Caesar Art Thou YOU?

Back at home with Chrome.

I had IE9 at work for awhile as they installed ZScaler which blocks websites on Firefox.  It seemed to block ALL websites until they fixed it.  I loath IE.

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I hope everybody saw A A Ron on Jeopardy yesterday.

And of course we were all out looking at the Northern Lights last night right?  You could see them in downtown Madison from some of the photos I have been seeing

A very good friend of mine that I met on the art fair circuit shot this one.  He is one of the reasons I do not have many photos of the Union chairs.  A lot of people keep asking me for Union chair photos but I just send them to Cassius Callender who I can not compete with.

Actually we do not "compete" at all as his photography is totally different then mine. But there are some photographers that FEEL they compete.

Cassius Callender Photography

There have been some pretty big sales in the art market lately.  This painting was sold at an auction.

For $46 MILLION DOLLARS!!!  Seriously?  And do you really need latex gloves to handle it?  It does have a certain "otherness".

So I raised my prices a little this year and have been nailing down my art fair canopy.  I use Excel to make a mock up and here is my left side. I'm creating new price tags for each image and on that top left photo I'm (seriously) going to put $25 MILLION on the price tag  :-)

If nothing else it will be a talking point and a little funny to open a conversation.  As DJ said, I have never asked for $25 million so I can't complain no one buys one for that much.

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My buddy and I were at Jungs Saturday looking for plants to put in under my Cotoneaster's and they had an entire row of Coral bells which are also called Heuchera.  When I said Hoochura I was corrected as it is pronounced Hookura.  OK  Then we started talking about pronouncing other plants and we came to clematis. WELL, the real way to say that is CLI-maa-tis.  I looked at the woman and said I felt uneasy saying the word that way as it reminds me of female genitals and that stopped the conversation right there. She did not correct me any longer.  

ANYWAY. I think we will "paint" that sunny to partly sunny to shady area with different coral bells. See which ones do well and replace the ones that don't do well (it's how we roll).

The tags all say they thrive in sunny to partly sunny to shady areas which seems like they are really picky on sunlight.

But before Elwood and I could get down to our landscaping plan the Columbus Water Czar** stops by and drinks all of our beer. Well, not ALL of it.

**Czar is from a Balkan origin etymologically originating from the name "Caesar."

OK, the story behind THAT.  Elwood and I are going to prepare the rocks under the Columbus water tower for planting sedum this summer but there needs to be a LOT more dirt between the boulders. Caesar will bring dirt to us and we will start to fill all the cracks in that giant wall.

I texted Caesar to say we would be there to make a plan but we missed each other as we got there early.  Once home and preparing the soil, our soul, with a beer we invited him over for one to discuss the logistics and in and seconds (when I say seconds it was like a half hour) he was sitting there with a European IPA in front of him talking dirt!        

The photo on the right above shows the sedum mid summer I believe. It's green and lush now, turns this color in summer and a pinkish in fall.  It smothers all weeds and needs very little water, a do nothing but plant plant.

We have a lot of experience with the plant. OH here is a photo of what it looks like 2 weeks ago.  Each one of those blobs were the size of your little finger last year when we planted them.

It will be a work in progress for a couple years. The below image is of my back patio which was 100% dirt and that rock wall before we started.  We like to experiment with seeing what grows and what does not in different areas.  

Elwood (last name) has a 10 by 70 foot garden behind his apartment that he created from filth and garbage 7 years ago full of experiments.  

So that is the plan.  If you see two dudes and a czar looking at the water tower that is probably us.  Come on down to the tower on the 23rd, bring a shovel. Dirt is good for you.

Weather.

Lots of moisture in the air starting drive home time Thursday through Sunday night!  Off and on with T-Storms on the weekend.

Today will be nice but "Temperatures may radiate out quickly east this evening".

warm air advection and increasing cirrus late should prevent widespread frost. However some patchy frost east is possible.

Saturday and Sunday

agree with warm sector airmass establishing itself over 
the region Saturday into Sunday...with south to southwest flow in 
the low levels. This will allow for warm temperatures and dew 
points to rise into the 60s...which will make for somewhat humid 
conditions.

Area forecast soundings suggest potential for severe storms with 
strong deep layer shear and decent mean layer cape. Storm Prediction Center has Sunday into Sunday evening in the day 4 to 8 outlook...which looks good for now. Certainly worthy of watching over the next several days.


Quiet weather and cooler temperatures are then shown for Monday 
and Tuesday next week...as cold air advection behind the cold 
front moves into the region.