stubbed toes and mud pies

[bobm]

When I worked at UCD Veterinary Pathology Dept. I built a transilluminator box using colored plastic sheets with a light backlight with a reostat control. I used a lightly frosted glass ( as a light defuser to eliminate hot spots and place the specimen on) to produce colored background of various intensity an well as with cheezecloth cover over side floodlights to take pathaological specimen photos without shadows to be published of experiment results by Professors and PHD theses candidates in medical journals. Have fun !

 

[flowerbug]

When I worked at UCD Veterinary Pathology Dept. I built a transilluminator box using colored plastic sheets with a light backlight with a reostat control. I used a lightly frosted glass ( as a light defuser to eliminate hot spots and place the specimen on) to produce colored background of various intensity an well as with cheezecloth cover over side floodlights to take pathaological specimen photos without shadows to be published of experiment results by Professors and PHD theses candidates in medical journals. Have fun !

i have a lot to learn! at present i'm trying a white cloth background because i don't like how the tan background worked out. the overall issues are that the camera does various types of color processing and white balance to to find all of those settings and to learn what they do and then to either turn them on and off, etc. is taking time. then i also have post processing capabilities of my own outside of the camera. and then there is the whole thing about RAW images and post processing of them, including learning about all of the things being done by the camera to produce the images i have been using to edit from (it can spit out the raw image and the processed JPG image at the same time).

it is a lot of fun, but i suspect it may take me some time to figure this out.

not being able to order any other gadgets for the moment means i have to try to work with what i have on hand it is forcing me to learn a lot but it also takes time.

 

[flowerbug]

i started trying to get the stacks of pallets dealt with yesterday. thinking that perhaps i could get it done in one day. hahahahahaha, um, no... the saw i'm using has a dull blade. that means it isn't going fast. at least i did get one stack of pallets moved and 6 pallets chopped up. i need to look around to see if we have another spare blade for the saw here. i hope so, i'm not doing this by hand (i did a lot of other pallets already by hand and it takes a lot of time to pull nails). no, i won't burn them... the garage was full of carpetting from my brother's place that Mom wanted to use for weed barrier, but she got that done yesterday so now i can have a chance of finding that blade if it exists at all.

[edit: after a bit of thought i decided i might be able to file it to make it sharper as it might be just a plain steel blade and nothing that would need special equipment to sharpen. we'll see how that goes later.]

other than that, today is raining and so i'm just puttering inside. not inspired enough to do much of anything. i need to pick a book and vanish into another world for a bit, but i've recently re-read all my favorites. i'm sure i can find something.

 

[flowerbug]

still on pallet busting duty. today looks like i can get outside for another round. i'm hoping only 12-16 more hours to go on this part of the project. if i'm lucky it won't be that bad.

the weather is still spring mix, rains, frosts, winds, etc. yesterday would have been ok to be outside if it weren't so windy and cold, but at least the sun was out. today is supposed to be another 10 degrees warmer and not so windy so that will be perfect for being outside.

groundhogs came back to their previous den site that i'd blocked off the year before last year. with my injured leg last year i couldn't get out to make sure they weren't coming back and the vegetation was growing enough that they could have been under there and i'd not have known it. only one has ventured on this side of the fence so far. the air rifle is ready. they have no other places to hide like they had before with the many rotting pallets now gone and the ditch wide open.

rains forecast for the next several days and frosts overnight for the later half of the upcoming week. it is ok as it still is early spring here. not unexpected to have cold for a while yet...

picture taking gadgets still not ordered. leaving the shipping and other people to get things sorted out for a while first. i'll keep playing around with the camera in the meantime as i still have a lot to learn. should try to get a few pictures today... nice to see some flowers up and perhaps can try some macro zoom flower pics while i have that lens on the camera.

 

[flowerbug]

today was the day to finish the next part of that mess i got into last fall. the pallets are all cut up or broken apart.

i have two large stacks of debris to use up, the chunks of wood with nails in them i can use as fill in a spot where they won't be disturbed again, so they can rust in pieces. the chunks of wood that don't have any nails in them will be used in various spots where they can finish rotting away. a lot of it is already in very cruddy condition so it won't matter what happens to it next, eventually it all becomes detritus.

tomorrow i get back to gardening. ahhhhhh! and some picture taking. i went out today to take some pictures but nothing looked that good and it was too cold and windy. tomorrow might also be too windy, but i'll try again.

