Rurality

Facebookization

2011-06-13T11:49:00.003-05:00

Why don't she write?!

Facebookization.

I've meant several times to start up again -- geez, it's been a year! But well... blogs (writing and reading) for me are huge time sucks. And Facebook is the huge time suck that I've been abusing most recently.

Note to spammers: that does not mean that you can graffiti my blog with your crummy, spammy links. I still delete those.

Anyway, I'm still alive, though parched with drought. Thinking about starting back up again, or at least posting every now and then.

The photos show something I've been obsessed with lately: I'm on a huge succulent kick, potting them up in thrift-store finds. I can't say which is more squee-inducing, finding new plants, or discovering containers that speak to me (marked way, way down).

Too sweet

2010-06-08T06:33:00.001-05:00

I said that bugs are attracted to me because I'm so sweet. My husband had to point out that they're really more attracted to... other things.

Hackberry emperor, Asterocampa celtis. His favorite foods: Sap, rotting fruit, dung, carrion.

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I like that Butterflies and Moths of North America site and their detailed range maps. You can get a custom list of the butterflies in your state. It even goes down to county level, but I'm not sure if all counties have the same level of detail.

Here's another one for the more common Alabama butterflies.

2010-05-13T06:59:00.002-05:00

Sometimes you're lucky, and they just come to you. (~~Green~~ Barking tree frog, Hyla ~~cinerea~~ gratiosa.)

Shortly after whining about being sick yesterday, I chipped my front tooth while biting my fingernail.

So, maybe I'm just frog-lucky.

I was going to say, "Doesn't he have a pretty eye?" But after staring at the close-up while doing the photo cropping, I'm finding it slightly creepy. A hypnotist's eye. Squinting and wide-open at the same time.

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Thanks to Swampy for correcting my ID!

Ick, sick

2010-05-12T07:13:00.001-05:00

Since just after my last post almost a month ago, I've been unwell.

First there was discomfort, and an attempt to postpone the doctor til after the craft show. Then there was pain, a can't-take-it-no-more doctor visit, and the missing of a craft show. Finally there were pills and a little loopy relief. Eventually a long, slow recovery, with lots of wish I had more pain pills malaise.

I'm 90% better, but that last 10% is taking forever. I'm still not in good form for bending, stooping, or scrunching photography maneuvers. So I've been playing in Photoshop with earlier shots.

Vroom Vroom: Indy at Barber

2010-04-12T11:20:00.002-05:00

We spent the weekend at the Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham. Friday we roamed the park scoping out the different viewing spots, before finally coming back to our old favorite under the trees (on the straight between turns 11 and 12).

Various car clubs gather at the races and park in "car corrals". My husband wished he could take one of these Vipers home with us.

Although not the headliners, two Grand Am series races were also held this weekend, and turned out to be a lot of fun, even though I didn't know much about them. I was surprised at how many of those racers' names were familiar to me though... Hubby loves to watch those "24 Hours of Daytona" type races, and some of it must have rubbed off on me.

Pirelli employee taking a break. (Tired tire girl?)

There was a "fan walk" for the Rolex Grand Am series on Saturday. You have to pay extra for a Paddock Pass, and we didn't have time to fully take advantage of it. But I really enjoyed being able to walk on pit lane. It's even narrower than it looks on tv.

The crews couldn't have been nicer -- we even saw them opening the car doors so little kids could look inside.

Hot Dog Boy was there on pit lane. I took the flyer, and still have no idea what that was about. But he was awfully cute.

In which I pretend to be part of the pit crew... I imagine that Fernando Alonso just sped by in his Ferrari. I held the pit board to give him vital info, since his radio was broken... (Never mind that he's in F1, a series that doesn't come within 1000 miles of this track.)

Marco Andretti demonstrates how to pass at Barber.

The one thing I really got SICK of hearing was how you couldn't pass at the Barber track. I must have heard it a hundred times, from Joe Schmoe in line at the Porta-Potties, to radio announcers, to some of the drivers themselves. (I saw Ryan Hunter-Reay by chance, the only time I didn't have my camera, and he was saying it too.)

Indy Lights drivers take turn 5 three-wide.

But it's really not true. There was not much passing, granted, and it may not be easy, but it is possible.

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Still more photos to process... more later!

Goo Day

2010-04-08T16:50:00.001-05:00

Happy Goo Day!

I was mistaken in thinking that I'd already missed Orange Goo Day this year... That is, the day the Cedar-Apple Rust and Cedar-Qunice Rust make their outlandish annual appearances.

Hooray! I hate to miss it. This year the appendages seem more noodly than ever, don't they? I wonder if that's because it's rained so much in the past year.

Well, if you aren't hip to the whole orange goo phenomenon, don't fret. I wasn't either, until we moved out to the country. You can read my past posts (with slightly more scientific explanations) here.

So, was it Goo Day with you too? Did you have fun shouting sporulation and heteroecious and gelatinous telial spore horns?

Game Cam

2010-03-24T08:12:00.002-05:00

Some recent game cam photos:

A sleek bobcat (Lynx rufus).

Murphy's law of game cameras:
You get mostly southern views of northbound animals. (Coyote, Canis latrans.)

Looks like she barely escaped that bicycle pump. (Virginia opossum, Didelphis virginiana.)

Finally, our first shot of a beaver in action. (Castor canadensis.) Click to embiggen!

We nearly ruined the game cam, trying to get a photo of a beaver. Positioned it too near the creek last spring. The heavy rains came, and... well, it's not meant to be an underwater camera. It still works, but not as well as it once did. The batteries used to last forever; now they need replacing every two weeks or so.

And this was the only beaver pic we got out of that sorry situation:

Smile!

If that's the miscreant who gnawed down the only white-blooming redbud in our woods, I wouldn't be too sad if that flash gave him a mild heart attack. I really miss that tree.

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Sirens from emergency vehicles screaming down the highway roused us in the wee hours last night. Jasmine howled, which she almost never does. It sounded so funny, I couldn't help but laugh, even as I was trying not to wake up too much. But then every coyote in the woods howled too. There are a lot more of them than I'd thought. I had imagined the population somewhat reduced, since our chicken flock has stayed intact for the past year. Now I'm worried.

Finally wonderful, Pt 2

2010-03-22T06:29:00.002-05:00

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). The bloodroots are almost two weeks late this year, due to cold weather.

I haven't tackled moss identification yet. This is a common one here.

Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata). Most of them are still not open yet.

First damselfly of the season. They are frustratingly difficult to identify.

Hepatica (Hepatica nobilis). You know it's a late spring, when the hepatica aren't open til after mid-March. I've found them blooming in January and February, most years.

The beavers are out in force and at it again.

Yesterday was decidedly not wonderful (got colder, rained all day). And snow flurries this morning! I think the wonderful is due to return tomorrow, though.

Finally wonderful

2010-03-21T09:29:00.001-05:00

The meteorologist was right Friday morning, when she described the coming weather: finally wonderful!

Wildflowers are popping up everywhere. I've been out with the camera, and will post some pictures soon. (It's raining this morning, or I'd be out trying to find more.)

I should know by now to take the camera everywhere, though, since I ended up really wishing I'd had it yesterday in Birmingham. You just never know when you're going to be surprised by bagpipers.

Usnea strigosa

2010-03-16T07:24:00.001-05:00

We see this lichen here all the time, only usually without quite so many things on it. The technical name for the things is apothecia. If that's exciting to you, you may want to look here for related technical terms. I spent way too much time there, following links and trying to figure out what was meant when they said something was shaped like a skittle. The candy or a British bowling pin?

Anyway, I finally identified the lichen: Bushy beard lichen; Old man’s beard; Usnea strigosa.

I haven't found a good southern or eastern North American lichen identification site. I was lucky and happened on a page that told me that this "is the only Southern Usnea with large, pale, terminal apothecia."¹

The Ohio Moss and Lichen Association has some good photos, including this one that shows what Usnea strigosa more commonly looks like. But there's no key. Let me know if you find a good lichen site.

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¹If you could actually get the pdf file to come up, it might be useful. I had to make do with the hodge-podge cached html version.

Evidence

2010-03-15T11:00:00.001-05:00

Pileated woodpeckers wuz here... Dryocopus pileatus calling card.

This fallen log is along the path that I've been taking to scout wildflowers. They bloom first on the higher elevations, and I've made the trek two or three times in the past week, with no luck. Nothing blooming yet. It's been an unusually cold winter, followed by an annoyingly tardy spring.

Since it's been raining in near-biblical proportions, I get to tromp through plenty of mud and standing water to reach the higher elevations. A good test for my new rain boots, I guess, but now I feel slightly guilty at how abused they look, so soon out of the box.

Plants are starting to emerge, at least. It won't be much longer.

Via my superior weather radar-sleuthing skills, I suspected that it would rain again before we got back. I was right. Next time, we're taking two umbrellas... I keep forgetting that somebody is a lot taller than me, for umbrella purposes.

The better to see you with

2010-03-02T07:43:00.006-06:00

Here's a recent game camera shot of a reddish coyote. I still haven't managed to get a better photo of the suspected melanistic (black) coyote. I think this one may be his/her mate. I've gotten a couple of shots of them together, but Red here is always the one in the foreground.

After viewing our previous shots, the local Extension agent agreed that the black canid was most likely a coyote. He advised me to bait the area with meat for a better photo. I'm a little afraid that would attract the wrong element though... stray dogs. There have been a few more of those around lately.

Work, work, work

2010-02-28T08:13:00.001-06:00

During a previous set-up at Cottontails

My first spring craft show will be Cottontails next weekend.

I'll be in normal chicken-with-head-cut-off running around mode this next week, working on all those last-minute things that I think will take 10 minutes and invariably end up taking 3 hours.

So, of course it is the perfect time to start a new project! A page on Facebook for the soap biz.

Come be my fan. See behind the soapmaking scenes. Get special deals on my handmade soap and other lovelies. Help me expand my "fan base" beyond just relatives who owe me money.

I'll endeavor to be at least 50% less annoying than a telemarketer, and I promise never to call during dinner.

