Before and After - Shoveling Panoramas

The view out of the garage before (click picture for panorama) ......and after shoveling (click picture for panorama).It was only 5 inches on the driveway as I measured it.So it wasn't as dramatic as farther east but it looks real pretty. Today's winds were powerful and rattled the house. Some children lost a ball onto the frozen Shellpot Creek, probably because of the wind.It made it down the creek to our section and they fished it out safe...

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Roses in the snow

The last of the fall roses dried on the stem now have to contend with sn...

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Boxing Day snow photos

It's going to snow for a long time today and tonight and we are supposed to end with 12 inches. Here are some starting photos of the excitement.Shellpot Creek downstream.Shellpot Creek Waterfall.The lonely snowy swingset.More to co...

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Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse

Above is the sequence of the best pictures I took last night when I stayed up late to capture the first lunar eclipse on a winter solstice in almost 400 years.I had hopes of taking pictures from inside the sunroom through the skylights but I realized they were dirty and I would have to clean them. Unfortunately I out it off until nighttime and so I was out on the roof with the windex freezing on the skylights trying to get them clean. I finally...

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Freezing Shellpot Creek Video

This morning it was about 25F. The creek has been trying to freeze these past few days but it is actually still relatively flowing due to last weeks rain. The battle between water flow and below freezing temperatures has produced interesting ice spray on the rocks of the water fall. The creek also flows under the i...

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Christmas lights are on the tree

Finally put lights on the tree last night. Had some help from Linus who magically fixed a set that was one third out that I could not get to relight.We are using the multicolored lights on the tree this year. I think it makes it the tree look a little retro. Next step ornamen...

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SANDART Delaware license plate

Either this person with the SANDART Delaware license plate likes to put colored sand in bottles or they which is cool, or they like to build giant sand castles at the beach which might be cooler.Perhaps they make giant colored sand paintings on the ground. The ephemerality of such work is vey deep and poigna...

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Fig newton fan in Delaware?

The Delaware owner of this FIGNEWT license plate is perhaps expressing their love of fig newtons to the wor...

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Toad Lily on the Shellpot Creek

I thought I had lost this toad lily twice this year due to Shellpot Creek flooding and overflowing its banks. It seems to have done just fine and has some pretty wildly spotted flowe...

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Ghostbusters Quiz

Mental Floss has a quiz on Ghostbusters, which has lately been on cable, so I felt really prepared. Some of the questions were not trivia from the film, they were trivia about the making of the film, which is unfair in a quiz purporting to see how much of the film you remember. I got a 90%.Take it yourself here.(via Mental Floss, via Neatora...

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Are they really POFOLK?

This family better be extreme fans of Edgar Allen Poe or enthusiasts of a river in Europe, because I don't know how poor you can be driving around a BMW SUV X5.This POFOLK Delaware license plate seen during my travels. Are there other interpretatio...

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Shellpot Creek just starting to fill up from the rain - video

Shellpot Creek is only just getting started today. If Tropical Storm Nicole drops the 2 to 4 inches expected then this creek will rise higher.The rain will be good to flush out the creek anyway. We just don't need a flood of the backyard like earlier in the summer....

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US Religious Knowledge Survey and Quiz

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a new survey of religious knowledge on Tuesday. From the summary:"Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the...

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Measuring Shellpot Creek Stream Flow with a Leaf

Before today's rain, the Shellpot Creek has been so low due to the lack of rain that it has contracted down to flowing through a few inch wide cleft in the rocks on the stream bed in the middle of the picture below.Here is the cleft:The width is about 3.25 inches:The depth is 2 inches, the ruler I used goes to 16 inches on the right side and 14 inches is just visible below.I realized that such a controlled situation would allow me to measure the...

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Name the ten largest cities in Pennsylvania - quiz

Mental Floss has a quiz to name the ten largest cities in Pennsylvania in 5 minutes. No choices you just have to type them in. I only got 8, though the quiz declares that anything over 6 would be considered a win. The stats when I took it said that of 1542 people took it with an average score of 53%.As a former Pennsylvanian who is from the Philadelphia area but went to Pittsburgh for college, I should have gotten all ten. I have been to the...

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Polar Bear Swimming at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago

We went to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago as part of our vacation in August. This Polar bear was having a cooler time than us swimming in the pool of his enclosure.Except for the fact that he would have eaten me, I would have jumped in there with h...

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Caterpillars eating a sunflower

I am not sure what species these caterpillars are, but they seem to love eating the petals on the lone sunflower out in the front garden.I think the sunflower is a second or third generation of seeds from flowers from earlier seeds we planted a few years ago. usually the groundhog snips them off before they get to gr...

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Mosaic of stars at the Chicago Stained Glass Museum

While on vacation we visited the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows on Navy Pier on Chicago. They also had an exhibit of mosaics. This mosaic, "When the Star Line Up For You", by Yulia Hanensen of Baltimore, Maryland in 2009 is made of smalti, coal, glass and gold. It was very beautiful in person and the straight on picture captures some of it, but the stars were three dimensional and bulged out of the mosaic. The picture below from the side...

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Cell Phone Camera Photo Essay: Tunnels From Pittsburgh to Harrisburg

I happened to take a picture of each of the tunnels we traveled through yesterday from the Pittsburgh Airport Marriott where we stayed east to Harrisburg where we got off of the Pennsylvania turnpike to begin the southeastern slog to Delaware. As a bonus we took I376 through Pittsburgh so we got two extra tunnels to make up for the fact that we didn't drive hundreds of miles out of our way to go through the Lehigh tunnel, which is on the Northeastern...

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Lifesaving sign for the alphabet road game

We play the alphabet game when travelling sometimes. You must find a word on a sign or somewhere on the road that begins with each letter of the alphabet. Vehicles and buildings and generally anything but what is in our own car are allowed. We allow a one letter pass, but still you always risk getting stuck at Q or Z. That's why this sign would come in handy.The post doesn't say where this is. Technically we would need to see words starting...

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Fayette Panorama

I took pictures of the harbor at Fayette on Fayette Day and stitched them together using Hugin. This is the resulting panorama.It was a beautiful day for it.Here are some more pictures of Fayette.The Schooner Madeline.Inside the beehive coker.The beehive coker.The smelte...

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