This morning was maintenance and an "arts and crafts" day. I cleaned the camera sensor with a wet-mop kit, inspected it with an illuminated sensor magnifying tool to assure that it was clean and free of streaks.

Did a quick hippity-hop to the Hobby Lobby and picked up several sheets of "Beetle Black Crushed Velvet Scrapbook Paper" (SKU 982348) that I use to flock my lenses and adapters. I also use black velvet sheets that are adhesive-backed that I get there as well. The Beetle Black Crushed Velvet is a goto material that is used by others here as well as those on other macro-micro forums.

I rolled a piece of the Beetle Black (black side in) to make a lens hood to eliminate any fugitive light that might affect the quality of the image. Stray light will result in softness and haze so it is best to eliminate it.

Of course, I had to try it all out so I mounted the 28mm enlarger lens with its DIY hood onto the Vivitar 2X macro focus teleconverter and attached it to the fully extended bellows and staged this preserved green bottle fly for a focus stacking session of its compound eye.

. . . . who advised me to harvest all the green dermaters when I took out the vines before the first frost. I posted a shot of that harvest in early Nov, abut 75 dermaters.

As advised, I placed them, individually, on a carpeted surface, and as they began to ripen, Wife would transfer them to a dish and place it in a window with exposure to direct sunlight. Wow, more dematers than we could consume, so we treated three close-by neighbors with a number of these delicious delectables.

I lost count, but I have enjoyed more scrump-licious BLTs than I can count on two hands, with a few toes included. The final treat occurred today. Life, and my dermater harvest, is GOOD! Thanks’ Hoggers.

DeanS

An energy company wants to put a solar farm on over 600 acres of prime farmland in Madison County, Indiana, a few miles from my home. The only people in the county who want it are government officials with dollar signs in their eyes. This project, if approved, will destroy the livelihood of many area farmers, some of whom are friends of mine. Even more crippling is that the electricity produced will be transmitted elsewhere for use.

People do not, apparently, understand that farmland is something that people cannot make more of. The world population is increasing by leaps and bounds, yet big corporations want to take away the land used to feed people. This attitude is senseless.

Solar farms, go away!

Any of you "old-timers" familiar with this? I was remembering when I was little & at my grandparents house. My grandfather & I would go down to the basement & he let me shovel some coal from the coal bin into a bucket (coal scuttle?) and then we would empty that into the "stoker" (basically a large box with a lid that automatically transferred the coal to the furnace). Then we would take out the "clinkers" (by-products of coal combustion) and haul them off to the "dump" (local junk yard). On the ceiling above the furnace was what looked like a giant octopus ( all the huge, round duct-work for carrying the heat to different portions of the house).
Great memories, but I have no pictures. Does anyone? If so, please post them.

Photo below is not mine but shows what I'm talking about. It seems to have been converted to natural gas.