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Not calling during dinner offer does not apply to relatives.

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My booth at Cottontails will be Azalea 1202. Come see me!

Boat in the woods

2010-02-25T07:28:00.008-06:00

Sure, lots of people have boats on the river, or boats at the lake.

If you want to be really trendy, try a boat in the woods. It doesn't go very fast, but there's no danger of drowning.

I really thought this boat would have fallen totally apart by now, but she's still hanging in there. (Here it is in 2006.)

It used to say, "Jazz Feeds". I've no idea why anyone would paint an ad on the side of their boat.

This one makes me feel like a sort of tumbledown Walker Evans, only 1000% less likely to take a good photograph.)

Maybe I really should plant something in it.

Cat Parables

2010-02-23T08:00:00.000-06:00

When they had all gathered together, the cat was completely silent, and some speculated that perhaps he had fallen asleep. The cat slowly opened wide his eyes, and winked. Several of his disciples tried to interpret what this meant, though of course none of them were correct.

Spring Break

2010-02-22T07:11:00.001-06:00

It was warm! It was dry! Very unusual for our winter this year. I was afraid we'd missed the bluebells coming up, since last year by this time they'd been budding for at least a week.

There was no sign of bluebells at all, though; not a single leaf was sprouting. It's been cold. Unceasingly, mind-numbingly, give-no-quarter cold.

We did find a few little decumbent trilliums poking up (Trillium decumbens).

There were very few of them. These individuals were on one of the warmer, sunnier slopes. I thought I heard one of them sqeak, "First!"

A single budding Toothwort was nearby.

I was sure we'd find a few Hepatica blooming, but we had to be satisfied with their lovely leaves.

We grilled some salmon, took a nap, went on this little hike, then lounged in the sun. It was nearly 70°F (21°C). It's been so cold and wet and dreary lately. It was wonderful to have a break from all that, even if it was just for one weekend.

We cleaned up in the garden a little, pulling dry vines off their supports. This had been maddening, gloppy work when they were wet. We didn't even care that we were probably popping off dozens of morning glory seeds straight into the garden soil. There are hundreds of them there already. No, probably more like thousands. They were in this dirt when it was brought in. Every spring, we pluck the sprouts with zeal, but by summer's end the morning glories have always won the battle. But on a weekend like this, we just didn't care.

Low

2010-02-21T21:35:00.001-06:00

Around the time I wrote my last post, my mother-in-law became sick. She died before the new year.

I've wanted to talk about this, but every time I try, I get stuck, not to mention extremely sad. So I'm just going to have to leave it at these few lines, if I'm ever going to move on and write anything else.

A lot of people make jokes about their in-laws, but mine was the best. I really miss her.

Must be shred

2009-12-16T08:14:00.000-06:00

Seen on a bin at a library. A local University library.

How proud this makes me of my diploma.

Scritch scratch

2009-12-15T08:11:00.000-06:00

Another recent game cam pic. After looking through some of the older game camera photos, I realized that we've had the camera in almost this exact location before.

I'm not sure why it surprised me, when I first realized it... Animals like to walk on clear, open paths just as much as people do.

I suppose I vaguely imagined some sort of I'm an animal! I walk in the woods! philosphy. But no. If we built an asphalt highway through those trees, the animals would be walking on it.

Melanistic coyote?

2009-12-14T08:00:00.000-06:00

I'm fairly certain that this recent game gam photo is of a melanistic coyote.

You can see why we've been tempted to buy a new camera with a faster trigger. We get a fairly high percentage of this type of shot (only part of a moving animal).

Here he is going in the opposite direction.

Here's that same photo, lightened up a little.

Without seeing the face, I can't say for sure that it's not a coydog. I don't think those are very common here either, though.

Keep your fingers crossed that we'll get a better photo of this individual in the coming weeks.

Tour of trees

2009-12-12T08:17:00.000-06:00

At one of the homes we toured last weekend, my friend S. and I enjoyed the sight of the huge trees as much as the home and all the decorations.

How I could have neglected to note exactly what type of trees these were, I'm not sure... I guess I was afraid that the shuttle would leave us. Looks kind of like an oak though, I think. You can click to see it better. (I blurred my friend's face so she wouldn't kill me.)

Another nice one on the other side of the house. Wish I had trees this nice and spreading. (If you're local, you might recognize this as Mitchell Farm.)

On the walk back to the car, we passed a couple of trees with last-gasp color. (That smaller farm manager's house is really more my speed.)

The trees near the Ruby Radish were bare of leaves. The better to see the good bone structure, though.

This is the view from Mitchell Farm - it gives you an idea of the winter forest look in my limestone valley. Almost everything green is a cedar; there are few pines.

Tour of Homes

2009-12-08T06:01:00.000-06:00

A friend and I went on the Blount County Tour of Homes. Ticket sales help fund grants and special projects for local schools.

This year, I guess they had a hard time finding people to open their houses. Out of the five "homes", one was a church, and another was a tea room.

It was fun anyway, and the refreshments at The Ruby Radish were so good that I doubt people would mind them being on the tour every year.

The photos here are all from the same house - the smallest one on the tour. (I haven't processed the other photos yet.)

I'll never live in a house this fancy, but I enjoy seeing other people's homes... their doodads, their decorations, their dishes, and so forth.

She had a large collection of nutcrackers near the fireplace.

"Nutcrackers are scary," says my husband.

Shiny festive mantel.

An abundance of matching candles.

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The schools need help because Blount Countians tend to spend their money in Jefferson county, where most of them work, rather than in their home county, where their kids go to school. It's a problem.

All that lovely new paving on Hwy 75 is thanks to stimulus money, by the way, not local tax money.

Early snow

2009-12-05T12:52:00.002-06:00

Nothing like a little snow, to bring one out of a blog slump.

Every channel forecast snow, but I didn't pay much attention to their percentage predictions. My belief that it would actually snow, in Alabama, in early December, was exactly 0%.

But it did snow, a little.

Jasmine romped. She adores cold weather.

The chickens were wary. It might have been some evil plot, after all.

I don't remember the trees ever looking so nice, after such a light snow.

I hope the rosemary didn't get too frizzen.

I and the Bird anniversary

2009-08-06T07:11:00.001-05:00

It's the four-year anniversary of I and the Bird! Go visit the special-edition post Four Years Young. Nice job, Corey.

Search terms

2009-08-01T09:18:00.000-05:00

Further down, there are fifteen other variations on the yellow fuzzy caterpillar theme, and even more versions with misspellings of caterpillar or yellow.

This topic came up the other night at the Blount County Blogger dinner... what is the top search term for your blog? Mine tends to vary seasonally, but year in and year out, the overall winner is always... yellow fuzzy caterpillar.

Blue snake usually comes in second.

I used to look at my stats compulsively, but these days I tend to forget for weeks at a time. So if anyone's sent me a rash of traffic, I apologize for not thanking you properly. The stats roll over after about a day, since I'm cheap and don't pay for the extended version.

We also talked about answering comments, and I admitted that I'd been kind of slack in that regard, especially lately. If I've ignored your comment, it wasn't on purpose. I just tend to put things off, or get started doing something else, and then forget. I wish there were a pill for that.

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Who else was at the dinner?
countrypeapie
Edifice Rex
The Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
and a friend who I'm trying to convince to blog.

The Country Experience couldn't make it this time, but we hope to see her next week, as well as mountainmelody and WhoKnowsWhat.

Bobwhite

2009-07-31T08:10:00.002-05:00

Colinus virginianus

Growing up, I knew this bird as "a Quail". Since there's only one type of quail in Alabama, there's no confusion. I also heard them called Bobwhites, and some people put both together: Bobwhite quail. The standard name is Northern Bobwhite, but you'll be considered an egghead if you go around calling it that.

Our place was so manicured when we first moved here, that we never heard Bobwhites. A few years of "the natural look" was more to their liking, and now it's not unusual to hear them singing. It never fails to make me a little happier, every time I hear one.

Yesterday my husband discovered one walking down our driveway. Between a fogged lens and zero cover between us and the quail, I never thought to get a photo, let alone one this close. But this bedraggled individual seemed almost as curious about us as we were about him, allowing us closer than almost any wild bird I've ever encountered. He wasn't stupid though - he walked off into the brush just as we reached him.

Bobwhites are in decline, and I suspect that their numbers here are probably hurt by the huge increase in armadillos in recent years. (They're ground-nesting birds.)

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Click here to hear a Bobwhite calling. We got close enough yesterday to hear an endearing little quiet chirping noise that he was making.

Visit the Friday Ark.

Indecisive cropping

2009-07-25T07:51:00.001-05:00

I'm growing Zinnias for Hospice again this year. They're perfect for me: varied, easy, prolific, and forgiving. And, good for Hospice: long vase life.

I'm growing the same types as before, but their behavior this year (when not totally drought-stricken) is wildly different. The large varieties are doing so much better that I'd think they were different plants. (They're actually from the same batch of seeds.) We watered them last year, but apparently, that doesn't compare to actual rain.

The only problem I'm having...

... besides Japanese beetles...

... is indecisive cropping.

Can't decide which looks best.

I have that problem a lot.

Gave up after one try on this Peppermint Stick variety.

Gray day swallows

2009-07-13T11:01:00.001-05:00

Flighty flibbertigibbets.

Chickens love watermelon

2009-07-08T07:57:00.001-05:00

Chickens love watermelon, with a passion. These were just our leftover rinds, with only a bit of red. Last year we bought an over-mushy melon by mistake, and they ate the whole thing: chicken heaven.

I had figured that the black and white chickens were Dominiques, but now I'm not so sure. Dominiques (or Domineckers, as they are called here) have a rose comb, and these don't appear to be headed in that direction. The female on the right as a lot of whitish feathers on her front, but the others don't. The feathers on the back of their necks seem to be changing from black-and-white to brown-and-white.

My husband says they're probably all just mutt chickens. The three remaining excess cockerels haven't made it to the stew pot yet. They're not fighting, or even crowing, so far, but it's just a matter of time. For now though, they are helping decrease the insect population in the yard. This little flock roams further afield than others we've had.

