Night Visitors

Can you see the glowing eye? This little owl and its friend landed on our steps the other night. My hubby came running in saying, "Get the camera!" Sorry the picture is a little blurry. I'm just getting used the my new camera, but I did manage to capture one of them on it. We've also been having flocks of little wood ducks fly in every evening to roost by our pond. It's funny to sit out at night and listen to them squeek; they don't quack like other ducks. They are too far away for me to get a good picture of them though. It's always a nature adventure around here.

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've been working on the big mosaic project and just finished the main pieces and started installing them. I then have to tile the whole bathroom around them and paint the walls. I will definitely post pictures of it when I'm done.

Meanwhile, I have managed to make a little jewelry. Shawn at Silo Studios has requested that I make some colorful, funky pieces for the next show so that's what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm using some vintage junk as the focal pieces with some glass and fabric beads in some of the necklaces. I've been neglecting earrings...next I need to focus on that, and maybe some bracelets. Here are a few of the new ones.

Evading Gustav

I just got back from a family reunion at Gulf Shores, Alabama at 1:00 this morning. There was a mandatory evacuation because of Hurricane Gustav. We were supposed to leave today but had to cut it short. The trip was a blast in spite of the evacuation. There were 45 of us in one huge house! What an amazing gathering of people! I will post more later, but I wanted to tell about the coolest thing that happened there. On Saturday night the ocean was glowing! There is a phenomenon called bioluminescence.Here is an explanation taken from http://mips.stanford.edu/public/abstracts/hastings.pdf

“Ocean “phosphorescence”, commonly seen at night when the water is disturbed, is largely due to the dinoflagellates; they occur ubiquitously in the oceans as planktonic forms, responding to mechanical stimulation when the water is disturbed by emitting brief bright light. Light emission may be seen in the wake of a large ship for some 20 miles. About 20% of marine species are bioluminescent and many are photosynthetic. “ Red tides” are transient blooms of individual dinoflagellate species. Phosphorescent bays (e.g., in Puerto Rico, Jamaica) are persistent blooms of this type.

Since dinoflagellates are stimulated to emit light when predators (e.g., crustaceans) are active, predators on the crustaceans might thereby be alerted to feed on crustaceans, resulting in a reduced predation on dinoflagellates generally. Predation on dinoflagellates may also be impeded more directly; the flash could startle or divert a predator, allowing that cell to escape predation. The response time to stimulation (msec) is certainly fast enough to have this effect.”

I tried to take pictures of it but couldn't capture it, but I did find a Youtube video that shows what happens when you splash in the water. All of us ran down to the ocean and started swimming and splashing with the kids. I have always wanted to see this phenomenon but thought it only happened in tropical places but apparently it is fairly common.
I was so thrilled to finally experience it. That was one of those "bucket list" experiences.