Nature's Patterns

Our local Photo Group had a photography workshop last week, led by one of our most knowledgeable members.  He had us outside, paying attention to various camera settings, and looking for patterns.  Later, when I uploaded my photos and looked at them, I was struck by these ones.

Can you tell what they are?

He suggested that we try just looking for patterns, which I did, and found this.

He suggested that we shoot these vertically instead of the usual horizontal.

But actually I found I liked the horizontal version better.

 So have you figured it out yet?

Common bulrushes or cattails, growing in the ditch.

Here's the first view I had, when he took us out to the edge of the road.  The photos above are what I got out of it!  Turned out I enjoyed this workshop a lot, 'cause I like these pictures!

Linking to:

Nature Notes

Fall Colour Continues

We continue to have spectacular fall colours here at the edge of the valley.  We're up in the 'highlands', and tend to get cold nights more than the places closer to Georgian Bay, and I'm told that helps the bright red colours.  I never tire of taking more fall colour pictures.  Here's another selection, all taken either on the walk the dog and I follow in the morning, or on a nearby road.

Meanwhile, a lot of leaves have fallen, thanks to the strong winds and heavy rains at times over the last 4 days (along with dramatically colder temperatures).  The many White Ash trees are looking particularly bare, even though there are still lots of trees with green leaves.   If sun permits, I still want to get out and take some shots of the landscape here while the leaves are in colour.

Linking to:

Mushrooms

Fall is the time for mushrooms, especially when we have lots of rainy days.  I haven't had a chance to get out hunting elsewhere, but several have appeared right here in our yard.

 I find the pattern of the gills underneath fascinating.

This was a simple white toadstool like the Fairy Ring Mushrooms, but not in a ring.  So probably one of the Fibre Head mushrooms.

These were quite large at up to 6" across, and they popped up in a large circle around our White Birch trees, about 10 of them, in a loose circle nearly 10 feet across.

According to my mushroom book, they could be one of several, perhaps one of the Milky group of mushrooms.  They are entirely golden-brown, not white, and convex on top.

I like the pattern of these small bracket fungi, growing down the space where two left-over logs from building the log cabin have been sitting for 15 years.

They've got quite a bright orange-brown colour pattern, and may be the Yellow-red Gill Polypore.  I have a very long way to go to learn the mushrooms.  When I look through the guide many of them look so similar!

But whatever the species, they're another sign of the season.

Linking to:

A Question for My Dutch Visitors

Hi, if you're visiting from the Netherlands, I hope you'll leave me a comment.

According to Blogger, over the past month I've had more visitors from the Netherlands than all other countries combined.  I'm grateful for the huge number of visits, but no-one among you has left even a single comment.

Can anyone enlighten me as to why this is happening?  Was this blog promoted on a popular website? Does the name of the blog have a secret meaning in Dutch?  Is it particularly interesting to you?  Is there a school where students are doing a big project on the 'Seasons'?  Or is there a hacker someplace who has programmed a computer to automatically sign on to this blog 400 times a day?

If any of you can leave a comment, I'd appreciate it.
The Furry Gnome

Mill Pond Reflections

The weather is changing fast here, from late summer to late fall all in 3 hours it seems, with blowing blustery rain, temperatures dropping and leaves flying.  So I'm going to try and ignore it and take you back to the mill pond at Walters Falls, which was sunny and tranquil when we were there 10 days ago. This was a Photo Group outing, so I was experimenting a bit, and these are some of the reflections I captured.

Walters Falls Water-powered Mill - Part 2

Picking up on yesterday's post, once we saw where the water in the flume from the mill pond entered the actual mill, that's when it got interesting for me.

As the miller explained how things worked, I learned a lot both about the power of water, and about how simple the machinery can be.  This picture shows the flume entering the mill, to power the turbine, but about 8 feet back up the pipe is a vertical stand pipe that functions as a pressure relief valve.  If there's any excess water backing up, it rises in that pipe rather than increasing the pressure in the flume; it's fluctuating freely up and down in that pipe all day.  At the end of the day, when the turbine is shut down, the water soars up that pipe, and often sprays out the top.  If it wasn't there, the pipe and turbine would simple explode from the pressure!

Inside I was trying to use natural light as much as possible, but it was just too dark in places.  Never-the-less this blurry picture captures the main gear from the turbine below spinning madly at 730 rpm. This simple gear transfers the water power turning the horizontal wheel to the vertical wheel, which turns all the belts in the mill and does the work.

A flash enabled me to stop the action and show you the teeth on these gears.  Believe it or not, these are all wooden teeth, each made out of hard maple, and fitted separately into the wheels.  Every morning before turning things on the miller greases these gears and tightens each tooth to be sure they're ready for the day's work.

The horizontal axle from the main gear extends some distance into the mill, and turns several wide belts that in turn run other machinery.  Most are out of sight, or behind barriers, but I was able to get a picture of this one.

There weren't many other places in the mill where you could get a picture of operating machinery.  The grain is all enclosed in augers or chutes of course, so you don't actually see it unless you're there when a truck unloads.  But this photo shows a main belt extending all the way from the floor below to the floor above, humming away as it passed through the main floor.

These controls on the bottom of the various chutes through which the milled grain is mixed and bagged are placed strategically around the main floor of the mill.

And here is the final product, bags of grain ready for shipping or pick-up.  I have a lot to learn about getting good indoor pictures like these, but I hope you enjoyed this visit to one of Ontario's last commercial operating water-powered mills.

If you're every passing through Walters Falls, you can get a small taste of this by visiting the store in the mill (where we buy our birdseed).  You have to go through a corner of the main floor of the mill to enter the store.

A Real Water-powered Feedmill

A few months ago I learned that the Walters Falls Feedmill was actually still an operating water-powered mill.  I was astonished.  Though there were perhaps thousands of these scattered across Ontario 100 years ago, I didn't think there would be any commercial water-powered mills left.  I've been wanting to see how it operated ever since.

Our Photo Group leader had arranged for us to have a short tour of the mill, so we got to see the inside operation!  I was fascinated! 

Stepping into the mill, your first impression is the noise and the vibration.  The whole building is shaking, with a regular loud thump, the sound of the turbine down below.

There must be a dozen chutes for bagging grain, depending on what is being prepared at the moment.  I have visions of grain being lifted up from the bin where it's unloaded, soaring to the top of the mill, and dropping through various chutes back to the main floor, having been milled.


But let's do this in order, and start at the mill pond.  This is the second mill pond in Walters Falls, a much larger one than the one just above the falls, and mostly out of sight behind the mill.  The water level was high the day we were there.


The water backed up by the dam flows into the sluice pipe, heading downstream right beside the creek, toward the mill.


It's a long pipe down to the mill building, up in the air on concrete pillars.

When it hits the mill, it goes right inside, into the turbine, the excess spilling out over the wall.  Tomorrow, the tour continues inside the mill.