Archive for the 'Mother Earth' Category

Winter or Spring?!

Wednesday, March 19th, 2014

(DEUTSCH) And yet another ice storm in March! Yesterday morning everything was coated in ice, yet again, even the poor little daffodils. After it had rained all Monday, temperatures dipped just below freezing Tuesday morning, while it was still raining. It was not as bad as the ice storm on March 4th, but schools closed, […]

Weather rollercoaster

Thursday, March 6th, 2014

(DEUTSCH)    This winter has been a bit of a rollercoaster here in Central North Carolina, with temperatures in the 50s and 60s one day and then well below freezing the next. Earlier this week was a good example: On Sunday, we hit 71°F (21°C) and for the next 40 hours temperatures went straight down. At […]

The blizzard of 2014

Sunday, February 23rd, 2014

On Feb 12, winter storm Pax dumped a lot of snow on the East Coast of the US. we got 3 inches on Wednesday afternoon between 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM. I made the animation below from the footage recorded by our home security camera: Click on the image for a larger version (warning: 21MB) […]

Emus in the snow

Wednesday, January 29th, 2014

Emus don’t like the snow. A few cold nights are no problem for them. They keep warm by huddling in a sheltered spot, tucking their feet under their plumage. But when snow is on the ground and it’s hard for them to find a dry spot where they can sit to stay warm, they just […]

Brrrrrrr

Tuesday, January 7th, 2014

This morning we had the coldest temperatures in over a decade: 8°F (-13°C) and that only 26 hours after a high of 59°F (+15°C). The data below are from our weather stations at the house. At RDU, the low was 9, which breaks the record cold temperatures from 1988 for the day. Of course our […]

Chocolate cake harvest

Monday, December 23rd, 2013

Yesterday we set a temperature record of 78°F (26°C) and I decided to work on my composting project. I had two nice piles of compost from last year that I had turned in early summer. One of the piles I had inoculated with mycorrhizal fungus to see if that has any benefit for the compost. […]

Vacation!

Monday, July 22nd, 2013

A week at Peggy’s Cabin is just what the doctor ordered. A week of horseback riding, kayaking, mountain biking and hiking … and a nice, tasty beer when we get back. Saturday, we packed the trailer with the gear: the kayak, hay for the horses, tack, some tools, and our baggage. The bikes got strapped […]

Spring is here!

Monday, April 8th, 2013

Finally it looks like spring has conquered the remnants of Winter, here in North Carolina. The weekend was gorgeous: sunny, warm (70*F/22*C), and dry. We finished planting our garden and Laura and Julia took the horses out to Hill Forest Sunday morning. I did some logging, got a bad case of poison ivy and I […]

Record Heatwave

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

Today marks the sixth consecutive day (July 3rd – 8th) of 100 degrees or higher here in the Triangle and that sets a new record. The previous record was five consecutive days set last Summer from July 20 to July 24, 2011. Today’s 105 degree temperature also sets a new record for this day (previous […]

Earth Day biodiesel batch

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012

Happy Earth Day! Today I made biodiesel batch no. 82.* It is still in the processor right now. Today was a rainy, cool day. It rained all day, and that’s great, because we really need the water. Yesterday I cleaned my two 250 Gal (1000 Liter) rainwater containers. One of them was already 1/3 full […]

Spring morning

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Spring is in full swing this morning. It’s warm and a bit breezy, and the forest is bursting back to life. Noch ein paar Fruhlingsbilder hier …

The Gulf War

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

Raffi Khatchadourian’s in-depth account of the BP DeepWater Horizon oil spill cleanup effort provides an interesting perspective on one of the largest responses ever mounted to a man-made environmental disaster. He uses many war analogies and the whole story has a bit of an “embedded reporter” feel to it. It’s a very sincere account of […]

Winter morning with snow

Monday, February 20th, 2012

This winter has been really mild here in North Carolina, but last night we did get a 1/2 inch of snow.  The ground was pretty warm after a mid-50s day, and so this morning there is no snow on the roads. Even so, there were some accidents and schools are on a 2-hr delay. We […]

Ghosts

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

Michael Glawogger’s film “Ghosts” on AlJazeera is a fascinating portrait of the sulfur miners at Kawah Ijen – an active volcano in East Java, Indonesia. It’s a quiet film with authentic voices and eerie, haunting images of men scraping sulfur from the smoking mouth of the volcano and carrying their heavy baskets out of the […]

Eleven-one-eleven = seven Billion

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

11/1/11 (or 1.11.11) – crazy date today! And most likely we’ve also crossed the 7 Billion mark in earth’s human population and we’re now gunning it for the 8 Billion mark sometime around 2020. Is it time to panic? Depends on which estimate in the graph below becomes a reality. The reality is also that […]

Hurricane Irene in NC

Saturday, August 27th, 2011

This morning, Irene made landfall near Cape Lookout on the North Carolina coast as a Cat 1 hurricane. We’re about 180 miles (290 KM) inland from Cape Lookout and so Irene was not a big threat to us. Still, we stocked up on food, gas for the grill and gasoline for the chainsaw. Just in […]

Earthquake

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

Today, at 1:51 PM I was in the bathroom getting ready to take a shower after a long run this morning and an hour of horseback riding, when the damn house started shaking. “Wow – that’s an earthquake” I thought. I was right – it was a 5.9 earthquake in Virginia that was felt all […]

Happy Geester!

Sunday, April 24th, 2011

The pair of wild Canada Geese in our back yard had 4 goslings last week. Today, on Easter Sunday, I got close enough for some pictures and some video.

Disasters

Sunday, March 13th, 2011

Friday morning, around 2:00 AM, I was at work dealing with a major email server problem, when I started noticing the news headlines about the disaster in Japan. It sounded bad, but I was too tired and too preoccupied with my work for the magnitude of that disaster to really sink in. Later that morning, […]

Christmas snow

Sunday, December 26th, 2010

This morning we woke up to 3 inches of snow, after a fairly warm Christmas eve. The snow is wet and sticky. Wally and Cleo kept their faces mostly in their favorite hayroll. But in the morning, for a while Cleo was prancing around, bucking and rearing and shaking her head at the snow.