Water Bridge

I'm flabbergasted!

Water Bridge in Germany ..... What a feat!

Six years, 500 million euros, 918 meters long.......now this is engineering!
This is a channel-bridge over the River Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany, as part of the unification project. It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin. Be sure to double-click on this picture to get a good look at it!

















To those who appreciate engineering projects, here's a puzzle for you armchair engineers and physicists:

QUESTION:
Did that bridge have to be designed to withstand the additional weight of ship and barge traffic, or just the weight of the water?

ANSWER:
It only needs to be designed to withstand the weight of the water!
Why? A ship always displaces an amount of water that weighs the same as the ship, regardless of how heavily a ship may be loaded.

It's a Great Day in May!

Today I'm blessed with another beautiful day and the mosquitoes are not bad at all. Maybe all that spraying the city's been doing helped or maybe the breeze we've been having blows them away, but I'm thankful about having a little reprieve - for now! I visited my friend at Bank's Lake again, and, as usual, we sat outside on the bench, just talking and watching nature. I did see another alligator (with the binoculars) but it wasn't close enough for a good shot with my little camera. She told me that earlier this morning a big 8 footer was laying on the boardwalk and I could have got a really good picture. Maybe I'll try going there earlier in the mornings and see. Here are some pictures that I thought turned out really well, considering I don't have a fancy camera:
This picture to the left, is me looking down from the landing of the boardwalk, onto a protruding patch of land with cypress roots growing up from under it and the reflection of the opposite trees in the water. I thought it looked kind of interesting. Afterwards, Gizzy and I stopped at Roquemore Memorial Park. We saw a few new memorials that were added recently. Gizzy had to run straight to his favorite "Rocky's Bridge" memorial. Then, we strolled around while I took some scenic pictures.
This memorial is one of my favorites. It commemorates the departing of a beloved daughter. It's a lovely statute of a girl reading, surrounded by beautiful roses. The roses' first bloom is almost over, but they bloom continually all year through autumn. They have a lovely, fruity fragrance.
Here's a close-up of one of the remaining big blossoms:



















Lastly, Gizzy tried out the swings to see if they're still Gizzy-proof and that's the resulting short movie clip of him swinging:


(just click on the right-arrow to view - it's very short!)

Here are some stills for those of you with a slow internet connection and no patience - you know who you are ;-)




Maaaaam, I'm ready to go now.....












And this, ladies and gents, is what happens when a woman has no grandkids. Have a nice May!

A Gator and a Skink

Hello again from Bank's Lake. Today was a beautiful day (and still is) with a nice breeze. If you can stay away from the trees where the moist, shaded spots are, you should be ok with the mosquitoes not being too bothersome.

I visited my friend (who runs Bank's Lake Outpost) with Gizzy today and we sat outside on the bench chatting about this and that (my favorite topic.)

That's us: My friend, I and Gizzy! (oh, and the guy who's taking the photo)


















As we were sitting there talking, she pointed out an alligator to me. I left Gizzy tied up to the bench for a minute, while I walked on the dock to take a closer look. My camera doesn't have a very strong zoom lens, so I had to crop the photo to see it better:

Just double-click on the photos to make them bigger and that should help.














Wile I was out there by myself (without the dog) I took a few photos of some water lilies. They are all over the lake now and from a distance look like big, puffy snowballs. You can even smell them way before you get close to them (especially today with a nice breeze going.) Their scent reminds me of a mix between a passion flower and a tuberose. They smell sweet with a hint of citrus. I just love it!

















We watched the fishermen pull up with their boats and walking to the Outpost to purchase their crickets and such. The worms were all gone because there was a big fishing tournament yesterday. I read the paper and suddenly noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye...here came along this little skink, it's a form of a lizard, and he ran right past us and back towards the Outpost because he knows where he can find some crickets ;-)












It was another beautiful day and I couldn't resist taking a few more photos:


















There were quite a few people canoeing and kayaking today. Here we saw what looked like to me a father and son team, coming back in:
















As I drove away, I saw a couple having a picnic under a tree with their three-wheel motorcycle right next to them. You see a lot of motorcycles here because it's just such a beautiful place to ride.

Earth Day 2009

In honor of Earth Day today, I took a few photos and a nice little video clip from my walk around Lake Irma with Gizzy this morning.




I hope you can hear the birds singing. I love listening to all those different sounds. When I close my eyes, I can imagine being in a tropical rain forest somewhere. I just don't understand why there are so many mosquitoes with all those birds around. Don't birds eat mosquitoes? I know dragonflies do. Maybe I need to start raising them.



(Click arrow ABOVE to view video)

I set my alarm and we headed out early, since I learned that all the mosquitoes in Georgia are now after ME! Apparently it must be open season for DORIS! No matter what I do, they attack me. I sprayed repellent everywhere (or so I thought) but must've missed a spot between my fingers. Well, guess where I got stung? Also, they sting right through my clothes. I give up! For me, resistance is futile. I need a beekeeper's outfit! Or do like I do every summer - go out very early in the morning and then stay inside for the rest of the day! (poor Gizzy)

Here's a picture of Gizzy and I that a friend took when she came walking up with her two dogs.



















On the way back home, we saw this log cabin that someone's building around the corner from where I live (they've been working on it for a while)


















Lastly, please click below to see how Valdosta, Georgia, celebrated Earth Day:

Valdosta Daily Times

Bank's Lake National Wildlife Refuge and Pear Blossoms

Greetings from Bank's Lake! (This photo was taken two years ago, when my friend took me for a boat ride and we kept getting stuck on the roots of the Cypress trees)




(REMEMBER to double click on the photos to make them large for better viewing.)

Today, I would like to share a few photos that I took on the way to Bank's Lake back on February 1st, 2009, because the weather was interesting with the clouds and the sun playing peek-a-boo. I live only about 1 mile away from the National Wildlife Refuge, so we (my dog, Gizzy, and I) visit there often.

If you would like to know more about Bank's Lake, just click here:

U.S.Fish & Wildlife Service

On the way to the lake, I passed my two most favorite pear trees. They are late/winter pears and give an abundance of pears that I like to cook up into a delicious compote. I look forward to these pears, but look, they were blooming already and it was barely February. We were still expecting some frost and freezing temperatures. My concern was that the blossoms won't survive and I would not get pears again this year. They didn't produce last year. I was told these trees skip a season sometimes.

But the blossoms sure looked beautiful. I wanted to share some pictures for those of you that still had snow to provide a little glimpse of Spring.
























Here's Gizzy inside the car, barking and yelping at me as if to say: "hurry up already with the picture taking and take me to the lake..."



















When we got there, I placed him on an old tree stump and proceeded to take a few very photogenic shots of him posing like Rin-Tin-Tin (for those of you too young to remember, Rin-Tin-Tin was a German Shepard movie hero dog, similar to Lassie that I saw on TV in Germany when I was a kid)






Soon, the clouds began to get darker and thicken, so that the sun was almost covered completely, except for a few rays that reflected on the water.




Eventually, it got so dark that I feared of getting rained on and we headed on home.



Only it never rained that day.

Walking Buddies (with video clip)

This clip is from last year, in July, but since I didn't blog then, here it is now. A few of us always ended up being at the lake (Lake Irma) in the morning at the same time. Some walked regularly, others fished and I just did whatever Gizzy wanted to do because, after all, it's HIS walk.

(Lake Irma, March,'09)
We decided to have a little celebration whenever it's someone's birthday. This time it was Joe's 70th and I brought my camera along.







This little clip was an accidental movie (July, '08) because I had never filmed before and somehow I recorded, when I thought I was just making a group photo. I think it's kind of cute, so here it is ;-)