Big Black Bees

— Posted inNature — 1 min read
Ponciana tree

The Poinciana tree in the back is blooming which means the bees are buzzing. There is an innumerable number of blooms on the tree.

Spot the bee

While there are quite a few large black bees gathering nectar from the blooms, they make very brief stops at any one bloom. Did you see the bee? Center of page then up.

Bee wings

In this photo you can see the iridescent wings of these bees. From what I can find, they are simply called large black bees.

closeup of bee

This is the best image I was able to capture. I even focused the camera on a single flower clump for some five minutes, no bee never visited it even though bees were constantly flying from flower tor flower. I guess I could be called – Rob, the not nature photographer.

If One is Good, Two is Better and Three is Best

— Posted inHumor — 2 min read
New skillets

The bottom skillet in the photo is the one we use in Sophie, our travel RV. With space at a premium we only use one skillet and it has two short handles rather than one long one. It was used everyday over the 9 1/2 month trip we recently took and my wife worried that if something happened to it, a handle broke or the nonstick coating was scratched, we wouldn’t be able to find a replacement. She has repeatedly searched the internet in vain to find the same or a similar skillet.

skillet

Whenever we shop in the same store where we bought the original, I always make sure to check if see if they had any in stock. This time they did. I brought one over to where she was getting some deli cheese and showed her what I had found. She wanted to know where I found it, and then proceeded to the display and put two more in our grocery cart.

I questioned this and was told we needed them “just in case”. I knew from experience not to pursue that point any further. In the back of my mind I was wondering if just having one long handled skillet that would be easy to replace wouldn’t take up less space than taking three extra skillets along. Then I remembered the adage: Man will never understand the mind of a woman. With my luck she will decide that I take to many clothes along and use part of my clothes drawer to store them.

Someone Didn’t Do Their Job

— Posted inEclectic — 1 min read
Markings

Both our neighbors and we are getting fences installed to enclose the back of our lots. Before any digging is done the city sends out someone to mark where the water and electric lines are buried. Red lines are spray painted to mark them .

Digging a post hole

This hole is being dug on the west side of our property where that neighbor already has a fence installed.

First water line repair

Unfortunately for the fence contractor and the neighbor on the east side, the person doing the marking missed a water line, the main line from the street to their coach house and RV pedestal. This is certainly not the best repair job and the fact it kept on leaking confirmed that fact.

Better repair

A better repair that worked. The second I saw that first repair, due to my vast experience at repairing broken water lines, I knew what they did wrong. You have to dig back along the lines so you can get enough pipe into the fittings. PVC pipe will bend, but not if it buried in the soil. You can also see they moved the location of the hole. All this work just because someone didn’t mark all the lines.

The Readout Now Reads

— Posted inEclectic, Travel — 1 min read

A while ago I posted a similar photo under the title When a Readout Isn’t Reading. The replacement readout has arrived and it’s now installed and once again we can tell how full our tanks are. We have been back for 4 1/2 weeks and this is the black (toilet holding) tank reading. It’s unreal, it is only 2/3rds full. It looks like when one cuts down on their intake, their outflow also diminishes.

The backside of the old monitor with back cover removed. They say good things come in small packages. I can also attest that expensive things also come in small packages.