Look what I Saw this Morning...........

The highway in front of our house is jammed with cars/trucks and the airways are crowded with jets. Now we have hot air balloons landing in our neighbor's field. It is really getting congested out here. The balloons are fun to watch though. Even funnier is the fact that the recovery truck got suck in the sand that the power company tore up a few weeks ago. That is the 4th vehicle stuck in the past month. They were lucky in that a truck stopped to tow them out. You just never know what you are to find on any given day.

This balloon thing was drifting over the road as I left the driveway at home this morning. So I drove up and took it photo in the field just west of ours. Not as quiet in the country as one might think. 

One of the Anthurium hybrids that helps to make the research house sort of XMASy. 

The coleus seem happy in the cool cloudy weather we have been having. Only wish I enjoyed it as much as they do. 

Malvaviscus (Turk's cap) are again in their fall splendor. I only wish there was a way to commerialize them. They would make a great Xmas plant since they look like little Xmas trees. 

Unamed plus its friend "Mr. Sunflower". 

Thanks to the advice and help of mosaic mom here is latest steel/mosaic sculpture. It is a happy little flower that is 34 inches across the petals. No name for this flower masterpiece yet. 

A Dark and Dreary Week Make Brighter....

It has been a long week at work with lots of negative political stuff plus the usual December clouds. Some of my work collegues have been hurt but will recover. So to take a break from all the crap I hung back the happy colored shade cloth in the research greenhouse (photos included). We need this to test the different light effects on leaf size, shape and color of some of our hybrids. This setup will be better than before as there is no indirect light from other sources to affect the results. Plus we have new shade over the whole greenhouse which makes things very uniform. A few plants were put in today but the final experiments will go in next week. We should have some interesting data by next June. Hey ,is reserch stuff takes time you know.

Back to the colored shade tests to see if it will affect leaf size, shape and color.  

At least the cheerful color is back in the research greenhouse. 

Painting done... Now for the cleanup... 

We painted our fouth Z car 12-2-06..........

This 280z will look alot better in couple of months. 

That clear coat really brings out the shine. It took all day but the car should be really nice with the 6 coats of new paint. 

Things were busy in the Z shop this weekend as we painted Mel's 280z. 

Some more local scenery. Several types of croton being propagated in a production greenhouse.