(no subject)

[which_chick]

When I take the ashes and coals out of the woodstove so that I have room in the stove to build a new fire, I schlep them outside and dump them on the compost heap. This has set the compost heap on fire a couple of times, but since I live way out in the country and don't really have neighbors, that's okay. Also, the compost heap doesn't catch on fire easily these days because it's all already been burnt. Anyway, if it's night out when I tip the ashes and coals out of my nifty metal bucket that I got for Christmas, the coals glow orangey-red, like things that are hot enough to emit visible spectra of radiant heat, about the color of an electric stove burner on high. Hrm. As a simile, that could use some work. It's not exactly tripping off the tongue, is it? But if I said they were like rubies, that'd suck -- hot coals are not like rubies. They're nowhere near ruddy enough. They are the orange-red of mediumly-hot things, about 900 degrees Fahrenheit. (Here's a handy chart.) This is probably because they ARE hot things. D'oh. If you've not seen scattered hot coals glowing angrily in the dark cold, well, your loss... they're quite pretty. I should try to take a picture for you. I wonder how that'd come out?

For now, though, if you're resorting to your sterling imagination to render this bucolic image of my life that I've just shared, imagine an orangey-red and not a red-like-rubies. Red-like-rubies is way wrong.

Comments

[ornery-chick.livejournal.com]

Poppy orange, I think. I know the color of embers, as my parents heated their house with a big old woodstove when I was a kid. My sis and I used to like to sit by the stove when we were kids, and spit on it, and watch out spit bounce and sizzle on the hot metal. Gross, eh? We made our own fun, you might say.

I think the photo of the coals would be very cool. I've done some nifty stuff with available-light photography outside at night. Do you have a digital camera?


One of my back-garden poppies. I can't wait to see these guys again.

Also, I wish I could set my compost heap on fire. I threw a bunch of clippings off my horrid red bayberry bushes back in August, and the damn things haven't even begun to think of rotting down. I'm going to pitchfork them out of there, and grind 'em up with the lawnmower.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Heh... I have never mastered spitting. I spit ineffectively, with stranding issues, and I try not to do it in front of people because loss-of-dignity ensues. I should probably practice more.

I think you're right. Poppies are a much better color for coals than rubies. Yours are lovely -- I have got to get some for my garden.

Despite the appalling lack of visual content on my LJ, I do have a digital camera. I take pictures of strange stuff, though...


This is an emergent calico pennant (Celithemis elisa), a kind of dragonfly. The calico pennant, like other dragonflies, spends some time as aquatic flightless insect (the brown husk bit there, called an exuvia, is what it used to look like) and then one early morning along about the end of May, it crawls out of the water on a stalk of reed or grass or whatever and the skin over the back of the thorax splits open and it wiggles out, all soft, pale, and alien-like. The newly emerged bug hangs out without moving a whole lot, slowly hardening up and expanding its wings over a couple of hours, and then it's all grown up and flies off. It's like butterflies, kinda, except there is no dormant months-long phase. This one's about half-done. The wings are close to full-size but they're not clear yet, the abdomen is still kind of puffy, and the basic colors aren't anywhere near right. (Full color takes a couple of days, maybe a week.)

Some of the stuff I've taken pictures of is here (http://www.bedford.net/teep/walk.htm), and if you have some burning desire to see more pictures of dragonfly type things, there are a bunch of them here (http://www.bedford.net/teep/odonata.htm).

[ornery-chick.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that is an incredibly cool photo! I've watched a katydid bust out of its pupal exoskeleton. It's fascinating. Did you watch this dragonfly through the whole process of unfurling itself?

I've got a real appreciation for extreme close-up photos and nature photos in general. I spent a lot of hours in my garden last summer chronicling the progression of the flower beds.

I'm going to go check out your other photos.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I didn't watch this particular one, but I have watched *a* dragonfly emerge. I live next to a lake (it's in sight from where I sit typing this), so there are numerous dragonfly-viewing opportunities for me.

I didn't know katydids pupated. Learn something new every day, I guess.

I should take more pictures of my garden. On my "someday" list is growing morning glories so that I can time-lapse photograph the opening of one of the flowers at fixed intervals some morning and animate the frames for a movie.

[zhasper.livejournal.com]

That's beautiful

My grandparents used to have a wood-fired hot water system. They had to go down the back every day to light the boiler so they could have a hot shower.. it was a lot of fun :)

[ornery-chick.livejournal.com]

You should definitely plant some morning glories. They're eeeeeeasy and so very cheerful. We've got an ugly chain-link fence between our house and the neighbor's to the west, and I planted morning glories along the entire length of the fence this past year to make it a little more aesthetically appealing.

One of the bonuses of morning glories is that they'll re-seed themselves for quite a few years, so if you have a space you don't want to have to mess with much, they are a good choice.

Oh, and bumblebees fit exactly and perfectly into the center of a morning glory, and it is vastly amusing to see those fat little buggers inserting themselves into the center of each blue trumpet to snack on whatever nectar they produce.