Jeffrey B. Banke Posted December 31, 2020 Share Posted December 31, 2020 Sheila, it is so easy, there are 39.307 inches to 1 meter = 100cm = 1000mm So to ball park 39.3 inches to a meter there are 2.544cm to each inch, ball park it at 2.5, or approximating 5cm for 2 inches, or 30.5cm for each foot, or approximately 91.6cm for a yard, and 1.6 Kilometers to each mile, which also helps with the translation for MPH to KMPH But we are all using metric every day, you use your 5cm (50mm-2 inch) lens, or you 200mm (20cm -7.8 inch) lens every day don't you? I ski on 200cm skis, and am 183cm tall, I shoot a 5.56mm firearm and a 7mm Magnum, so you can see we are using metric in many of the sports or other activities like photography that we may participate in. Now when you get into volume we do not have consistency, where they do in Metric. 1 US fluid gallon is equal to 3.785411784 liters and 1 Imperial gallon is equal to 4.54609 liters. An English gallon is 1.2 US gallons, or 153.7 fluid ounces, (160 fluid ounces in an Imperial gallon) so how does work out with cooking if you are using an English cook book? There is no confusion using a French recipe vs Italian, vs any other country using metric. Just for fun :-) Anyway, Happy New Year to one and all! 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Wendy Townrow Posted December 31, 2020 Share Posted December 31, 2020 Happy New Year everyone .... hard to believe this very strange year is drawing to a close Link to post Share on other sites
Linda Bestwick Posted December 31, 2020 Share Posted December 31, 2020 We had a bit of snow that melted quickly and today a hard frost, so the worst I've had to deal with so far is breaking a bit of ice on the duck pond. Jeff, that is a lot of snow!! Sari, loooooving the videos. It looks like you have a little winter paradise there Wendy, you have snow?!?! Happy New Year everyone. Hopefully we will all get over tomorrows reset quickly. And hopefully 2021 will be a better year in everyway for us all. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Sheila Fitzgerald Posted December 31, 2020 Share Posted December 31, 2020 Jeff, some of it I do get. We use metric in measuring medication doses so I do ok with those measurements, but the rest just gives me a headache. Happy New Year everyone. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Jeffrey B. Banke Posted December 31, 2020 Share Posted December 31, 2020 Sheila, I forgot all about medications are also metric LOL! I found the easy way to remember length is just approximate for most things, like 2.5cm to an inch and 39 inches to a meter, 160KM = 100miles, but then I was in an industry using both all the time, so I had an advantage there. Have a great New Year! 2 Link to post Share on other sites
Sari ONeal Posted December 31, 2020 Author Share Posted December 31, 2020 I'm so used to switching between the units (US vs rest of the world) it's pretty much 2nd nature by now. Of course, it's strictly a matter of need -- if one never needs the conversions, why would one ever even think about them. I do the temperature, distance/length and volume, but as I never need the specifics like tool sizes in metric vs. "standard"/imperial, I would have to calculate those separately. Meanwhile, my husband has the metric equivalents for standard sizes down impressively well - but that's because he's been using them all his working life. If I asked him about the other conversions, I'd get a blank stare...LOL And yeah, having the medications in imperial units would be a nightmare...LOL Happy New Year, Wendy, I hope 2021 is awesome! Sheila - yeah, nearly all of the trees in that video are on us. And yes, lots of small stuff, shrubby trees and bushes. Mother Nature and the horses are the only ones doing any "maintaining"...LOL If a bigger tree falls we cut it for firewood, otherwise the wildlife gets to take care of it. Bugs and birds benefit from it, as well as birds like their sheltered places where stuff has grown in to thickets - none of those are on the video, as I couldn't walk through them, haha My "butterfly jungle" has some serious thickets, and the little birds love them. There used to be a lot more of it, before the neighbor cleared the fence line and demolished it 😐 Linda - the "winter paradise" didn't last long - never does around here.. LOL! We got a little bit of snow yesterday, too, but it was all gone within a few hours.... Supposed to get started on rain again, gonna have to put the horses in for the night. 3 Link to post Share on other sites
Sheila Fitzgerald Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 LOVE the slow motion snow fall. I've only been in snow falling once or twice. When our oldest was living in Flagstaff. I have to say, driving in the snow was freakishly scary coming down that mountain. I won't do that again anytime soon. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Wendy Townrow Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 16 hours ago, Linda Bestwick said: Sari, loooooving the videos. It looks like you have a little winter paradise there Wendy, you have snow?!?! Happy New Year everyone. Hopefully we will all get over tomorrows reset quickly. And hopefully 2021 will be a better year in everyway for us all. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx lol Linda, Sari said she had rain, I said she had more than us ... snow here, not going to happen any time soon I am guessing Sari your place looks lovely. Are you saying your neighbour cleared your side of the fenceline? Neighbours can be a pain, we had to get our neighbour to move his driveway as it was on our property, before he did it, he was trying to say that our house was partly on his land ... umm nope! We had 21mm of rain to start 2021 off ... I am going to take that as a good omen Happy New Year everyone, may the dl Gods bless us with a profitable year! 