In a graveyard

I dragged my mother and great aunt all over northwest Georgia last week, searching for ancestors.



The wall around this graveyard was built in the 1880s.



I like old graveyards in general, but finding people you're related to makes it even more interesting.

I don't think Elmina's family could write. So the carver inscribed the tombstone as they must have pronounced it: Elminer.

It seems in pretty good shape for something that's been out in the weather for over 100 years.



There's her husband, Berry. I'm a little surprised that they chose such a different style of headstone for him.

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P.S. Title of this post is my favorite Rufus Wainwright song. (Click the "preview" button at that link and you can hear a snippet.)

You get some really interesting images when you search Google Images for the phrase in a graveyard.

First game camera of 2008

No matter which way we point the game cam, we always seem to capture mostly... southbound views of northbound animals.



Well maybe not mostly, but well over half, definitely.



I'm not sure why it happens that way.



This seems like a different bobcat, don't you think? (The first one looks heavier.)

At least two other blogger friends have told me they got game cameras for Christmas, so I'm anxiously awaiting their first pictures.

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Our game camera is a Cuddeback Expert 3.0. We bought it from Boss Buck. Neither of them gave us anything for free, which is a crying shame, really, considering how much free publicity I've doled out.

I wasn't wild about Boss Buck's skimpy degree of packaging protection. But the camera got here in good condition anyway.

Wayne got the "No Flash" version of this camera, but I'm not sure that he's entirely pleased with it. I believe I remember him saying that he'd get the regular (flash) version if he had it to do over again.

If you're considering buying one, definitely check out the Cuddeback gallery to see which pictures you like best. Many videos are there too, but we've never been able to get the video function to work to our satisfaction.

More fun with fungi

Fungi are one of the more frustrating things to try to identify. I thought bugs were bad, but at least BugGuide is pretty dang inclusive. No such comprehensive reference exists for mushrooms, so far as I know.



You'd think this sweet little cup-type would be easy to identify. I was thinking, well it looks like a bird's nest fungus, only without the "eggs". But I can't seem to find any reference to anything like that, not to one that isn't "densely hairy" anyway. Maybe its hairs are all repressed, what with the drought...?



Sometimes it helps to just google what something looks like. (The top search term that finds this blog has been "yellow fuzzy caterpillar" for over 2 years now.)

But trying to find "yellow sandwich fungus" didn't do me much good.



I do believe it's the same fungus as this one, which he calls Stacka hydnum (which you'd think would be the scientific name, but isn't). But other pictures of Climacodon septentrionalis (the real scientific name) look completely different to me.

Then there's this black stuff.



If you look at this site, you'd be pretty convinced that it's Diatrype stigma, common tarcrust.



But if you went by this image, or this one, you might not.



And is this even the same black stuff? It seemed thin and crusty, whereas the others were thicker and sort of... puffed.

I do think, after looking at several images for common tarcrust, that it's what I've been seeing when it seems like there are several old burned branches in an area with no other signs of fire.

Deep south deep freeze

Well, at least the wind's not blowing.

7.9°F (-13.4°C) is not the norm here, but I guess the temperature gods wanted to remind us that we're really still in zone 7, despite the updated hardiness map.

We are in a valley, so it's usually a bit colder here. The local tv station is saying that it's 16°F; (-9°C) in Birmingham.

This is the display for the fancy weather observation system we got for Christmas. I cropped out the bottom of the picture -- it also shows the atmospheric pressure.

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I could swear that it reached -12°F (-24°C) when I was a kid, but nobody else seems to remember this. We lived a little further north at the time, in Gadsden. According to this site, the lowest recorded temperature in Alabama was -27°, on January 30, 1966 in New Market. Now, that location is practically in Tennessee, but that could be the weather event I'm recalling.

MMMushrooms

I had a feeling that the rain last week would make a few fungi shout for joy. I think these are oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus).



But I'm not sure enough to try to eat them.



Even though there are so many.



And they look so tasty.

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Everything I know about mushrooms is from books. The only one I'd be confident enough to eat would be a morel. And I never seem to find more than one of those at a time, so I just leave them and hope they'll make more.

People in Europe gather wild mushrooms all the time, but I've never had anyone here (in the south) tell me that they do.

Happy New Year

This was the image on my sister's Christmas card this year, but I think he makes a good New Year's Koi too, don't you? (It seems like he's swimming in confetti.)

I was impressed that my 4th grade niece had colored such a pretty carp. Then I found out that she'd actually drawn it! She said they'd had something to copy from, but it isn't traced.

