I have been visiting a lot lately at my Mom and Dad’s place to help out with Dad, who is convalescing from his illness. Mom can use the help. While I’m there, I take my camera into her garden and get some images of her beautiful flowers and cactii. This morning glory is one of the many colors in her garden.
Click image to enlarge.
This reminds me of Obama’s demeanor without his ubiquitous teleprompter . . .
Courtesy Scott Adams and Dilbert.com.
We have a lot of fun when we go to the shooting range. Sunday, Damsel was shooting at a silhouette target with her 20 gauge Remington 870. She gets such a kick out of demolishing the last hanging vestige of the target.
I really love going to the range with her.
Saturday, we attended the Cactus Show at the South Coast Botanic Garden. We also took a walk into the main gardens, but more on that in another post.
I have always loved succulents and find them fascinating – so many varieties, sizes and colors. I always manage to pick up a new succulent and bring it home from the sale. This is one of four new succulents in 3-inch pots that made their way to our patio. It’s called ‘Neoporteria senilis’ or ‘Eriosyce senilis’ but I couldn’t find a common name for it on the internet. All I know is that the flowers are going to be bright pink when they bloom.
I’ll post another photo with the blooms when they open. Click the picture to see full sized.
The remarkable thing about our weekly trip to the range for target practice is that there were no anomalies to report. Well, other than the knot heads who brought some 12 gauge steel shot shells into the range and were putting on a fireworks show downrange until the range master corrected the problem.
As for us, we had a lot of fun. Damsel’s Warthog performed flawlessly after the replacement parts were installed a couple of weeks ago. She sure loves that little gun, recalcitrant or not. I shot ten rounds through it and experienced the kick that it gives with the new springs. She will be keeping an eye on the wear on the internal parts so we can replace the springs and caps before needed.
Damsel also brought her Smith and Wesson 686. In the photo above, you can see the plume from the .38 special reloads we were shooting today.
The little S&W 908s 9mm pistol gave no problems, as usual. My two Glocks were, as always, a pleasure to shoot.
The end of the session is when we break out the long guns – Damsel’s 20 gauge youth model and our 12 gauge security gun – both Remington 870s. Shooting the shotguns made the finalé a grand thing, indeed.
What a great outing!
Last evening, we tuned into NASA TV to watch the launch of the Kepler Spacecraft. The countdown procedures went as originally anticipated and the launch was successful.
Kepler’s mission is to statically observe a patch of our galaxy consisting of roughly one hundred thousand stars. The instrumentation consists of a photometer which will monitor the emissions of the stars to try and detect extra-solar planets. The spacecraft can detect the slight dimming of a star as a planet passes in front of it.
Of course, the orbits of such planets would have to be at an angle where the transit would align with Kepler’s line of sight. I’m hoping that the NASA scientists factor the probability of alignment into their equation to determine the planetary count.
The image above (click to enlarge) is an artist’s rendering of what our galaxy might look as viewed from outside our Galaxy. Our sun is about 25,000 light years from the center of our galaxy. The cone illustrates the neighborhood of our galaxy that the Kepler Mission will search to find habitable planets. Credit: Jon Lomberg.
Our visit to the flower concession at the supermarket yielded a bouquet of these pretty yellow Gerbera daisies. They will occupy the centerpiece on the dining room table this week. Click image for wallpaper-sized photo.
