The full moon was September 13, which just happened to be a Friday. This was shortly after moonrise. It was cloudy.
The color in the clouds was there, but not really visible to the naked eye. I let my camera take whatever exposure it wanted to. That resulted in an exposure about a second or two long, which allowed the colors to be seen in the image.
The clouds were not moving quickly, but eventually the moon came out.
As usual, the best sunsets we see are those we can never really get a good photo of. There was a nice sunset Sunday night as we drove home from a short outing. This is the best we could get.
The moon was a waxing crescent.
Maybe one of these days I’ll start taking an actual camera with me instead of relying on the iPhone, as good as it is for some shots.
It’s been a while since I posted. Nothing much has been happening, but I took a few pictures.
The blackberries in the valley are ripe now, but up here on the mountain they’re running behind.
They are prettier when they’re still red, but taste much better when they’re ripe and plump. Unfortunately, even the black ones still lack a few days before they are completely ripe. I ate one, which was semi-OK. The dogs know exactly what’s going on and want in on the action. I gave one to each. They didn’t complain.
On one of our other walks I heard some scrabbling around in the weeds beside the road. I expected an armadillo, and was not disappointed. It was about half-grown. The dogs were extremely interested. I thought I had included the armadillo in this shot, but I can’t find it. They are well camouflaged.
I don’t know how hard an armadillo shell is, but it must be proof against whatever predators they had to face when they evolved because they seem fearless, even with two fairly large dogs and a human almost within grasp. I suspect Zeke wouldn’t have much trouble with the shell.
We have had a few fairly windy storms, although not what some other areas not far away have had. I have been finding limbs on the road, but I had not seen any downed trees until I saw this one.
I have taken a photo of this tree before. It was a large oak tree, huge in these parts. I imagine that it was in the yard of an old farmhouse. It’s hard to tell from this photo just how large this one was. Apparently it was old enough that the center had rotted. It seems to have split down the middle. It’s sad to see the end of this old grandmother tree.
The full moon passed a few days ago. I took some shots of it as it rose. This was just before it was full.
This was just after.
And now for another movie experiment. Open garage doors seem to be irresistible to hummingbirds. We have had quite a few fly in and not be able to find their way out again, both in this house and our old house up on the mountain. This one managed to find its way back outside.
I really like hummingbirds, but I am afraid they aren’t the brightest of all the birds. Another small bird has flown into the garage on at least two occasions lately. It flies around frantically but then sees the open garage door and escapes. The hummers can sometimes manage to see the huge opening to freedom, but often can’t. They seem to focus on the white ceiling, apparently thinking its’s open sky.
I am not sure this movie will play. It plays on my laptop, but when I try to preview this post, it seems to hang up. That might be because I have a slow connection tonight, or there might be something wrong with the movie. Let me know if it doesn’t play and I’ll try to load a different version.
Thursday night the moon was just past full. There were a few clouds in the sky. This is what it looked like when I took the dogs out for their last evening walk.
I put my camera on a tripod and took a time exposure for this shot. I don’t know exactly how long the exposure was, but I think it was around one or two seconds. The tree is our misshapen but photogenic maple.
You may or may not be able to see a kind of spider web effect around the image of the moon. This is caused by reflection from the branches of the tree. Any part of the branch that is perpendicular to a line to the center of the moon will give a nice reflection. The parts of the branches at other angles don’t reflect much, so it leaves a kind of broken wreath around the moon.
There is also some iridescence in the clouds below the moon. I didn’t notice it until I saw the photo.
Our eclipse was right on schedule Monday at 2:34 PM here in Rome, Ga. We had about 98 percent coverage of the sun. We took the same pictures that probably millions of others who were not in the path of totality did. Here are the crescents made by the sun filtering through a sparsely-leafed maple next to the driveway.
We made an eclipse viewer from a cardboard box. I cut a flap out of the side so we could look in. I made a small hole — a pinhole, as they say — that focused the sun’s rays pretty well, but I have to admit that viewing an eclipse that way is not all that satisfying. I think our new cat is going to get more use out of it than we did.
A couple of hours from of us (in normal traffic, not eclipse traffic) the extreme northeastern tip of Georgia was within in the path of totality. The TV stations covered it, of course. The thousands of people who gathered in the little towns in northeast Georgia had a scare as the clouds moved in, but I think they got a pretty decent look at the fully-eclipsed sun. The televised image from a telescope was probably better than what they got with the naked eye.
My brother was in Tennessee at almost the exact center of the moon’s shadow, so he got the full effect of the eclipse.
I would like to experience a total eclipse. Although I would like to see the solar corona when the sun is fully covered, what I would really love to see is the shadow of the moon racing towards us at 1800 miles an hour.
They say the next eclipse in the continental US is in 2024. I will be 74 by that time, but I hope I’m still able to travel. Maybe Leah and I can start making plans right away.