Alas, I missed my chance Sunday. It was baking hot on the porch, I had Aunty Flow's typical "hi, I'm here!" agony going on, and the weather folks assured me that all would be sweetness and light aside from scattered thunderstorms on Monday. "No problem," thought I. "Scattered t-storms we can live with. Plenty o' sunbreaks, I'm sure!"
What the weather folks apparently meant but didn't state explicitly was, "Thunderstorms scattered through solid gray clouds that will not allow so much as a single stray sunbeam to alight upon your porch. No, not even for a second."
Argh.
So we're going to have to go on with two pics I shot that include the cat, and that do not in any way do justice to the glory that is my chunk of serpentinite, but can be seen as a teaser.
There she is, lying on top of the bits of the glacial erratic I picked off the ground so that I could take them home and break them open and attempt to identify what it's made of. The rocks from Carkeek are laid out neatly drying. I suppose she believes she's helping. The serpentinite is that chunk o' yum right behind her head.
Here she is lying beside my great and glorious chunk of serpentinite, out on the porch. Could've gotten a much better shot if I'd been in any condition to crouch, but at this time of the month, movement is severely restricted. Still, you can tell it is beautiful.
The light today is so severely filtered by clouds that the truly magnificent greens and blues of this thing aren't properly displayed, but I can't just leave you with mere glimpses. Here's one taken near the window, with what little light we've got:
How amazing is that? Just imagine what actual sunlight does to it!
A macro:
Really, as much as I love my schist, I almost think I love this more. Once the sun comes back at a time when I can take full advantage, we'll have some truly good pics and a proper write-up on what serpentinite's all about. As long as this is serpentinite. If anybody suspects it's not, now would be an excellent time to say so.
And, because I can't resist:
How happy does she look, eh? Shot that with the zoom from inside the house, so as not to wake her up. In the summer, she spends a fair amount of her time out on the porch, basking in the sun. At least she's lazy and doesn't try to climb up on the roof like the neighbor's cat. I can leave the door open and leave her to do whatever without worrying I'll have to call in a ladder truck later. True, we get flies, but it's a small price to pay for such a happy kitteh.
Mmmm. Does, and doesn't, look like serpentinite. But serp wears a lot of faces, and I couldn't imagine what else it could be.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's pretty. (Drools.) And enhanced by a cute kitty. She certainly doesn't LOOK like a monster, but kittehs are even more seductive in appearance than serp.
If you're ever down in my neck of the woods (south SF Bay, California) I'll take you down a rural road that's cut through serpentinite -- part of an extensive exposure of the Coast Range Ophiolite. But serp to the left, serp to the right... how much happier could a serp lover be?