The amazing moon of January

Obviously, this is not the moon.  It is a photo I liked while sorting photos for the Light Garden album on my web page.  I did not get a  photo of the blue moon, or the blood moon, or the eclipse.  There is extensive information on Space.com 

Tuesday, January 30, 2018
from the  Times Colonist
by Dirk Meissner
Get Ready for a rare three-part moon show
There will be a super bule blood moon on Wednesday and a total lunar eclipse, evenets that by themselves are not uncommon but combined they make for a spectacular night for skywatchers in Western Canada.
On the West Coast, the skies will feature the fantastic lunar show as the gravitational forces of the sun and moon churn up the strongest tides of the year, known as king or spring tides.
"I'm looking to put on my star-gazing hat and if it's a nice, calm evening I'd encourage everybody to go out and have a look at the super moon," said oceanographer Richard Dewey, associate director of science services at the University of Victoria's Ocean Networks Canada. "It's one of these things that we need to know that we're just part of a big solar system and the moon is out there as our best partner."
A blue moon is a full moon that comes twice in the same month.  During a lunar eclipse, when the moon passes into Earth's shadow, the moon often turns red, prompting the moniker blood moon.  The super moon appears larger because it's six per cent closer to Earth and 14 per cent brighter than normal.
All three events are happening Wednesday morning.
Dewey, an expert in coastal flows, tides, waves and turbulence, said the beauty and power of the moon and sea will be on full display.
"We've got tide gauges out with Ocean Networks Canada and pressure gauges and we'll be watching to see that, yes, we're seeing some of the largest tides of the year, " said Dewey, who has conducted research from Japan to California and along the British Columbia, Alaska and Arctic coasts.
Ocean Networks said its Coastbuster app, developed to track marine debris on B.C. shores from the March 2011 tsunami in Japan, can be used to report and comment on tidal activity, including the king tide.
"The moon is a little bit closer, so it appears a little big bigger, " said Dewey. "it's also aligned with the sun, so there could be places where the moon is just reaching into Earth's shadow, so you'll get a lunar eclipse.  It's going to be a little bit of an extraordinary sight."
On its website, NASA says a lunar eclipse can only happen on the night of a full moon.  It only occurs when the sun, Earth and moon are aligned and the moon passes behind Earth. 
In Victoria, the total lunar eclipse starts at 2:51 a.m. and ends at 7:50 a.m.  The eclipse will be at its maximum at 5:29 a.m.

The Johnson Street Bridge

photos from Dec. 6, 2017
 From the Times Colonist - Tuesday, January 30
Johnson Street Bridge Back in business
Deck placement and other work on new span spills into Monday due to Saturday winds
Adrew Duffy
Ten minutes later than expected, the Johnson Street Bridge was down and operational on Monday after two wet days of construction wrapped on its replacement.
Bridge project director Jonathan Huggett said the massive crane barge known as the Dynamic Beast, which lifted the last two components of the new bridge into place over the past two days, was secured about 4:30 p.m. and the barge ropes were disconnected just before 5 p.m.
By 5:10 p.m. the old Blue Bridge was in the down position and traffic was flowing again between downtown and Vic West
The crane barge will head back to Vancouver, returning when the old bridge is demolished.
Foot, bicycle and motor traffic was detoured to Bay Street on Sunday and most of Monday, as crews installed the last of the major components for the new Johnson Street Bridge.
Work on the project was cancelled Saturday due to wind, forcing the job to continue into Monday.
On Sunday, through heavy rains most of the early afternoon, the Dynamic Beat slowly lifted and  aligned the 46-metre long,  470-tonne bridge deck span that will make up the bulk of the new bridge.
Small crowds of onlookers dotted the waterfront for most of the process, many of them sitting in warm, dry cars in a parking lot between the Janion and Mermaid Warf buildings.
Workers managed to do their final alignment about 5:15 p.m. on Sunday.  A night crew worked under floodlights to bolt the span in place through Sunday night.  There are three complex bolted connections to be made on each side of the bridge.
On Monday, crews worked on securing the bridge, while raising and adding an insert that had to be welded between the righs and the bridge span.  The bridge is expected to be completed ahead of a test lift on Feb. 4.
While the new bridge will look complete, it is not expected to be open to the public until the
 end of March to allow for testing of its mechanical, electrical and hydraulic systems.  After the new bridge is operational, demolition of the old bridge will begin.


