Author: Low Wattage

Expat Welshman, educated (somewhat) in UK, left before it became fashionable to do so. Now a U.S. Citizen, and recent widower, playing with retirement and house remodeling, living in Delaware and rural Maryland (weekends).

Life’s a Beach

On vacation this week, borrowed a house from my rich business partner, on the beach at Lewes (say Lew-is), Delaware. Got here late Friday night via Delaware City, Delaware (more about which later). Raining today and windy with it, holiday innit?
Lewes (the First Town in the First State) was settled by the Dutch in 1631 in what was to become Delaware (the first state to sign the Declaration) so naturally it is home to the Zwaanendael Museum just a couple of blocks away from here, and perhaps a little more surprising home to the Kalmar Nykel, a replica of the Dutch ship that brought original settlers to Wilmington, Delaware (sixty miles North of here), however, they were Swedes, following me so far?
Here she is back in 2011 on the Bay.

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May-ish Photo Comp. – Trees.

Abject apologies for the lateness of this, I have been busy repairing some winter damage to the other house but that is no real excuse for my dereliction.  Anyway here we are and May is almost gone and photographic opportunities abound.  So how about we make the subject “Trees”.   It can be one, a few or a whole forest if can get them in the viewfinder.  I like trees and can often see the Ent in many of them.

Here are a few I took this morning wandering around the yard (me that is, the trees were their usual stationary selves).  t3cs

The conifer in the middle was our 1994 Christmas tree, now about 50 feet and thriving.

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Rural Humour

Living in the wilderness has some compensations. True we have no services that those in urban settings take for granted, trash collection, cable TV, municipal water or sewer systems to name a few.  But we do have “Honey Wagons”, these are driven by the folks who empty septic tanks every few years, not the world’s most desirable occupation but improved by a sense of Humour.
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Give me Liberty………

Yes, I know, it’s all about ships again.  Liberty ships in this case.  Last year I had a little field trip across the bay to Baltimore to see the USS John W. Brown, one of the last two surviving Liberty Ships in operation.  She was built in Baltimore in 1942 and has been part of the city landscape for the last ten years or so.  She is fully operational and certified for public use and steams up and down the east coast during the summer months.  Here she is out chugging on the Chesapeake Bay.
jbrown3

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The first idea is sometimes the best.

Returning from our boat trip in late last Summer, I only half seriously suggested we should take the boat to the Bahamas for the winter.
Well one thing led to another and the idea was shelved for 2013.  The winter here has been brutal, record cold and record snow, another 8 inches overnight.
To this worker in the wilderness that trip does not seem quite so crazy today.

Snow 2s

Gin and Fat.

Well this started out as a comment on Sipu’s recent post, then as usual it got so long and convoluted I decided it better belonged here.

A number of unforeseen consequences of Whitney’s cotton gin followed rapidly after its wider application.  The rapid growth in cotton fibre production in the southern states was accompanied by a huge supply of cottonseed, for every bale of cotton (480 lbs) an astonishing 700 pounds of cottonseed were produced, most of it was dumped in the nearest river (gins were often water powered) or simply left on the ground to rot.

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