Our first post on VERNABOB.COM was on July 17, 2006. We put up a couple of photos of us taken in our leisure time since we were still reporting to work in those days.
We don’t blog as much or regularly these days, well, because retirement finds so many ways to use your time and efforts otherwise. Today, I took off a major upright limb from the mesquite tree by the RV driveway. I pruned off the remaining low-hanging branches that were almost reaching the ground. Click on the image to enlarge.
Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is an image rendered in stereo taken by a Martian satellite. The depth of this image when using the red/cyan glasses is pretty amazing.
From APOD:
This stereo anaglyph was created by combining two images recorded by the HiRISE camera onboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The multi-level falls were created as flowing lava breached sections of the northern rim of a 30-kilometer diameter martian crater, located in the western part of the Red Planet’s volcanic Tharsis region. As the molten lava cascaded down the crater wall and terraces to reach the crater floor it left the distinctly rough, fan-shaped flows on the steeper slopes. North is up and the breathtaking 3D view is 5 kilometers wide.
We enjoy raising cactus in the wild, in the rock and cactus garden and in the courtyard. When there are flowers on them, we both like to take photos of the beautiful blooms.
Above are a couple of images of today’s Astrophytum (Star Cactus) flowers open and I took a picture of Verna doing the picture taking of the flowers.
Click on the image to enlarge.
The countdown has been underway here for almost five years since we first made our reservations at the RV campground near the centerline of the eclipse in Wyoming. Now, however, we’re down to the last few weeks before the big event. The Javascript countdown timer above shows the remaining time to the start of the eclipse (first lunar encroachment) in Arizona Time.
The date of the eclipse is August 21, 2017. The beginning of the eclipse is dependent on the location of the observer, but in our case is 16:22:20 UTC, The seven hour difference has been adjusted in the timer. Totality follows a bit over an hour later.
During spring and fall we may heat the spa, but when the outside temperatures here in the Sonoran Desert climb above 100 or so, the heater goes off and we use the spa as a place to cool off. The water temperature (measured today) was a cool 85° while the ambient temperature on the patio where the tub lives was 104°.
I captioned this photo on the FecesBook™ post I made today as “When it’s a dry heat – get wet!” Click on the image to enlarge (credit to Verna).
We visited Casa Grande several times before we retired in 2009. This photo of Verna and the ruins was probably taken around summer of 2002.
The national monument consists of the ruins of multiple structures surrounded by a compound wall constructed by the ancient people of the Hohokam period, who farmed the Gila Valley in the early 13th century. Archeologists have discovered evidence that the ancient Sonoran Desert people who built the Casa Grande also developed wide-scale irrigation farming and extensive trade connections which lasted over a thousand years until about 1450 A.D.