I did not get down to take photos on the 29th of January to see the new bridge put in place.

Otherwise, I have finished cleaning up and reloading the albums that had been finished on my web page, after Godaddy cleaned up the malware, and registered my SSL certificate.  I have made new pages on the Gardening page and new pages for the on going Travel stuff.  2017 was a very busy year  for work on my web page. 

There were renovations to old flower beds in the back and in the front gardens.  The cedar hedges have been trimmed, topped and pruned.  Despite the heat wave after this pruning, the hedges are looking fine and healthy.  I had Davey Tree do this work.  They also took out the old plum tree in January, as well as the tall pin oak in the back woodland area.  It was too close to the garage. 

Hopefully, I will have more time for my blog this year.  

October on my web page

One of the photos from the October photo album on the Gardening page of my web page.  In March of this year, Godaddy let me know that I had malware on my page.  Over the next few months they cleaned up the malware and we now have an SSL certificate on the page.   Since March I have reloaded all of the albums I had previously finished, using the GoDaddy FTP to upload.  I have decided to remake albums in Gardening; from January to May.  And have, completed January, and new albums for June, July, August, September and October.  I have added quite a few new pages, to Travel; and will be making a few more albums in Gardening.  But I am happy with ALL of the stuff I have managed to get done on my page since March.

We have had a terrible drought all summer and now, since September we have been getting an overload of rain.  There were forest fires all over the interior of BC last summer.  My garden suffered from the water restrictions, the tree terrorists chopping down my plants.  God only knows what is wrong with those people.  I had Davey Tree people come in to trim up all the hedges.  They did this in mid-summer when we were in the middle of this drought.  The hedges seem to be doing ok now, though.  I have yet to get the old plum tree taken out and the lovely pin Oak taken down also.  The pin oak is too close to the garage.  I have renovated flower bed along the old sidewalk at the back; taking out the old perennials that have been taken over by the michaelmas daisies, and replacing them with milkweed and fennel, new tulips, and the new soil that was in the pots containing these replacement plants.  Hopefully these plants will take hold and I can get some monarchs to enjoy the milkweed, and maybe even become a place for them to lay eggs.  Perhaps the swallow tail butterflies will like the fennel.  I have also renovated the flower bed in front of the bamboo that was also taken over by michaelmas daisies.  I have a couple of milkweed plants in there, to and a few other new perennial plants.  The thyme circle seems to be rejuvenating and filling in the spots that have gone bare. 

I am now in the process the keeping up to the fallen leaves, and doing bits of cleanup all over the garden.  The germander needs cutting back and the irises need cleaning up.  I want to get the old compost bin emptied to the back bed behind the old garage, and use it to load up the rest of the leaves, this year.  The moss garden is looking good with all the rain and it, too needs cleaning up.  All in all, the garden is looking good. 

We have new neighbors on the west side where a family of Syrians are renting the house.  They have a trashy looking shed in the back for their chickens.  Nice looking big red chickens.  The chickens seem to have found the grass to be greener on my side of the fence once or twice.  They go home to roost at night.  I don't think there is anything back there that the chickens will damage. 

We have had a rather trying summer this year with the purchase of our new camper van.  The delivery date kept us anxiously waiting most of the summer to get it.  There is a lot of new computer stuff that we need to learn about driving it, and running things in the camper.  It has real mattresses and lots of storage space, a pantry, a generator, solar panels on the top that actually feed into the  house battery, so we could run a few things on this power.  It has a shower, for short showers.  Pat likes driving it.  But we seem to be having trouble with the battery in the Mercedes diesel; it keeps losing voltage.  Pat took it to the dealers but they could find nothing wrong with the battery.  Pat has disconnected it and we will see if it keeps running down.  Or this might just be the solution to keeping it over wintered or when we are not using it for long drives and camping trips. 

So, it is no wonder I have not had time to post to my blog.  But Megashot has been shut down, so I have more time in that regard.  Facebook just does not hold much interest for me.