Sweetbay Magnolia - Magnolia virginiana

It was raining steadily when this photo was taken

these two single flower photos were taken on a clear day - the blossoms have an incredible fragrance

Eastern Box Turtle - Terrapene carolina

14 June 2013    ©smck

"Box turtles are usually seen early in the day or after rain (it was in fact raining when this photograph was taken); they often retire to swampy areas during the hot summer months. They are fond of slugs, earthworms, wild strawberries, and mushrooms poisonous to man - which has killed many a human who has eaten their flesh.  New York Indians are responsible for eliminating this turtle from much of the area between Ohio and New England; they ate Box Turtle meat, used the shells for ceremonial rattles and buried turtles with the dead.  A few specimens are known to have lived for more than 100 years, having served as 'living records,' - with fathers then sons carving their names or other family records on their shells.  If habitat conditions remain constant, a Box Turtle may spend its life in an area scarcely larger than a football field."  -   from The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles & Amphibians

Spider Mother

05 June 2013

Rainy Morning At Black Hill

Pi

I’ve always been an absent minded kind of a guy but as I age it seems as if my memory might be really not working well – so on a whim I decided to memorize the decimal values of Pi (p) out to 100 decimal places to check out the old grey matter.  When I completed that task I couldn’t seem to stop wanting to ‘just do another 50’.  Well I pretty well have that damn transcendental (non-repeating never ending decimal string) out to 300 places now AND I AM NOT GOING TO GO ANY FARTHER!!

  pi = 3. 14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510

        58209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679

        82148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128

        48111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196

        44288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091

        45648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273

         . . . .  and so on forever

The dark print numerals after the decimal place above are the first 300 decimal places, now etched in some manner into my brain – but I keep thinking that maybe another 100 or so might be OK – say 500 places – a nice round number, eh?

[examining this post this morning and saw that I had inadvertently posted without tidying up - so is it my memory or just a normal mistake, eh?]