Pyro Technics

Midwestern lights

It's quite beautiful what a little bit of wire in the fire will produce. It would be a biti difficult to tell the metal ions present in this uncontrolled environment, but I think it would be safe to assume there is copper in those copper wires.

Ants vs. wildflowers

While perhaps mildly entertaining at first, watching me lying on the ground taking pictures of flowers does not hold the kids' attention for long periods of time. While I was taking pictures of a violet, I was privileged to overhear a lively debate regarding the importance of ants and wildflowers. The importance of wildflowers (to me) had been firmly and rather fervently established, but the question of the importance of ants came up when Dani appeared to nearly squish one. Her brother was quick to point out that she ought not be squishing ants. (This coming from a guy who enjoys telling me of his deer hunting adventures and chicken butchering.) Dani quickly retorted that he had no right to be telling her not to kill an ant when he had been mucking about squashing wildflowers.
Josh explained to her, as gently as any knowledgeable, older brother would, that there is, indeed, a difference between squishing ants and squashing wildflowers.

She replied that there was no difference and they were both alive and neither should be killed - they were both important in the great processes of life and oxygen recycling and such.

Here Josh threw his trump card and stated that scientists had conducted an experiment in which they had 'boxed' an ecosystem to see if the process of recycling oxygen would truly work. It didn't. There was missing aquatic bacteria and everything died of oxygen deprivation. I think this ended up meaning that ants are more important than wildflowers. Dani replied that it wasn't fair that her science book didn't include such useful bits of information. Right at this point in the discussion Josh looked up and discovered that I wasn't actually taking pictures of wildflowers.

Which ended the discussion -

I really only wish that I had changed the setting on the camera so all the pictures of them would be in focus.