Name That Drink

Since we've been in the new house, we've discovered a simple non-alcoholic mixed drink that NDM is in love with. This beverage accounts for probably 25% of unfinished drinks left lying around our house (also 60% various teas and 15% suisse mocha -- 100% NDM leftovers)...
It consists of a splash of grenadine (enough to just cover the bottom of a pint glass) covered with a can of Diet Pepsi. Yeah, I know, I wouldn't drink it either, but it makes NDM very happy. After over a year, despite our increasing sophistication leading to use of a bartender spout for the grenadine, we still don't have a name for this drink! Any suggestions?

Serviceberry Harvest

When EJB visited this last weekend, he pointed out that we weren't harvesting our serviceberries. This is one of the more edible of the antique, rarely-eaten fruits that he lives and dies for; they are actually quite good. I cleaned out our bush and froze a quart or so which will one day become preserves.

Beat The Heat (Pets)

Nothing like a nice crunchy bowl of ice on a hot day!

Besides hoovering ice, 'Dolon has also evolved some strange drinking habits at the dog park. He now lies down with a water bowl between his front paws and will frequently submerge his entire muzzle in the water. Sometimes he blows bubbles. If another dog comes near, he'll hook one of his paws around the bowl and drag it closer in to his belly. This is the kind of dog you get if you raise him without regular doses of Sesame Street...

Rotating Poles

So we saw these really nifty wind sculptures by Lyman Whitaker while visiting the Missouri Botanical Garden. Unfortunately, I did not get a very close look at them because of how they were installed, but I've been thinking about how to make some sort of less attractive approximation.

The only critical engineering element is the bearing. The Whitaker sculptures apparently use a sealed ball bearing "at the top of a vertical rod", which I suppose is to reduce the thrust load on the bearing. I'm unclear of their definition of top, however... It does make sense to place the bearing as high as you can, reducing the amount of the sculpture that will spin and produce drag.

There are lots of types of bearings. Generally I would expect a spinning pole to need to support a moderate thrust load with very little radial load, but at fairly high speeds. The speed probably mean that a ball thrust bearing would not work all that well, so I'm guessing a roller thrust bearing might be the way to go if a ball bearing doesn't cut it.

Wouldn't you think that there would be readily available plans on the Internet for making some kind of rotating pole thing? As far as I can tell, two kinds of rotating pole assemblies exist electronically: rotating flag poles, and trick stripper poles. Both of these use bottom-mounted bearings, which spin the full weight of the pole and anything hanging off of it -- which I guess means it is silly for me to worry about whether I need roller thrust bearings instead.

I guess what I need is a nice 12' galvanized steel pole to fit a sealed ball bearing's inner dimension, and a shorter length that fits the bearing's outer dimension which can depend from it and will have my windsocks fastened to it. Or I guess I could even use a separate bearing for each propeller element.
Something I don't fully understand -- remember, I'm a software guy -- is how to fasten the bearings. Do you ever have any choices besides pressure fits and straight welds? Larger bearings often come with cast mounting accessories on the outer piece, but the inner piece is often featureless. Flanged ball bearings provide another option, but don't really relieve my consternation about how best to connect one piece to another.

Maybe I'll email Lyman.

Adam Blacklisted For Indecency (Reblog)

An actor who played Adam in a vignette at the Creation Museum has had his clip pulled because of his real life activities. He gives a particularly pertinent quote at the end of the AP article:

"It's make-believe."

Missouri Botanical Garden (Recommendation)

We visited the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis this weekend with EJB, his mother, and his daughter. It was a nice change of pace from the excellent Chicago Botanic Garden, and even held up acceptably to EJB's mother's marvelous private garden that I just posted about.
A non-vegetal highlight was a beautiful hanging Chihuly in the visitor's center at the garden's entrance.
In the line of plants, I really liked the asparagus fern (Asparagus densiflorus 'Myersii')...
The Peruvian golden shrimp plant (Pachystachys lutea), which I'd never seen before...
The king's spear asphodel (Asphodeline lutea), which had neat little fruits that yield a yellow dye...
This dramatic Amazonian elephant's ear (Alocasia x amazonica)...
A wonderful dense stand of bamboo... I really need to get some bamboo for our yard, but it is so expensive!
There were also many wonderful stones in the Chinese garden. The most dramatic were the Taihu stones. I'm not sure if these limestones always come from Lake Taihu, or just get that name because of their prevalence in that area. Maybe one day we'll get one of our own -- after we've got a nice thicket of bamboo going, of course...
I'm not sure what kind of stone this aggregate is. Maybe CRB will chime in with an answer? It is natural, but does share a lot of characteristics with concrete.
There was a really nice bridge in the Chinese garden...
The bridge to an island in the Japanese garden was also very picturesque, but closed to the public.
The waters around these gardens were full of koi and other carp. These were some of the largest such fish I have seen anywhere, and must be very old.

Failed Fence Kludge

Our garden will never look as nice as EJB's mother's because we have a wonderful dog. I have a more permanent solution in place now to keep him from destroying everything in our back yard in his frenzied search for cicadas to eat -- this initial pass at a dog barrier was a failure.

One Garden To Rule Them All

On the way back from our weekend trip, we stopped at EJB's mother's house. His mom has the most extraordinary private garden I have ever seen; these few pictures totally fail to do it justice.
There are lots of smaller plantings from the street front up to her house. Then her huge back yard is so riotous with interesting colors, textures, elevations, and smells that you just don't know which way to go to further appreciate its beauty.
One of the plants I enjoyed the most in her yard was this excellent ornamental asparagus, leaning a little more than usual due to our recent high winds.
She even has a few smaller accent gardens with various succulents. Many of those pictured here are in home-cast cement troughs.
There is even an old mulberry tree. Here we witness EJB's inevitable tree climbing ritual (although I shrunk the picture down so much that he just looks like some particularly strange branches). Unwilling to play the chump and pick fruit by hand, he's placed a tarp from his trunk under the tree and is jumping up and down to dislodge the mulberries. A quick spritz and it is time to eat!