Not a Toy

Here's my fabulous new telescope. It wasn't an impulse buy. Back in 2012, I started a special savings account to purchase a 10" DOB  'scope.

There were many reasons I wanted a bigger 'scope, but I remained loyal to my 4" refractor.

In the interim, I managed to amass rather a number of star atlases. The reason we amateur astronomers want bigger scopes is we want to see even more of the heavens above. It's called Aperture Fever and it is incurable.

I tried getting others in my family interested in stargazing, but they mostly just said NO. Even after seeing Saturn and her moon, Titan, they were able to walk away from astronomy. The exception was my granddaughter Molly, now twelve years old. She really gets into it when she comes to stay with me. Once, we were lying on the front porch, just looking up at night sky overhead, when a big fireball whizzed across the dark sky. We laughed and hugged each other in our excitement.

There is no quicker way to clear the room than to discuss astronomy. A couple of years ago, at Molly's house, the big kitchen table was filled with family and friends. She was showing a star atlas, pinpointing our recent discoveries. No sooner had we started talking than suddenly it was just Molly and me and her dad. He would have drifted away, too, but she was sitting on his lap. She and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Her mom, my daughter Isabelle, says we are Not Normal.

A word of caution about visual (not automated) stargazing: a person gets into it thinking they can just have a quick look at the stars occasionally. Then they start splitting double stars and searching for fuzzy spots called globular clusters. They find comets currently in the news. They move to a place with darker skies. They buy more eyepieces and filters for their baby. They lose sleep. Friends drift away.

I started in 2005 in a town with much light pollution from nearby gas stations and other sources. I rigged up a tarp enclosure on the clotheslines. I kept my nighttime vigil accompanied by feral cats, in the dead of winter.

After all these years, it's apparent that I'm never going to get over my fixation on the stars. It's okay, I'm retired now and can nap the next day. It's amazing how I can be sleepy at 10:30, step outside for a quick look and suddenly it's 2:00 a.m. and I'm enthralled. I hear myself saying, "Oh, Wow," a lot.

In order to not become addicted to astronomy, do not check for exciting displays of the Sun's antics on spaceweather.com. That can only lead to buying a solar filter for the telescope.

Whatever you do, don't read read Starlight Nights, by Leslie Peltier, especially more than once.

Wayward Plants

It hasn't been an easy season for the gardens, but they seem to not have read my Master Plan for them, anyway. Rain came as two early deluges and then nothing for about a month. My hopes for rain finally culminated in lots of it on the day of the Solar Eclipse.

It was a day of adventure for the family, meeting at Lissa's old place, where it rained. Then we drove in three vehicles through some torrential rain to the first sunny rest area off the main highway. There I was able to set up my 'scope and solar filter.

I'd bought glasses for us all. We got to see the first half of the eclipse, then clouds moved in at the precise moment of totality. Everyone got to look at the sunspots through the telescope. I was too entranced to take more than the one picture. Izzy is having a turn at the scope and Molly is draped over the hood of their car.

Only a half of inch of rain up here, so the garden has continued to struggle on. Early this season, I found a volunteer growing next to the snow peas. I guessed it was a zucchini, so let it be. In the spot that had been the compost heap last year, I planted a few Butternut squash seeds.

The volunteer  grew about ten feet before finally setting some baby Butternut squash. The plant charged on, setting more and more squashes before hurtling over the metal barrier, where it put on more babies. It also sent branches out to wander through the tomatoes and overtake the cantaloupes.

Where I deliberately started some, they struck out in all directions, going through the fence, up the fence and out into the grassy area. I put down some cardboard to make life easier for them.

The tomato plants quickly grew out of the top of their big cages, promising a bumper crop. The heavy rain, about six inches,  must have been what made their leaves dry out and drop off, leaving the exposed tomatoes subject to sun scald. They put on a second growth, careening over the cages, which listed drunkenly.  One of the tomato plants was labeled as a big type but turned out to be a cherry tomato. My fault, since I grew them from seed.

I was left with hundreds of cherry tomatoes and scant others. I managed to can up seven pints of regular tomatoes, all with lots of green insides that I had to cut out.

I used the old TV antenna for pole beans. With such dry conditions, they took all summer to get started bearing. Then the aluminum pole snapped at the base in a high wind. Now I have a pile of pole beans.

These Morning Glories reseeded from some I unwisely planted along the fence last year. It turned out they are vining types that don't take well to climbing up chain link fence. This year, they grew over the shoulders of existing plants and finally demanded I give them a fence post to continue to the skies.

It's a good thing that I transplanted some marigolds early from Izzy's garden, because they give the garden less of a defeated air. The bell peppers, mild Jalapenos, and Anaheim chili peppers are doing fine, as is the one big basil plant.

Some big red zinnias promise to brighten up the landscape while I yank out weeds and things past their prime and prepare the ground for next season.

The late peaches were big and sweet. I had plenty to share with the family and froze some slices and even made some peach leathers in the dehydrator. They ripened mach later than the others, as if to make up for the disappointing tomatoes and green beans.

I hope to find takers for the bumper crop of Butternut Squash.