I think we've got a budding artist in the family.

Critter cam?

Chipmonk creeping through the holly.



Fox lurking in the houseplant... preparing to pounce.



Chipmonk hiding in Mom's Christmas tree.



Fox and chipmonk divide the crumbs from Mom's table.

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My sister's dog's toys, up to no good and pretending to be caught on the critter cam (my sister's idea). I had to be coaxed into the idea, but my brother got me going by taking the first pic above.

Isn't that a nice holly plant he gave us for Christmas, by the way?

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I just noticed that the chipmonk is hiding between examples of Mom's smocking, Mom's tatting, and Mom's crocheting. There is even a ceramic Santa she painted, in the background. She also made the ceramic napkin ring holder and the angel in the last pic, as well as the boxwood Christmas tree on the table. She's pretty crafty!

Better late than never

Santa brought 1/4 inch (.6 cm) on Christmas, but waited until yesterday to deliver the main gift: a whole inch (2.5 cm) of rain!

You know you're deep into drought when just an inch of rain makes you so happy. Of course, when you're this far gone, one inch doesn't help that much, but we'll take every little bit we can get.

We still need something like 12 - 15 inches (30 - 38 cm) 24 inches (76 cm) to catch up. I don't think it's going to happen. Weather experts are predicting more dry, dry, dry, at least through spring.

But I can't think about that now... it may rain again tomorrow.

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Updated:
I was wrong about the rain deficit -- it was worse than I'd thought.

Merry Christmas

From all us turkeys.

Geckers

Geckie loves her (very fancy) humid-hide. It's filled with moist sphagnum moss and helps her shed her skin.











Plus I think she just likes the getaway. She's still not eating much though.

Click the pictures for larger leopard gecko-ness.

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Did you see the Friday Ark?

Foggy bottom

The sun is a boor
who seines the slithery mist
then throws it away.

Latest game cam

We haven't had a bobcat picture in quite a while. This one seems particularly well-fed.



He probably ate all our chickens, but he sure is handsome.



Tentative fawn. Click to see the larger version... you can still see some spots on the haunch.



The fawn in the foreground is too dark and the deer in the background is too light, but I thought the focus was reasonably good on both of them.

It's gotten warm again lately, which means the animals have to be closer to the camera to trigger it. The weatherman was expecting a high of 75° yesterday, but I'm not sure it reached that here. (That would be a record high.)

Happy thoughts, Anita, happy thoughts!

Remember this purple wall?



It's in the garden I went ga-ga over on the Shoals tour in 2006. Lavish slobbering was carried on here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

That gardener, Phillip, started his own blog, called Dirt Therapy. You should check out his Christmas decorations. This one in particular just makes my mouth hang open. Isn't it amazing that real people do this, and not just when they're expecting a visit from magazine photographers?

Anyway, now he's tagged me for a meme about "eight things that make you happy". So here are some recent happies:

Girls Dominate the Siemens Competition. Woohoo!¹

The library left a message that my copy of An Ice Cold Grave is waiting. Yay!

Latin Via Proverbs.

A little birdie told me that we might be getting a few really nice knives for Christmas.

My daily email from The Writer's Almanac (which is really more of a Reader's Almanac if you ask me). Each entry includes a short poem, and "Literary and Historical Notes," which often contains biographical tidbits about writers or artists (on their birthdays). Example from December 4th: "It's the birthday of poet Rainer Maria Rilke … who made a career as a poet by seducing a series of rich noblewomen who would support him while he wrote his books."

Stephen Duffy & the Lilac Time have a new album, Runout Groove. Had to get it from amazon.co.uk, but that's ok because it was dispatched in a hurry.²

Brittlestar's new one is out soon too. Well technically it's already "out" but due to my computer-with-not-one-ounce-of-spare-memory problems, I'm forced to wait for the hardware version.

The last one, I think I'll expand into a separate post.

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¹ Must... resist... saying... "You go girls"!

² You can listen to some of it on their myspace page.

Devil's walking stick

Devil's walking stick, Aralia spinosa.

I grabbed onto one of these on a steep trail once, and really wished I hadn't. Floridata calls it "one of the most viciously spiny things in the vegetable kingdom".

Since then I've been a lot more aware of them. But until I looked up the latin name just now, I didn't realize that this was the same plant I'd been trying to identify since the spring.

Before the leaves fell off, and also when in bloom, it reminded me of an oversized elderberry. (But prettier, really -- click the top link.)

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Edited to correct a typo. Too anal to let it stand once I'd noticed it. Sorry sorry sorry.