I hate the fact that after the cockerels are culled, we'll have one tiny flock of two chickens and another tiny flock of three. "Can't we all just get along" is not a sentiment that's shared by chickens, apparently. The older birds just won't have anything to do with the younger ones. They treat them as if they were another species entirely. I wonder, if one of the older ones dies... will the remaining one prefer to spend her time alone, or will she try to join the younger flock? I'm guessing the latter.

The one on the right is lowest in the pecking order. The other chickens chase her from the food at times. But I've taken a tip from some people and started offering bugs that I find in the garden to the chickens. This gal is the one who comes running the fastest, for her caterpillar treat. Now she runs to me, expecting bugs, every time she sees me. I'm tempted to buy mealworms to keep in my pocket, so I won't be such a continual disappointment to her.

Bad picture of a good fish

2009-07-04T20:54:00.000-05:00

We walked in the creek. Apparently it's become our warm-weather holiday tradition. We spotted these fish, that I photographed poorly, and one other cool long-skinny-stripey one that I missed altogether.

Hubby said he thinks this is a sunfish. I looked online but couldn't find anything that matches exactly. (I'm hoping one of you will enlighten me.)

The weather was hot, the water was cool. The gnats were horrible. The mosquitoes, surprisingly, weren't unbearable. I did get an interesting bite that looked like it might have come from a 6-inch-tall vampire. It's still a little swollen, but I've experienced no bloodlust so far.

It hasn't rained in over three weeks. Most of the county got a nice downpour last weekend, but not here. The grass makes sad crunchy sounds. Hubby put in drip irrigation in most of the garden again this year, so I fired it up for a good soaking this week... and forgot to turn it off. For a long time. A looooong time. An "I'm embarrassed to tell my husband exactly how long" long time. The plants didn't seem to mind.

Daylily garden

2009-06-19T07:21:00.002-05:00

I knew, in a theoretical kind of way, that there were a lot of varieties of Daylilies. It didn't really prevent my non-stop gaping at a Daylily garden, though.

One of our wildflower group couples gave us a tour of their garden this week.

Their main focus is Daylilies -- they have hundreds of them.

I doubt I'll ever be as dedicated a gardener.

But I'm lucky to have friends who are.

All the types were labeled, but non-dedicated non-gardener that I am, I didn't take down any names.

If you're dying to know about any particular one, I can probably find out.

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Daylilies are Hemerocallis sp. The name in Greek is a combination of Hemera (day) and Kallos (beautiful).

I wrote about words using Kallos before, when talking about Beautyberry. Every time I come across it in a botanical name, I still crack up, remembering that comment about a track team and their cry of "Callipygious!"

Bird's Nest fungus

2009-06-18T07:35:00.001-05:00

I know I'm living up to the most common descriptive written in my old yearbooks ("weird") when my first reaction to finding Bird's Nest fungus is, "Oh, I've been wanting to see those!"

But it's true. If I'd had a Most Wanted list for fungi, this one would've been near the top. I should have prepped myself a bit better though - I didn't realize that they were so tiny. (That green towering thing on the left is an onion.)

It's apparently very much a fungus of bark or wood mulch. The "eggs" contain the spores, which are splashed out by rain. So I'm thinking that our mulch probably already contained the spores when we bought it.

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Key to the Bird's Nest fungi. I believe this one is Cyathus striatus.

Other Most Wanted?
Dead Man's fingers!
Any variety of Stinkhorn fungus!

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Hmm, there's a blog carnival/festival/circus for everything else in the world, but not one for fungi? Or am I just missing it?

Soap meeting

2009-06-16T07:15:00.003-05:00

I always have so much fun at our Alabama Soapmaker meetings, and this was our largest ever: 101 attendees. At least a third of them were from out of state this year. There were so many new people that I didn't get to meet them all.

To inspire creativity, we participate in swaps. This year I signed up for the lotion bar swap, figuring that it would force me to work on my formulating. (I've made them before, but hadn't really ever been happy with them.)

Mine was still a bit greasier than what I was aiming for, but it sure worked well on softening my rough elbows. So I called it "Elbow Grease". It still needs some tinkering.

After I see all the swap goodies, I usually end up wishing I'd entered two or three more. This year it was the Shampoo Bar swap that I was especially envious of. Dianne always has such adorable packaging, and her treatment of the swap items was no different.

Cute, huh?

Shopping is one of my favorite parts of the meeting, and this year we had more vendors than ever.

This is one of those times I wish for smell-o-vision.

We also have table space for members' garage-sale items. If you're lucky, you can pay for your meeting expenses this way.

We usually have a mixture of lectures and demonstrations. Carol demonstrated her company's cutter, and Darlene (who's really from Georgia, but we claim her as an honorary Alabamian) showed us how to make sugarcube scrubbies.

There's a camera showing the up-close action during demos. This is Alison's lotion-making class. (Click to enlarge.)

But sometimes you just have to get up close in person.

Theda showed us how to make liquid soap.

Tammy is the "Mud Queen" and sells all manner of Dead Sea salts and mud products. Here she is demonstrating the proper use of gloves and goggles.

That evening, she had a mud party in her room, and I was able to take many incriminating photographs.

I'm hoping my blackmail money will start arriving any minute now.

Madopterini

2009-06-10T07:24:00.002-05:00

Weevil party at the nearest daisy, pass it on...

I think these weevils are in the tribe Madopterini. Though I might just be leaning towards that conclusion since I like the name so much.

I wasn't even aware that there were such things as tribes, taxonomically speaking, until I started trying to look up bugs. Just as species can be further divided into subspecies, families are sometimes further divided into subfamily, tribe, and subtribe.

Madopterini: More likely to march on Rome, or to perform straightjacket escapes while upside down and underwater?

All zoological tribes end in -ini, apparently. (I would not have been able to resist naming several of them after Italian operatic composers.)

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A professor at the University of Florida has a nice series of pages about writing scientific papers. They include sections on species name formation, Greek and Latin words adopted into English, pronunciation of scientific names, and several other interesting topics.

Prickly pear

2009-06-08T07:22:00.001-05:00

I was surprised the first time I saw cactus growing in the wild here in the southeast. Outside of cactus gardens, it's not the kind of plant you tend to find in the suburbs. But it's a native in most eastern states.

This is Opuntia humifusa. The upright tall version is Opuntia stricta. There are three other prickly pears in Alabama: Opuntia austrina, Opuntia pusilla, and Opuntia monacantha. But only humifusa is in Blount county, and it's the only member of the cactus family that's native here.

My book says it grows in sandstone outcrops, limestone glades, and open, thin-soiled woods.

Zygodactyl Coccyzus & the cut direct

2009-06-05T07:51:00.001-05:00

Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus).

Giving me...

The cut direct.

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Cuckoos are zygodactyl, like woodpeckers. Click that link for further bird-foot edification.

Friday Ark.

New chickens

2009-06-04T12:05:00.003-05:00

The newer chickens never seem in the mood for portraiture.

We came up on the losing end of the chicken lottery this time. Out of eight mystery chick picks, five were cockerels (males), and only three were pullets (females).

What kind of homesteading woman am I, if I couldn't watch what had to happen?

The squeamish kind, I guess.

Hubby is just as content to do it all himself, I think, to avoid having me standing over his shoulder. "Offering suggestions," as I see it... "Bossing me around," according to him. "And stressing me out."

We made the rookie mistake (according the the Backyard Chicken Forum) of cooking them without letting them rest in the fridge for at least 24 hours, so they were a little tough.

Why are my blackberries not getting ripe?

2009-06-02T21:32:00.005-05:00

A friend told me this story tonight, and I figured I'd post it here to help blackberry-less internet wanderers.

My friend's blackberry bushes seemed to be on track for a banner year. Tons of blossoms. Scads of little berries forming. But never any ripe fruit.

What was going on? She searched the internet high and low, finding no likely answers. She became increasingly frustrated. Why were her #$%^&*@ blackberries not getting ripe?! It didn't make sense.

Then she found the answer by accident, when she arrived home in time to catch her husband lurking near the garden. He was eating all the ripe berries directly off the vine, and had been doing so for the last two weeks.

"That answer wasn't on the internet," she said.

Now it is.

Annie's

2009-06-01T07:18:00.003-05:00

The Blount county bloggers met at Annie's over the weekend! Her job may be a pain, but it has made Annie Linda-Hamilton-buff.

I'm so jealous. I'd do anything to look like Annie. (Except eat well and get a lot of exercise.) If I'm found dead next week, it'll be due to Annie killing me for showing this. But the light was so nice, I couldn't resist.

Also present were CPP and TCE. We should have taken a pic of all our feet together or something, but of course I had that idea on the way home. Maybe next time, when I hope that MM can join us too.

These photos were all taken on our "weed walk" at Annie's place.

Pink phlox. I can't provide scientific names for most plants blooming after April, since they all seem to have 50 look-alikes that vary only in the slightest details.

Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele) on Blanket Flower.

Whorled loosestrife (Lysimachia quadrifolia).

Collection of colored glass from Arkansas.

Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis).

Mexican Hat. ~~This and the Blanket flower aren't natives here, but are good plants for butterflies and quail.~~ Update: I think I was wrong about them not being natives.

One of the skullcaps, possibly Hairy skullcap (Scutellaria elliptica).

A daylily I can't remember the name of.

Possibly a summer bluet? I'm not familiar with this plant and can't find a picture that matches well.

A fern I couldn't identify.

The lovely Lika.

The lovely Grendel.

Thanks for having us over, Annie! It was great to meet you, TCE and CPP!

Long weekend

2009-05-26T07:58:00.000-05:00

'Tis the season for baby toads.

Everywhere a nest, nest.

Woodpecker playground.

Top of the previous tree, now on the ground.

Somewhere behind these leaves, many warblers were cheerfully singing.
(Kentucky, Blue-winged, Common Yellowthroat, Northern Parula, Louisiana Waterthrush.)

Happy with "just clover".

Black Knot & the Cherry Tree.

Green green green

2009-05-22T07:12:00.003-05:00

Much better than last year's drought, but my nose won't stop itching.

