AUSTRALIAN WOMAN, 50-ish,
WALKS AWAY FROM PLANE CRASH--

Pundits were calling this a "miracle" but I see a private airplane that the lady pilot had complete control of as her craft impacted the ground in early April near Sydney.  Note the cockpit, in fact, the entire fuselage, appears undisturbed.  Evidently she was able to simply open the door and climb out of the wreckage with some assistance from nearby airport personnel.

It also looks like she was able to hit a tree with her left wing, tearing it loose from the airframe and helping slow the crippled airplane to a safe stop.  The fact the damaged wing is still attached to the airplane, or at least nearby, suggests she had the plane slowed to its minimum controllable speed just before impact.

At that speed slight heading adjustments are possible with the plane's rudder to avoid hitting the tree with the nose of the plane.

Often times panic-stricken pilots will haul back on the elevator (stick) attempting to keep their craft airborne in this kind of situation.  That results in total loss of control (airfoil stall) and often spinning into a nose down impact with the ground and disastrous results.

I believe this lady saved her own life with a dramatic dose of excellent airmanship when she needed it most.

It remains to be seen, however, what happened to put this airplane in this situation in the first place.
____________________________
I believe the photo was provided by a NSW (New South Wales) ambulance squad and information was published by the Canberra Times.

Finally, once again sloppy journalism was apparent in several articles I read on this crash where the plane was described as "nose-diving" into a ditch.  If that had been the truth we could expect to see extensive damage to the plane's nose and cockpit area.  Evidently, exciting verbiage is more important to some writers than accuracy in their stories.  

 

COMMENTERRY--

A delightful part of watching springtime birds is seeing the migrants or otherwise unusual avian visitors that wander by.   The last few days I've had a Baltimore Oriole visit.  Ordinarily they are attracted by fruity offerings at the feeders and I have offered nothing of the sort.  In fact the one I've been seeing is grubbing around on the ground with the sparrows and doves and etc. 

Maybe I should see about something more traditional to their taste.

And, if we ever get out of the frosty nights it's time to think about your humming bird feeders.  A good cleaning of them is a fine way to start and the mix they like is 1 part sugar to four parts water.

One web site makes this additional comment:

"The solution will keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. Please don't use food coloring, honey, brown sugar, unrefined sugar or sugar substitutes, as they can be harmful to humming birds."

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I've been shooting handguns quite a bit recently at my safe. home locations because the manufacturer of a couple of my new ones recommends a break-in process of 400 rounds or more before they are put to work in your arsenal.

Today I was wrapping-up another segment of that shooting and walked about 35 feet to examine my target.  While doing so I noticed out of the corner of my eye, a wild turkey pacing me about 50 feet to the east without an obvious care in the world.

My guess was it had evaluated my marksmanship and decided it was in no danger.

TURKEY FROLIC--

Watched a big, male turkey doing his proudest display of passion in the near south woods for at least 20 minutes this morning.  His slowly circling, quarter turn dance with a full fan of tail feathers was performed just behind the long-gone, firewood garage.

Didn't appear it was going to be his lucky day.  He managed to attract only one young lady who showed no interest in his exertions.

Of course, they could have shared their intent to seek more privacy than was available this close to a human dwelling with an old man peeking through the curtains.

Shame on me.  In fact I left them to their potential frolic while his enthusiasm remained obvious.

JON BOAT--
Goes to Church

It was one of those "never thought I would see this" experiences. 

As dawn broke today Brian and Kate showed up, the three of us loaded my Jon boat in their truck, and they were off to deliver it to our Storyside Church.

Ethan Boggs, our Executive Pastor, made good use of it during his message which was part of the church's year-long study of the Book of John.  Today's topic dealt with getting out of your boat and swimming to God.

This was just one more tiny sample of the church's continuous vibrancy in delivering Christian messages with down-to-earth, understandable relevance.

HARVEST TIME--

It is not uncommon to see variations in yield in nut trees from year to year but I have never seen walnut production of this kind in the 24 years I have lived here.

Never!

This little trailer is about 30 x 40" by 12" deep.  If this load were leveled the trailer would be F.U.L.L.

And, every bit of this load came from one tree in the middle of my only grassy yard area.

