I had no idea that it's Pancake Day. I don't plan to make pancakes today, but if I change my mind I promise to photograph them. :) I made apple crisp last night, but didn't photograph it. How about raspberry-almond coffee cake instead? but with double the raspberries and almonds! I made this last week and tasted to make sure it was ok before I took a quick pic. :O)

I wish I could comment and ask questions about all of the photos posted. They are all wonderful! They make me want to travel, go birding, and visit the eye doctor. (I think I stared at those Tricyrtis dots a bit too long. lol) Mountain Chickadee

Aurora over Icelandic Fault Image Credit & Copyright: Juan Carlos Casado (TWAN, Earth and Stars) Explanation: Admire the beauty but fear the beast. The beauty is the aurora overhead, here taking the form of great green spiral, seen between picturesque clouds with the bright Moon to the side and stars in the background. The beast is the wave of charged particles that creates the aurora but might, one day, impair civilization. Exactly this week in 1859, following notable auroras seen all across the globe, a pulse of charged particles from a coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with a solar flare impacted Earth's magnetosphere so forcefully that they created the Carrington Event. A relatively direct path between the Sun and the Earth might have been cleared by a preceding CME. What is sure is that the Carrington Event compressed the Earth's magnetic field so violently that currents were created in telegraph wires so great that many wires sparked and gave telegraph operators shocks. Were a Carrington-class event to impact the Earth today, speculation holds that damage might occur to global power grids and electronics on a scale never yet experienced. The featured aurora was imaged last week over Thingvallavatn Lake in Iceland, a lake that partly fills a fault that divides Earth's large Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.

ElizabethA I got a few questions for you. Such as, which shore? I am going to ride almost all the way around it this summer. I am hoping to find out what is the warmest month on the north side of the lake? How cold is the lake? Do you ever swim in it? would you consider writing to me on this thread? http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/4390442/who-lives-close-to-any-of-the-great-lakes?n=21 edited to take my email address off.