Problems with Blogger comments

2009-05-20T05:45:00.001-05:00

If your blog has one of those "Comment as" buttons just after the comment space, don't expect any comments from me.

My comments on your blog disappear into never-never land, no matter which type of ID I choose. Even "Name/URL". Even "Anonymous". I have never been able to comment on any blog that uses this type of comment form. (Blogs with "Choose an identity" work fine.)

I can't figure it out. There are plenty of other comments, so those people didn't have problems. It's just me. Only, it's not just me - I've found a few other folks wandering the internet in search of a solution to this problem.

But I haven't found a solution. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Wolves at the door

2009-05-19T06:12:00.000-05:00

The one who was the church clerk

Last week my cousin from New Hampshire was visiting, and we made the genealogy rounds.

Samford University's Special Collections has a treasure trove of old Alabama Baptist church records. In between learning that one ancestor was a church clerk and that another was excluded (thrown out) twice, I overheard this conversation:

"Listen to this. The church has been in two previous locations."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah. It says they had to move the first time because the church was built in a spot with no access to water. The second time, they had to move because of too much activity from Timber Wolves in the area!"

Actually I'm sure they meant Red Wolves (Canis rufus), since there never were any Timber Wolves (Gray Wolves, Canis lupus) in Alabama.

The Red Wolf was declared extinct in the wild in the 1980s.

There are now over 16 million Southern Baptists.

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Red Wolf Recovery Project

Red Wolves of Alligator River

Red Wolf Coalition

This page shows the historical range of the Red Wolf. The subspecies that lived in Alabama, called the Florida Red Wolf (Canis rufus floridanus) was completely extinct by 1930. A second subspecies, the Mississippi Red Wolf, Canis rufus gregoryi, was extinct by 1970, leaving only the Texas Red Wolf, Canis rufus rufus, the species being used in the Recovery Project.

Ain't no sunshine

2009-05-18T06:16:00.002-05:00

The sun came out long enough to make a Sun Dog.

Still no garden planted. Too wet. We were under three miserable inches of rain this weekend. Last year it would have been a blessing — this year it's just increasingly annoying.

The forecast is for at least 3 days of sun though, so keep your fingers crossed for me.

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The temperature dropped so low last night that the heat came on at 1:23 am. I know the time, because the smoke alarm was also roused (presumably just from dust). In the hour+ that it took me to fall back asleep, I wondered if I should create a "grab and go" drawer of important things that I wouldn't want to get burned up. I was secretly proud that my purse and cell phone had been within arm's reach. (But not my computer.)

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My new words for the week:
Chatoyancy
Nixtamalization

Deer feeding

2009-05-11T07:26:00.002-05:00

We have unwittingly set up a deer feeding station in our back yard.

Mother and son

For several years it has been a chicken feeding station, poached by no undesirable critters other than the occasional grackle or bad dog.

But our luck wore out, and it seems that deer have excellent memories as far as food is concerned. They're daily buffet visitors now.

Scruffy deer

Hubby thinks they're cute. "You won't think so after they eat the entire garden," I warn, but he doesn't believe it.

This would be the non-existant garden... the garden we've yet to find time to plant. When I moaned about it at a meeting last week, a man told me that he hadn't planted yet either. "The signs aren't good until Thursday. Then they'll last for about 10 days."

Since it's supposed to rain almost every day this week, I'm not overly hopeful. Instead of planting by the moon, we usually use the "when we're both here and it hasn't been raining buckets" method. And those signs have been terrible lately.

Odd anole

2009-05-08T09:26:00.006-05:00

I met this jaunty little anole outside a restaurant recently.

I tried not to stare, but something was definitely odd about the skin on his head.

Has the skin had actually been scraped off? Eww. Or is that just discoloration? An infection? Problem with molting?

He disappeared around a corner before I could probe further.

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Green anole (Anolis carolinensis).

Friday Ark.

Acoustic Cafe

2009-04-27T11:31:00.001-05:00

Yellow Bearded Iris

My wildflower buddies and I made another visit to the Acoustic Cafe Amphitheater.

Steve Masterson

Steve very graciously took us on another guided tour. Most of my flower photos didn't turn out well (it was too sunny) - the ones from last year are here.

Mabel and the formerly perfectly fine soaker hose.

Mabel's the new pup on the block, and she's very friendly. She's still at the chewing stage though, and will probably be on vacation during the upcoming festival, so as to save tent ropes and such.

Sadly, the lovable Buster passed away since last year. Lucy is as aloof as ever.

Tadpole

Tadpole walked with us. Her sister (Sarah) joined us briefly, but was skittish of the camera. Katy the calico slept through the whole thing.

Fiery Searcher

On our walk, we spotted a Fiery Searcher, Calosoma scrutator. They're also known as Caterpillar Hunters.

Another view

So brilliant in the sun! If not the most beautiful beetle, he's at least in the top ten. He was large, as beetles go, and very fast.

Take off your shoes

Also new since last year, this exquisite hardwood floor (Ash).

There are some wonderfully worked details. I didn't forget to photograph them, but I did forget to remove the lens hood. (The lens hood is great for reducing flare when you're taking pictures in the sun. When using the flash, it causes horrible shadows. Duh.)

Skull tree

The skull tree. Still wishing I'd thought of that. Now that we have Jasmine the bone-stealing dog, we don't find the number of skulls that we once did. But I'll remember Steve's advice for cleaning such things: stick them in an ant bed. Reeeeally wish I'd known that before the antler incident.

The Acoustic Cafe is all about String music, and this is its museum. (Click for a larger version.)

It includes:
John Hartford's bowler hat,
Sam Bush's whiskey bottle,
Vassar Clements' pipe, and
Duke Bardwell's photos of playing with Elvis.

Now, Steve knows that while my friends and I do enjoy string music, we are pretty much totally ignorant about it. "You may not know his name," he said, speaking of John Hartford, "but you know his song, Gentle on My Mind."

I didn't realize though, til just now when looking up his links, that I did know John Hartford. He was on the PBS special Songs of the Civil War, that I had taped years ago, and watched dozens of times.

Here he is singing my favorite version of my favorite Civil-War-era song, Lorena:

link

Just lovely.

I looked for another song I remembered from the show, Sweet Honey in the Rock's rendition of Climbing Jacob's Ladder. Couldn't find the video, but I believe this contains the audio:

link

OK, one more. Another favorite from that show was Hard Times Come Again No More, sung by Kate and Anna McGarrigle and their families. I found this somewhat later version by them that I actually like better, and it has the added bonus of Emmylou Harris:

link

Rufus Wainwright is in both versions. Here's a link to the original, with a much younger Rufus and Martha.

Waiting to greet you at the Acoustic Cafe Amphitheater...

Peekaboo

2009-04-10T08:06:00.001-05:00

I didn't get a better photo before he noticed us. He slithered away so fast I could hardly believe it.

I am really, really glad that venomous snakes don't tend to move that fast, or at least, not that fast towards you. (I have seen Copperheads move fairly quickly, but away.)

Anyway, this is a Water Snake, I think the Brown Water Snake (Nerodia taxispilota).

They supposedly have poor dispositions (they'll bite if you pick them up), but if you ask me, any snake that runs away from me has a disposition that I enjoy.

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Submitted to the Friday Ark.

Goo to you

2009-04-09T22:00:00.000-05:00

Big spring rains = orange goo.

This year we had an overabundance of the Cedar-quince rust (gooey bits seen here) and not so much Cedar-apple rust (noodly orange meatballs).

Sporulation, my new favorite word.

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These photos are really from about 3 weeks ago - I forgot to post them earlier. I have been forgetting a lot of things lately.

Conflict of interests

2009-04-06T18:47:00.001-05:00

By coincidence, the state meetings of both the Alabama Master Gardeners and the Alabama Wildflower Society were held in Huntsville this past weekend.

I had a conflict of interests!

Actually it wasn't too bad, except for half a day on Saturday, when the AMG was winding down and the AWS was beginning.

We did not get as much time at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens as we would have liked.

This is their 115+ year old dogwood.

A trillium that doesn't know how to count. (It's supposed to have only three petals.)

A quadrillium...?

At a garden we toured, my favorite feature was this granite wall that the owner had built out of free scraps.

I didn't take my "good" camera due to forecasts for lousy weather, and of course ended up wishing I'd had it.

Especially when we hiked the Monte Sano sinks trail. I saw Squawroot for the first time...

...I didn't realize it was so big!

One night the banquet hall was late opening up, so I wandered the neighborhood and photographed enchanted medieval castles. (Or possibly it was just a backlit church with swirling clouds.)

I had a wonderful time, but boy are my feet tired.

With parakeet accompaniment

2009-04-02T06:34:00.003-05:00

It was more spectacular before I thought to grab the camera, of course.

I grew up hearing this called sheet lightning or heat lightning, but to be correct I think it's actually called intra-cloud lightning.

I didn't realize, until playing it back, how loudly the frogs out in the pond were singing. And inside, you can hear Beaker (our parakeet, aka budgie) squawking, whistling, and talking. At around 11-12 seconds he says, "crazy bird". You'll have to have your ears pricked and the sound turned up to hear it.

Chick flick

2009-04-01T13:40:00.002-05:00

After a week, we moved the chicks to a much larger container. Wow, were they happy about that. They started a sort of fighting almost right away. I believe they are establishing pecking order.

You can see them doing it in this short video. It brings to mind that chest-bumping thing that boys do, doesn't it?!

I don't remember our previous chicks doing this when they were so young, but it's been a while, so I may be wrong.

I hope it's not just the males doing this. That would mean we have 6 or 7 males out of 8 chickens. Eep.

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P.S.
Please excuse the ratty-looking board the waterer is sitting on. We're recycling!

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P.P.S.
The reason we had to give so much information when buying chicks, was, I suspect, the whole NAIS thing. It's basically so the government can track livestock.

In the case of chickens, it's so that they can come kill all your chickens if the Avian flu ever hits here.

Chicks!

2009-03-31T20:37:00.004-05:00

I piddled around and waited too long to order chicks. Sold out!

