Spider Woman

    During the daylight hours, if you walk out onto my back porch you will see no sign of a spider or a spider web.
    Walk out onto the porch at night and you will see a different scene.   
    Every night at sundown this Barn Spider comes out of hiding to build a web on my back porch. She spends over an hour to weave her complex net and it spans an opening that is six feet high. At the end of her project she moves directly to the center and sits motionless, quietly waiting for her dinner.
    She does not mind the camera flash at all. But let something touch her web and she is on high alert. A touch to her web could mean supper has arrived.
    In the morning when light first touches the sky she suddenly becomes mobile again. She cuts her web down with two or three well placed snips and goes straight back to her hiding place under the eaves. She probably eats some of her web because it contains a lot of protein and it benefits her to reuse that.
    The spider in the children's book "Charlotte's Web" was a Barn Spider. Like Charlotte, this spider will disappear when cold weather arrives. I hope next year one of her daughters will take her place to eat the mosquitoes that are so fond of my porch.
    Click on this link if you would like to see a video of a spider spinning her web.

Twins

    I have resolved once again to carry my camera in the car with me each day. Okay. Most days. 

    I tried it for a while and it was a lot of trouble. Carrying my camera to work was like having a toddler in the car. If I stop at the grocery store do I take the camera in or leave it unattended? What if it gets too hot in the car or someone steals it?  So I stopped.

    Soon afterward I was driving to work early one morning and I saw a cougar. That is so unusual in my area that I was afraid no one would believe me. Every time I told someone their first words were, "Did you have your camera with you?" You can guess my answer since you haven't seen a photo of a cougar here.

    I don't expect to ever see a cougar again as that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But today I was lucky enough to see the twins. You can't see their mom as she is a little deeper in the woods and to the left.
    Remember to take your camera with you tomorrow.

    

    

Black and White

    This old building stands in the yard of a nearby church. It once served as a school for African American children. I was lucky enough to meet a 73-year-old man who had attended school here.  He would have begun first grade in 1943.
    He said that the building used to be twice as big. It was cut in half when it was moved to make room for the new brick church built in 1960. It used to have four rooms and was heated by a wood stove. Considering how sparsely populated our rural county was back then a four room school house seems pretty big.
    Imagine children walking here from great distances, the younger ones watched over by their older siblings. All of the children would have carried their lunches from home.
    Their teacher probably would have been educated at one of our state's black colleges. She would have owned a home nearby or  boarded with a local family.
    Students finished school when they reached the ninth grade. They were needed to help support the family and would have begun working on the farm or elsewhere.

Starry Starry Night

    My daughter recommended an article on National Geographic's web site to me. The article said  cameras aboard a satellite on Sunday  photographed an eruption on the sun's surface that caused tons of plasma to  speed toward earth. This plasma was due to reach earth on Tuesday night around midnight or later.

     It all sounds like the intro to a science fiction movie. In the next scene a farmer goes outside to check on his barking dog and bumps smack into a visitor from outer space.  Quickly drawing his cell phone from its holster the farmer calls 911 and asks, "Would I get in any trouble if I shot and killed this beast, this animal or whatever it is?"

     But the real point of the article was that when the plasma entered our atmosphere  we  would have a chance of seeing auroras.  Auroras  usually occur in the arctic regions but National Geographic quoted an astrophysicist who said we had a 50-50 chance of seeing them here.
     It was a perfect night to be outdoors. After setting up the camera I stretched out on the ground in front of our house with my head on a pillow to wait for the light show to begin. It was not too hot and a gentle breeze was blowing. The crickets were chirping, I heard a far off coyote, and through the brick wall of our house I could hear Darling gently snoring.

     After  two hours outside all I saw were two falling stars and a raccoon. I guess we all know which half of that 50-50 I got.

     That's when I decided to try my hand at photographing star trails. Stars don't actually have trails of course. The illusion is caused by the earth spinning on its axis. As the earth spins the stars appear to rotate around us and the camera. 

     If the camera is aimed directly at the North Star the other stars will appear to be whirling around in a circle like a celestial Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Just the thought of it makes me feel a bit nauseous. I think I'll stick with the photo I have.

     I was amazed to see that in this photo there appear to be millions of stars.  While I was outside looking at them there did not appear to be many.The camera was able to record so many more than my eyes. The stars also appeared to be similar in color to me, and yet the stars in the photo have many different colors. I have since read that the camera sensor can pick up colors produced by gases in the starlight that our eyes are just not designed to see.
    This photo was made by leaving the camera shutter open for ten minutes. It is interesting to see how far the stars "moved" in that short period of time.
    You don't have to have a telescope or an expensive camera to enjoy looking at the stars. A friend taught me that a pair of binoculars works very well. Go outside tonight and look at the sky without binoculars. Then put the  binoculars up to your eyes. I bet you will gasp when you see how many  stars show up. The moon is especially fun to look at this way.
    Just think, if it wasn't for my lovely daughter I would have missed all this fun.