m procrastinating on kitchen cleanup - argh!

I’ve also been playing with digital scrapbooking - okay, I told myself I wasn’t going to do it, but now I’m hooked. I downloaded the free software from Digital Scrapbooking, and have been looking for free paper and embellishments to add - there’s some pretty nice things out there! It kept me up late last night and so far I’ve created three pages. I have NO clue what I’m going to do with these pages - they’re 12 x 12, I guess I’ll just add them to Flickr for now.

I like the color and texture combination of this garden at Cornell Plantations:

Now I’m going to shut the computer off so I’m not tempted to play with scrapbooking anymore. And go clean that kitchen.

Hydrangeas from Cornell Plantations - August 12, 2006

I love these Hydrangea flowers that are at Cornell Plantations:

I don’t what kind they are, but they’re sure pretty!

Cicada Shell, Tufted Titmice, Laundry Basket, etc.

I found this Cicada Shell on my house today:

I would love to see one of these shedding its skin. I’ve seen snakes shed, but not a cicada. This is so cool!

Hah birds, I caught ya! I was on my way out the door to photograph the sky for the incoming storm that never occurred, and a bunch of Tufted Titmice were flitting about on my deck. Here’s the ones I captured:

I never did get to the clouds because the phone rang. And now the sky is all innocent looking.

This laundry basket is really awesome - for a plastic laundry basket, that is. It has a place for your hip or abdomen to go. It is very comfortable, you know, for a laundry basket. You probably already know about this, but I don’t shop much at all. This was bought at K-Mart - Essential Home brand:

Yup, those are my bare tootsies at the bottom - I hate shoes with a passion!

And last, but certainly not least, Susan Gets Native blogged the other day about the Big Muskie Bucket at the bottom of this blog entry. I got to thinking, if the bucket is that huge, just how HUGE is the machine that was behind it. So I did an internet search and came up with the Noble County Ohio website that has tons of photos of the machine. That thing has to be gigantic and powerful! My Dad will love this one, if he doesn’t already know about it.

Hummingbird, Erie Canal, Onanda Park

I took a JavaScript class today, and felt all boxed in by the time I got home from being inside all day, so I went out on my deck for a few minutes before dinner and I saw a hummingbird feeding on the orange cosmos for a minute, and then it went onto the powerline and sat there for what seemed like f-o-r-e-v-e-r. If I went in to get my camera it would have been gone. It’s like I need to walk around with the camera around my neck *all* of the time. I would like to catch one before they leave for the winter. If not, there’s next year.

And as I was leaving class I realized I should have brought my camera there, too, because the building I was in is right on the Erie canal, and as I was leaving in my vehicle I had to wait for the lift bridge AND a train. Way to really back up traffic, but it would have been enough time to take some cool photos!

So since I was so bad about not photographing my day’s events, I’ll leave you with these photos from Onanda Park in Canandaigua that I took on March 4, 2004. This is the Lower Falls of Barnes Creek that flows into Canandaigua Lake:

And I turned to the east and took this photo of Canandaigua Lake. I’ll share other better photos of and from this park later:

Niagara Falls, NY - Jan 2, 2006

Since it is raining today, and even though I’ve seen tons of birds dancing around in the rain and puddles, I haven’t captured any photos today. So I’m going back in my photo archives.

We went to Niagara Falls on New Year’s Day to see Aretha Franklin, The Queen of Soul, at the Seneca Niagara Casino which is on the New York side of Niagara Falls. She was awesome! I love her singing, I love her in the Blues Brothers movies, she is one of the best! Note: Cigarette / cigar smoking is allowed in all Indian Casinos in New York State. I felt crummy from inhaling the second hand smoke.

On January 2, 2006, the day was very overcast, I didn’t bring my camera (don’t ask me why) so I used my cell phone camera (not so good) to take some photos of Niagara Falls. Here is the Niagara River as we are crossing the bridge to Goat Island. Let me just say, it is very scary crossing that bridge on foot with all of that water rushing underneath you!

Here’s the Niagara River right after the bridge:

Here’s a shot of Luna Island and the American Falls from the Goat Island overlook. Note that we couldn’t walk down the stairs to Luna Island because it was thick with ice:

Here’s another photo of the American Falls and Luna Island:

Here’s the Horseshoe Falls from Goat Island. Note that you don’t get to see the entire falls from this vantage point, but it is v-e-r-y s-c-a-r-y seeing all of that water dumping over the falls:

And here’s another photo of the Horseshoe Falls still from Goat Island showing the ice build-up:

The poor trees along both falls have thick ice on their bark. It is all so scary to me! Water is just so powerful. I want to go back there some time when the weather is nice. Goat Island has the most diverse plant material in all of New York State. And I would like to walk down to Luna Island so I can get even more scared. Shoot, who needs fast roller coaster rides at an amusement park - just go to Niagara Falls. That is scary enough to me!