How do you deal with low lifes/rats/spam blogs that copy the content of your blog? Gah.
http://www.radio-surfer.com/snapdragon.htm
Anyone know how to use the leech protection thing? Doesn’t seem to be working atm. :S
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Possibly the most heaviest downpouring of rain since moving to Leura about 1 year ago.
First 24hr reading ended up being 165mm…
Next 24hr reading pushed the water level in my fish tank up to 295mm, so only 130mm of rain for the next day.
The sky began to take on the strange orange glow yesterday evening again. Not as intense as the previous chase.
Woke up to heavy torrential rain in Leura this morning around 8:50-9:20amish. Mild flash flooding here, but i’m sure it could’ve been worse in other areas.
My fish tank…(functioning as a small greenhouse for plants) read 68mm of rain. It will be interesting to see what this will read by the end of the day.
Thank goodness for storm water drains…
…but they were obviously struggling to keep up!
I want to take a photo of something with the camera, but i need to walk further out into the street before i can get the close-up. Do i dare venture out into the cascades by putting my foot into it?
Yes…. lol My shoes drowned!
Why it’s not a good idea to speed when it rains…
Ah well - at least it saves me from watering the plants this week! 
Here we go Mrs.Lifecruiser,
Some shots of my giant agaves, though they’re not that giant. They’re heavily “pot-bound” so have begun to go “bonsai”. The ones at my parent’s place are HUGE. I don’t know if it’s the exact same plant, as i thought yours had an alien mouth in the middle, but who knows - they might be loosely related somehow.
They haven’t enjoyed the colder climate here in Leura with the higher altitude. Got damaged quite badly from the frosts during winter (prone to yellow spotting on the leaves). They’re only just recovering now that it’s summer again. One of my favourites because they’re so low maintenance and i enjoy the green foliage a lot. 
My father’s a volcano chaser. For me, it’s the weather. The geography bone definitely comes from my Dad. It was passed onto him from his own dad, so it’s definitely in the blood!
A very cranky electrically charged storm hit Leura early evening about 3 days ago on 7th February 2007. It struck somewhere between 4-6pm-ish? D’oh-ing myself for not taking more thourough notes!
It was a foggy & wet damp style of morning, followed by a very dry & hot day - which then made a sudden turn for the evening into a strong electrically charged storm. We experienced a similar pattern of weather the day before but not as intense.
I know this style of weather during summer is normal, especially with “hail” but i haven’t experienced it for quite a few years.
Could feel the electricity in the air - it was really thick and the sound of thunder had a very low, voluminous kind of a boom to it. At one stage, i thought I was hearing the sound of a rescue hellicopter but it was merely thunder. Very stange sounds of thunder indeed.
Had a friend in Hartley who let us know how bad things were, so we had a bit of advanced warning to unplug our electrical appliances. I’ve noticed recently that weather like this seems to be more intense in the Lithgow region, but it’s just a hunch based on storms occuring the last 2 months atm. Hail larger than golf balls was reported in the Lithgow area during this storm. It’s made me really curious about how the terrain in that area might be a possible cause if it is the case.
The thunder wasn’t a cranking bang like crackling chewing gum that pops in your mouth with a lot of trebble. Very low-bass kind of crumple about it - very much like listening to Rob Zombie in our car with the bass cranked up and there’s no woofer in the vehicle. It had the same kind of angry doofing techno power about it
The town experienced a blackout, perhaps about 2 hours long? We had to go shopping too, so it was really eerie to see the neighbouring suburb of Katoomba without electricity too. The shopping experience was really strange without as much lighting. The supermarket was lucky to have an emergency supply to allow continued trade. People were jumpy & on edge in the supermarket. Not too far off from the crazy flight paths of flies you can sometimes get just before it rains.
Young men were getting heated. We walked past one violent brawl about to emerge, I also faced two men making risky manouvres on the road with their cars during my drive back home too. You could almost smell the testosterone in the air.
I think the storm & blackout shook up many people. Perhaps this was amplified because we were heading towards a supermarket. No power - how to cook dinner? What if the blackout lasted much longer? What if it didn’t get back on within 24 hours… or a week?! It did put me into a bit of a panic mode, noted “alert” or adrenaline whilst walking down the ailses perusing the non-perishable items alright. The electricity kicked back in while we were checking-out.
The quality of light after the storm was really weird - like wearing my sunglasses with a very subtle orange tint about it. The atmosphere had a very unusual vibe about it due to the foggy mist surrounding my house suddenly making a very abrupt departure - as though it had not rained at this place at all.
The colour of the light made the place feel very strange, almost alien. I’ve always enjoyed the luminence after storms, it’s always a good time to take photos. I have experienced the orange tinge before, though it’s been very rare.
Some parting photos of the post-storm period here that i captured. It was really difficult to get the real ambience/luminence of the light. I caught intriguing shots of just how much “orange” colour there was living in the sky, however the flash on my camera amplified the colour HEAPS as it certainly wasn’t that orange here!
Another picture displaying very unusual behaviour in my family before the storm! I rarely use the dishwasher these days. We ended up using nearly all the cups in our house so we were unusually more thirsty than usual? I wonder if this could this be a potential sign to look out for in the event of strange weather on the verge? lol
Might be worth seeing if there’s a storm chasing meme in the world of blog to join! If anyone knows of any then please let me know!
Like, i’m so sick of spam blog sites ripping off content from my site…
www.akaracquel.com
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Today, i realised why it’s always been so hard for me to grow plants from seeds that are super-tiny & come in packets by the 100s.
This is the only successful snapdragon plant to flower so far - it’s the first time in my life that i’ve ever been able to grow a flower from such a tiny seed like this.
It’s also the first time i’ve ever seen them “fruit” into these bulbous formations too - i was looking forward to how on earth the “seeds” would form within it.
I caught one of the bulbous formations “dried out” - it had cracks on the top, and it was as though it was holding many seeds inside. Very resonant to how the grape hyacinth and other bulb-style flowers create seed-pods.
I carefully pulled the seed-pod off the plant, and emptied it into my hand. I counted about 137 seeds from just ONE pod! It made me realise why this flower must’ve been so hard for me to grow. For one flower to produce sooo many seeds, surely this must be for survival purposes? It’s been a great adventure to see the journey of this flower turn full circle
I need help. I was pulling out some frozen meat for dinner (sirloin cuts of beef), and wanted to work out if it was ok, as it’s been quite sometime that i put the meat into the freezer. I had trouble understanding the sign on my feezer because i couldn’t see a picture of a moo’ing cow anywhere!
My fridge is a Fisher & Paykel brand and it’s supposedly an “Active Smart” fridge. I stumbled across a curious symbol, that i couldn’t make any tails out of, but i could certainly see a head with two eyes, a nose and a smile! ccc
My husband & I have concluded that it’s possibly safe to preserve a human head in our freezer for 3 months, but i was curious to know if anyone else could dicipher what else this symbol could represent. What can you see? Here’s a close-up:
Like, is that supposed to be a standard muffin dressed with 3 pumpkin seeds? Or am i just seeing things again? *lol* ..and where’s the symbol for “beef”?!
Perhaps this is supposed to be a leg of ham, but it looks like a really tired one with it’s tongue poking out. What do you think?
For crazy thinking mums who have a bloody sense of humour!
