"IT'S A MIRACLE!"

'IT'S A MIRACLE!" That's what everyone says who looks into my office! Yes, Suzanne came in on Memorial Day and helped me really clean house. We sent 12 big boxes to off-site storage. If you ever saw it before, you will know how amazing this is. Why is everyone asking me if I'm about to retire? The answer is "No. Give me another 5 years or so."

Notice also that I have re-displayed my Grandpa's Tahiti shell collection. They have been sitting in boxes for 3 or 4 years - ever since I moved from the 18th floor to 17. I did the shells last Presidents' Day. Love those Monday holidays!

It's been 10 days, and the office is still clean. Any bets on how long I can keep it that way?

Papa Duck's Whacky Musical Instruments

Here are two pictures of Papa Duck with a couple of his whacky musical instruments: a musical saw which he arranged for Santa to give him for Christmas in 2003; and his new musical "washboard tie" which Dawn's family gave him on his recent birthday. What next?!

Quail in our Yard!

Suzanne and I have been wishing for a long time that we had a covey of quail in our back yard. I've searched on-line for places that would sell us some chicks, and have been seriously considering buying some later this spring. I've also been scheming on how to catch a few from Shauna's and Spencer's yard to transplant into our yard. Imagine our surprize and excitement this morning when I saw this pair checking out our yard - hopefully for a new home? We hope they liked what they saw, and will stay.

Tinker to Evers to Chance - A Wild Dream!

Here's a dream I had the other night: We were playing baseball for the Dodgers. It was the last game of the World Series against the Cubs. The Dodgers were leading in the Cubs' half of the ninth inning, with one out. Darin ("Little D") was at bat for the Cubs, with a runner on first. For the Dodgers, we had Suzanne pitching, myself playing second base, and Aaron playing first. Darin grounded to second, I shoveled it to the shortstop, who fired the relay to Aaron at first, and the game was over. Darin was upset, so I tried to console him by pointing out that we would all be remembered forever in baseball lore as the only World Series ending double play to have involved four members of the same family! He was not impressed!

Suzanne tells me there is something wrong with this dream. (What's new?!) Is it because the Cubs (home of the famous double-play combo of "Tinker to Evers to Chance") and the Dodgers are both in the National League, and would never play against each other in the World Series? Or is it that I would never have been able to bend down and field that grounder? She says it is the impossibility that she would ever have even been on the field, much less as "Fireball Suzi" the pitcher! Oh well! That's the nature of dreams, isn't it?

Thanks for indulging my looniness. (Sorry, no pictures.) Papa "Sure-Hands" Duck

Bonsai - Miniature Trees

Here are pictures of my bonsai trees. Each winter, I bury them under leaves when they go dormant. Then I bring them out in the spring, trim their roots and prune their branches and re-pot them for the next season. In each pair of pictures, the first is from April, 2007; and the second is from April, 2009. (showing two years of progress.)






These two sets of photos are of Russian Olive trees. These were volunteers (planted by birds) which I dug up from my flower beds, and first potted in the spring of 2006. So, the summer of 2009 will be their 4th season.

The lava rock you see in all of these pots comes from Idaho. I picked it up in the lava fields north of Twin Falls on various trips to Sun Valley.

All of these other trees are Ash trees. Again, volunteers which I dug up from my flower beds, and first potted in the spring of 2006. These were not planted by birds, but grew from the many seeds which fall each year from an ash tree I moved from our Pony Express home to our Joey Park home in 1999. It was about 4 or 5 years old when I moved it, so it is now in about its 15th year. As with the Russian Olives, these Ash bonsai are beginning their 4th summer.

"It looks like a banana!" Venus as a crescent

I got my telescope out on Monday night to show Venus to the grandkids (Elisse's family). Sarah said, "It looks like a banana!" It was the perfect object to look at on a short attention span. Even Elisse and Garry were asking good questions, like "What makes it a crescent?" "Why is it so bright, when so little of the surface is illuminated?" "Why is it so much bigger than it was when you showed it to us in early February?" And after the naked-eye "star" disappeared into a cloud, "How come we can still see it in the telescope?"

The next night, I took the telescope over to Shauna's, because a few days ago Cole was asking to look at Venus. So Cole and Kylee and Katie all got to see it too (along with Spencer and Shauna, of course). We also took the time to find Saturn, the Orion Nebula and a few star clusters. Hopefully, I'm sowing seeds of interest for new generations of star gazers. Now is a great time to view Venus: crescent phase, good spring weather! (While both last.)

Part of this text was posted on the Salt Lake Astronomical Society's daily email, and received good comments. The big photo on top is one I found on Google, and is very close to the view we had through the telescope. The photo below is one I took by simply placing my point-and-shoot digital camera up against the telescope eyepiece. Something about my low-tech method makes Venus look fatter than it actually appeared as we looked at it through the telescope.

Comet Lulin

This is the picture I took of Comet Lulin in the early morning of Satuday, Feb. 21, 2009, from our back yard in Draper, Utah. This view is cropped from a wider field of view photo taken with a Nikon D40X digital SLR camera, using a 55 mm lens, at f 4.0, iso 800, time exposure of 30 seconds. The comet is the bluish smudge, left-center in the photo. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

Last week, Nathan, Scott and Sam and I attended a lecture, sponsored by the Salt Lake Astronomical Society, in which Tyler Allred explained his imaging and editing magic. Tyler is an expert astronomical imager in Tremonton, Utah. (See his dazzling images on his website at http://www.allred-astro.com/gpage8.html . I was so impressed with Tyler's abilities, I sent him this photo of Comet Lulin, and invited him to try his editing magic on it. I wanted to know if Tyler's techniques could be used to enhance even my simple photos. Tyler produced the version below, which is much improved, and described his process of editing as follows:

"I am using Photoshop CS3, but there may be a more recent version out. (Yes, CS4) I just did a quick version with your data. I used Focus Magic (Photoshop plug-in program) to remove the trailed stars. Then I did some curves and levels adjustments in Photoshop. I broke my own rule and forced the background to black because there was quite a bit of blotchy noise there. That is normal when using only 1 frame. The resulting image is not bad. Keep up the good work."