Trivia that matter
Some years back, one of the local Walmarts stocked rhododendrons in their gardening department, and I saw a number prominently planted in yards around town. Every single one was dead by midsummer. I spotted these for sale this past weekend. (It is possible to keep some species of rhododendron alive in Kansas in the right spot, but it’s not easy, and they don’t flourish.)
I suppose I should explain why I’ve dropped every show of the spring season and have instead been re-watching Shingu and reading Alan Coren, but I think I’ll just post a few more pictures instead.
Update: A climatological footnote from this morning’s forecast.
… Coldest April since 1997 across the area…
Wichita… the average April temperature was 51.3 degrees… which was
the 7th coolest April on record since 1889. The normal April average
is 56.1 degrees.
It might snow tomorrow.
I could do with a little global warmening right about now.
I rode out to our local little Renaissance Faire yesterday, the first time I’ve been to one since I got fed up with the SCA years ago. It was a rather drab affair overall, though I did find a few things worth looking at. I doubt I’ll be going back any year soon.
… but crab apple season is just starting.
More pictures from yesterday’s trip to Botanica below the fold.
… just a close-up of the fountain in the kids’ garden. More pictures from yesterday’s trip to Botanica are below the fold.
If yesterday was November, today is March. It’s still chilly, but the sun is out, making all the icy trees glitter.
Unlike most places in temperate regions, in Kansas the seasons don’t follow a simple spring-summer-fall-winter sequence. This year, for instance, we had a few weeks of spring back in February, followed by heavy winter snows. Today I woke up to find that it was November outside. I wonder if we’ll see any more spring here, or if we’ll go directly from winter to summer.
… to do macro photography with a 50mm lens and an extension tube, and without a tripod?
Just barely.
More pictures from today’s trip to the botanical garden below the fold.
Weeds are flourishing. Soon lawns will be purple with henbit.
… until the first tornado warning, but spring is almost here. Trees are still leafless, but daffodils and small bulbs are in full bloom. I visited the botanical garden yesterday and found the pink okame cherry in bloom. The white yoshino cherry is lagging about a week behind. (The very double kwanzan cherry, I am not happy to note, has been cut down.) There are more Botanica pictures beneath the fold.
Yeah, right.
It looked like spring would arrive early this year, but that was before 22 inches of global warming fell. The snow is finally gone, but Wichita is still mostly brown. I figure that it will be another week or two before trees leaf out. I went to the botanical garden yesterday and found very little color aside from pansies and daffodils. The lenten rose, above, was the highlight of the trip. The Corylus avellana was in full bloom; look closely to spot the female flowers.
The most colorful item there was the gateway to the children’s garden, below.
Children's garden entrance in Wichita
The okame cherry was showing some pink in its buds. There might be a few flowers opening during the coming week and perhaps more than a few next Saturday. (It’s already cherry blossom season in Japan. Here’s the blooming forecast, should you be planning a trip there soon. (Via J. Greely.))
Update: the panorama works particularly well as a “little planet.”
The sky was mostly clear this evening, so I tried to find Comet PanSTARRS. I couldn’t see it myself — it’s not a bespectacled-eye object in Wichita skies, though possibly someone with better vision than mine can spot it — but my camera did.
At the same time the cathedral was being renovated, across the street a new, gigantic YMCA building (with two indoor swimming pools) was being built. Now that it’s finished, construction workers are demolishing the old building, where I used to swim laps in the crowded basement pool. The picture above was stitched together from nine snapshots taken over the fence around the site with my little go-everywhere camera.
We got six inches more snow yesterday, which makes 20 inches since Thursday. I took the scenic route to work this morning, passing by the “standing stones” in a nearby park.
Update: Here’s the panorama. Right-click and pick “little planet” for a different kind of view.
Standing Stones in Riverside Park in USA
This was assembled with Panorama Studio Pro. Hugin, which I had been using, is free, but it’s finicky, and I got tired of constantly finding and editing control points and still getting glitchy output. I also considered PTGui Pro. It has more features than Panorama Studio, notably HDR support, but it didn’t do quite as good a job stitching images together in my tests (though both worked much better than Hugin), and it costs twice as much.
… before spring arrives: fourteen inches of snow so far, and it’s still coming down.
Update: The view from the front porch Friday morning.
Let’s run a few raws and HDR stacks through Photomatix. ((Yeah, still more cathedral pictures. I did these at lunch yesterday, and these are what I have on hand at the office.))
I rode out to the botanical garden this afternoon to find that it’s closed on Sundays until April. My irritation was slightly allayed by discovering a Japanese apricot in full, fragrant bloom.
The renovations at the Catholic cathedral in Wichita are finally complete, and it reopens Saturday. Here is a slide show of some recent pictures I took there.
The music is from the Open Goldberg Variations.
Update: Here’s the cathedral with people inside: