Summer Reading

Look what just arrived on my doormat this morning. Will settle down to these later!

Course Notes 3 - Blending new backgrounds (Sky)

I'm still experimenting with the possibilities of blending photos together using Photoshop. The camera magazines merrily talk about 'putting a new sky in' when photos have dull skies - but it seems to me harder than you might think. I had a go with this silhouetted statue of Billy Fury, taken on Albert Dock in Liverpool one evening.

I like the rim light and the form of the statue - it's quite an iconic silhouette. But the background is undoubtedly a bit too cluttered. I couldn't get any closer or lower to take the photo, as the area was cordoned off and a policewoman standing there! (All to do with the Tall Ships Race a couple of years back). So...what to do?

Well, I also have this attractive sky picture. (It's actually dawn over the Sea of Galilee, but could just as easily be sunset over the River Mersey... ?)

In order to blend the two images together I had to lift the silhouette off its background and place it on the 'new' sunset sky. Easier said than done, to make it look realistic! You need a very precise selection around the part of the image you want to move.

So, firstly working with the photo of Billy Fury, I needed to make a selection right to the edges of the silhoutted statue. I have found that for me the easiest way of making a selection in this kind of scenario is to use Photoshop's 'Magic Wand' tool to highlight the sky behind the statue. The selection can then be tidied up and made more accurate by clicking on the 'Edit in Quick Mask Mode' icon (bottom of tools palette) to make the selected area coloured, and then using the brush tool (with black as the foreground colour) to paint more into the selection or alternatively (with white as the foreground colour) to subtract from the selection. It's easy to toggle between the modes and to vary the size of the brush to get it neat.

I only have the basic Photoshop CS, and that doesn't have a 'Refine Edge' facility but using Select - Modify - Contract, set to 2 or 3 pixels, you can pull the selection in fractionally. Using 'Create a New Layer' and 'Apply Image' I pasted the cut-out statue onto a transparent layer (which isolates the statue from its original background.) Then using the Move tool I dragged it onto my sunset sky background photo. Resizing and repositioning the image to fit the background is easy enough, by dragging the 'handles' around the statue image.

I then flattened the image, slightly adjusted the whole new image using Adjustments - Levels and cropped it, before adding a stroke border.

The finished picture may not look wholly realistic, but it gives the silhouette more impact, I think.

A similar technique can be used to drag a picture onto any nice sky - blue with white fluffy clouds, storm clouds or whatever. But I find this only really works for images that have strong edges. For example, it is difficult to move a picture with trees on the skyline because you can't get a good enough selection on the delicate edges. In my picture above, the rim lighting works quite well, in itself sharply defining the shape of the statue. But with some subjects the precise selection necessary to drag the image onto the new background leaves the composite image looking very much 'pasted on' and unreal.

The method outlined is only one of several ways to achieve much the same outcome in Photoshop. As time goes on and they continue to refine Photoshop, I have no doubt it will all become much easier. As it is, we just have to be thoughtful about what images we can give this kind of treatment to.

So, not a cure-all for every dull sky by any means, but sometimes this can be a trick worth trying. Far better, as always, to try and get good results straight out of your camera! Though we all know that English weather, in particular, can be prone to flat grey or white skies.

(Not) Trespassing: The Blue Shack

Decay doesn't have to take 100 years, sometimes just in your own life span humans can build things, and watch their tiny personal empire fall to pieces. There's always a hidden story, a mini drama, a loss, forgotten time or sometimes a death these places hold onto... but for the blue shack not very much longer.

Ya might notice there isn't any No Trespassing signs on this property, and that is because it is for sale - under $100,000 with 13 acres! ( If you want to know where it's located in Western North Carolina, send me an email.)

The house is caving in. Literally. Porch posts leaning into a V shape, if you step on the covered porch floor boards your foot will go through it. Windows are broken, wood is bending, pieces of the roof are falling off.... yet it still holds it's bright blue spirit, you can still read some of the dreams that were afloat when it was built.

The back of the house pushes up to a rather steep hill, which is probably why the blue paint has washed off, the wall is pushing outward under the weight of the roof.... even a piece of the whole back wall has opened up and a freakin' lawn chair is poking out! Somehow that is creepy.

Peeking into the windows, I didn't find much on the inside of the house --- the usual anticipation to see something beautiful in it's last run of decay was not really even there...

Unless you feel a toilet seat is beautiful....

The ceiling is peeling off in sheets, which shows the rafters.... the rafters are the only thing about the structure that still looks stable. "Stable" being used real loosely.

Since there was 13 more acres of mystery to explore, I set off up the long winding road that led back up the side of the mountain. Plants & wildlife abound...

EDIBLE, MEDICINAL, and NATIVE PLANTS :::::::::

The Fiddle Head Fern... Edible when it first shoots up in the spring.Raspberries!!! Mmmmmm - the berries will pop out those hairy shells....

Blackberries ..... about to be ripe!

Woodland Nettles and Jewelweed growing in patches together.... ( so if the nettles sting you, you can put the jewelweed on your skin to sooth it!)

Pokeberry.... not yet ready to use for dye, but the white flowers turn into dark purple berries. You can eat the young plant in the spring, but not the berries or the mature plant (although i have heard people debate this!)

Bloodroot! My favorite native plant eva' ! The root is used for dye and medicine.

Mountain Mint?? Some kind of minty, menthol, bee balm smelling herb that grows in the woods here....

More HUMAN STUFF :::::::

In places along the road there was old fencing, from when this land was most likely a pasture with some type of domesticated animal... I have heard stories from locals about how their parents or grandparents made pasture by digging around & cutting roots of trees then having them pulled by mules out the ground. That's a shit ton of work!
There was also a small hidden barn, with wide open slats --- it was totally covered in thorny wild roses making it impossible for me to go inside or get near it!

In a lil' nook I saw this cinder block built contraption, that upon closer examination I realized was an old spring water box....

I would not be drinking the water from this thing anymore- it was full of mud and I did not see water in it... either that spring has run dry or the box was old enough to have a leak down below.

ANIMAL EVIDENCE::::::

Even though there had been a big huge rain storm just last night, I still found a few bits of evidence left by the wildlife on that property.

First, coyote scat (poop) totally rained on so hard that most the poop part was gone and all that was left was the huge hair glob left from the little critters it had eaten.

Then a fresh deer track in the mud, it slid a little downward because of the steep part of the path...

right next to the deer track was a patch of jewelweed (see the pic below) that the tops of the plants were eaten off....

THE ROAD ENDS :::::::::

The long long long road ended at the top of a ridge, which behind the trees you could see lots of mountains.

On my way back down I stopped to take a pic with the rocks being exposed from the erosion along the road... I LOVE big funky rocks! ANd I loooooove (not) trespassing. :)

XOxoxoox

Strawberry Papercut (work in progress)

About half done now. As you can see, I'm leaving the centre open so that I can overlay some type in there. Maybe "Thank you" or someone's name etc.

Clever Gambrel

Another lovely home by Steven Gambrel. Imagine sitting there on the water's edge like that. So gorgeous.

Book Review: Rewild Or Die

"If the true meaning of sustainability involves giving back more than what you take from the land, then nothing that takes more from the land than it returns can define itself as sustainable. Less destructive does not mean more sustainable." - Rewild Or Die


Ya'll know how I love to read, and over the last year I had mostly immersed myself in fiction books - as a direct retaliation to reading years of health, self help and spiritual books.
But then I got this book called REWILD OR DIE sent to me in the mail - which can not really be put into any one category I can think of ...

• Nature?
• Survival?
• Philosophy?
• Ranting & Cursing?
• Culture Studies?
• Agriculture Bashin'?

Urban Scout's new book about getting back to nature is not a DIY guide that tells you how to live off the land, make primitive crafts, or hunt wild game --- it is a thought provoking book telling people WHY they need to learn these skills, why big agriculture is killing the planet, why most humans are depressed with their current situation, the main focus being on the hidden ways living in a "civilized" society makes us slaves to a life we don't really want to live.
Many chapters felt like someone had took my own thoughts and written them out in essay form - except that usually deeply philosophical shit makes me confused, overwhelmed and bored. Nearly every chapter kept me engaged, especially the ones discussing the function of money vs rewilding, and schools vs rewilding (i am someone who really hates the way money and school both currently function.) Especially schools! There were some chapters I could not relate to mainly because I am a recluse who has been out of normal society for 9 years now and didn't know about all the different types of 'groups' & 'diets' & 'styles' & 'movements' like the anarcho-primitivists? who follow certain genre of thought about how society should eat/ live/ function (or should i say dysfunction?) Chapters focusing on stuff like that I understood, but felt a little lost since I rarely make 'genre' distinctions when i meet people anymore. (Not cause I am a mini Buddha but cause i see/saw people so rarely that now i get so excited to see a human i don't give two shits to judge - i go right to talking their head off!)
*
I have not been in the mainstream for a while, I never really knew about all these terms, like "rewilding" (returning to a more natural state, undoing domestication). I never knew that many of the things I have chosen to do, ways I live in accordance with nature were something many people are now discussing & learning to live by! (Way cool!) Not that I thought I was alone, but never knew I had intuitively moved along with a whole movement I never saw. It's cool to find out there are others who want to be close to nature, who want to keep the environment in a supported natural state, who don't wait for an Apocalypse/End of Oil with stock piled guns...... even if they live very far away.
*
What is most refreshing is this book is not written in the traditional edited book style, it's personal, it's honest, it's defensive, aggressive, and sweet all at the same time - most likely because it is a series of essays taken from his personal blog (The Adventures Of Urban Scout, a hunter gatherer wanna be), making the style more modern and less bookish.