 

[flowerbug]

ah, fence is repaired. tulips are blooming. kinda windy now to get out and take some pics, but will try to get out tomorrow morning...

i also have peas up and growing. going to find out which of these varieties can resist some cold. now they've got all the next five evenings at freezing or below. that was the risk of planting earlier than before but we'll see how this turns out. i have backup seeds just in case i need to replant any.

 

[flowerbug]

i've been so distracted lately with so many things going on that i forgot to get some pictures posted. will do eventually. not sure when.

today will be the first day i am able to get back to trying to finish up the big project, i hope i can get it done in the next two and a half days. we'll see.

i have to pull the drain tube from under one garden, move it to the house drain ditch where the pallets used to be and then move all the pea gravel and pile in all the wood with the nails in it that i can fit and put the pea gravel over it so it can rot and rust in pieces. it will not be gardened or disturbed again so any risk from rusty nails should be minimal, but in the future if i really become in need of busy work i can easily (hahaha, right) go back through, dig them all up and remove all the rotted wood and nails. what i'm really hoping is that instead it all just turns into some mushrooms and bits of rotted wood and rust that won't need to be touched again in my lifetime.

otherwise, strawberries are blooming, most of the fence is up that i needed to get done ASAP, still some work to do but that is not critical.

the flash flooding did not wash out much of the end of The River Nile (along the berm i put in years ago) and the grass held the upper part in place as it should have so i think i can ignore that for another year. the plan for that is to get back to it next year to put some large chunks of concrete in place to do the step downs to the large drainage ditch and that will help keep the erosion from getting worse. it's been a mess all along, but made worse by Mom spraying weed killer and then the dirt gets washed away. once i got her to stop spraying it has been much more stable and not eroding as much. through hard clay. only the end is a problem... next year, not this one...

getting garden transplants hardened off and ready to plant. can plant some of them at any time, but i'm not doing that the next few days. i really need to get this large garden area done so i'm not wasting that space this whole season. it is normally a bean garden. tulips were blooming in there so they will somewhat be disturbed. they will likely survive and some will get moved. now isn't the best time, but it just has to be done.

this large garden is a bit raised up and sandy soil that was brought in to see how the tulips would do. the soil was also intentionally made poor in nutrients to see if that made any difference in how well the tulips would survive our more general conditions. some are ok and others have faded or rotted away. botrytis (sometimes called tulip fire) is not a fun disease but the tulips that survive both that and our conditions can be pretty hardy in the end. i just wish i had other places to grow them where the critters won't eat them besides inside the fenced gardens where they are now. almost all that i've moved to other places around the yard are now gone due to being repeatedly eaten (not me, but just in case you ever need emergency food tulip bulbs are edible as long as you don't overdo it, they are a rather wimpy onion flavor (according to my brother who thought a bag of onion bulbs i dropped off for him to plant were onions)) by deer, etc.

in other news, new washer/dryer was delivered and installed yesterday - new hook up valves for that were redone last week by plumber. will be interesting to adjust to this new device for Mom. at least so far it works and is not leaking... i'll have to redo the exhaust tube under the house in the crawlspace some time but that is not an emergency issue. i'll save that for some other day when i have to get down there to change the furnace/AC filter.

roofing people have not gotten back to me yet. i'm going to try some heavy flat slabs over the vents on the upside to see if that is the issue. it may be. something we have not tried yet. will not hurt. some evidence points to this be a possible cause. would be nice to just be able to scope the roof when leaks happen to track them back to the sources, but that means getting up pretty high on a ladder for me and not something i really want to do. climbing a ladder to get up on the roof is much much easier. alas, that's the wrong side to see where the water is coming through.

ok, breakfast time. ramble time is done for this morning.

 

[flowerbug]

the strawberries are blooming nicely!

what a difference a few years and some work replanting/renovating can do:

 

[flowerbug]

killdeer babies...

 

[flowerbug]

yesterday i went out to move more pea gravel from the trenches and when i lifted off the cover i had put down the previous evening there was a mouse nest right there. i'd left it only for the night and a mouse had been very busy putting all those leaves and bits of whatever it could find under there. kind of a strange place to put a nest for sure as it was the bottom of a trench under some weed barrier fabric that was just pulled across to cover the gravel in case of rain through the evening.

the mouse was there and i could have killed it but i just didn't have the heart to step on it. a very large fat mouse, so probably soon to have some pups. i leave the mice alone in the garden, they don't really cause enough damage for me to try to trap them all and besides the snakes, owls, etc. need something to eat.

i think today might be a mental health day. my body is telling me to take a break and so i will only get some light things done. a good sign of this being needed is me still laying here after noon already... my got up and go went without me...