I like winter in general – snow, cold weather, and a fire in the fireplace. One thing I do HATE is the trend over the last few years of receiving ICE instead of snow…aka the freezing rain of terror that has been the theme of winter for the last couple years. We generally don’t get a ton of snow here, I think the average is supposed to be about 12″ but usually at least one good snow every winter seems about right, sometimes a couple. But the last few years have been disappointing in the snow category with little to no snow at all…nowhere even close to the “average”.

I was glad when the ice that started falling Monday afternoon eventually turned into a good steady snowfall. It only amounted to maybe 3″ but that was good enough because I had pretty much forgot what snow was like. So I went out and enjoyed it and took a few photos.

Here is one back at the creek. It was cool because pieces of ice and clumps of snow were slowing floating downstream. It was almost like you could see the river freezing over. It was cool. One of those things that a photo can’t accurately capture.

Over the weekend I spent a considerable amount of time playing the old school Super Mario Bros 3 with Hannah’s brother in law, Al. When I was a kid I played nintendo all the time. But over time as I got older and video games became more advanced and complex I eventually more or less loss interest. I like the old controllers with only an A and B button. It seems like the controllers now have 47 buttons and are identified by colors and shapes that somehow you are supposed to memorize.

I guess this just proves that I am in fact getting old because I find a commonplace technology among younger generations just too overwhelming, complex, and time consuming for me to master.

And yes, I know that image is from the original mario bros.

Ok class today we are going to study plant reproduction, particularly in plants that are incapable of reproducing the good old fashioned way.

In this case it’s my lemon tree. For plants to fruit they have to have their flowers pollenated. Which I think is kind of weird because they produce the pollen and the pollen receptacle…but have no way to move their pollen from point A to B. This is normally where bees or some other kind of insect come into play. But this lemon is kept indoors and thankfully there isn’t a hive of bees in my closet. Luckily, the flowers smell so good they attract me instead, and I get the job done. I doubt the plant cares exactly how it happens, just as long as it does.

There really isn’t much to it… I take a q-tip and collect pollen from the stamen (the little tentacle things in a flower) and then brush it all over the pistil (the stem in the middle of the flower that is covered in some kind of “pollen glue”). I am not sure why I know what the parts of a flower are called.

I usually collect pollen from a variety of flowers and mix and mingle it all together and rub the pollen potpourri on the flowers because I am not sure if the pollen will work in the same flower or if it needs pollen from a different flower.

Anyways… so that’s really all there is to making lemon babies. It’s actually kind of neat when you think about how the whole process works in nature.

Over the years I have become more tolerant of some things and less tolerant of others. One activity which I have become almost completely intolerant to is smoking. I went to visit my homie Ian this weekend and Saturday night we went with a group of friends to this mexican restaurant in the trendy new power & light district. The place apparently transitions into a ‘club’ of sorts as the night progresses, so towards the end of our stay there it was more people drinking and dancing with some music and a cocky guy with a microphone occasionally yelling at people and trying to act cool.

At one point the cocky guy with the microphone yelled out to the crowd “hey whoever is smoking in here, put that $#!% outtt!”. I then learned from Ian that smoking was illegal in restaurants, bars, etc in Kansas City. Which makes it just one of the many cities around me that have embraced the idea that smoking indoors is complete obnoxious as well as a substantial health hazard to customers and especially employees. So KC, Springfield, Fayetteville, and probably countless others have all gone smoke-free and I have heard little to nothing about such an idea in Joplin. Not to say that nothing good happens here, but for once I wish Joplin would be a city that is setting a good trend, rather than resisting one.

I saw a story on the news the other night about a no-smoking proposal in Carthage, and pretty much everyone they interviewed was opposed to the idea, even ones who don’t smoke (???). Not even because they want to smoke, but because they feel it’s their right to smoke or because they don’t want the city to “tell them how to run their business”.

To me, smoking in a restaurant is like farting next to someone who is eating – except the fumes from cigarettes not only smell toxic, they actually ARE toxic.

My drive home from work each day is maybe a mile at best but on a fairly regular occasional I feel compelled to stop and take a photo of something. Here is one such photo I took last week that I thought was worth sharing. The sun was just setting and was at such an angle that the light was just skimming the tops of the trees. It was pretty cool and thanks to my trusty camera you can all enjoy the scene as well!

Saturday Matt and I decided to hang out for a bit and enjoy the nice weather.  I had been wanting to take some pictures around the falls for awhile so it seemed like a great day to try… except that once we arrived I realized i didn’t have the quick release for my tripod so i couldn’t do the long exposure images I had my mind set on. None the less it was still a nice day.

I remember going to this spot a lot when I was a kid and thinking it was really cool and it still is. Shoal Creek is a fairly large river, so when the whole width of the river drops 20 feet or so… it makes quite a sound…which in my mind is half the point of a waterfall. When I was little I remember how the area seemed dangerous because all of the rock surrounding the falls was really smooth and slippery.

Although it is known locally simply as ‘the falls’ the actual name is Grand Falls, and to me it kind of resembles a miniature niagara falls. Personally I think the falls is way undervalued as a natural asset to Joplin.  I would like to see the huge concrete wall and man-made dam torn down because it’s ugly as sin and makes a terrible backdrop for Missouri’s largest waterfall – but I don’t think this is likely to ever happen because I believe the dam creates a mini-lake in shoal creek which is Joplin’s vital source of water. I also think the area would be a lot better if the road (and especially the parking lot) was moved further away so that you could park in a designated lot and then walk a short wooded trail or something to get to the falls. I think that would be great because I feel the scenery and ambiance of the area is severely degraded by all the cars and the somewhat busy road that passes maybe not 100 yards from the falls itself.

In my mind, the area has the potential to be a state treasure if it were so treated…but I know things like moving a road and everything else that would have to happen to do this are extremely expensive and therefore unlikely to happen…so I can be content enjoying it as-is, which is still pretty neat for Joplin. It really is a cool waterfall and having not been there in several years I greatly enjoyed re-discovering it!

Here are a few other photos:

That water was really pretty and you could see big rocks and boulders in the fairly deep water.

 

 

A wider shot of the area from below the falls.

 

 

A cool gravely area looking downstream.