Awesome stamp

I was going through some stamps I got from a friend this week and found this.

It was issued by Belgium in 1986 to mark "100 years of the beer." Or more accurately an anniversary of the nation's beer industry. Nice.

Funny, I can look at this over and again and not feel the need to run out and drink a beer. But you won't ever see anything similar on a US stamp. Pity that. Come to think of it though, I think there was a stamp depicting a cask being destroyed on a stamp commemorating the prohibition era. Spilled alcohol we can put on a stamp. More's the pity.

Prost!

Science art

Eli has been studying various systems of the human body this month: circulatory, cardiovascular, muscular, etc. Somehow he had some free time at school this week and came up with this.

He says it consists of the cardiovascular system, the circulatory system, the respiratory system and the nervous system.

The green thing at the bottom is a little robot-thingy that he drew as a bonus.

Beans and peas and carrots! Oh my!

Nine days later everything has popped through the surface! Above are peas, and below are beans. The carrots are also up, but the sprouts are so fine it's hard to see them against the dirt. But they are there, as are the melon sprouts. We'll string line this weekend so all the bean and pea plants will have places to climb. Libby also planted some nasturtium seed along the chicken wire fence. Those will be coming along soon. More later...

Bird update

The nestlings are covered with feathers. They puffed up when they saw me invade their space just now. Momma is still keeping guard. They seem to be doing well. I found this nifty site that describes baby bird development using robins as examples. Wish I had thought to get more pictures earlier on.

Rainy weather

We've had rainy weather the past few days, mostly short, strong storms in the evenings. Today it rained off-and-on for most of the day. By late afternoon, though, it looked like things were going to clear off.

I was leaving to pick-up Eli from Scouts when I noticed this portion of the sky. This hill is south of Interstate 40 from us, and a couple of friends live up there. It's no more than 1/2 mile away. Also, there is a water tank about halfway up the hill. It's hard to tell but fog has settled over the topmost portion of the hill, lopping off maybe 50 feet of elevation. With clear blue skies, just a little further up. The big tree on the left is in our yard.

Eli's Scout troop meets in Montreat, a mere 2 minutes up the valley. By the time I got back, this was the view of the same spot. The clear sky is gone, and the hill across the way is completely socked in. The temperature has dropped quite a bit also. The same tree from our yard, but to give a sense of perspective, the line of trees that borders State Street as it heads toward Ridgecrest. That tree line is about 100 feet from the house. So, as you can tell, the mountain is gone!

I'll try to remember to get a picture in the morning if, as I guess, things are even more thoroughly shrouded in fog.

Click on the images to get a closer look; you should also be able to zoom in. This will help see the detail of the fog on the mountain-top in the first picture.

Cutey

Calvin was heading out into the yard to play a few days ago. It was cloudy, and damp after a shower, I think. Anyway, he came to the door attired thusly. That's Eli's cap on his head and my sandals on his feet (on the wrong feet). But Calvin thought he was something else!

Bonus plants

The whole yard was a mess when we moved in. Two years ago I finally conquered the back corner where these roses are. They had been covered over by all kinds of junk. I mulched the whole area, and thinned out the junky weeds. Last year these little roses said, "thank you." This year they screamed it. I may have to go back in here and thin them down. The aroma, though, is divine.

There are a few of these toadstools in the mulched area of the back yard. This area is more open and tree-shaded. There are a couple of these at the moment, but I could see more ready to pop through the mulch.

Just a few feet away are these, next to a dead limb. I'm not sure what prompted their development, but they seem to like where they are!