Free-range and wild dust bunnies

There has been a population explosion of dust bunnies here! The research I have conducted online suggest that ours are special – they free-range and effectively live wild.

I was going to add a fascinating discourse about my recent observations and research on these dust bunnies (including a photograph of a wild one!) but I’ve noticed that all the links to images in my posts on this site from 2006 are still pointing to my old URL and will need uploading again … a job for the next few days.

Sorry, looks like any of you interested in dust bunnies will just have to wait … and if you don’t know what dust bunnies are … perhaps you will intrigued enough to return here one day to find out …

Supersize me

Everyone knows that strange phenomena of selecting a Christmas tree. You pick one, get it back to your house, wrestle it inside and realise it is a little bigger than you first thought.

As we have countless hundreds of trees, Richard tends to harvest a branch from a pine tree to be our much loved Christmas tree.. This year we picked what we considered to be a small branch from a 15 metre pine tree. It took us about 5 minutes to select and collect our branch from ‘Winter Gully’. Two seconds with a saw, onto our car roof and a few minutes later, into the house. The thing is, that it looked smaller than last years … until we got it into the house …

No, that’s not an optical illusion, it’s approximately 5 metres tall.
I wonder if you get giant presents from Santa with a giant christmas tree ….

Orange moon

Yesterday morning as I was letting the dogs outside at 6am, I saw the spookiest moonset. On the horizon over the sea, (in the direction of the usual summer sunset) in total darkness was a vividly orange moon peeking out of darkcloud. It was like a nightime sun or an eclipse.

Then tonight, the full moon rose in the east over the hills, large and quiet, just rising into the pastel sky in it’s friendly way like it does. There was definitely a promise of spring in it’s colour.

Seeing it made me think of the Harvest Moon but I read on the Horizon site that a Harvest Moon is later in September.

I love the old names for the moon, but I still struggle with the southern hemisphere dilemma. I found following the seasons was natural in the UK – you could almost feel each solstice- Yule is so Decemberish that even the most disconnected person can remember that, but here I seem to be having trouble staying in touch.

Anyway, all this has made me realise that I need to refresh my southern hemisphere knowledge and perspective . Handily this week on Sunday, I planted a load of sunflower seeds just before the full moon which according to permaculture and biodynamic theory is pretty good timing for seed planting.

I can’t find out much about the correlation of old moon names with the southern hemisphere and I’m not sure if our winter moon at this time should be the February equivalent (Old Moon)…or whether it really is the grain moon, but if we do swap, here are the Southern equivalents:

Old names for the monthly moon
January: Old Moon, or Moon After Yule (july)
February: Snow Moon, Hunger Moon, or Wolf Moon (august)
March: Sap Moon, Crow Moon or Lenten Moon (september)
April: Grass Moon, or Egg Moon (october)
May: Planting Moon, or Milk Moon (november)
June: Rose Moon, Flower Moon, or Strawberry Moon (december)
July: Thunder Moon, or Hay Moon (january)
August: Green Corn Moon, or Grain Moon (february)
September: Fruit Moon, or Harvest Moon (march)
October: Harvest Moon, or Hunter’s Moon (april)
November: Hunter’s Moon, Frosty Moon, or Beaver Moon (may)
December: Moon Before Yule, or Long Night Moon (june)

My own blue square in New Scientist

Wow!  I got my own blue square in New Scientist this week! I’m so excited. Half way down the page.

http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns?id=mg19125592.500

A bit of the moon

It was such a still-calm night tonight that I wrestled the telescope into the yard to point it up at the nearly full moon (full tomorrow night). After exploring its pock-marked plains for a while, I decided to try a bit of astro-photography for a laugh with my cheap digital camera ($150 point-and-shoot) by putting it up to the eye piece.

I was actually really surprised by the results…much more detail than I imagined would be possible. There be craters on my photo!

A bit of the moon

It was such a still-calm night tonight that I wrestled the telescope into the yard to point it up at the nearly full moon (full tomorrow night). After exploring its pock-marked plains for a while, I decided to try a bit of astro-photography for a laugh with my cheap digital camera ($150 point-and-shoot) by putting it up to the eye piece.

I was actually really surprised by the results…much more detail than I imagined would be possible. There be craters on my photo!

Blue energy

I thought I’d make an exciting new energy discovery last night. I was walking down a darkened hallway opening a gummed envelope and I saw a neon blue flash of light.  No, it wasn’t me having a dream about getting a letterof acceptance from Hogwarts, but it wasn’t a one off phenomena either.  By sticking the envelope back down the blue flash could be called up at will.  Like any good wannabe scientistette,  I got my husband to verify my findings.  He too could see the blue flash.  I was relieved to find it was not my imagination or the result of reading waaay too much Robert Jordan lately.  (WOT reference for RJ geeks: Well, I *might* be Aes Sedai, can you prove that I’m not?)

Was this a potential source of free energy for the future? Maybe we could use this blue flash to run lightbulbs on our property?  My eco-thoughts got a little carried away…..

Anyway, I went straight to the holy scriptures -  the New Scientist magazine website – only to find that the blue flash has already been discovered.  Looks like I won’t be going on the ABC’s ‘New Inventors’ program just yet.   Interesting to note the suggestion that it could, in theory, cause an ignition.  Next time we’re camping, I’ll be putting aside my matches and pulling out my pack of gummed envelopes (recycled of course!).

Try it with the next gummed envelope you get. I can’t confirm that all brands of gum will yield a result.   Who knows, it could spontaneously combust and get you out of paying that pesky bill.

http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/article.jsp?id=lw261