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Category: around the house

It’s Raining Leaves

The storm on 08-Jun-2008 blew over one of the shrubs near my condo. It was partially rotted, and the storm seems to have broken it off and bent it over.

It seems that today’s storm took out one of the shrubs right near my condo. It was partially dead and located at a point which funnels wind during storms. (See this drift at the same point in 2005.)

I had just left Target when I looked up and saw what appeared to be The Nothing coming from the west, so I hopped in my car and headed north on Schoenherr. Before I could make the Michigan left it started, and all through my drive along Schoenherr from M-59 to home it was as if I was driving sideways through a rainstorm. After turning east on 22 Mile and hitting 40 MPH there was still rain pelting the rear window of my car and making streaks from the top of the windshield to the bottom.

While driving down Schoenherr I kept noticing large clusters of leaves falling out of the sky, and at a few points the road was littered with 5′ – 8′ branches. I even saw an overturned trampoline in the road.

After getting home and checking the radar I noticed that everything was beginning to take on a greenish cast and the rain was lightening up. I headed outside with my camera, but beyond the strange light I didn’t see anything indicative of a tornado. No wall cloud, nothing. Oh well.

Here is a detail of the base of the shrub pictured above. Some of the decayed branches can be seen, which is likely what led to the failure.

One other thing which I’d failed to mention previously is that someone has cut down the other shrub near my condo. I’m not sure why this was done; the only thing I can guess is that it’s to allow easy access to the gas meters.

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Dead Bird

A dead bird found in the lawn when taking pictures of the sunset on the evening of 26-May-2008.

Last night while just after taking the photo used in this post I noticed a dead bird in the lawn. I’m not sure why it died, and poking around online last night showed me that testing for Avian Flu isn’t really being done anymore on a federal level, and Michigan delegates it to the counties. Macomb County, where I live isn’t testing either, so I guess I’ll just have to leave the bird there.

Also, here is a close up of the dead bird’s head.

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Flowers for 2008

One planter of Castle Scarlet Celosia.

Since the weather is finally consistently nice, while out shipping Ivan’s P3 back to him Danielle and I stopped off at Deneweth’s and I picked up some celosia, coleus, and three kinds of chilis. These have been planted out front along with last year’s rosemary plant, which was kept indoors during the winter.

Instead of salvia, as I’ve normally placed in the rectangular concrete boxes along the edge of the porch, I put some nice, furry red celosia. The area around the tree has two colors of coleus in it, and the skinny plastic box along the edge of the porch has three different kinds of chilis, all of which I hope to eventually add to the garlic / chili / salt fermented concoction that I’ve had living in the pantry.

I then washed the chairs and table on the porch and rinsed the dust / poop / seeds / whatever off the porch, so it’s nice and clean and ready for summer.

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