Dominick Labino

"Azurite Envy," blown hot glass by apprentices of Dominick Labino, Carrell Clinic, Dallas, Texas.

Visit Labino's Web site.

Little XC in a Little Airplane

        Ground speed: 84 knots across North Texas landscape. We had a superb flight in MyMrMallory's little aerobat, and no, no spins or rolls, Immelmanns, or whifferdills, just straight flight in smooth morning air. We flew slowly enough to admire the view from 2,500 feet. I took pictures with my iPhone.

Joe washed and buffed the aerobat all week. It looked nice and shiny for our early morning flight.

Watched an Air Tractor take off for his cross-country to Idaho Falls. 

His speed: 230 mph with a service ceiling of 25,000 feet. 

The aerobat's wheel cover as we took off with a slight crosswind from the left. 

The shadow of our wheels as the airplane gains a positive rate of climb. (By habit, at this point I think, "Gear UP," even though aerobat has a fixed gear.) 

The shadow of the plane on the grass along the runway as we climb.

Over the nose of the aerobat: Hazy day with a high ceiling and still miles and miles of visibility. 

Photograph of the view over my shoulder. 

An hour later, ah, there is the marina at our destination.

Our destination, the grassy runway at Cedar Mills, pointing downhill and into the lake. Eek. 

It is a nice and long strip, though, of 3,000 feet, and well maintained.

Small mural at the restaurant at Cedar Mills. Good coffee there. 

Dusty Riding

Oil Field Gate

      A dainty garden gate leads up to a set of batteries, and no, that is not an effect of the lens making them look as if they lean, for they really are teetering to each side. 

       In-camera black and white process by my Nikon P7700.

Good-bye, Seamus, and Thank You

 

DUBLIN (AP) — Seamus Heaney, Ireland's foremost poet who won the Nobel literature prize in 1995, died Friday after a half-century exploring the wild beauty of Ireland and the political torment within the nation's soul. He was 74.

Heaney's family and publisher, Faber & Faber, said in a statement that Heaney died in a Dublin hospital. He had been recuperating from a stroke since 2006.

The Northern Ireland-born Heaney was widely considered Ireland's greatest poet since William Butler Yeats. He wrote 13 collections of poetry, two plays, four prose works on the process of poetry, and many other works.

Heaney was the third Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, joining Yeats and Samuel Beckett.

The eldest of eight children, Heaney went to Catholic boarding school in Northern Ireland's second-largest town, Londonderry.

Life in 1950s Londonderry — where Catholics outnumbered Protestants two to one but were gerrymandered from power — provided Heaney his first real taste of injustice and ambiguity Irish-style.

His early work was rooted in vivid description of rural experience, but gradually he wedded this to the frictions, deceptions and contradictions rife of his divided homeland.

In 1972, the most deadly year of Northern Ireland's conflict, Heaney left Queen's University in Belfast to settle in the Republic of Ireland. That year, he published "Wintering Out," a collection of poems that offered only oblique references to the unrest in the north.

His follow-up 1975 collection, "North," captured the Irish imagination with his pitch-perfect sense of the evils of sectarianism.

SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press 

 - See more at: Seamus Heaney

Landing, Taking Off, Dallas Love Field

Turning final to Dallas Love Field. And why, you ask, are you taking a picture during final????

Because, I respond, friskily, MyMrMallory is landing the Bonanza, not me. Ha.

And here is the view of the Dallas skyline, and I'm enjoying looking at it, and taking a picture of it with my iPhone while I wait to be cleared for takeoff. 

A Pitts with a Three-point Landing

Pitts landing at F14.

Rushed to See Last of Rain Lily

The rain lily is visible underneath the umbrella and sun shade.

Evening Star Rain Lily

White Prickly Poppy in Clay Soil

Late August Along Plum Creek

Late August in Archer County.

Delivering Wood Chips

Sawleaf Daisy, Coreopsis, Silverleaf Nightshade

     Alongside runway 35 at Kickapoo airport there grow abundantly some summer flowers. 

MyMrMallory stopped, I slipped out of my Jon Van Zyle flip-flops and into my boots, then walked amid the flowers to enjoy the opportunity for hand-held photography.

Runway 35, to the left and barely visible, lays underneath the afternoon clouds.

Saw-leaf Daisy.

Coreopsis.

Silver-leaf Nightshade.

Volunteers in My Garden: Ipomoea

      When Paul lay rocks along my wall, and enhanced them by some of the plants he brought, a stowaway joined the garden, a thriving one.

Bee Tenants Moved In

  Bees swarm around the opening provided to them by MyMrMallory. 

Supper on Snow-on-the-mountain

      The forb, Snow-on-the-mountain grows from July to October. The name of this euphorbia comes from the resemblance of a snowy mountain with they spread across a hill, which they do from Central to East Texas on both dry and moist soil. Its sap is poisonous. The plant provides food for insects, such as the ones I spotted on this stand of them, stone flies wasps, daubers, flower flies, grasshoppers, and a handful of Queen butterflies.

      Nearby the stand of Snow-on-the-mountain, sunflowers continue to thrive into late August, though some show signs of chomps from insects, such as this one below.

Stevie as Dracula

Earlier this year, Katie rescued two nestling Great-horned owls that had hopped out of their nest, a barrel in a barn. Sickened by West Nile virus, one of them died, and the other became blind. The blind one is growing up at Wild Bird Rescue. 

Wild Bird Rescue is planning a party in late October. 

Stevie attended their first meeting and got into the spirit of Halloween.

Here is the post-processed image of Stevie:

Old Roof, New Roof

Falls Flyover Sunrise

      The city of Wichita Falls, founded in the late 1800s, has a rich history in aviation. The workforce Sheppard Air Force Base, coming from all over the nation and world, infuses the community with dynamic new culture. In addition, Sheppard collaborates generously with the city in maintaining the municipal airport, soon to become regional airport. A nearby airport, Kickapoo, receives a large number of aircraft daily, from Cubs to Citations, and is the meeting place of the "Ol' Codgers" group of pilots, veterans of past wars, or not, who enjoy talking shop. Hobbyists devoted to aviation hangar their aircraft at Wichita Valley airport. On the edge of Lake Wichita, there lies a runway, now covered with growth, with buildings and hangars at the southwest end, still shown on a sectional as the Tom Danaher airport, where during Tom's younger years pilots would gather every weekend.
      It came as no surprise to me, and I felt charmed by it, that the community in 2007 chose to call the newly-constructed highway ramps "Falls Flyover." Here is an iPhone image I took as we "flew" over one of the ramps. In the background, we see the Attebury grain elevators built in the early Twentieth century by Jack Kemp.

Festus' Shadow on the Grass