It seems Frank Lloyd Wright was once called to Bagdad to design an opera house. View a very interesting page and some drawings of projects he sketched at the 1957 Bagdad Project
Author Archives: Heather
Awesome Magnolias
The Magnolia down the block that looked so sad last week with snow all over the buds bloomed this week. It’s impossible to get the sense of what this large 50 foot tree looks like covered in giant flowers the size of a head of lettuce, but these pictures hint at the outrageous spectacle.
Which America is this?
I’m getting truly confused. I read in CNN how “Dozens of fans walk out” of a Pearl Jam concert the other day when Eddie Vetter made some anti-Bush comments. Seems he took a rubber mask of Bush and jammed it down on a mic stand. He also said he supported the troops, they aren’t the ones who set foreign policy …
What is this binary attitude of folks that if you aren’t wholly (blindly) for something, if you are the slightest bit critical, you are some kind of evil Satan.
I find it telling that in a concert event where, I would imagine, there are hundreds, if not thousands of fans, the story is about “dozens” who walked out offended. People – this is not a meaningful quantity!
Its like CNN is trying very hard to drum up excitement over nothing. Must have been a slow day for news …
Click Pix to enlarge!
Note the bench mid-picture that is buried up to the seat!
Note the depth of the snow drifts by the cars
Weather Extremis!
Very odd doings outside. All week long it has been unseasonably warm, reaching 72-74 degrees by mid-day! Daffodils are on blooming everywhere, there are yellow slashes of Forsythia all over the neighborhood, its been a wonderful, optimistic time, even with the war news downtown.
Friday after work we bought 3 large rhodedendrons at Home Despot, and planted them before sunset. It was hot work in shorts and Tshirt.
Saturday we cleaned gardens, got rid of the leaves that fell in the winter to let the sprouting hastas and bulbs break free. Emma gave everything a good scoop of compost, and I raked most of the paths in the yard down to the mulch I spread last year. 4 big bags and 3 trashcans full of yard waste … another “hot” day, but dark clouds blew over by 5, a cold front from Canada. It rained overnight, and continued this morning as Emma left for Richmond. It was colder, too.
About 20 minutes ago it started snowing – SNOWING! As if we haven’t had enough white stuff this year. The big magnolia at the end of the block is ready to bloom in outrageous splendor, and we get this freaky snowstorm!
Ahh … I LOVE my D40Zoom Olympus digital camera …
As usual – click to enlarge …
Yardwork!
Its much better than shovelling snow, and its nice and warm, remarkably so for March! I started around 8AM today and spent the day pulling out the old ivy and spreading cedar mulch around the pond. But this is just an excuse to take pictures with the new camera! the original is in SuperHQ mode – thats a 2.5meg JPG – but I crunched it down from the original 2288 x 1712 size to a more reasonable 600×800 and the usual 300×400 thumbnail below. Its a bit overcast today.
If you have the bandwidth –
click here to see one of the unedited JPGs right out of the camera!
Warning – its 2.28Megs in size … but you’ll see what the camera can do!
New Camera
I’ve been a fan of the Olympus Digital cameras for over 4 years now. I started with the 320, got a warrantee upgrade to the 400 model and then got a C-2000Z.
All the pictures in the blog are from the C2000 – a very nice, if slightly bulky 2 MegaPixel (2 MP) camera … see My Digicam Page for more history specifics.
Anyway, I noticed in the paper last week that Olympus has come out with a new 5 MP clamshell pocket camera, the C50. It has an all metal body, but they finally made some changes from all the previous models. The C50 uses a new proprietary battery and a new xD memory card. They’ve also done away with the top status panel. I did some extensive reading of reviews and commentary and it seems that a number of folks really like the previous model – the D40. Some even said its better than the new C50. Its nearly as small as the C50, had a number of nice presets, used 2 AA batteries (I’ve got 8 AA Nickel-Metal Halide batteries and a charger already), takes the old smartMedia cards (I’ve got a number of them). I even went to the local Circuit City and checked out the new C50 model – and yes, it IS compact – like a thick deck of cards!
So – I did the good thing – I shopped Ebay for the D40 – and got one for just over $300 – should be able to call in my VISA info tomorrow and maybe get it before the weekend! Thank goodness for my tax refund!
Spring (yard) Cleaning
What a day – I am exhausted …!
Spent most of the day raking the leaves that fell since we last raked in the fall …
that the fun of living in the forests of Fairfax – cool and shady in the summer – but payback time comes often! So I raked into pileds, ground it up with the lawn mower, then used the wheelbarrow to haul it to the compost pile. I even cleaned around the pond some, tho I want to raise the surrounding ground to the level of the pond’s edge. Once thats done, I can border the pond with slate
and give it a really cute look. Anyway – contrast this with the shot below from Feb!
Here’s a picture from 5pm – just after I fed the fish!
(Click to enlarge)
Winter’s gone AWAY
Its amazing but we’ve had a string of days this week that felt like temperature got into the 70s! I was out raking leaves in shorts and a tank top after work yesterday (just before the rain) and was quite comfortable. The pond has finally thawed and it looks like there are a dozen or so large goldfish swimming around in there! They survived all that snow and ice!
I’ll get out there with my camera this weekend and get some current pictures!
Here’s a picture from Feb 7, 2003 – all Snowed In!
(Click to enlarge)
Icicle Cathedral
Icicle Cathedral
Just another digital picture from the big snowstorm of February 18th – this shows some of the icicles hanging off our raingutters … Click to see a larger version
MCC Snova
Just a quick snap from some pictures I took at church after Friday’s snow …
