backyard bees
pizza truck
old school trees
haywood county hail
“Hail can be found in the middle and upper portions of almost all thunderstorms. However, most either melts before hitting the ground, or being very soft, disintegrates in the violent thunderstorm interior…. The size of hailstones usually increases with the intensity of the storm cell from which they spawn. To form hailstones the size of golf balls requires over ten billion supercooled droplets be accumulated, and thus they must remain in the storm cloud for at least 5 to 10 minutes.”
looking glass
“Rising to 3,969 feet, Looking Glass Rock is comprised of exposed Whiteside granite that was formed approximately 390 million years ago. Geologists refer to it as a “pluton,” a big ball of granitic rock that would have become a volcano had it not cooled before it reached the earth’s surface. The name “Looking Glass” is derived from its appearance when rainwater freezes on its surface and reflects the sun like a mirror …. Looking Glass Rock is set amidst a landscape of waterfalls.”
http://www.blueridgeheritage.com/attractions-destinations/looking-glass-rock
“Planning and landscape design for the Parkway began Dec. 26, 1933 and construction began in Sept. 1935. The Civilian Conservation Corp began work on several sections of the Parkway simultaneously, with sections being given priority where employment needs were greatest. Contractors were mandated to hire local people whenever possible. Four CCC camps were established at various points along the route to perform the work. The CCC camps were managed in military style with workers being housed in barracks, marched in formation and taking turns with kitchen duties. Almost all of the work on the Parkway, including the rigorous chore of tunnel digging, was done by hand and with very little machinery.”
bolinas barrel
“The relationship of barrels and water make good companions, it is an ageless marriage.”
“The portable, one-of-a-kind, Barrel Sauna is uniquely styled. Its design is very energy efficient. Unlike most conventional saunas with squared corners, the Barrel Sauna’s cylindrical shape allows greater air exchange from top to bottom giving the sauna a great advantage over traditional square designs. The cylindrical design has 23% less cubic feet of area to heat up than standard wall-and-ceiling style saunas. This allows the sauna to heat up sooner, which in return lowers the costs of operating the sauna.
The wooden floor is another advantage of the Barrel Sauna. It is much easier to heat, allowing the lower areas to more easily maintain ideal operating temperatures. Compared to saunas built with a concrete floor, the Barrel Sauna distributes the heat and moisture more evenly throughout the sauna.”
http://barrelsauna.com/art.html
http://www.sisu-saunas.com/a/j/barrel-saunas
plum trees
“Not a native tree, (to the Bay Area,) Prunus blireiana is the product of botanical engineering, that is, a cultivated hybrid. Crossing the purple-leaf plum Prunus cerasifera ‘atropurpurea’ with the Japanese flowering plum Prunus mume, an enterprising horticulturalist created a tree with all the charm of the orchard and none of the trouble of fruit — a perfect suburban tree.”
http://ezone.org/ez/e2/articles/nisbet/smell.html
http://www.fuf.net/resources/gallery/details.php?oldid=V112h113
immortality tea
“Even though it’s called a Kombucha Tea Mushroom, or a Manchurian Mushroom, or a Russian grib “mushroom”, or any of the dozens of other names it’s acquired in the past several thousand years, the Kombucha isn’t really a mushroom at all. It’s a symbiotic combination of good bacteria and healthy yeast (not the kind that causes yeast problems) that, when left alone for 7-10 days floating in a mixture of ordinary sugar, tea and distilled water, combines to make an invigorating beverage containing vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, folic acid, and glucuronic acid.”
bottle to bucket
Kombucha bottle and pickle bucket reuse program resolves into a 2-stage hanging garden of Plectranthus verticillatus, Swedish Ivy, first in Greg’s kitchen for rooting, and thenoff his back deck guardrail for growing.
concrete syncretism
Brasilian Architect Edgard de Oliveira Fonseca designed what is called Catedral Metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro, (the cone shaped structure, above, can accommodate up to 20,000 standing parishioners,) but it’s actual name is Catedral de São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro - named for Saint Sebastien, the patron saint of Rio.
The patronage of Saint Sebastien is a direct connection to traditions and culture of the Yoruba People from the Niger area of Western Africa still in existence in present day Brasil. Western scholars compare the Yoruba People to the Ancient Greeks and their impressive pantheon - Yoruba deities are numerous and known as orisha. During the period in which the majority of the Orisha venerators in Latin America were slaves to Catholic Europeans, orisha know as Oshosi came to be identified with Saint Sebastian in the Rio de Janeiro area. San Sebatian is most often shown in representations tied and shot full of arrows, which led to his association with the hunter orisha.
In this way the Catedral de São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro offers not only an unusual, often detested, appropriately brutal formal design language but also embodies an increasingly rare and antiquated form of religious syncretism.
http://www.mimoa.eu/projects/Brazil/Rio%20de%20Janeiro/Catedral%20Metropolitana
http://www.cultural-expressions.com/ifa/ifahistory.htm
http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/people/yoruba.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxossi
