Finally Some Snow... and Icicles!

Icicles!

It's been a pretty bleak winter as far as snow and precip goes, with an early largish snow dump in early October, followed by... a lot of nothing other than some few and far between minimal snow showers and some minor snow in early to mid December. We've had cold mornings off and on, nothing unusual there, but we've had way more sun and unusually warm days compared to the previous four winters that MOH and I have spent here at our little house in the hinterland of eastern Nevada. This winter, we've had highs in the 50s to upper 70s in October, highs mostly in the 40s and 50s in November, highs mostly in the 30s to upper 50s in December and January, with four days in a row above 60°F right after New Year's day. So far, we've only had one high in the 20s, on December 5th, and no highs in the teens or lower. We have had a few scattered lows below 0°F, but nothing approaching our usual number of sub-zero nights. Consequently, what little snow we have gotten has not stuck around. Lowlands have been completely dry, midlands even to 7000 feet have been dry, and uplands have been largely snow free, at least below 9000 feet or higher. Elm beetles actually made a comeback last week; they must have thought it was spring. Hopefully not.

A couple days ago, it snowed! Six inches fell one day, two inches the next, and at least another inch fell the third day. Now, we're back in melting mode, creating what seem like the first icicles of the year, though maybe we had some back in October.

More icicles, including one making a fish-hook-like shape.

We don't have the usual ice field on the north side of our little house; instead, we have dry soil and gravel beneath a few inches of snow. Maybe we'll get a little more precip in the next day or two (hopefully not as freezing rain).

Alaska! Send us your snow!!

Update from the Lake: Early Fall

Photo:
Early fall construction in Austin, Nevada

In a departure from the semi-standard format of my on-again, off-again updates from the lake, this post will have zero pictures from the lake itself, just from the road to/from the lake. Why? Because I didn't take any! Really!

Our fairly recent visit to the lake was one of getting a little less accomplished than planned, with accomplishment of one or two things not planned, including the fixing, eventually, of a semi-broken water heater. Semi-broken means that if one went out and occasionally tripped the reset, the heater would come back on, heating fully until the next time the thermostat, upper or lower or both, went haywire and caused the thing to shut off. That was the main thing not planned for, which, as far as we know, was fixed successfully just as we were leaving. (No way to really tell until we go back and run the hot water.) A second unexpected accomplishment (or event) was a special trip to town for a family birthday dinner.

Photo:
Looking downhill while waiting for the pilot truck in Austin, Nevada.

Overall, it was a mostly lazy, restful interlude. I had no problem sleeping in or napping, and my state of restfulness carried over nicely to the beginning of this most recent work stint, which started sometime last week (I already don't know what day that was, or what day this is: the perils of long work stints.)

We didn't get new flooring down in the dining room, but we did find a likely store and probable choice: a rock-patterned vinyl.

Oh, and we discovered that one thing we thought we had accomplished back in early summer had been left undone, with our local handyman having disappeared with his payment plus tip. He took the money and ran! We are hoping a neighbor will be more thorough and conscientious.

Our drip line was still running, flowers were still blooming, birds were chirping, and leaves on trees hadn't started to change. It was summer when we arrived, fall when we returned.

In other news, we are back at our little house and well into the middle of our work "month." It's turned suddenly fallish and is expected to snow tomorrow; the tomatoes in the garden are safely enclosed in an impromptu greenhouse made of stakes and thick plastic. Flowers here are still blooming; it is hoped that green tomatoes will ripen despite the impending snow.

The Orbweaver at Our Door

This spider, a type of Orbweaver, has taken up residence just outside our front door.
When I moved in to try to get a closer shot, it moved over, taking a cockeyed stance on its web. I decided not to bother it any further.
The next day when I went out for mail, its web, which had been attached to the mailbox, was gone, and it had retreated to the wall right next to the door.

This is a cat-faced spider, Araneus gemmoides, and I think you can see the little cat face from this straight-overhead angle.

Our spider has now formed a new web, high above the door in the eaves, with a few strands still attached to the mailbox. Hopefully it won't be disturbed in its new location.

Genus Araneus
Family Araneidae
Order Araneae
Class Arachnida
Phyllum Arthropoda

Our 2011 Garden

We got a later start on our garden this year, and although I'm really not sure about the relative timing of plants getting into the ground with respect to last year, this year's plants were started later indoors and may have been smaller when we put them in the ground. We had to get them on a drip line before we went on a road trip at the end of last month.
The chocolate mints, in two pots, are growing like crazy, and we're thinking of starting more pots so we can give some away.
We've planted fewer vegetables this year, partly so this squash can have more room than last year's had, partly so the chard can have more room, and also so we can plant more flowers.

Friday morning, a little more than a week after the squash photo was taken, the temperature dropped below freezing, and currently the little guy doesn't look so hot: leaves have wilted and dried some. The squash, basil, a newly planted melon, and oregano were covered last night, and we'll keep covering until we get some summer-like temperatures (even spring-like temps would be helpful).
And so, this is how the back garden looked on May 27th, just after the drip line went in. There are little chard plants, the squash, two or three tiny tomatoes, green bean seeds against the far wall, and lots of flower seeds scattered everywhere.
A little more than a week later, yesterday afternoon, the back garden has larger chard plants (still hard to see but on the left), and the tomato plants look like they have survived all the chilly mornings. The larger plant towards the back, behind the pot of chocolate mints, is the honeydew melon MOH planted after we came back from our late May road trip. No seedlings have sprouted.
Here's the front garden as it looked on May 27th: a chocolate mint pot, two tiny basil plants almost drowning in the water of the newly re-established drip line, and lots of flower seeds in the ground.
And here's the front garden yesterday afternoon. I've taken matters into my own hands and planted a few nursery flowers from the big city — marigolds, a lavender, some little daisy-like flowers, and the some oregano. Possibly some little seedlings have sprouted; probably they are common weeds. Across the street in a barren spot, I threw out some wildflower seeds: Cosmos and bachelor buttons. These aren't on a drip line, and will require watering by hand.

As it turns out, we needn't have bought plants from the out-of-town nursery — a local hardware store has put in a couple greenhouses and has quite a nice supply of flowers, herbs, and vegetables (and other things including trees). We had lost our only nursery last year to the go-out-of-business demons, but now we have a replacement. I hope it does well.

In the meantime, MOH has started new squash seeds indoors in our heated seedling mat, along with seeds from our ballon flower.

A Bit of the Garden

We've been very busy this month, and the month before, as you might be able to guess from the lack of posting on this blog -- but we have managed to get a bit of our garden going in the backyard of our little house, just like we did last year, though not on such a grand scale. The chocolate mints, which were in the ground all winter in pots, so as to prevent too much die back, are going quite well, and were yesterday pulled out of the ground. These pictures, from May 16th, show them with a sparkle of snow.
We have fewer plants from seedlings grown indoors this year (so far), and most will be in the ground by the end of today [written yesterday, see update below]. Hopefully it isn't too early for them, but we need to get them on the drip line, so in the ground they go. We'll be planting flower seeds around our seedlings, maybe right where these mints are sitting now, and also in the front garden and in a little patch along the edge of the street, where I'm hoping the overly easy to grow Cosmos and cornflowers will flourish.

Update just prior to posting: One squash and two tomato seedlings are in the ground; the rest are waiting for a less rainy day. It poured and hailed and lightninged and thundered and rained ... and our garden became a little too damp for planting (ha! -- drenched is more like it). And we're getting another deluge right now!

Rocks and Stones

For a long time, when I was young, I really wanted to someday have a stone house to live in, and I think that thought started somewhere between our home in northern Virginia and the National Zoo in downtown D.C. I vaguely recall that we drove by a particular stone house while going to the zoo, or to other places downtown, and it became my favorite, something I aspired to live in someday "when I grew up." As for pictures, because I didn't spot anything while driving around here locally, perhaps my stone house or cottage would look something like Moore's Station, or maybe it would look something like this hobbit home.

My original stone cottage was made of large, gray, roundish stones of unknown rock type, and it had large stone steps leading up to it. I can't say for sure whether ivy grew on the walls, but tall, thick trees partly hid it from view, making it appear mysterious and even more enticing. It was in the middle of a city where I would no longer want to live, and probably wasn't as colorful as this painting.

After moving back to the west, I gradually learned to stop wanting to live in such a building because I consider Nevada to be earthquake country, with stone and brick houses just sitting there waiting to fall down in some next future earthquake similar to whatever one created the nice fault scarp on the eastern range front of the Carson Range near Genoa.


Old buildings like this one at Pritchard's Station, made of ash-flow tuff and sitting out in the middle of nowhere, are probably as close as I will come to having a stone cottage or cabin, though we would like to have slate or other stone siding on lower exterior walls when we build, maybe some slate walkways through garden areas, and it's always possible we'll have some slate as part of the floor near an entryway.

In the meantime, I realized this morning that I prefer to have most of my rocks outside, and that our building plans are pretty vague. Also, my few indoor rocks are messily and non-photogenically lying scattered through the house, and my yard rocks are out in the mud, currently getting re-covered by the latest snow shower (a relatively miniscule thing compared to the snow dump of April 7th and 8th).
I also realized that we have all the rocks we want on the hill above our house, along the roadside as we drive to work, and everywhere we go out in the field.

Written April 13th and submitted to the April 2011 Accretionary Wedge at Geological Musings in the Taconic Mountains.

Light and Color on a Cozy Indoor Day

It's cloudy and threatening snow outside, and I'm staying indoors, pretending we have a warm stove radiating heat, drinking coffee mixed with cocoa. This one corner of our little house usually looks fairly uncluttered, and sometimes the plants even get a bit of light. Not today. The upper shelves are stacked with various books, mostly geology or travel related, though not entirely. Titles I can read from here include A Garden of Bristlecones, Blue Highways, Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land, Topo! for Nevada, and Nevada Off the Beaten Path. I recommend all these books, though I can't comment about the Topo! program, as I haven't used it.

I'd say that it's probably cabin fever that's keeping me indoors, but that's not right: surely cabin fever would send me outside despite the dreary weather. It must be something else.
Over near the front door, a door used only to retrieve mail, the plants look bright and cheery, even as if the sun were shining through the clouds, but their color has as much to do with the camera setting as anything else.
Um, maybe it's time for more coffee.

Snow Days = White Christmas

Yes, we'll be having a white Christmas, thanks in part to the recent (and now tapering) Pineapple Express. Image is from NOAA, the evening of the 19th (2:30 Dec 20 UTC).
Here's what it looked like yesterday in front of our little house...
...and here's what it looked like this morning.
The Prius yesterday...
...the Prius this morning, slowly getting buried deeper and deeper.
We don't have all that much room to pile up snow when we shovel it, so we use a wheel barrow to haul the snow uphill out of our driveway, down the street where it can be piled out of everyone's way.

Note the conspicuous absence of my truck in these photos. It's parked on the street below because it wasn't possible to get it up the hill yesterday, though by the end of the day it probably would have been possible. It is, however, safe from becoming snowed in like the Prius, so we're just leaving it there for the nonce. If we do laundry today or tomorrow, we may have to haul our baskets down to the truck with MOH's snow sled, the one he uses to carry extra gear when snow camping.
Snow on our roof, as of this morning. Yesterday, after two days of snowfall amounting to about a foot per day, I measured 14 inches of compacted snow on the low roof behind our garden.
Here, MOH is measuring the snow on our rooftop. L-square height is 24 inches. His measurement of 17 inches agrees with my behind-the-garden measurement, also of 17 inches. Snow depth varies considerably from place to place, and the 2 feet of Sierra Cement that fell the first two days (after a day of rain) compacted immensely.
Another shot of the Prius.
Inside, I have found the view out my window to be fascinating: ice from icicles has melded with snow on branches.
Unfortunately, these shots can only be taken through the non-removable window screen.

Why does it snow?
More on the Pineapple Express, called an "Atmospheric River" at the WunderBlog.

Record Low Temperatures for November

We thought it was a little cold at our little house on November 25th, Thanksgiving Day; the temperature according to our thermometer went down to –14° F in the early morning, before slowly rising to about 20° F in the late afternoon. All across central and eastern Nevada, record lows for November were recorded on the 25th: the Ely Airport low was –20° F, breaking a –19 record set the previous day (24Nov2010); the Winnemucca Airport recorded –10, breaking a –9 record set in 1880; the Wendover Airport recorded 5, breaking a record of 6 set in 1993 and 1955. (All temps in Fahrenheit; all data from the Weather Underground.)
Record lows were also set for November 25th: the Ely Airport low was –20° F, breaking a record of –4 set in 1992; the Elko Airport low was –14, breaking a record of –9 set in 1898; the Eureka Airport low was –12, breaking a record of –10 set in 1992; the Winnemucca Airport low was –10, breaking a –6 record set in 1993; the Wendover Airport low was 5, breaking a record of 8 set in 1938; the Tonopah Airport low was 8, breaking a record of 13 set in 1993. (Again, all temps in Fahrenheit, and all data from the Weather Underground.)

We had a little pipe freezing problem at our little house, which we noticed early in the morning. Initially, four pipes (cold and hot to the bathtub and kitchen sink) were frozen, and turning the heat up, running the hot water at the bathroom sink, and turning our little space heater toward the bathtub thawed those two pipes (and the tub drain, which had also been frozen). We then concentrated on the kitchen sink, placing the space heater under the sink, which finally got the cold water running, but not the hot.

The pipes in the crawl space under the house are insulated with thin foamy pipe wraps, but the outside cinderblocks around the "pipe room" are mostly uninsulated, meaning that although heat goes down through the floors in the kitchen and bathroom into the crawl space below, it escapes easily and has little chance of keeping the pipes warm. Poor design.
We finally moved our little space heater into the crawl space, ran a long extension cord to it, turned it on to max and ran it for some time. I also moved another space heater to the open cabinet doors at the kitchen sink and cranked it up, until MOH noticed that the extension cord was getting hot (we have sub-standard wiring). So, I turned that space heater to I from III, while the little heater below kept cranking heat into the void of cold air pooled under the house. It took about an hour and a half to thaw that final pipe, not counting the two hours of interior heating we had concentrated on prior to running the cord below the house.
Yes, it was cold.

Later, we took a hike up the hill, on a path MOH had made by mashing down with snowshoes what had been one-foot deep snow. By then, 20° F in the sun felt warm, but hands and chin were tending toward icy, so it was a short hike.
I noticed some interesting wrinkles in the snow, which appear to be mini-slump features formed around buried clumps of grass and bushes.
The snow sparkled in a rainbow of colors, with the deep periwinkle blue really standing out from some angles, possibly suggesting a particular orientation to the snow crystals. These colors were a little hard to photograph; a few other colors besides blue show up when enlarged.

It's been warmer these past two days, partly sunny with a little snow, and highs above freezing. Today is bland and gray so far, the temp is above 24° F already, and it's snowing and blowing once again.

Green Tomato Salsa

This recipe is modified from a recipe on Farmgirl Fare.To see the recipe, click through to the original: Farmgirl Susan's No Sugar Green Tomato Relish. I haven't copied the entire recipe here because it's copyrighted, and because I didn't really change it that much. Thanks to @LizEnslin for the tip.

For me, it made about 2.5 pints.

