Community Building Tip: Gallery

For my current set of tips, I'm using the list "101 Small Ways You Can Improve Your City.

30. Open a gallery in your living room. If you think your apartment is cramped, maybe all it needs is a few paintings on the wall: Paul Soto turned his 300 square-foot apartment in Los Angeles into a functioning gallery.

Fireworks Reference

See my previous post about my writing that features fireworks and how the colors are composed. 

Birdfeeding

Today is sunny and hot.

I fed the birds.

We walked around the prairie garden deciding what to mow.  A previous path left to grow up is nicely filled with grass and clover, but the one I most recently tried to reseed over mowed territory is still all goldenrod.  Bah. 

We did see a monarch butterfly, though, and the yellow coneflower now has petals on its heads.  I hope the monarchs will lay eggs on the milkweed plants.

EDIT 7/4/20 -- We cut dead wood from the mulberry tree to clear the back path to the orchard.

I noticed there are two eggs in the dove nest under the kitchen window.  :D

Fireworks

We watched fireworks again.  Lots to the southeast, some to the west, also some very distracting stuff to the northeast that I could hear but not see.  One place shot off a bunch of rings.  Several others had shaped charges of some sort, but it was harder to tell what.

We also lit off some fireworks in the south lot.  We had three little fountains (2 for $3).  These were described as 9" Floral Fountains, Rose and Daisy, that set off showers of sparks and colored balls.  One was much louder and snappier, the other had more balls.  These are a great size for home use if you have a firepit or driveway.  We also got a grand finale box, which turned out to be a 4x4.  We did not count because there were huge explosions right overhead.  It was spectacular, but not one I'd recommend for backyard use.  Perfect, however, if you have a very large field or better yet a pond with one of those floating docks.  It was described as Psycho Circus with colorful peonies red/blue/lemon/orange star with green glittering, gold glittering, white strobe and peach red + colorful chrysanthemum (brocade to red, green, blue stars) shoots flaming balls.

The main problem with low-powered backyard fireworks is that they're not actually powerful enough to get so high that the sparks all go out before touching the ground like they're supposed to.  The starbursts are nearly full-size but quite low.  It would be better to put more charge into the launch and a little less into the overhead.