Tagged With: Rocks

Malachite and Azurite

Photograph taken on Monday, July 23, 2018 by Henry
Malachite and Azurite

Malachite and Azurite

I think I mentioned before that my great grandfather was a miner in Nevada in the late 19th century. He mined two forms of copper ore, green malachite and blue azurite, copper carbonates with formulas Cu2CO3(OH)2 and Cu3(CO3)2(OH)2 respectively. For some reason, our family collects rocks. These were gathered on the mountain where my great grandfather lived and where my grandfather and his two siblings were born and raised. We have recently thrown away a lot of rocks that were in my mom’s basement but we kept a few that were particularly nice. Cathy put some in this bowl and they are outside our front door, where the bowl has filled with rain water, which I think makes it especially nice.

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Stones

Photograph taken on Tuesday, November 03, 2020 by Henry
Stones

Stones

Sometimes when you travel, you pick up souvenirs. You might buy a post card and you’re almost certain to take a few (or a lot of) photographs, which for most of us really help to keep memories alive. We can look at the photographs and remember what it was like wherever we happened to have been. Or we might buy a small object in a store or at a market to remember the trip by. In our family, we sometimes pick up stones. Sometimes they are selected because they’re a particularly pretty color or have a nice pattern on them. Other times, it’s their shape or the smoothness of the surface. Some here—the green one at the top and the bluish green one on the right—are from the Nevada ghost town where my grandfather was born, 135 years ago.

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C&O Canal Rocks

Photograph taken on Saturday, February 06, 2021 by Henry
C&O Canal Rocks

C&O Canal Rocks

These rocks are south of Pennyfield Lock on the C&O Canal. The photo was taken on the same walk as the previous one of the great blue heron. It’s an HDR composite photo made from three images taken with different exposures. This allows the camera to capture more detail in the shadows and highlights than it would normally be able to do. As amazing as our modern digital cameras are, they still have a ways to go before they can handle the extremes of light that we take for granted.

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Backyard Bric-a-brac

Photograph taken on Saturday, August 07, 2021 by Henry
Backyard Bric-a-brac

Backyard Bric-a-brac

When we bought our house, the outside portion of our air conditioner was on the back patio. I’m not sure who would ever think that was a good idea. Someone who never sits on the patio, I guess. When we replaced the furnace and air conditioner, we had it moved to the end of the house so we could actually sit outside in the summer and hear each other talk. The concrete plinth that the unit used to sit on is still there and is a sort of stage for assorted bric-a-brac. Rocks, shells, bones, and antlers make up the bulk of the collection.

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Rock Balancing

Photograph taken on Tuesday, June 20, 2023 by Henry
Brian and Henry, Balancing Rocks

Brian and Henry, Balancing Rocks

As you might guess, although I take most of the pictures with my camera, Cathy took this shot. We had driven to the end of the road and then walked to the shore just past Echo Cove. This is as far as you can drive from downtown Juneau. It was sunny and hot, which is unusual for Juneau, but we enjoyed being out. Cathy and Lisa were down near the water and Brian and I sat higher on the rocky beach and started balancing stones. It’s a fiddly thing but soothing in its own way. We each managed to get a respectable cairn built and Cathy took a few pictures as we worked on our final stones. The horse flies started to bother us, so we headed back to the car and back to town for the evening.

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Tree Planting Outing

Photograph taken on Monday, March 18, 2024 by Henry
Cathy and Dorothy On Horse Rock

Cathy and Dorothy On Horse Rock

Cathy and I spent most of the day up in Pennsylvania today. I had 45 tree seedlings I wanted to plant and that took a good part of our time. I planted 25 Atlantic white cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides) and 20 black gum (or tupelo, Nyssa sylvatica). I put six of the cedars in the picnic field with the hope that at least a few of them survive to maturity. I don’t expect them all to and honestly I might cut down all but three if more than that make it. The other were planted in the woods simply to add to the woodland environment. Both trees are native to the area, with the cedar being confined mostly to the states along the Atlantic and eastern gulf coast and the black gum more widespread as far west as Texas.

I planted about half of them in what we refer to as ‘the wet field’ but which is woods at this point. This large rock and a few others are along the edge of what was a field when my parents bought the property nearly 60 years ago.

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Cathy and Henry, On The Rocks

Photograph taken on Sunday, November 03, 2024 by Henry
Cathy and Henry, On The Rocks

Cathy and Henry, On The Rocks

We took a walk at the Rachel Carson Conservation Area in Brookeville this afternoon. It was cool and fairly quiet but really nice to be out and about. There is a spot with a large outcropping of huge quartz boulders and I took a few pictures there, first of Cathy sitting on the rocks and then of the two of us. I balanced the camera on another rock and got it reasonably level and aimed about right. Then I turned on the self-timer, started it going, and ran to get into the photo. The first try didn’t work out well because when I jumped up onto the rock it tilted down in the back and I fell over backwards. That photo just shows Cathy and then me with my legs up in the air. This one turned out better.

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