My modifications, for freezing and not canning, are as follows:

• One of my green tomatoes was actually a slightly pink tomato on the inside. I don't think this matters much, unless you are canning, perhaps, where the acidity might make a difference. I chose what I thought were perfect green tomatoes, the kind that won't ripen, because I'm trying to ripen the rest of my greens! (And some recent luck on this: we have 2 more red tomatoes left. :))

• Instead of a red Bell pepper, I used one red and one yellow Bell pepper, and I added 2 large and 3 to 4 small Anaheim peppers, to boot.

• I used white rice vinegar; I didn't have any apple cider vinegar, so used what I had on hand. Also, because I wasn't canning the salsa but instead froze it in 2 pint containers, I used 1/2 cup vinegar. About 20 minutes into the 1 hour boiling process, I thought it smelled too vinegary {vinegar and I don't get along well), so I dumped some of the liquid and added some water, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 cup. (I didn't measure.)

• I added half of the jalapeño peppers 15 minutes before the one-hour boiling time was up, then added the rest to boil for the additional 5 minutes, instead of adding them all at the end. After munching on this salsa for a while, I'd say one could at least double the jalapeños. With the prescribed amount, the salsa is less than mild. (The heat seems to be strongest immediately after cooking; it diminishes later as all the flavors blend.)

• I added way more than 2 T cilantro, but didn't measure - a small batch bought at the store. Maybe that was a 1/4 to 1/3 cup?

• Initially, after all the cooking and mushing was done, I thought the 1 t cumin was way too strong. I might start with 1/2 t cumin next time, though the cumin seemed fine after the salsa sat overnight.

• The resulting salsa tasted too tart to me, so I added a small amount - 2 large "pinches" - of brown sugar. This is an old Sicilian trick, adding sugar to spaghetti sauce, which I applied to this non-Sicilian recipe. Just add a little to taste if you're not familiar with using brown sugar, or sugar. Of course, the recipe is no longer "no sugar" as in the original. Later, this seemed a little sweet to me, but didn't seem that way to MOH, so you may have to experiment.

This is an excellent, tasty, colorful green salsa. Yum!

Why Do I Like Geology

I’ve been asked to say what I like and don't like about my work or my life as a geologist.

--SIDE NOTE: I don’t often call myself a scientist, but I call myself a geologist, which I've heard is supposedly some kind of scientist, though I wonder some days, or maybe I just wonder about some people. Whew!--

These are questions that I’m rarely, if ever, asked in real life. What I’m usually asked is, what do you do as a geologist, because most people—as far as I can tell—don’t have the vaguest idea what a geologist does. When I’m asked that, I say vague things like, I map the geology out there, you know, the rocks (because I’m a rock person). Sometimes I’m asked—by people who have an idea of what a geologist might do, and who know that I work for mining companies—how is it that you find gold or whatever-it-is you’re looking for out there. Well, then I mention mapping to find out what is out there, drilling to delineate and define the ore, and looking for various hints and clues that depend on the commodity and ore-deposit type that I might think is worth looking for (or for which someone has paid me to look, if I haven’t had the chance to decide that for myself). I explain that some things look good because of past associations: certain colors in the rocks, certain types of brecciation, certain minerals, certain structural conditions, and possibly things like quartz veins if one happens to be trying to find a vein-type deposit—but maybe even if one isn’t, because quartz veining can indicate that something is going on in the area, some mineralization processes may have been at work.

And I explain that, really, to understand these things, to discover something undiscovered or to further delineate something already discovered but not yet large enough or good enough for anyone to want to come in and mine, that I or someone will have to sample the rocks, because assays and geochemical analyses need to be performed; these are necessary so I can tell what is really in the rocks and not just end up going on past associations. Past associations can lead you in a right or wrong direction, and that direction may just depend on blind luck. So samples are necessary, geochemistry is required.