I should have realized, after hearing stories about seeds flying off the shelves in this poor economy, that the same would apply to small livestock.

But we found mystery chicks from the Cullman Tractor Supply store.

I think we have Leghorns, a Rhode Island Red, and Dominiques. Maybe.

They are cute, at any rate, although I suspect that a high percentage may be cockerels.

Fuzzy.

Wuzzy.

We put them in a pen outside one sunny day, to soak in sun and eat bugs and scratch around, but mostly they acted like it was just another ploy to try to kill them.

The female Muscovy was verrrry interested. Poor thing wants to be a mama so bad, but is too dumb to figure out how to sit on eggs correctly. Maybe we should have brought her some ducklings.

This is how much they grew in just a week:

That one on the far left and one other black chick have tails already, which says "male" to me, but I pray I'm wrong.

Look Ma, real feathers!

To buy the chicks, we had to sign a paper: name, address, phone, driver's license number! I considered yelling "No NAIS!" and running out the door, but I didn't. I hadn't felt Big Brother peering over my shoulder like that since we tried to drive up to view the local dam, and had our plates and license numbers recorded.

Lord knows what sort of watch list I'll be put on for buying chicks, visiting a dam, and buying Sudafed.

"I'll be watching you."

Spring, sprung.

2009-03-11T07:20:00.000-05:00

It's bloodroot time!

Tempus est Sanguinaria canadensis.

Babelfish doesn't work for ancient languages, so that is possibly not correct latin.

But anyway, bloodroots are up!

Natural Graffiti

2009-03-09T05:59:00.006-05:00

Fungi graffiti. (Spalting in tree trunk.)

Snail graffiti.

Insect scrollwork?

Cottontails

2009-03-05T21:16:00.004-06:00

We've gone from snow to temps in the 70s in one week. Don't plant your tomatoes yet though, says our Extension guy; there's still more cold weather to come.

Divided heart-shaped rock that has nothing to do with this post.

I'll be at the Cottontails craft show this weekend at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic center. So if you are local and have $6, come see me. If you come Friday morning, you may see a friend of mine too. Two blogging soapmakers for the price of one. And if tell me, "You said on your blog that you'd give me a 10% discount," then I will.

Snow! (Part 2)

2009-03-02T05:46:00.006-06:00

Snow in pines.

Snow in beeches.

Now they look like Christmas Ferns!

Rabbit trail revealed.

Snow in swampy area.

Snow in other beeches.

Snow on Rudbeckia skeletons.

The Virginia Bluebells are over there - hope they're ok.

Deer tracks in snow. I have been wanting to track wild animals in the snow ever since we moved here. Unfortunately the snow was all gone by early afternoon, and not many animals had moved around in the morning.

Duck tracks in snow. (The chickens were afraid of the snow. They refused to come out of the coop! It was hilarious.)

Mystery tracks in snow! There is my gloved finger for size comparison. Now if I could only remember where I put the tracking book.

Snow!

2009-03-01T08:09:00.009-06:00

The forecast was for two to four inches by daybreak.

The TV is full of snowmen and snowball fights and cantevenseethegrass, but here - not yet.

We had five inches of rain day before yesterday, so I'm thinking that the persistent puddles are melting all the snow.

It's still coming down though, so I've got my fingers crossed.

Sundogs

2009-02-20T06:12:00.002-06:00

How I managed to live (mumble, mumble) years being unaware of sundogs, I'm not sure.

It's been two years since I first saw one (and wrote about it), and I've seen dozens since.

But I still haven't managed to get a good photo of one.

I see them more often in winter, especially when driving south late in the afternoon. (AL-75S gives great sundog.)

No use trying to race them home, though. They're slithery, and don't hang around for portraits.

Here's a nice, simple page with a good sundog photo, as well as other atmospheric phenomena. Here is the definitive page on the science behind the "why" of all the optics.

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The latest I and the Bird is up over at The Birder's Report. Go see!

How to mesmerize a cat

2009-02-19T06:22:00.004-06:00

I'm not sure if it's the groovy screensaver, the Grateful Dead, or the combo.

Early bloomer

2009-02-18T05:54:00.007-06:00

~~Cherry~~ Japanese Apricot blossoms...

... at the in-laws' this past weekend.

I haven't seen cherry trees blooming around here, and the inlaws are north of here, so I guess this one's just an early bloomer.

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Updated:
My sister-in-law emailed to tell me that the reason this is blooming before other cherry trees, is that it isn't a cherry tree! It's a Japanese Apricot. (The bark looks just like that of a cherry.)

Major award

2009-02-17T07:04:00.002-06:00

The leg lamp from the movie A Christmas Story is so well known, that when someone speaks of a major award, you think they're kidding.

My nephew really won a major award, though.

A "What do you mean, I have to pay taxes on it?!" MAJOR Major Award.

My sister-in-law told me that he's actually the third person in the family to have won something this substantial... an aunt and an uncle, on separate sides of the family, have both won cars.

Our nephew is back stateside now, having finally finished his tour in Iraq. And you may remember that he previously served in Afghanistan.

Hubby says this bike may be more dangerous than either of those.

He had to try it out too, though.

I can't help myself, I just love a man on a motorcycle!

I feel famous now

2009-02-16T07:33:00.004-06:00

The Nature Blog Network interviewed me (here)!

That first link takes you to their list of nature blogs, which numbers almost 700 now. I'd encourage you to sign up, if your blog's a fit.

I'm hoping that in the future they'll consider listing by geographic area too. I'd love to be able to click over to, say, a "Canada" tab, then select by province. Because I frequently find myself wondering, "What's shaking in Nova Scotia right now?"

Thanks so much to Wren for interviewing me, and to Pablo for suggesting me.

Coming attractions

2009-02-15T20:20:00.001-06:00

Many have risen...

... but few have budded.

(Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica.)

Shy ones have been spotted, but their lips are sealed.

(Trailing Trillium, Trillium decumbens.)

Mouthy little things, they'll soon be chewing the scenery everywhere you look.

(Toothwort, Cardamine sp.)

Tired of worn winter clothing, some are already sprouting new duds.

(Stoneseed, Lithospermum tuberosa.)

Still sleeping, but last year's faded poster marks the spot of exciting future installments.

(Foamflower, Tiarella cordifolia.)

Chipping sparrow

2009-02-13T07:51:00.005-06:00

Poor little stunned Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina).

Birds do still occasionally fly into our windows, dirty as they are.

I found a sheltered spot in the woods and left him there to recover on his own. Later I googled, and it suggested that we should have kept the bird in a towel-lined, dark shoebox for an hour or two.

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Don't forget to visit the Friday Ark.

Stumpery

2009-02-12T06:51:00.002-06:00

Squirrels have their own ideas about what makes a good stumpery. "Feeding platforms, a must-have!"

This is what remains of our old falling tree problem.

Turkey-tailish fungi march up one side and down the next.

Flamboyant fungus.

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I only learned about stumperies earlier this week, when a friend sent me an article about the one on Vashon Island. (Pat Riehl, the owner of that one, will be speaking at the B'ham Fern Society lecture in May.)

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Trying to google images of stumperies brought me to an interesting blog, the Folly Fancier, who had featured this stumpish superstructure.

I saw that FF had also written about the Lupercale grotto, another coincidence, since of course Lupercalia starts tomorrow.

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And a dog nicknamed Stump just won the Westminster dog show.

There should be a word for it

2009-02-09T06:15:00.002-06:00

It happens a lot... you learn something new, then you start to encounter it everywhere.

After learning about Swamp rabbits recently, I thought this log cried out for closer inspection.

Decaying log - check.
Swampy area - check.
Lack of other suitable latrines (elevated flat surfaces) in area - check.

Yup.

This surface really isn't flat at all, but I've been noticing that flat isn't nearly as important as elevated, to a Swamp rabbit.

Decaying isn't that important either - closer to our house (where there are mostly cedars), they almost always use mossy rocks, or rocks where leaf litter collects naturally.

If you become tired while walking through the woods, and think, "There's a good place to sit," well, chances are, a Swamp rabbit has thought that too.

What madness

2009-02-04T07:04:00.005-06:00

My Mom's old neighbor had a beautiful wall-trained Pyracantha espalier.

Some strain of madness* evidently struck the new occupant. He cut it all down, while it was full of berries.

Mom rescued a few branches for display.

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*Rhodophobia, the fear of the color red?

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This is not the first time I've wished for a Big Book of Phobias. The internet can't find me a word that means fear of berries. Or fear of thorns, though I'm almost certain those words must exist.

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P.S. Go visit the Festival of the Trees, if you haven't already.

Armchair birding

2009-02-02T08:00:00.001-06:00

Female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius), eating berries from an Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana).

As seen from our living room sofa.

Please excuse the dirty window glass. I don't wash the windows, so that the birds won't fly into them. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

I didn't actually know that Sapsuckers ate berries, until I saw this one doing it.

Comfortable sleeping positions

2009-01-30T06:35:00.002-06:00

Cats have funny ideas about comfortable sleeping positions. Trouble is, I always wake them up, trying to take pictures.

I haven't managed to photograph my favorite yet. Sometimes I'll glance over towards the chair, and just see a paw (or two, or four) sticking straight up in the air.

Then I usually wake them up by laughing too loudly, before I can even get the camera.

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Submitted to the Friday Ark.

Animal tracks

2009-01-29T07:23:00.001-06:00

I don't even know why I have an animal tracks book.

I'm so rarely able to figure out what anything is.

If I were a dedicated animal tracker, I guess I'd have hopped right down there in the mud, and planted a ruler next to the tracks.

But I wasn't carrying one, it was more than a hoppable distance, and I didn't want to get my good shoes muddy. And it probably wouldn't have helped, anyway.

If you know, please put me out of my misery. I'm to the point of imagining snickering little critters, roaming the creek banks at night. They've painstakingly carved no-such-animal mystery tracks onto the bottoms of their gaily painted miniature stilts.

Poor dear

2009-01-28T06:35:00.001-06:00

My husband phoned on his way home from work. "There are two Great Pyrenees in our driveway!"