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Sari ONeal Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 Sheila - yes, driving in snow can be tricky, it just depends on the circumstances. Wendy - yeah, the old fence was in horrible condition, and they put up a new one (they have lots of cattle, and they're notorious of just walking through fences if the fence doesn't look intimidating enough!), so they wanted to make sure no trees were going to fall on the brand new fence right away. So they cleared up way far to our side, too, and took a big part of the butterfly jungle out. All the flowering trees got demolished 😐 And yet, not long after they got the new fence up, one of the big trees they left up fell over in high winds, right over the fence - but it didn't cause much damage. It started raining again when I was putting the horses in this afternoon, and for once it helped me get JJ in. She always hates going in and usually I need to catch her to lead her in the barn. This time, she was standing next to the barn right close to the stall door, and it started raining - I opened the door and asked her if she'd go in, and she did! LOL! Made it quicker and easier than having to convince her to come to me to be caught.... Supposed to get freezing rain with high winds tonight, and then a chance of snow. I guess we'll see how 2021 starts in this part of the world. Cold and wet, I guess! 😮 Link to post Share on other sites
Wendy Townrow Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 bummer on the butterfly jungle being demolished, hopefully it recovers quickly. lol on JJ going in easily, she obviously knows where it is more comfortable. Link to post Share on other sites
Sari ONeal Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 Wendy - Sometimes she puts her stubbornness aside and does things the easy way They'd be really miserable in that cold rain right now! The wind chill is way below freezing. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Sheila Fitzgerald Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 I'd guess she knows how comfortable (temperature wise) it is in the barn after the last snow you guys had since it's still fresh in her memory. Always good with they're cooperative And it sounds like a spring project to re-seed the butterfly jungle. At least with the flowering plants. LMK if you want some milkweed seeds. I can send you. some of mine. These are pretty hearty. I was pulling out the little plants and reseeding them after I sacraficed them to the caterpillars, but then I got lazy and didn't get around to it on a few plants and they're regenerating and starting to grow again. So I'm cutting back the ones out front as these last caterpillars need food (I found 6 quite large ones on the plants a few days ago - can't recall if I mentioned that before or not). So hopefully they'll be bushier this next spring. I'll be planting a few more between the three plants I have out there too to help make it more dense. The directions online say to plant three plants a few inches from each other and separate those by about 12 inches. So basically pant in clusters. Since I bought potted plants in the spring, I'm not sure how many actual plants were in the pots. It looks like just two. But I've been collecting quite a few seeds the last month or so that they were producing seed pods. Link to post Share on other sites
Wendy Townrow Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 lol Sari, even stubborn knows when to e co-operative when it needs to, Sheila you have reminded me that I really need to work on my butterfly garden, a couple of food plants I put in have died so I need to try again. It would help if the wallabies stopped eating them as well ... sigh! Link to post Share on other sites
Linda Bestwick Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 7 hours ago, Wendy Townrow said: lol Linda, Sari said she had rain, I said she had more than us ... snow here, not going to happen any time soon I am guessing Sari your place looks lovely. Are you saying your neighbour cleared your side of the fenceline? Neighbours can be a pain, we had to get our neighbour to move his driveway as it was on our property, before he did it, he was trying to say that our house was partly on his land ... umm nope! We had 21mm of rain to start 2021 off ... I am going to take that as a good omen Happy New Year everyone, may the dl Gods bless us with a profitable year! Haha, serves me right for speed reading! I know the worlds gone mad but I was thinking it couldn't have gone that mad surely 😂 Phew! 2 Link to post Share on other sites
Sheila Fitzgerald Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 Spending the first day of 2021 backing up files. My husband got me an 8TB hard drive so I'm transferring all my photos over. I have two backup hard drives at all times and retire one as I add a new one (the one I just retired was almost full anyway). Hours to go for the back ups to complete. But at least it's a bit of insurance. Took the pup to the park today. He had a blast. He loves his time on nice green grass. I guess our next house should have a better landscaped yard so he can have some grass of his own 2 Link to post Share on other sites
Wendy Townrow Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 awesome Sheila! Link to post Share on other sites
Sari ONeal Posted January 2 Author Share Posted January 2 7 hours ago, Sheila Fitzgerald said: nice green grass Most of ours goes dormant for the winter months. Sure, there are some random small green spots, but mostly it's all yellow now. Green will start back up in March/ April. Link to post Share on other sites
Jeffrey B. Banke Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 Great idea Sheila, must do that myself Link to post Share on other sites
