fishingcat aka llamavan's photostream  

For the fruit, click here.

It is flowering. In JANUARY. Like, right this instant it is below freezing outside. How goofy is THAT???

If no one else can come up with a legitimate name, I shall dub it the "Goofball Bush"!

Anya and Jolly Molly are on YouTube!

You can see and hear them in action by clicking here.

Use the link in the YouTube description to vote for the song ... if you like 'em ... (once per day!) until voting closes (11:59pm EST 1/30/12).

Or, use this link to go directly to the voting page (but be sure to follow the directions outlines on the YouTube page comments so your vote actually counts ... the contest has, um, problems).

Special note for Meron — RedWing the hammered dulcimer will be coming to YouTube soon, I promise! :-)

These intriguing fruits are from a hedge at my chiropractor's office in Eugene, Oregon. Nobody knows what they are, including me, and inquiring minds are being driven batty.

• the fruits are distributed sparsely throughout the bushes
• the fruits start out yellow and hard
• they fall off when about the color of the fruit at the right of the photo, and are soft
• the centers have a hollow (no pit or large seeds)
• the fruits are apparently not fatally toxic — one of the staff said "Dr -----'s uncle ate one last year."
• Eugene winter weather has numerous nights below freezing in any year

Any ideas???

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After an extra-stressful busy season, I'm really looking forward to catching up on everyone's photostreams. Hope your holidays were good, and that the new year brings health and happiness to you all !!!!

Just in time to play with his friends at the Hentze Harvest Festival (Hentze Farms, Junction City OR) this Saturday afternoon, Oct 22 (which should explain what I've been doing instead of taking photos) ...

Galen has a new tailpiece. A very fancy and pricey new tailpiece. This Frirsz 'cello tailpiece is so new that they are not exactly on the market yet — this one was part of the "preorder" manufacturing run.

Usually I don't leap at new stuff, prefering to wait for others' reviews ... but for whatever reasons, I took the plunge on this one. Saved myself 20% by pre-ordering, and I won't complain about that.

Reviews are mixed from others so far, but this tailpiece does indeed work for Galen — the big bad wolves aren't howling anymore (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_note), and that means more musical freedom for me ... and my teeth will stay in my head, too!

Greater volume, resonance, and dynamic capabilities as well as richer tone are among the "secondary" results. The relative string tension is different, noticeably firming up the bass side, so it's a durned good thing I did NOT yet spend money on a higher-tension C string (that's the most expensive one). The universal comment is that the new tailpiece makes Galen sound 2-3 times more expensive!

The design is non-traditional enough that some people hate it outright. I happen to like it, although it does create additional optical illusions that make Galen's bridge look crooked in a whole buncha new ways. :-/

This isn't quite what I want to say photographically, so I'll keep after it. For one thing, next time I will make sure that I don't have so much help from George and HIS tail. :-)

More cute and less-than-sharp photos of silly Fiddlehead waiting for that puzzling gate to "disappear" and let her continue on her merry way into the house.

As of yesterday, Fiddlehead has not gotten out for a week, and thus is officially living with the adult ducks full time.

The eventual plan is to put a night divider in the duck coop and move a couple of the backyard geese in there to reduce inter-gander aggression in the existing goose coop (the ganders are separated at night year-round, but things always get tense from about February through May). In the process, I'll need to put a gate between the duckyard into the back yard, and that will allow Fiddlehead to come over to the house and listen to music next spring (once it's warm enough for people and instruments alike to play out on the porch).

By then, Fiddlehead should have a pretty solid idea that the duck coop is her home. If I did that right now, there would be ... difficulties!