My Chicago Garden

Last weekend the family took the Metra to downtown Chicago so I could have lunch with an ex-colleague of mine who just became a US citizen. Afterwards, we took the opportunity to take the girls to the Art Institute of Chicago. They did pretty good for 4 and 3, considering. Of course the museum is very stoic with nobody making a sound except Sierra (our 4 year old) talking in her normal voice saying things like “Look at that lion! He’s big.” or “You can see her bottom!” or “That’s a picture of Jesus on the cross” and the like. Pretty much every room we walked into she gasped and said something funny. Nobody looked upset and several commented that it was great to see a kid enthusiastic about art.

While we were there we checked out the Thorne Miniature Rooms exhibit. Basically an artist has taken rooms from various period homes and created exacting..and I mean exacting…detail models in miniature.

Here are two pictures of my favorite. If I ever get the chance to build my own cottage/farm house I think I would choose a mixture of the two kitchens below. The large fireplace and rustic look is just wonderful.

“Pennsylvania Kitchen 1752″

“English Cottage Kitchen of the Queen Anne Period, 1702-14″

The Illinois extension has this to say about Cabbage Worms.

"It is almost impossible to raise cole crops in Illinois without controlling these pests."

Well I can tell you I agree with that statement.  My cabbage plants were decimated last year (my first year growing vegetables in IL). I decided to run a little cabbage trial in my garden this year.  I put out a crop of cabbage utilizing a row cover and another crop without row cover. Everything else was exactly the same.  I had been seeing minor damage on the broccoli and cabbage leaves but nothing major until this morning.  I came out this morning and the uncovered cabbage was completely destroyed. Nasty little bliters! The base of the leaves were full of a green’ish colored "poop" which could be the eggs of the cabbage looper and on the most damaged cabbage I found small yellow egg sacks on the under side. I don’t remember seeing any of the cabbage moths flying around so it might just be cabbage loopers. Time to get out my insect encyclopedia.

Oh yeah…the covered cabbage…as pretty as can be and not a single pin prick of damage. In fact the leaves could easily make a hat they are so big.

Anybody else have issues with these guys?

I’m heading out storm chasing today with Paul Sirvatka (meteorology department of CoD) and David Mayhew (professional photographer) .  Paul is having a heck of a time deciding where to go while David is pushing him to send us further west.  I’m just along for the ride and bring my geek toys.  We should be out until late Thursday night.  Paul is all jazzed about Thursday, but he changes his mind every 20 minutes.  Pretty funny to watch.

If you want to track us you can head over to the Spotter Network and look at the National Activity map and search for a little green car labeled "David Mayhew" or "KI4BUM" (my ham callsign). If we see anything good I’m going to try and fire up the live streaming camera for the first time.

Update @11:30PM

Two confirmed tornados and one maybe!

My first time in over a year I’ve been out on a real "chase".  Everything goes to Paul at CoD…I wouldn’t have gone that far by myself

First tornado only Paul saw..and it was more of a "dust whirl" than a tornado he says.  The second was obviously a tornado. But I was too busy looking at data and submitting the report that the only chance I had to snap a picture was when we were repositioning.  Dave/Paul got much better ones.  Dave’s pictures are here

Third one I never got a picture of as I switched to video since Dave and Paul were on their expensive cameras ;)….I think I got it but haven’t had time to check.  I was running data (of course) with my head down in the screen but happened to look up and scan behind the car (as I was trained by CoD) and yell’d "TORNADO" and everybody turned around and started snapping. Of course I’m throwing Spotter Network reports in while everybody else is shooting pictures ;)  That’s okay…that’s what I’m good at.

Also got a call from Omaha NWS (via Spotter Network) asking for ground truth.  Yeah! It works!