Xoxox

The Dying Hemlock Tree(s)

I had heard about the Hemlock Pine trees in the mountains here dying out a few years ago, but had never really seen the damage, the reality of what was happening till moving here to Hot Springs, NC. Here at the Luck Cabin (and throughout the adjacent forest) there are scores of big HUGE old growth Hemlocks, and many smaller ones too - all dead or near death, falling down to the ground in piles, families of barren trunks, groves of up-turned roots.

I was told by an Old Timer neighbor that when the bark starts pealing off and shows this red color pictured here, it means it will soon fall to the ground. Another neighbor said after it's death, due to shallow roots, they will fall over within one year of dying.

*
The impact is much more apparent when you are standing in the forest surrounded by dead trees - from the spot I took these pictures, in a heavily, dense wooded area I counted approximately 20 dead Hemlocks from where I stood.

""The future of the species is currently under threat due to the hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae), a sap-sucking bug accidentally introduced from East Asia to the United States in 1924. The Adelgid has spread very rapidly in southern parts of the range once becoming established, while its expansion northward is much slower. Virtually all the hemlocks in the southern Appalachian Mountains have seen infestations of the insect within the last five to seven years, with thousands of hectares of stands dying within the last two to three years. Attempts to save representative examples on both public and private lands are on-going. A project named "Tsuga Search", funded by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is being conducted to save the largest and tallest remaining Eastern Hemlocks in the Park. It is through Tsuga Search that Hemlocks have been found with trunk volumes of up to 44.8 m³ within the Park, making it the largest eastern evergreen conifer, eclipsing in volume both Pinus strobus (Eastern White Pine) and Pinus taeda (Loblolly Pine).""

Under these giant dead trees are the young new sprouts, of tiny hemlocks - ones that looks free of the disease. One thing about the forest is it knows how to renew itself... the sucky thing is, we have yet to begin to understand what the impact of losing old growth trees has on the eco system. There may be some lag time between now and like, say 200 years from now when these can right themselves again. Then again, before recorded history I have to wonder how many times species were wiped out and no one would ever know about it now... if these things are part of natural life cycles, we call disasters?

*
""A 2009 study conducted by scientists with the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station suggests the hemlock woolly adelgid is killing hemlock trees faster than expected in the southern Appalachians and rapidly altering the carbon cycle of these forests. According to Science Daily, the pest could kill most of the region's hemlock trees within the next decade. According to the study, researchers found that "hemlock woolly adelgid infestation is rapidly impacting the carbon cycle in [hemlock] tree stands," and that "adelgid-infested hemlock trees in the South are declining much faster than the reported 9-year decline of some infested hemlock trees in the Northeast.""
*

What do I plan on doing with all my dead Hemlocks? One thing I can not do is burn them, because the pine would clog up my wood stove pipe and catch it on fire ... I can use the smaller branches for good kindling though. I am hoping to get a portable wood mill out here and turn them into lumber for building. Other then that I am not sure what to do except watch the Hemlock graveyards house the bugs and birds and slowly decay, while the tiny new trees reach for the light.

XOxoxo

June 21st to 27th St Neots

Monday, glorious day, barely any wind & lovely sun most of day. Gentle cruise back to Houghton Lock to view Houghton Mill. It is a National Trust property & we struggle to find places to use our membership at these properties as they tend to shut for the winter just as we return from our cruise & don’t open till we set off!! Problem here is moorings, there are EA moorings below the lock but they are on an island & you can’t get to the village/mill. We decided to visit the pub The Three Jolly Boaters, and this entitled us to use their mooring! Nice pub but food seemed pricey. Interesting village, but how on earth were these houses permitted planning? A small estate, clearly from the ‘60s, that just is not in keeping.

There was another picturesque pub in the village too, and the water mill was well worth a visit. If we had arrived earlier we could have seen some milling, but we bought a large bag of the flour & it made lovely bread. Pleasant tea room alongside plus a large camp site.

Being worn out by this exertion, we stopped the night.






Tuesday 22nd and an even better day, getting quite hot. Returning past Huntingdon we shared Godmanchester lock with a narrowboat reversing back to a mooring but we carried on. Apparently this meadow above Huntingdon Bridge is the largest one in the country at 365 acres.

At Brampton there is an old mill with it’s wheel turning, but it is a replacement & purely decorative addition to what is now a restaurant/hotel. Still it looks good.

