Jupiter, Neptune, Venus, Mars, and Saturn lined up early this morning. Uranus was not visible from Albuquerque, which is just fine. Mercury rises too late to be seen in the morning.
Smoke and Ice at a medieval dinner last night.
Butterfly on the bank in the late afternoon
Mama Owl, a Wowlet, and Daddy Owl late this afternoon.
When the time changed to Daylight Savings Time, Marina at Marina Kanavaki — Art Towards a Happy Day, made a comment about “the dreaded DST!” I told her that was a good song title. I had intended to write and record the song a couple of weeks ago, but DST got in the way. It seems I’m always coming up an hour short. I did the calculations to answer the question about how much daylight we save each year, and address them in the song.
The Dreaded DST
Lyrics and Music by Timothy Price
Inspired by Marina Kanavaki
Daylight blinds fools who have no skills
They create silly rules they are so unreal
Daylight’s scarce, why don’t we care?
We save it eight months out of… every year
Bedtime at ten feels like nine
Don’t feel sleepy? Have more wine
It’s midnight damn, the bottle’s empty
I’m still awake… I’m feeling pretty cranky
Now we’re on the dreaded DST
Body clocks are broken why can’t we see
That hour we save every single day
Is two-hundred forty hours of daylight that we have… stashed away
Alarm at five it feels like four
Like a zombie, I hit the door
Preparation-H on the old toothbrush
Toothpaste up my… Whew! What a rush
No time to shower, sleepin’ on the job,
Stinkin’ up the office, what a slob
Head bobs up and down, fishing at the screen
My boss is cranky… making quite a scene
Now we’re on the dreaded DST
Body clocks are broken why can’t we see
We can look forward to falling back
We get one-hundred twenty hours of daylight from… our stash
We’ve changed to DST for 56 years
That’s six-thousand seven-hundred hours, my dear
Of daylight, we’ve been banking away
So let’s go spend it on our… sanity
Now we’re on the dreaded DST
Body clocks are broken why can’t we see
That hour we save every single day
Is two-hundred forty hours of daylight that we have… stashed away
Marina’s Incognito Pear Tree
Morning contrails
Mama Owl was sowing her head last night. The Owlets might have hatched.
Afternoon clouds
Tiny butterfly
Orange blue brown colored dots
Labor Day a break
The larger butterfly is the female. The male was chasing her around. She seemed to be giving him the stink eye.
Like pixies angels
Blurry butterfly bothers
Oblivious bee
Great Purple Hairstreak Butterflies in love.
Green Eyed Lady. Lovely Lady.
Clouds spilling over the crest of the Sandias.
Gary Grasshopper listening to a course on the New Testament while riding to and from work with me.
The Beetle is singing “I love you! Yah! Yah! Yah!”
View from the Rio Grande looking south.
Our lovely green eyed lady again.
A Crab Spider caught a Pearl Crescent butterfly.
Gary Grasshopper enjoying being ran through the gears
The sunset looking east.
The sun trying to break through the clouds in the west.
Our Majordomo texted me last night that there would be water to irrigate in the morning. I went out at dawn, but there was not much water in the irrigation ditch. There was a lot of sticks and cotton floating on top of the water. Therefore, I didn’t want to open my gate before the water was flowing over the main gate because a lot of the debris would clog up my culverts and ditches. I texted the Majordomo and asked when the water would be let in, and told him I’d be back home around 11:00 am to let in the water if it had come up by then.
I went to work, and we moved the remaining file cabinets, shelf units, tables and cabinets out of the downtown office. We put some of it in the storage room on the south end of the building, and loaded the rest of it into 4 pickup trucks and delivered shelves to a church in northeast Albuquerque, and then I delivered file cabinets and desks to our pharmacy in Corrales on my way home. At 10:30 am the Majordomo texted me that the water was up. I thought I would make it to Corrales by 11:00 am, but then an employee at the market asked if we had more desks. We did, so he got his truck and we loaded it with 3 file cabinets and two desks. I wasn’t going to make it home by 11:00 am, so I called Laurie and had her open out gate and get the water started.
Speaking of cotton, not only does it cling to plants and other things, it clogs up our swamp cooler. The above photos are the swamp cooler all clogged up again after I had cleaned it on Monday afternoon. I have to pull out the pads and brush the cotton off of them, and then I have to use a hose to spay the cotton out of the vents in the panels that hold the pads.
Around 1:00 pm, storm clouds were building up. It started raining around 3:00 pm.
This native bee was working the Shasta Daisies. The insects really love the Shasta Daisies while they are in bloom.
The rain stopped around 4:30 pm. I went out to shut down the irrigation gate at 5:00 pm and the storm clouds were breaking up.
A Pearl Crescent butterfly was also enjoying the Shasta Daisies this afternoon.
A yellow lily started blooming this afternoon.
While I was checking the progress of the irrigation water, I noticed we had one yellow Bing Cherry on our cherry tree. That’s the biggest harvest I’ve had in years. I think we had four or five cherries in 2018. The cherry was delicious.
Pre-sunset at around 8:00 pm looking southeast. Resa’s tree lighted on the left, Dale’s Peach tree in front (it has peaches), and Rebecca’s Black Bamboo patch with yellow tops in the middle right background.
Closer to sunset around 8:15 pm east/southeast. From left to right: Tiffany’s tree, Gabriela’s tree, Gigi’s tree, Teagan’s trees behind Gigi’s tree, and Susan’s tree.
Sunset looking west.
I was going to buy a ultra-wide-angle lens for my Fuji XE-1 that I used to use as a carry camera. But the 10-24mm zoom lens is quite large, which makes it not as desirable to carry when I’m also carrying the Bazooka on a 7D Mark II body, and the 70-200mm zoom lens a 5Ds body. I have been using my iPhone XE for all street photography and wide-angle photos, stitching together panoramas for ultra-wide-angle shots. I finally decided that since an iPhone 12 Mini was the same price as a Fuji 10-24mm lens, I might as well upgrade my iPhone to the iPhone 12 Mini. The 12 Mini is the same form factor as the old iPhone 5, which is my favorite style of iPhone case, and the camera has wide-angle and super-wide-angle. The iPhone 12 Pro has telephoto, also, but I have the Bazooka and the iPhone 12 is bigger than I like.
What’s really nice with the iPhone 12 Mini is the “Portrait” setting works for any abject or critter as you can see in the photos of the kitties and the America Rose above. The “Portrait” setting on my iPhone SE only worked on human faces. When I tried using it on the cats, or anything else, it said “No faces recognized” and would not take a photo. I’m really happy with the camera on the iPhone 12 Mini.
All photos below were shot with the Bazooka 400mm lens on a Canon 7D Mark II body.
Off Center & Not Even 