I finished repotting my Money Tree. It has been returned to her spot in the window and seems to be happy with the whole arrangement.
Next up on my "Things To Do And Say" List was to finish rinsing all the rocks and get the next cycle back into the tumblers. They are rolling, so that part is done.
The batch that is finished polishing has some interesting pieces.
Some close-up shots of the cool features:
I have shown quite a few of these from Teepee Canyon, with their signature fiery reds and oranges. If you click on the picture, you can zoom in and see the color formations in more detail. This is both sides of the same stone:
As the weather cools down, the tourists go home and the locals don't venture out that far. That is the time when I like to go back to Teepee Canyon and collect all the stuff they missed. Then I head south to the Fairburn Agate Beds and do the same thing to restock my supplies.
This is a piece of Bubblegum Agate from the Fairburn Beds.
My mining buddy found a rock out by Fairburn (near the Badlands) that looked exactly like a potato. I thought it was a potato and she was pulling a prank. It really was a rock, but too big to put in the tumbler. With her permission I "belittled" it with a 3-lb sledgehammer. Some of the pieces have been tumbling for months, but it has some cool colors inside.
Another piece of Dawn's Potato Rock:
A piece of Bubblegum Agate that revealed some kind of alien skin.
A piece of jasper from Teepee Canyon.
A Teepee Agate, both sides.
At first, I thought this was just "dirty" quartz until I shined a light through it. It is Dendritic Agate. The red dendrites are likely hematite, a form of iron oxide that looks red.
For comparison, here is a piece of "dirty" quartz. Notice the inclusions are close to the surface, whereas dendrites run throughout the stone.
A piece of green Aventurine. The only green stone in the batch.
Tic-Tac-Toe anyone? Quartz crystals often have fractures, sometimes multiple fractures that run parallel due to the force that caused the fracture. But two sets of fractures at 90 degrees to each other is not very common. I like the light pink color of Rose Quartz, our state gemstone.
Sometimes when I am hunting for Rose Quartz, I find some clear pieces that look like ice.
And finally, a piece of local chalcedony that has a nice purple hue. It looks very different under UV light.