I'm not sure how many walnut trees I have but there are two or three out along my township road.  Passing traffic ground up those nuts and their black-as-ink, decaying fluid made the tar-and-chip road surface look like newly paved and polished asphalt.

There is another nice walnut tree below the dam but its yield was conveniently dumped in the weeds and didn't require my attention.

I tried raking and I tried shoveling but nothing worked as well as bending over about a thousand times and picking these things up by hand, one-by-one.  I worked as long as my 77 year young muscles would allow each day and it took three of them to amass this harvest.

You can see a tiny piece of the pond in the left background and the lower deck is cantilevered over the pond's west bank.  The stairs visible under the deck deliver folks to the boat dock.

(Remember, you can left click on the photo to see a larger image).

I was able to dump these in a nearby weedy area where an army of composting-critters (say, bacteria) will go to work and transform this messy pile of woodsy detritus into fresh top-soil by Springtime.

Except, of course, the nuts ambushed by raiding squirrels who will apply their own special form of composting over the Winter.

And, so it goes!

COLUMBUS METRO PARKS--
2017 Geotrail Season Wrap-up

You can tell the Columbus park system is a classy operation by the quality of this pavilion in their Homestead Park.  Geocachers from a wide area gathered there for munchies and this annual program recently, the highlight of which was the awarding of much sought-after Geo Coins in this popular, geo-trail event.

Earlier in the year about 20 geocaches were hidden, mostly at the rate of one per park.  After those hides are published on Geocaching.com the hunt is on.  As cachers found the caches they had to make note of a code word found in the hidden cache's containers and record that word on their entry forms.

This year geocachers had to find 15 correct code words in order to receive one of the much sought-after, 200 coins available.

There are two ladies in white sweaters, left center of the photo.  That's my partner, Sue (Skagway071) talking to caching friends Bill (Lighthouse Nuts in the blue t-shirt) and his wife Diane to his right.

Monikers like Skagway071 and Lighthouse Nuts are names cachers are known by when they sign logs of caches they find.  The Lighthouse Nuts live in the Westerville area.  The other lady in white behind Sue is Linda from Marion who is known as CoolJ.  To Linda's right her partner, Mike aka Gabby200, lives in Columbus.

The six of us along with another couple that lives in the Sunbury area often participate in caching activities like this around OH.  In an amazing coincidence we also assemble ourselves as a team since we discovered ourselves all wintering fairly close together in Florida.

FWIW I just logged my 5,600th cache in just a little over 5 years of caching and Sue is closing-in on #5,000 quite quickly.

Can you sense our passion for the activity? 

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I forgot to publish this post; a brain cramp that appears to becoming more prevalent as age consumes me.  Yesterday at a birthday celebration I noticed my cell phone had disappeared from its belt holster.  Good Grief, I announced and launched a search.  It was in my shirt pocket.  😊

Sue has since surpassed 5,000 finds.

HMMMMM...

This is the kind of thing my dozing brain concocts late at night when sleep is elusive.  I had the cellphone lying on the munching bar while I enjoyed late night radio and was fiddling with the front and back viewing control on the phone's camera.

I was rewarded with a hint of what this image could become.

Hand-holding the phone up to about a foot or so from the bottom of the subject, I made this exposure of a small, leaded glass chandelier as seen from directly below.

I first believed the perimeter panels were sloping into the composition toward the center.

Then, after a couple more hours of sleep and with daylight approaching I took another peek at the image and then concluded the perimeter panels are sloping out from the center of the composition.

...until I went and looked at the actual subject and found the perimeter panels are hanging exactly vertical to the horizon.

Actually, this is another example of one's changing perspective making radical changes in the outcome of the image.

We all know railroad tracks, for example, run parallel to each other but if you stand between them and look toward the horizon you will note they appear to converge.

This image is a pint-sized version of that visual phenomenon with a little optical illusion thrown in.

Late in this mental exercise I noticed a malady had crept into my creation.  One of the five light bulbs was burned out.

I'm sure when the PhD's in the crowd get done wrestling with the geometric nuances of the photo the other PhD's (the philosopher variety) will have tomes of analyses/analyzes dancing merrily through their heads on the meaning of there always seeming to be a confrontational malady present in life.

Egad.  Time to go back to bed!