Not Jasmine and a new friend, as he'd first thought, but a neighbor's dogs. They wagged their tails, but retreated across the ditch when we approached.

We were puzzled, until we spotted the dead deer lying in the water. We figured he'd been hit by a car on the highway, then wandered over onto our property to die. There was a cut near one knee, but otherwise no obvious injuries.

I thought we should try to keep the antlers. As it turned out, we didn't begin the boiling-the-excess-meat-off process (that the internet recommended) until two days later. In hindsight, I probably should have guessed that the process would best be suited to the outdoors at that point.

Oh, the stink. I am not completely sure that I'll ever get that stench out of my nose. It was revolting. Fetid. Malodorous.

I am unable to find a word that means, "my brain clings to that hideously repulsive odor like flypaper, and brings it back fresh (ugh) to memory every time I even think about a deer".

Spongy black fungus

2009-01-21T06:32:00.001-06:00

What the heck is that thing?

I don't know, but it sure looks weird.

Back home at the computer, it's Tom Volk to the rescue again.

This is a specialized type of Sooty mold, Scorias spongiosa, that appears only on Beech trees.

Here's another page about it.

I first learned about sooty mold when I took the Master Gardener course. Certain plant-sucking insects excrete honeydew, a delightful name for what really amounts to sugary poop. The sooty mold lives off of it, and that's the black stuff you see on leaves (and other things).

I hadn't realized they came in such specialized varieties, though.

Historic day

2009-01-20T05:33:00.001-06:00

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

But it's so much earlier than I ever thought possible.

Today they'll be swearing in a President who's...

younger than me!

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Update:

I love Google Trends.

How else could I have known, that on Inauguration day, there were only two other pressing issues on America's mind...

... a good snow cream recipe, and free makeup.

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Click the screen capture to see it writ large.

Swamp rabbits

2009-01-19T06:25:00.001-06:00

We see this a lot in the woods...

I always wondered why rabbits climbed up on top of things (stumps, logs, rocks) to deposit their scat.

It wasn't until I started writing this post, though, that I learned something interesting.

Apparently, only Swamp rabbits do this.

I was aware of Swamp rabbits (Sylvilagus aquaticus) before, but hadn't really thought they'd be here.

There's bottomland, but it's not really what I'd call swampy.

We've never seen rabbits swimming.

But elevated poo platforms don't lie.

To detect the presence of Swamp rabbits in areas without suitable "latrines", you can make your own!

Now I'm curious how widespread this type of rabbit is. Let me know if you've seen this rabbit sign in your area!

Husband humor

2009-01-17T07:09:00.001-06:00

Hubby: I think I'll go up and get my hair cut.

Me: It doesn't look that long.

Hubby: Mmph. [Still moving towards the door.]

Me: But what if I want to run my fingers through it?

Hubby: I'll have them put it in a bag for you.

Monkey cigars

2009-01-16T08:51:00.001-06:00

Several Catalpas grow here. They're a native tree, but these were planted by previous owners, to attract the catalpa worms that are such good fish bait.

One of its country names is Monkey Cigar Tree. Ever since I learned that, the long pods always bring to mind those old smoking monkey toys.

Inside the pods are several seeds, all fringed on the ends.

Looks like twins. (They all do.)

I posted about Catalpas, aka Catabas or Catawbas, and their worms before. They grow naturally by streams, so they don't mind getting their feet wet - the trees in the flood photo last week (on the right) were catalpas.

I thought I'd read that repeated defoliation by the worms didn't harm the trees. Usually, not every tree is defoliated every year. But one that seemed the worms' favorite is now dead. Could just be coincidence though; I don't know how to perform tree autopsies.

The spring we first moved here, I found a hornworm on the porch, and mistook it for a catalpa worm. Oh, so gently did I carry him over to a branch, thinking I was helping him find his true home. I want to slap my head now, remembering that piece of idiocy! It's ok though — confusion to our enemies, and all that.

I wondered if people actually ever lit up the pods, which don't seem very smokable to me. No firm evidence, but I thought it was hilarious that the search turned up an article by my blog friend Ron as the top item. Small world!

Winter-greens

2009-01-12T06:53:00.002-06:00

Several members of my wildflower group are already itching to get out in the wild. They're dying to dig.

Unless it's a rescue, I'm more of a looker than a digger. My thrill is in the hunt. I do enjoy garden tours, but to me, there's nothing like finding the flowers in their natural environment. (And then leaving them there!)

Anyway, I wouldn't recommend digging in January or February. But this Jacob's Ladder (Polemonium reptans) is one of the plants you can scout early - it's probably easier to spot the green now.

The plant's a lot taller in the spring, but some of the lower leaves stay green throughout the winter here. I'm not sure if that's the case in the north or not - maybe someone will comment and let me know.

There are several different types of Jacob's ladder, in almost every state and several Canadian provinces. But reptans is the only one in the south.

Further adventures in bad bird photography

2009-01-11T11:06:00.007-06:00

Once again, my digiscoping skills leave a lot to be desired.

Enough, though, to say about our new yard bird: "Yep, that's a Wigeon!" (American Wigeon, Anas americana.)

When I first spotted him, I thought the Hooded Mergansers had finally returned. (We haven't seen them all season, and usually they've arrived by Thanksgiving.) But a new yard bird is more exciting, even if he didn't stay long.

According to the Cornell birds site, they're a species that's increasing. (They don't say why.) I haven't watched enough Wigeons to say whether its nervous-seeming behavior was normal, or whether this individual was just anxious at being alone. He darted this way and that, in an unsettled fashion, mostly in areas where the water was too deep for dabbling.

Judging by range maps, not a lot of Wigeons winter near here, though I've seen them several times at Wheeler Wildlife Refuge. Wheeler's bird list calls them "abundant". Oh boy, is that right - I remember once searching through what seemed like a million little green baldpates before finding the one little brown one belonging to the Eurasion Wigeon vagrant in the crowd. Then after moving the scope, I never found him again.

While searching for range maps, I came across this site that has transmitters tracking Wigeons. Fascinating! Such a high mortality rate though, so sad. I don't know why I was so surprised that the survivors all returned to the same North Carolina refuge they started from, but I was.

-----

P.S. Bonus points if you know why this bird makes me think of pineapples.

-----

Update:
In other birding news, it's almost an all-feathered NFL playoff! The Charger-Steelers game isn't over yet, but no birds there anyway. The others teams in the semi-finals though, will be the Philadelphia Eagles, the Baltimore Ravens, and the Arizona Cardinals. Or as we like to call them, the Arizona Pyrrhuloxias. (They don't actually have cardinals in Arizona, but the Pyrrhuloxia, which does live there, is a close cousin.)

Diluvian New Year

2009-01-09T07:44:00.001-06:00

Holy cats, has it been raining!

We had 4.5 inches one night, then 2.5 inches fell the next day. (That's about 11.5 cm and 6.5 cm.)

I'm a few days late in posting these pictures, and the ground is still boot-sucking soggy.

If "beaver-drowning rain" isn't an old country expression, it should be. Driving towards town, I saw two dead beavers on the side of the road. You know it's a lot of rain when that happens.

It's hard to complain about this much rain after 3 years of drought. But it was starting to become worrisome.

Jasmine fretted. She whined. She barked at the water!

Just starting to recede.

Ahh. Much better.

This is a little drainage ditch that hasn't had water in it for 3 years or so.

This was the last time the water was so high. That was in the spring (when you expect that sort of thing), almost 4 years ago now.

They say it's going to rain again tomorrow...

100 years ago

2009-01-08T07:36:00.001-06:00

I was bitten by the genealogy bug.

I was also bitten by the 19th century fashion bug. More precisely, the bug pertaining to the period of fashion between 1840 and 1920. (The better to date old photos.)

The side effect is that I have become one of those people who wants to shout out historical inaccuracies in the middle of movies.

"They won an academy award for this?! Women didn't wear bustles in 1900!"

Or, "That sleeve wasn't invented until 1880!"

Even, "That dress has an 1840s bodice and a 1910 sleeve!"

And so on.

-----

The photo was taken in northwest Georgia, a little over 100 years ago. Judging from the baby's age and the plant growth: around September 1905. The two men in the middle (wearing bowties) are my ancestors three and four generations back. The older woman is my great-great-grandmother Martha, born in 1852. She's the daughter of Julia Ann of the broken heart.

The baby in this picture, Ennis, died in a Typhoid outbreak in July of 1921. A relative wrote:

"During the huckleberry season, about 9 people in our community had typhoid fever from drinking water from the stream in the mountain. Grace and I recovered." Seven others died.

My Mom told me that they normally started picking huckleberries on the 4th of July every year. Ennis died at one o'clock in the afternoon, on Sunday July 17th. He was 16 years old. (Antibiotic treatment for typhoid would not be available for another 27 years.)

I imagine his family had been frantic, calling two different doctors to see him. He had two death certificates, filled out by different doctors. The first began treating him on July 10th, and the second on July 13th.*

I love collecting stories about relatives from the past, but they are often so tragic.

The inscription on Ennis' tombstone reads, "Just in the morning of his day, In youth and love he died." This was apparently a fairly common saying to put on a young person's stone, and I wondered if it was from a poem.

I found in "Hymns for Christian Devotion" (copyright 1853!) one called "Death of a Scholar". It includes the lines,

Death has been here, and borne away
A brother from our side :
Just in the morning of his day,
As young as we he died.

I believe this was later changed in some churches, to this version I found listed from another tombstone:

Death has been here and born away
a brother from our side :
Just in the morning of his day,
In youth and love he died.

I also found "so fair and young he died" as an ending for this epitaph. It seemed to have been common to use just the last two lines.

-----

* A historian at the Georgia State Archives told me that she'd seen two death certificates for the same person before, but never from two different doctors.

Stupefied by the labor of digestion

2008-12-26T18:04:00.002-06:00

Bluh. I had to relax and do genealogy all day today, to recover from yesterday's intense gluttony. Bluh. Diet starts again next week, I guess.

I am much too lazy to send handmade cards for Christmas, so it's a wonder that I receive any.