And then I explain that I’m often working on a drilling project, whether it’s an early stage drilling project nearly immediately following the mapping and sampling phase or whether it’s an intermediate or end stage drilling program, where a mineral deposit of some kind has already been discovered or even partly drilled out. And that, once again, many samples with assays and geochemistry are required. Because, although a really good geologist can estimate copper grade in some kinds of deposits, gold grade is quite elusive, even in vein deposits where some of the gold might be quite visible.

So, what is my most favorite thing? The problem I have with this question is ultimately my problem with having favorites. I used to be asked to say what my favorite color was. I had to make that up. Because, really, I didn’t have one. I like, and have always liked, a hell of a lot of colors. Some not so much, most quite well. For a while I really liked lavender, and then I decided to have blue as a favorite color, perhaps as a reaction against the ubiquitiously female pink. At some point I decided that I didn’t like green—that was after living on the east coast where all the overgrown vegetation was obscuring my view of the geology. Now, there really aren’t any colors I dislike completely, although there are several that I favor, including magenta, various shades of purple, and some shades of green—among many others.

So again, what is the thing I like best about my work or my life as a geologist? I think primarily I like or even love rocks. I like working with them, I like being around them (they don’t talk too much, for one thing), and I like trying to figure out what they’ve been doing all the many eras, eons, and epochs that they’ve been in existence—depending on their geologic age. I also love the concept of geologic time, now popularly called deep time, and I’ve loved it for a long time (for me, that is—geologically speaking I’ve loved the concept of deep time for barely an instant). The rocks don’t even really have to be consolidated or rock-like, yet, for me to like or love them. Unconsolidated materials—soil, alluvium, gravels, sand—these are all rocks in the making, although many of the unconsolidated deposits won’t be preserved for future geologists to look at, but some of them will. And when I’m working with these unconsolidated materials, deposits, and formations of Anthropocene, Recent, or Pleistocene age—which I have mapped in some detail, and even drilled when needed—I often think about whether these particular deposits will get preserved and someday become rock, as though becoming rock is the primary purpose of being a deposit of any kind. (Yeah, maybe that’s weird, but that’s where deep time meets future time in my mind.)

So, now we’ve established what I like best—and because I like rocks best, and because I'm an exploration geologist looking for minerals, a few things become required, whether I like them or not. These requirements generally include that I travel for work, because one usually runs out of backyard rocks fairly quickly, and because the mineral deposits I'm finding, mapping, sampling, drilling, and delineating aren't usually found in my backyard (somone's backyard, maybe; if they had been found in my backyard, I'd alreay be rich and would just be blogging and traveling for a living).

Traveling, therefore, is a requirement. There are jobs that don’t require quite as much traveling; these are usually at or near mines. Some of these jobs require long commute times, and they usually require long working hours. By long commute, I mean as much as 2 hours in one direction. For compensation, the pay is often good, and sometimes the time off is good. Also, because travel away from home base is often required (except sometimes when working at mines), staying in motels becomes almost second nature. It used to be something I didn’t like, something that for some unknown reason even made me anxious. Now it’s nice to get away, at least for a while, and one reason that's so is that the rooms are almost always clean and not cleaned by me, and they have a greater feeling of space than the little house I currently live in.

And what do I dislike about the life? (Yes, we call it that: the life, like we were in the mafia or something.) That can depend on a particular job, but one thing that can be bothersome is office-type politics. Traveling away from the office, if one happens to have an office, gets one out from under the keen eyes of sometimes overbearing or over-managing bosses, gets one away from gossip and other related office antics, and can allow one the freedom to do one’s job properly. In the wide open spaces, one can feel free—even in these days of constant “on” required by cell phones and such, especially because cell service is not available in many prime exploration areas—unless one happens to be close to mines, freeways, major cities. Of course, by Nevada standards many of the “major” cities I’m referring to are quite small. Which is another good thing, for the most part.

What I have found over the years is that almost all good things have their downside in some circumstances, that good things become bad things, maybe just with repetition, maybe just because of the oppositional nature of things—and likewise for bad things. The things I don’t like under some circumstances can become things I like under other circumstances, and the things I like can become things I don't like, at least for some time being.

