By the time this hits the blog, it will be the best part of year since I took these shots. We have a variety of plants in the backyard at home and March was the time when blossoms started to make their appearance. Our plum tree had some blossoms, but the other plants also had some cute little flowers too. I dragged out the macro lens to get some images of them. Get up close with these and you can’t easily tell just how big (or small) they actually are.
Earlier in the year, we made an afternoon visit to Wisley – the headquarters of the Royal Horticultural Society. I have posted about it previously but, this post is about some of the really cool looking plants that they have. That is what you would expect for a horticultural society, of course. Some of them are really fascinating looking plants so here are some shots.
The departure from LAX takes you out over the Pacific on most occasions. As you climb out and reach the shoreline, just south of your track is a large water treatment plant. Oceanfront property would be in high demand, I imagine, but this spot is taken with a far more functional purpose. The size and shapes involved are quite fascinating to me and I couldn’t resist getting some images as we flew by.
Within the Georgetown Steam Plant, one of the docents was keen to show off the details of the boilers. These were originally oil fired but, during the Second World War, they were converted to operate using coal. After the war, they were reverted back to oil and there are hardly any signs left of the coal configuration.
The layout of the pipes within the boiler is quite complex. It is designed to create a circulating flow of the water in the pipes and create the stream at the top of the boiler to feed the turbines. These pipes lie in a triangular framework angled over the make everything operate as intended. These were assembled and the walls of the boilers were then constructed around them.
There are access hatches which allow you to see into the boiler and see the pipe arrangements. It is very dark in there and a flashlight is needed to see anything at all. The boiler walls are metallic but they are lined with fire bricks. These bricks had a limited life so there would be a time when they had to be replaced. People would have to climb in through the narrow hatches to knock out the old bricks and pass them out before installing the replacements. They would also have to clean off the pipe work exterior as this would accumulate debris from the hot gases of combustion.
Accessing the interior of these boilers looks extremely unpleasant. It would be far too claustrophobic for me to think about and that is before considering the hard work in a hostile environment. These guys were tougher than me! The boilers are in pairs with a gap between each pair so I guess they would have to close down both parts of the pair to allow a temperature that was acceptable for entry. Even then, I doubt it was a good place to work.
Near the north end of Boeing Field is the old Georgetown Steam Plant. This is an old power station that was decommissioned decades ago. I had been curious to see what it was like inside. I had thought about going a while back and then the pandemic put paid to any visits for a couple of years. The opening hours have now been established and they open on the second Saturday of each month. That proved problematic for a while as that clashed with travels or other plans. Consequently, I put the first opening in my calendar and tried my best to make sure I could go.
The Saturday came around and it was a gloriously sunny day. This shouldn’t matter much since I was going to be indoors but it does make for a nicer day to be out anyway. It was due to open at 10am so I decided to get there right at the beginning. Turned out this was a good idea. The parking lot was already looking pretty full and more were arriving. I have no idea why it was so busy. Sure, a nice day encourages people to go out but how many people see a sunny day and think “let’s go to a decommissioned power plant”? I asked a docent whether this was normal. He said they normally get about 30 people over the day and they had four tours of 50 people booked plus those, like me, that didn’t take the tour!
The power plant was built at the beginning of the 20th century. It had three steam turbines of different vintages, powers and technologies. The first two are vertical and the third horizontal. These are fed from a large boiler room. There are balconies with the control electronics which you can see but are not yet accessible. I was happy to let the tours concentrate people in various locations which meant it was quieter wherever they weren’t so I could wander around casually.
I had figured wide angle was going to be my friend in the building so had a wide zoom and a fisheye zoom with me. I used the fish a little initially but soon concluded it wasn’t that useful to me so I swapped it out with the 70-200 to allow me to get some detail shots of the machinery. Older machinery has a lot of character with polished metals, complex mechanisms and multiple gauges. It is a great look in to a bygone era.
These shots are few of the overall layout of the building. There are some details from within the plant that will have their own posts to come so I can focus on them. I don’t want to try and squeeze it all in to one post and lose some of the curious elements in the larger story.
Nancy has been busy planting in our back yard at home and one of the plants she has gone with is a lavender plant. Some of the plants take a while to get established and even longer to attract the wildlife but the lavender seems to be an instant hit. It has had a steady stream of bees visiting it as well as other creatures. Bees are the focus today.
I spent a little time lying on the ground by the plant with the macro lens fitted. This is not necessarily an ideal choice as my macro is not a high end lens and it has pretty slow focusing motors. The camera tries to drive it but often it can’t keep up. However, stick with it and you can get some shots that work out. One of the things I had not anticipated was the proboscis that the bees have. Maybe they tuck it away when not on plants but, as they move between parts of the plant, it stays out and it is rather an intimidating looking item!
I have taken a ton of photos of the hummingbirds that come to our feeders in the back yard. However, a cooler shot is one that involves real plants rather than a metal feeder. We have hanging baskets which have sometimes provided food for the little critters but the majority of the flowers in our baskets this year do not seem to have interested them. Only one of the flowers seems to get some of them to feed and it is a narrow trumpet shaped flower that seems to thrive on the far side of the basket away from me and the light.
Of course, the sun does move so, with a little patience and forethought, it is possible to get in position and try to stay very still so as not to scare away the blighters. I have had some backlit results but they aren’t very appealing photos. They are better than nothing but getting on the right side of things is the goal and one I have finally managed to achieve. If I could get better angles, that would improve things but there are a good start. Now to spend more time waiting for them and try to avoid freaking out the neighbors in the meantime.
We were taking a walk around the arboretum in Seattle. It is owned by the University of Washington I think (if not, let me know in the comments) and it is laid out with various areas to spend time if you choose to stop walking for a while. There is one open-sided building which could be used for a picnic of you were so inclined. What caught my eye was just how much there was growing on the roof of the structure. If you were looking down on it, it might be totally camouflaged!
As we walked through the grounds of Chateau Ste. Michelle after the Avants car event, we came across this tree. As we looked at it we concluded that it was a single tree that was coming out of the ground in various places. However, we are not arborists so could be completely wrong. It just looks like it springs from a single source under ground and breaks the surface in various places. If you know about trees and more specifically this tree, let me know.
Down in Federal Way, there is a rhododendron garden. It is next to the bonsai garden I have posted about previously but we hadn’t visited it before. We took a trip down when the rhododendrons should have been getting into bloom. The garden is a strange location since it is tucked in between two freeways. While you are walking around lots of lovely greenery, you can’t escape the rumble of traffic nearby.
Unlike some gardens that have a very manicured feel to them, this feels a lot more organic in the layout. I am sure there is a lot of planning that went in to the design but it feels like it is a natural growth. Supposedly, it has the largest collection of rhododendrons in the world. Not sure who verifies such things but it was certainly large.
It isn’t just rhododendrons, though. Lots of other plants are scattered around the place. They have a meadow that has blue poppies in it. They are lovely looking flowers if a little fragile looking. There is a glasshouse in the middle of the garden and we took a wander around in there but, with the sun out, it was pretty hot and humid in there so we didn’t spend too long.
The blooms were not extensive when we visited so it didn’t have the same feel as we got on our first visit to Meerkerk, for example. However, as a garden with a wide variety of plants and color, it was certainly a great place to wander about and I suspect we will be back there in the future.
