Saturday, July 12, 2014

SUPERMOON TONIGHT

 
 



Supermoon by Elizabeth Warner

There'll be a Supermoon Rising tonight. A supermoon appears much larger than a normal moon. Here's the scoop on supermoons from MSN News:

"The full moon on Saturday will appear to be unusually big. In fact, it will be a "supermoon."
That's the nickname for full moons that happen when our celestial neighbor is relatively close to Earth. That distance varies because the moon follows an elliptical orbit. When it's close and full, it appears bigger and brighter than normal, although in fact the difference can be hard to detect.
If you see Saturday's moon close to the horizon it may seem huge, but that's just an illusion caused by its position in the sky."

Two other full moons this summer, on Aug. 10 and Sept. 9, are also supermoons.

Here's a video on the subject from Science at NASA (Thanks for the link, Leanne):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1KKpeW231Y

I hope I get to see the supermoon rising tonight. We promise to have clear skies, but the video warned that haze may obscure the view. We've had haze in Bismarck for days now, from forest fires burning in way northern Canada.

On the home front:

All the grass in the backyard is dead but the fill dirt hasn't been brought in yet so the hydro seeding hasn't been done. There's been a delay due to the wrong part being delivered for my contractor's tiller.

However, on the plus side, my other contractors are working on my garage at long, long last! They finished getting rid of the small amount of debris left over after my niece's fiancé and cousin cleaned out the garage this spring. They then proceeded to rip out as much of the rotted out stuff as they could. They tell me that the garage is in such bad condition that the only thing holding the walls up is the stucco! They have to work very slowly and carefully. I have been having visions of coming home to find the garage all collapsed. However, when I got home from work last evening they had 1/3 of the garage framed out (if that's what you call that procedure).

They are re-building the garage from the inside out when it would be easier to demo it and build a new one. However, they are committed to saving old stucco buildings from the 1920s-30s when possible, and, more importantly, the city building codes won't allow us to build a new garage in the same place as the old one. I would have to put the garage in my back yard, which is not going to happen. If some future owner wants to cut up the backyard and install a two-stall or more monstrosity, fine. I want my little cottage, plus garage and yard to look like they did when the house was built in 1929.

On the negative side, the garage is costing me $4,000 more than I had expected, so I am feeling extremely broke right now.

Most of the early summer's gardening work has been done, except for the usual watering, fertilizing and weeding. Of course, there are always plants to move around to a better place in the garden! The bare squares in the new checker board courtyard are almost completely filled in. I will try to get some pictures this weekend.

2 comments:

WOL said...

I miss certain things about the yard at the old duplex, like my roses and irises, and the crepe myrtles, but I don't miss the rest of it. I think you are right to preserve the historical architectural integrity of your cottage and I wouldn't want a garage in my back yard either.

Leanne said...

I couldnt see the Moon last night, we had storms. Im glad I took the pics the night before though!

Leanne x