My Mom's cross-stitch. I forgot to ask if she started these last Dec 26.

Cutie-pie niece designed this card from my sister's family. (My brother-in-law says he's the handsome one in this drawing.)

Mt artist friend included one of her dogs on their card.

OK, this one wasn't homemade, but my brother knows how much I love Edward Gorey!

-----

Stupefied by the labor of digestion: Stolen from Anaïs Nin's diary, which was featured on the Writer's Almanac today.

Creative Outsourcing

2008-12-22T19:21:00.004-06:00

Hmm, there's something different about the office this morning...

I think they've brought in some outside contractors.

"Umm, your drawings may be a little late...

... we kind of had an incident."

I guess he heard there would be no bonus this Christmas.

-----

This happened at an office in Birmingham today. Raccoons really did pee on the drawings and poop all over the desks. Animal control wouldn't come, since the racoons were indoors. Did you know that private critter control starts at about $450 per hour?!

(I didn't take these photos - Hubby's co-workers sent them to him.)

Cleaning ducks

2008-12-19T06:27:00.000-06:00

We've been thrilled lately with plentiful downpours, cloudbursts, thunderstorms, showers, drizzles, sprinkles, and mists. Over six inches of very welcome precipitation over the past two weeks or so. (I'm sure that only seems like more rain than we've had in the last two years.)

Our Muscovy ducks don't much like the water. You'll find one in a pond only if you've thrown him in there yourself. They don't particularly like the rain either — they'll retreat to the porch to stand under the eaves to stay dry.

But the recent rain has often been at night, when the Muscovies like to be in the (uncovered) pen.

Boy, are those ducks clean!

-----

Submitted to the Friday Ark.

Winter thrush

2008-12-18T05:26:00.004-06:00

The Hermit Thrushes have returned for the winter. They're silent here, for the most part — you only spot them from their movements.

(Nothing to see here, just a bump on the branch, move along, move along...)

They desert us in summer, breeding as far north as mid-Alaska.

Wood Thrushes have an opposite agenda:
1. Arrive in spring.
2. Sing like a lovesick fool all summer long.
3. Shuffle off to Panama once the days grow short.

Someone once told me: the Hermit Thrush is rusty on his tail, and the Wood Thrush is rusty on his head. I can never recall which is which in the field, though. There are easier distinctions anyway, especially when you aren't usually in a position to be peering down on their heads or tails. (The Wood Thrush's spots are much darker, for example.)

During migration it can get confusing, with the Veery, Swainson's Thrush, and Gray-cheeked Thrush also thrown into the mix. I'm afraid I may have fallen out of practice in telling them apart without having a field guide handy.

Serendipigoat

2008-12-17T07:36:00.004-06:00

What are the odds?

In Georgia last month, I visited some relatives and searched through photos for ancestors. I came across this instead.

A pint-sized Valentine!

-----
Updated:

Ang mentioned in comments that heart patterns on livestock aren't completely uncommon. So I did a little searching and found these online:

British piglet, also named Valentine, beyond cute.

Japanese chihuahua, named Heart-kun, exceedingly adorable.

Cat and another cat (not quite as well-defined, still charming).

-----

Updated again:

Check out Northview Diary's cow, Mandy, who has a cute little white heart on her side.

What the storm hath wrought

2008-12-16T06:17:00.003-06:00

We could have used all this rain last spring or summer, but it's still welcome.

Even if last week's storms are going to cause a little extra work. I wish I'd put something in there for scale - this tree was huge. I had to hop up on it to get over.

This ex-Sycamore was definitely dead already.

I think the fish and ducks and flittery little birds would like this a lot, but hubby thinks it needs removing.

Collateral damage... I wish it hadn't taken two live trees with it.

It's amazing how fiercely the Sycamore balls still cling, this time of year.

Except for this one.

Flocks of Cedar Waxwings celebrated the rain. (Click to enlarge.)

Recent culinary adventures

2008-12-15T06:41:00.002-06:00

It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but we've never cooked a roast before, other than in the crockpot. (We call it crock roast.)

My husband and I have contrasting cooking styles. I describe his as, "Throw it up in the air - it'll probably come down a roast." I believe his description of my technique includes writing a book on how to cook a roast before ever opening the oven.

We eventually worked our way through the wilderness, with the help of hasty phone calls to relatives. It was tasty.

Homemade buttermilk and butter from this past weekend.

We'd made butter once before. Or actually, I made butter once before, while someone else sulked and refused to participate, because I'd started without him.

Anyway, it's very easy, if you want to try it. There are lots of detailed tutorials on the internet, but the simple version is:

1. Buy heavy whipping cream. Bring to room temperature.
2. Pour into a jar with a lid (and ample headspace).
3. Shake it.

That's about it. You have to shake for about 20 minutes, and you have to rinse it when it's done. From the small cream container, you'll get butter equivalent to one to two sticks.

Now, if I could only find someone with a cow, I could make it from fresh cream, mmmmm. I've had it that way, once, and oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, was it wonderful.

Covered Bridge Festival

2008-12-14T09:42:00.003-06:00

I was a lot more impressed with this costume before I learned that they sell them at pet stores. (I'd thought that the impatient lady at the other end of the leash had made it herself.) Still, it was cute, if you like clothes on dogs. He didn't seem to mind much.

The "Covered Bridge Festival" is held in Oneonta (Blount county) every October. I'm only two months late in posting these pictures. On the bright side, if you're sorry you missed it and are eager to attend the next one, well, now it's only ten months away.

That's the main shopping street in downtown Oneonta. Annie's old store was just there on the other side of Regions bank, just beyond that inflatable green turret. It's Fred's store now - the Eureka shop. (Eureka as in "aha", not vacuums.) I think it's the best shop on the street, but of course Fred sells my handmade soap there, so I might be a little biased.

The next street over, there's an antique car show. People in Alabama seem to hold antique car shows at the drop of a hat. I suspect that antique car people just like to socialize with each other.

You can see a video of one of the bridges, and a bit of the festival, and a cute kid, here. Not my video - it's from Thicket magazine, a very good new(ish) magazine about Alabama.

Another article about the festival is here. It includes photos of all the remaining Blount county covered bridges, as well as my friend Barbara (whose name people always spell incorrectly).

There were previously four covered bridges here, but one burned down. I should say, one was burned down. That's the scuttlebutt anyway: Ne'er-do-wells partying near the bridge were reported and forced to leave. The bridge suspiciously burned down shortly thereafter.

I'm not sure why the article refers to an "accident" that closed a bridge temporarily last year. According to the newspaper, there were deliberate, heavy-duty, meant-to-destroy acts of vandalism on two of the bridges. I'm not sure if rural areas have more than their share of misbegotten miscreants, or if the teenagers here are just really, really bored.

Should have known better

2008-12-11T06:43:00.000-06:00

"Look! Something caught a rabbit!"

While I was bent trying to focus on the fur (proud of myself for spotting something so well-camouflaged and so small), my husband got the bigger picture.

"The rest of him's over here."

OK, ew.

"Did he escape, but get mortally wounded? Did he just crawl over there to die?" (Latent detective tendencies in high gear!)

"Well, probably not. His head is missing."

Had we blundered up and scared a predator away in mid-snack? Hubby moved the carcass a little, and it was stiff. So, no.

Jasmine discovered some strewn rabbit guts, and happily gobbled up several bits before we noticed and tugged her away. Yuck, Jasmine.

On down the path, I had an idea. "Hey, let's get the game cam and put it there, to see if any critter comes back later to finish his dinner." (Latent detective tendencies on fire!)

I'd been moaning about moving the camera for some time now. We were not getting anything interesting where it had been stationed for the past several months.

While hubby was setting up the camera, I found more evidence.

"Maybe if I put this on the blog, a bird expert could tell me what type of bird this feather came from..."

OK, so a raptor (owl? buteo? accipiter?) was probably not going to come back to finish off the rabbit, but surely we'd get some cool wildlife shot of hungry scavengers.

But I really should have known better.

The only one who came back to finish anything was Jasmine.

Bad dog!

Oh, well.

-----

If you want to see the Cottontail in full headless gory glory, you can click here. He's missing a portion of his side too. It's bloody. It's not for everybody.

-----

On the feather, I was thinking "owl" but I really have no idea. (So if you do, please post a comment.) It seems similar to the photo on this page titled "Great Horned Owl feather". That would be cool, since we've never seen one here before.

Surprise visitor

2008-12-06T09:07:00.002-06:00

I spotted an anole on the wrong side of the glass. I'm not the best at reptile-wrangling, so I was surprised when I easily convinced him onto my hand.

"Poor thing," I thought, "he's so weak he can barely move."

Then he sprinted up my arm and onto my shoulder. Running headlong towards the face of an apparent predator doesn't seem like a good survival tactic, but it was hilarious. Watching that little anole face moving so quickly towards my nose really made me grin.

I ran outside before he could leap off. He stayed put. I leaned against a wooden post, and he slowly ambled off. He even stuck around to pose for a portrait.

One post away, his vardøger seemed satisfied.

-----

Updated:
I forgot to mention the scientific name. The Carolina anole (or Green anole) is Anolis carolinensis.

Fungophile (or not)

2008-11-29T09:39:00.002-06:00

I thought this fungus would be fairly easy to identify, but not being a true fungophile (or at least not an educated one), I apparently neglected to perform important field tests.

I didn't touch it, so I'm not sure if it was tough, brittle, or pliable. Was the surface felty, soapy, smooth, or otherwise? I don't have a clue.

I didn't sniff it - did it smell typically mushroomy, or more like newly-dug potatoes? Or perhaps like beans? I'm not even sure how "mealy" smells.

I sure as heck wasn't about to taste it. So it may or may not be bitter. Or peppery.

I didn't try to collect spores. I didn't cut a sample to see if it dried a different color.

So all I had to go by were visual clues and a knowledge of the habitat.

I thought it might possibly be Clavicorona pyxidata, but that one grows on rotting logs, and this one didn't appear to... though the log could have been beneath the leaf litter. I should have checked.