As far as using the things I like to motivate myself through things not liked: yes, I think I do that to some extent, but in some situations I’m more likely to motivate myself with things that arean’t strictly work related, by finding something that keeps my mind entertained or keeps me inspired. These things might be as simple as taking photographs when there is time, or finding something at work that I can do that is both helpful and personally rewarding, even though it might not be required or expected. And then other times I just plow through, knowing that mineral exploration is quite variable by nature, and that I’ll be doing something else soon, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few months—but soon in the long scheme of things, and instantaneously by the standards of geologic time.

scientiae-carnival

Accretionary Wedge #28: Deskcrop Trick or Treat

This month's Accretionary Wedge is being hosted by Matt Kuchta over at Research at a Snail's Pace, and it's all about deskcrops, "the spookier the better." I missed the fisrt Accretionary Wedge on Deskcrops, which was Wedge #4 at Goodschist, although I've featured a few random deskcrops now and again (exactly two, so far). And, as I explained elsewhere recently, I don't really have a desk, and will have to use either shelfcrops from inside the house, garden crops, porchcrops from the steps near the back door, or back-of-truck-crops. I had one vote for garden crops and one vote for porchcrops, but am going with a spooky little indoor shelfcrop.

Scale: Entire rock is 3cm in diameter.

MOH brough this little gem home from a hike one day, and it was immediately in the running for top shelfcrop, seeing as how Halloween is nearly upon us and it resembles an cheerfully smiling jack-o-lantern. It has a big grin, one partly squared off round eye, and one triangular eye. In reality, it's a dark gray, brecciated dolomite (now running out to the truck to get the HCl in order to test this diagnosis - yes!). Some breccia clasts appear to have been rotated or at least moved (the triangular eye) while others appear to be nearly in place (part, or even most, of the smile); the clasts were then cemented by a matrix of white, coarsely crystalline calcite dolomite (HCl to the rescue).

This is a sedimentary rock (dolomite) that has been brecciated under unknown circumstances, given that the context (an outcrop) is missing. Consequently, I don't know what kind of breccia this is. Possibly it's a karst breccia; maybe it's a hydrothermal breccia; maybe it's a sedimentary breccia that was cemented with dolomite. Maybe it's some kind of fault or tectonic breccia. Just don't know.
Oh, and then I had to do this, thinking I saw a couple veinlet correlations...
...and then this...
...and then this. Purple outlines the breccia fragments; dark pink follows veinlets.
And here's our grinning jack-0-lantern breccia in it's current home, on a shelf, leaning against a folded towel, making it truly a shelfcrop, and a top shelfcrop, at that!

Happy Halloween!
Or, Happy Nevada Day, depending on which you prefer to celebrate. :)

First Snow 2010

We had our first snow early this morning, although it was very light as far as accumulation. Here is the sum total that stuck on our garden plants.
A pair of tomatoes face the snowfall in our front yard garden area, which overall was not as productive as the backyard area.
Within two hours all the snow had melted, and the sun was out for most of the afternoon, until some low scud clouds blew in just before sunset.
And here's a few of my garden rocks; most are buried beneath Swiss chard leaves. The chard is holding up well, though I keep hearing that temps are going to drop below 20° F, any day now.
No snow on these leaves, which I swear were redder than what I could photograph.
These fallish leaves were spotted while I was meandering about on my afternoon walk.

The first snow of 2007 was on October 6th.

The first snow of 2008 was on October 10th.

The first snow of 2009 was on October 4th.

The first snow of 2010 was on October 25th: considerably later, but it could have snowed lightly last week when we weren't here, though temperatures suggest otherwise.

UPDATE 27Oct2010: The first hard freeze of 18° F came early this morning. It had frozen and slightly wilted the chard yesterday, but this morning, gardening ended. Now, blanching begins!