Slight problem at Brampton Lock, and narrow bendy navigation channel to it when there is a nice direct route. The locks operate by the electric mechanism lifting the guillotine slightly to fill the lock and setting in motion an interlock timer. The gate will not lift further until the time delay has counted down, but here it wasn’t counting down. I lowered the gate, lifted it again & this time it worked!



We carried on to Buckden Marina to top up with fuel before any budget changes, plus water etc. We were able to self declare our propulsion usage at 10%. We had run a load of washing during our cruise, but the inverter tripped out. The only way to get it to do washing was to turn off the freezer. Clearly it is not big enough though we had been told it would be. Also we started getting flashing lights on the washer. The marina was offering a free night’s mooring, so we took them up on it. Lovely marina, some lovely chalets around it & good club house & gym. We also got free power & with a struggle I managed to get another load of washing done, but that was it as far as the machine was concerned!



So we now have to resolve the inverter problem & the washer problem.



A big day of cruising. 8 miles & 2 locks.



Wednesday 23rd was a day of fabulous weather.



I was alerted by a load of squeaking & much splashing in the water & looked out & thought it was a pair of otters. I photographed & videoed this for a while, but looking at it now & having talked to people at the marina, we are sure it was a pair of very large carp splashing around which they carried on doing for well over 5 minutes. These young swallows found our neighbours tiller to be a good perch

I walked the mile & half into Buckden to see the old Archbishop’s Palace that dated from around 1100 onwards. Buckden was quite a nice village with a couple of pubs & Post Office & shops & the palace quite interesting too. Why on earth would the Bishop of Lincoln have his palace built in Buckden which must be well over 50 miles away? It was used to accommodate Katherine of Aragon for a period when she wasn’t Henry 8th’s favourite wife.

I loved this pub notice board.

Whilst I was doing this Carol used the laundrette at the marina to clear all our washing. Off to the club house for a coffee & discussions with Mike at Debdale about our problems plus also to Aquafax. We then set off to St Neots, sharing St Neots lock with 2 plastic fantastics & an EA workboat......they were pressure washing slime off the walls & steps in the lock. We’ve never seen BW doing this, could it be a waste of money?



We moored up on the pontoon mooring alongside the town council offices, right by the water point which had been disconnected!! 5 1/2 miles & 2 locks.



Thursday 24th a busy day on the phone and more fabulous weather.



Found a useful car spares place on Huntingdon St where I got one spare alternator belt & then they got me another spare for the afternoon. Lovely market in the Market Square. Got some lovely fruit & veg plus Carol got a crab & I had a wild, line caught sea bream....beautiful.

I went into the council offices & moaned at the District Council desk about the hopeless tap they have provided at Huntingdon, before finding that the town council were guilty of cutting off the tap on the pontoon outside after vandals had broken the pipe & caused a big waste of water. This caused the council to find out they were supplying the water free, when they didn’t know they were doing so. They terminated the supply. Can I request that boaters write to St Neots Town Council (Clerk) Council Offices The Priory, St Neots Huntingdonshire PE19 2BH. I am trying to find the name of the Chairman so we can make it political.

After lunch I changed the engine oil, thought I had a spare oil filter, but hadn’t so the car spares place was useful again! Then gave the oven an almighty clean, have you tried Oven Pride? It works well but even with this it was a long & dirty job but I suppose this is a drawback to enjoying Carol’s cooking.



After many calls I decided on what to do with the inverter. It seemed from on-line investigation that our washing machine problems probably came from a 50p capacitor but am I really up to dealing with it?



Friday 25th and another lovely day.



We visited the church in St Neots & it is well, worth a visit, but you need to collect the key from the office over the road from the church. The roof has fabulously carved beams & decorations plus some interesting painting. Found that as our washer was only 2 years old it still has a Hotpoint parts warranty. Great! Call out cost £104!! I couldn’t get them to come to the pontoon mooring, despite giving them a post code, so on Friday we have to go back to Buckden. As to the alternator on Tuesday evening a 4kw inverter/charger is being delivered & the 2.5kw unit is being collected. I managed to get a suitable discount to make us happy to take this option.

So after lunch we set off, stopping after 400m to fill with water & empty the loo at the small marina there. No diesel or petrol any longer. We tootled along through Eaton Socon lock, disturbing the local youths jumping in off the top of the guillotine gate. They were a happy crowd and we were soon on our way and we enjoyed our pleasant gently cruise on this river. After about 4 ½ miles around ½ mile before the A1 crosses the river, tied to the river bank, using a plank to get back on board. Not many moorings here abouts.

Saturday & Sunday both fantastic days & we stayed put with Grand Prix, Moto GP & Wimbledon to watch plus Carol decorating our new watering & Buckby cans & I cleaned the lacquer off the mushrooms & re-polished them plus a few other bits and blogging. Lots of bats flying over the river at dusk.