Clavaria fumosa was another possibility, but the habitat does not seem to fit. That one grows in open places, and mine was in the woods.

I briefly felt certain that it was Ramaria acrisiccescens, but that one's only in the northwest US.

Then I found Lentaria micheneri. The only description that lists "salmon" as a color possibility. Plus it mentions oak and beech and leaf litter, which was spot-on for the habitat. So that's my best guess.

-----

So, what's the word meaning "mushroom lover"? I thought fungiphile, but Google kept asking me if I meant fungophile. Online dictionaries don't recognize either, and all my real dictionaries are still packed up in boxes somewhere.

Blog-o-mercial

2008-11-27T08:03:00.003-06:00

We take a break from regular blogging, to bring you this blatant ad:

Here is a coupon code you can use online, if you'd like to order some soap:
10109081199 .

It's 10% off, good through the end of the year. Shipping is $5.95 per address, no matter how much you buy.

The site is here.

It could use some major updating, I know! It should look all spiffy with lots more pictures and fading-in-and-out doodads, but to be honest, I haven't changed it much since I started it 10 years ago. I need to either learn all the new html, or break down and pay someone else to do it for me. On the bright side, the site is written so simply that probably still works on the Dark Ages version of Windows.

Anyway. I hate it when I read a blog that makes me feel like a crumb if I don't buy something the owner is selling, or make a monetary contribution to their tip jar or some such. So I hope this doesn't seem like a high-pressure sales job. I love you whether you buy soap or not!

Do feel free to pass the code along, if you know anyone you think may be interested - it's not limited to the blog.

Now, I have to go get ready to overeat all day. Happy Thanksgiving!

-----

Updated -
We are through with craft shows for the year, but here are the places you can buy the soap locally:
The Eureka Shop, Oneonta (next to Regions Bank)
The Golden Temple (Five Points South location), Birmingham
Bowie's Pharmacy, Curry/Jasper
Gower Paints Plus, Ohatchee
The Rural Heritage Center, Thomaston

These stores may or may not still have the soap-
Hospital Gift Shop, Oneonta
The Garden Shop, Homewood

Surly beasts

2008-11-26T07:33:00.000-06:00

Cheating a little - this was taken before the big freeze. (Click to see it larger.)

We stopped just in time to spot this flock rounding the corner up ahead. I wanted to talk turkey, but they were not agreeable.

The two on the right were torn between joining their friends on the open road, and turning back to the brushy path at hand. In the end, they remembered that saying about birds of a feather, and ran to catch up.

Poor ducks

2008-11-25T07:35:00.001-06:00

When we are away from home and return after dark, the ducks sometimes elect to spend the night on the pond. The next night, they're usually back in the pen, waiting for us to close the door. No harm done.

Recently though, after we came home late several nights in a row, the ducks refused to return to the pen at all. We tried herding them off the pond, but they were having none of that.

Duckie (1, 2) disappeared. If I'd laid bets on which duck might be picked off first, it certainly wouldn't have been Duckie, the flightiest one in the group.

Then Runt disappeared. Then Bluebill. Dagnabbit, we were going to be stuck with only male Runner ducks left, and wouldn't the female Muscovy just love that, come springtime? And why won't those dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks ducks come back to the safety of the pen at night?! You'd think they'd notice their comrades getting nabbed.

Then Runt reappeared. I don't know where she'd been... she didn't look injured. I am guessing that something chased her, and it took her a while to find her way home again. I held out hope for the other two girls for a few days, but it looks like they're not coming back.

I'm not sure what's getting them... coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, or turtles. Or something else our game camera hasn't caught here yet.

I'm going to try tempting them into the pen in the afternoon, with corn. But they have to be in the vicinity of the back yard to see it, and I can't have fed them too much in the morning, or it won't work. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Spider poetry

2008-11-24T05:00:00.000-06:00

One morning we awoke to find that spiders had woven diamonds during our sleep.

Teakettle frostflower

2008-11-22T09:07:00.002-06:00

I've written about Frost Flowers before, but I don't remember ever seeing them this early.

This teakettle was formed from the stem of a White crownbeard flower (Verbesina virginica). Dr James Carter has the definitive page on Frost Flowers. He's also done a lot of fun experiments on extruding ice from pipes (also here).

The forecast was for 23°F last night (-5°C), but here in our glacial little microclimate, it was 13°F (-11°C) when we woke up this morning. Too bad it's not always 10° cooler in the summer too.

War of Wealth

2008-11-21T06:45:00.000-06:00

Geez, y'all stop collapsing the world financial system, would you?

This is a poster from a 1895 play. I'm not sure if today's equivalent would be War of Wealth, War on Wealth, or War for Wealth.

Wikipedia has a handy reference of Economic disasters in the US that includes 16 incidents labeled "Panics". I guess since the last one was in 1911, somebody thought it was high time for a good old-fashioned panic. Many panics seem to start when the Joe Moneybags of the world try to grow even filthier rich, by means of dodgy schemes designed to swindle everybody else.

-----

Here are a couple of money-saving tips that I learned by accident.

#1: Discounts.
Hubby had a few medical tests a while back (he's fine). The bill was substantial, about $1000. I always feel a little cheesy doing it, but since we have one of those BigNameGasStation credit cards that rebates 1%, well, why not use it. I've learned to tolerate a little cheese.

"Can I pay over the phone with a credit card?"
"Yes. How much would you like to pay?"
"All of it."
"I can offer you a 20% discount for paying the entire amount."
"What!"

I'm sure if I'd written a check, they'd have happily cashed the whole thing.

#2: Look closer.
Counterfeit $10 bills have been passed in Oneonta recently. Who's risking a felony charge for $10?! ("Teenagers" comes to mind.)

This is another thing I love about small-town living. The bank teller not only told me about it, she showed me the bill in question. I would never in a million years have caught this bill as a fake. It just looked and felt like one of the new tens that had already seen a lot of wear.

She told me there were two ways to spot it as a fake: look for the plastic security strip by holding it up to the light, or check that the glossy "10" (in the lower right) changes color when the bill is tilted. But who does that kind of thing for $10 bills? I check the strip on $50s and $100s at craft shows, though it always makes me feel so rude. Hubby's been saying that I need one of those currency-checking pens instead, but the teller told me that counterfeiters now use paper that the pen doesn't detect.

Bottom line, if someone hands you one of the newer bills that seems like it's seen a lot of wear... take a closer look.

Cat puzzle

2008-11-20T06:53:00.002-06:00

A purrfect fit? (Sorry, can't seem to stop myself when it comes to bad puns.) In a change from the normal procedure, George has crawled on top of Ginger in this picture.

Seven things

2008-11-17T06:05:00.003-06:00

While I was gone, Twinks asked me to do a meme. I'm supposed to list seven random things, but since I'm contrary, I'm going to list seven things that happened during my lost four months. It's longer than my normal posts, but since I'll be out of town for a few days, feel free to read in shifts!

1. I joined The Gym.
Really, that's what the gym in Oneonta is called: The Gym. I joined with a friend, and wheedled my way into a good deal via a long-term, prepaid, early-hours contract. I can't say I've lost any weight, but I feel in better shape. I'm getting to know my friend a lot better too, since we gab for about four hours a week more than we used to.

2. I thought I'd found a diamond.
People with a five-carat diamonds don't shop at Wal-Mart, I suppose, but I was momentarily dazed by the karmic thrill of it all. My mother lost her engagement ring stone over 40 years ago, and I imagined it had returned, with interest! Turned out to be only a cubic zirconia though, drat. Here is how you tell the difference. I couldn't read a newspaper through the CZ, and was already dreamily wondering how long the police would have to hold it before it was deemed unclaimed. The dot test worked like a charm, though. Like a big, balloon-bursting charm.

3. The garden refused to bend to my will. Again.
I had fun with the Zinnia experiment though. I got a late start, and Powdery Mildew crept in when we left town for a week. The grass got way out of control, as usual. Somehow I still managed to grow a few flowers to donate to Hospice. Maybe next year I will finally have my act together enough to get them there throughout the blooming season.

4. I won a major award.
Because I could remember the Alabama state bird, mammal, fossil, etc., when an emergency preparedness expert spoke to our wildflower group. OK, the award wasn't really all that major, but I basked in the egghead trivia glow anyway. Then a guy even more pointy-headed than me whined that my answer of "some kind of whale" to "What is the state dinosaur?" wasn't up to par. "The Basilosaurus cetoides is the state fossil, not dinosaur!" he moaned. I hugged my MRE and ran out of the meeting room.

5. We let Anatoli go. He'd developed a lump that we decided may have been from improper nutrition or insufficient sunlight. Since he was wild-born, we figured he'd fare better on his own. We saw an unusually high number of anoles this fall, but I was never sure if any of them were Anatoli.

6. I had to wait in line to vote!
There were all of four people in front of us when we arrived at our polling place. An elderly couple let us cut in front of them though, since the man was still searching his wallet for ID. There were a few local issues on the ballot so turnout was very high. The tallies from my precinct, not exactly what you'd call a democratic stronghold, included:
Obama 45, McCain 450
Figures 52, Sessions 442 (US Senate race)
Tag fee increase: Yes 59, No 392
Wet/Dry referendum: Yes (Wet): 226, No: 270
The ratios for the whole county were similar. I still haven't figured out how Vivian Figures, a State Senator from Mobile, received more votes than Obama. Most people in north Alabama weren't even familiar with her. I read that her budget was $22,000; the incumbent Sessions spent multi-millions. (I have loved her ever since I read that she was able to get the outdated, misogynistic Alabama State Senate dress code changed... the one that said women couldn't wear pant suits or slacks on the Senate floor!)
We needed the tag fee increase ($15), which would have gone strictly towards road maintenance. I had a feeling it wouldn't pass, but I was surprised at the resounding defeat.
I'm glad we stayed a dry county. I wouldn't mind alcohol sales in stores or restaurants, but didn't want a bar across the street from us. Rural counties don't have a lot of regulations, so it could have been a real possibility.

7. Alabama football, woohoo!
I had to say that before we play Auburn and ~~Georgia~~ Florida, just in case.