Sari ONeal Posted January 2 Author Share Posted January 2 Oh, about the butterfly jungle -- it's just that it had all those flowering trees - I think they were wild / native plums - and those attracted lots of early pollinators in spring. I would love to have the trees back, but unless they grow back from the dropped seeds or any root stock that might be there (probably isn't), it's probably not gonna happen. The main plant now that supports the butterflies (Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars) is the pipevine, and it's still growing there, even though the demolition took some of it out, too. There might be other native plants as well that are host plants for other butterflies. So if I ever was to plant anything there, it'd be some native plants that are butterfly hosts (for the caterpillars). It's not really suitable for Milkweed because it gets lots of shade from the trees that are left. The area is fenced in so the horses can't get there, either, so basically it's just a wild growing area for wildlife. If I ever go there now it's in winter or early spring, because there's also tons of Poison Oak everywhere, and I don't want it on me! Also, I have TONS of Milkweed in the pastures, all of that is native, so the best kind to grow here. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Jeffrey B. Banke Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 Sari, that poison Oak stuff is horrible, I have run into it several times. The last time I was in a trench putting in a new water line, on a hot day, my arms were brushing against some roots, didn't think about it, but a year earlier in that area I had killed off (or so I thought) some poison Oak plants. I wiped the sweat off my face with my arm and ended up with my face covered in hives from the poison oak. Apparently, even though the plant may be dead the Urisioil (the oily substance in the plant that causes reactions) can remain active for 3 or more years in the roots before it finally disperses. Link to post Share on other sites
Sheila Fitzgerald Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 I'm very happy that I've never had any personal experience with poison oak or poison ivy. Hope to continue that trend too. Sari, that makes sense on the butterfly plants. I wasn't really thinking about all the shade from trees. The area I planted ours in is in full sun for only the first part of the day, but it seems to be enough to sustain it. The second section I'll be planting in the spring will have full sun for a larger part of the day as it's more out in the open (but we still get quite a bit of shade from all the tall trees on the street). It'll be interesting to see how they compare in size, etc. I've only got the two types of caterpillars here. The Monarchs and Old World Swallowtails. I'll definitely be planting more parsley for them too. It doesn't take up much space in the planter. I was deficient in maintaining my lavendar plants so I cut them back for the first time a few months ago, but it looks like they'll all survive so we should have quite a bit of lavendar for the butterflies and bees to feed off of this year too. We're getting a lot more bees because the neighbor two doors over started a bee hive in one of the city trees. I'm surprised they gave him permission to do that, but it may be that he didn't ask too. They have a box for them but they spent a good portion of this past summer moving into a crevice street side on the tree. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Sari ONeal Posted January 2 Author Share Posted January 2 Sheila another plant that butterflies love that you might want to try is Salvia - get the showy perennial ones and they'll come back. The purple ones are beautiful, and some butterfly caterpillars use them for hosts as well. I didn't even know it, and then I found two Hairstreak caterpillars on one of my Salvia plants and I was thrilled I may have posted this before, not sure - https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-1058537011-grey-hairstreak-butterfly-caterpillar-eating-sage-leaf The other caterpillar was green, but it was the same species - they can camouflage themselves pretty well Oh, and Hummingbirds love them, too! And yeah, Poison Oak is nasty, that's why I try to stay away from it when I can. It grows everywhere here, and some spots more than others...LOL Somehow - KNOCKING ON WOOD REALLY HARD - I've never managed to get a rash from it, but I try to be super careful when I'm around it. And Jeff - not sure if you know, but in case you'd ever burn any wood that has poison ivy on it -- just don't do it - it's really really bad to inhale the smoke, and it will send one to the hospital. So, just don't! 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Sheila Fitzgerald Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 That looks like the flowers on the Mexican Sage we have here. I don't have the room for those in the small planter areas I have. I'd have to have just those in there for it to work. They do have pretty flowers though. The pineapple sage I planted out back the hummingbirds love, but they're not getting enough sun to get really bushy where they are. The only ones that do well are the ones I planted along the fence under the apple tree. Link to post Share on other sites
Sheila Fitzgerald Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 I just looked it up and the saliva is the mexican sage. Just different names for it. I go to a site (that's currently closed due to the pandemic) to get photos of the hummers with the sage. Got this one last fall. Wish I could've been closer. There was a tree in full autumn foliage in the background so it was dramatic contrast. 2 Link to post Share on other sites
Wendy Townrow Posted January 3 Share Posted January 3 beautiful capture Sheila, lots of copyspace there too! 1 Link to post Share on other sites
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