Roasting another Rouge Vif d’Etampes pumpkin with the skin on (which makes it more moist)
Rouge Vif d’Etampes Pumpkin Pie
The Spy
Smoochie
Tree
Pink Stump
Dexie Marie
Fire Pit
Tree Fort
Sleepy Baby
Sleepy Smoochie
Tree at Sunrise
Missouri River Sunrise
St Louis Homes and Lifestyles Magazine on the rack! Featuring Spy Garden!
Click here for a direct link (it will open in a new window) to the article in the November/December issue of the magazine!
Here is an excerpt from the article about the pumpkins pictured earlier in this post…
Bright-red ‘Rouge Vif D’Etampes’ pumpkins dangle from a lattice arbor that also frames a garden vista centered with gray-green eucalyptus and frothy asparagus foliage. The decorative and highly edible squash were the most popular pumpkins in the Central Market in Paris in the 1880s and were used as the model for Cinderella’s coach.
November Issue of Missouri Conservationist, another great local magazine!
The eucalyptus is still hanging on. Still have plans to dig it up.
Soggy, frozen, wrinkly pumpkin
Tree Marigold still photogenic long after blooming
Coneflower
Parsley still quite green and perky despite the cold
Wisps of a lemon cucumber wine
Snowman’s Noses Carrot Patch
I like to leave some carrots in the ground through winter to dig up for snowman’s noses. You can see in the above picture where the carrot greens have been gnawed off by deer. The deer fence has a large opening that we have not repaired yet, so they are sneaking in and taking what they can get (which at this point is not much!)
Coneflower
Russian Red (also called Ragged Jack) Kale
A fallen and forgotten tomato
And who do we have here?!
He was moving very slowly (cold blood!) so it was easy to catch him and bring him inside for a closer look (and photoshoot of course haha) before releasing him.
Happy Friday friends! Hope you all had a great week. Cold and darkness has enveloped Spy Garden as of late and we’re a bit behind in the raking, garlic planting and other fall garden to-dos…But one highlight of our week was watching Disney’s The Humpback of Notre Dame. Makes me want to read the original by Victor Hugo. As we watched it, the Spy (he’s 9), remarked,
“This is a little dark for Disney.”
Hahhahaha
Speaking of darkness, here is an excerpt from an interesting article about a new invention called Vantablack…
…the blackest black ever seen, or, actually, not seen….
Vantablack, for Vertically Aligned NanoTube Array, is made by “growing” carbon nanotubes on a metal surface. (A nanotube is a billionth of a meter thick, or about the width of three gold atoms.) Light is trapped between the tubes and bounces around until it’s absorbed, so almost no light gets out.
Vantablack has enthralled not just the tech world but also artists and architects. Ben Jensen, 48, a founder and the chief technology officer of Surrey NanoSystems, spoke by telephone from his laboratory in Newhaven, England, about the material’s applications and why it might not be quite right for your home. (This interview has been edited and condensed.)
Q. Why are people so excited about Vantablack?
A test sample of VantablackCredit Surrey NanoSystems
A. The coating reflects so little light, three dimensions seem to disappear. When you look at Vantablack on some wrinkled aluminum foil, it looks like a black, flat, featureless void, even with your eyes right up to it. That and the fact that it’s the darkest material ever created.
How did all this start?
Growing carbon nanotubes isn’t new. But typically they’ve been grown at a very high temperature: 750 degrees centigrade. That would destroy most underlying materials, so they grew them on things like silicon, diamond and sapphire, which can stand high temperatures. We’re building on work to grow nanotubes at a lower temperature for microelectronics.
What’s special about carbon nanotubes?
It’s almost like an alien material from “Star Trek.” Imagine a drinking straw, closed at one end, with a wall one-atom thick. This straw is one-ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, but it is 10 times stronger than steel, and 10 times better at conducting heat than copper. It’s been known to exhibit what is called “ballistic transport”; electrons travel through it with almost no resistance. Vantablack packs billions of these straws together. (to read the full article in the NY Times click here)
Fascinating concept; and imagine the possibilities for artistic application of vantablack! In other color and light news…We are excited to visit Garden Glow at the Missouri Botanical Garden next week. Garden Glow is expected to sell out, so get your tickets soon!
I hope I can get some cool shots at Garden Glow; I always struggle trying to take decent photos at night. I’d also like to make a Spy Garden Garden Glow one day!
It’s a start! hahahah
I’ve also been doing a little crocheting this week. Crocheting is such a great thing to do when it is frigid out!
Hat for our friends’ newborn!
I do love a good pom pom
I made the same shaped hat for myself in black wool. I’m making some leg warmers for Baby out of the same purple (super soft!) yarn. Baby demanded the leg warmers. Then she demanded I unravel them (a request I did not accommodate) Hahah She also demanded this morning…
