Another Trip to Pittsburgh

Our (only, so far) grandchild lives in Pittsburgh. So that's all the excuse we need. I spent last week there helping with child-care duties and enjoying some beautiful weather in Pittsburgh's famous (and fabulous) parks.

An entrance gate to Frick Park -- although the park is not fenced, and can be entered along much of the perimeter.

One of the trails in Frick Park.

Look carefully near the top of the photo and you can see Forbes Ave about 100 feet above the main ravine in Frick Park.

Armstrong Playground on the South Side.

Pittsburghers love their model trains. This one is set up in Phipps Conservatory to celebrate "200 Years of Pittsburgh". Many Pittsburgh landmarks are incorporated into the display including the Dusquene Incline, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, the Cathedral of Learning, and Phipps, itself.

Love that trolley!

Enjoying the "Stove Room" in the Phipps Conservatory, which has butterflies during the summer -- right now only a few remained.

The outdoor area at the Center for Sustainable Landscapes. The large glass structure in the background is the new Tropical Forest Conservatory. Both are part of the Phipps Conservatory.

Paying attention to details in the Discovery Garden, another outdoor area at Phipps.

Fall Food Fun - Part 1 - Apple Cider

Fall means that apples are ripe. Time for cooking with apples. Some people make applesauce or apple butter. We make fresh cider. When we first moved to Virginia, unpasteurized cider was readily available, but public health concerns makes it nearly impossible to sell any more. So about eight years ago, we bought a cider press on eBay and started making it ourselves.

First stop is the apple tree. Sometimes we buy apples, but this year, our neighbors who have two apple trees in their yard let us harvest from their trees.

One of two bushels of apples.

Even though we got them off the tree, and not off the ground, the apples still needed a quick bath before we would process them. The bathtub is the best place to do this!

The apples have to be shredded before squeezing the juice out them. This is about the only thing we use our food processor for.

The shredded apples are placed in the cider press.

As the shredded apples are pressed, the cider flows out.

A closer look at the cider flowing from the press.

We strain the cider before pouring it into storage bottles.

The apple remains will get dumped onto our compost heap.

Enjoy!

Picking the apples took about 45 minutes. Washing took another 45 minutes. Processing the two bushels took about 3 hours. Clean up took another 30 minutes. But now we have five and half gallons (about 20 liters) to enjoy. Since fresh cider starts to ferment rather quickly, we put three gallons in the freezer. We'll probably try one more pressing to have fresh cider for Thanksgiving.

Deer in the Headlights

Our trail camera has been recording deer lately. (No surprise there.)

A typical daytime photo.

The camera has a "black light" (infrared) flash for night photos.

Twice this week, this deer has been investigating the camera.

Can't get much closer than this!

Spiders

One of the more unpleasant features of my walks through the woods is continually running into large spiderwebs strung across the trail. I don't see them until my face contacts the web. Ugh!

It was very difficult to photograph, but this is the remains of a spiderweb on my glasses. Like I said above, they tend to be at face level.

Once in a while I see the web before I plow through it.

This seems to be the spider species making the webs. The spiky shell-like structure is the spider's abdomen. It is eating a flying insect of some sort that got trapped in the web. (I've tentatively identified this common spider as "Spined Micrathena", Micrathena gracilis.)

Another one of these spiders -- hanging on a thread after I destroyed its web.

Contrails

When you have as good a sky view as we do, you begin to realize how many of the "clouds" you see in the sky are actually remnants of contrails. In the winter, especially, it seems that the conditions are right for contrails. From our kitchen table window, we have a spectacular view to the east, and it is not uncommon to see a dozen planes in the air going up and down the East Coast flight corridor.

A few nights ago, the conditions were apparently perfect for contrails.

This east-west contrail was dispersing in an interesting "drop" pattern.

A bit later, the southwest-northeast contrails were particularly notable for how many planes were on almost exactly the same flight path.

From left: (1) The first flight leaves a nice, straight contrail. (2) The first contrail has begun to disperse as a second plane follows the same path. (3) A third plane follows the path, but is no longer leaving a strong contrail. (4) And a fourth plane follows the same path.

What doesn't show up in the wide-angle pictures above is Venus shining through the high clouds. This is a telephoto shot of the third plane. Venus is the bright dot in the lower cloud.

Night Sky

Tonight we finally had an evening without clouds. I played around with the "Manual" setting on my camera, and with the assistance of Photoshop, came up with some decent star pictures.

Saturn (top) and Mars (Middle) have been moving towards each other for the last few months. Tonight they also line up nicely with Antares in Scorpio. Mars and Antares are noticeably red to the naked eye.

Here's an annotated version of the picture.

Here you can see the entire scorpion, including the hooked tail at the lower left.

To the east of Scorpio is Sagittarius. Officially, Sagittarius is "The Archer", but it really looks more like a teapot.

A closer look at Sagittarius.

And finally, the Big Dipper -- probably the best known asterism in the northern sky. It's not a constellation, because it's part of Ursa Major (Big Bear).

Selfies

"Selfies" are so much a part of modern pop culture that Apple's "Photos" app detects photos that the software thinks are selfies and automatically puts them in a separate album. I rarely take selfies -- we're pretty "old school" on this and usually ask a stranger to take the picture of us for us. But I do have four photos in my "Selfies" album. Here, in chronological order, are the photos that the Photos app thinks are selfies.

Ring Day at West Point

Elephant in Sri Lanka

Our grandson, about one day old

Ditto

Love those elephants and newborns that are capable of taking selfies!