Black Racer

Hi, my name is Coluber constrictor.


I'm the first snake of the spring.


It's really warming up, so you'd better watch where you step.

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Not sure if this is Coluber constrictor constrictor (northern black racer) or Coluber constrictor priapus (southern black racer).

I don't have a "snake name meanings" dictionary like the one for birds, but fear not, there's a beauty of an online guide that covers reptiles and amphibians. I especially like the page on mythological references. My husband always jokes that I want to find a new plant species so I can name it after myself. Previously I've always claimed that I'd name my hypothetical find something descriptive. But now I'm not sure that I could resist slipping the name of an ancient Greek fertility god in there somehow.

Bloodroot

All moaning and complaining makes Rurality a dull blog, so I've tried to avoid a bunch of griping about my back problems.

Instead, here's the first Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) of the season. Only the one green leaf just beneath the rightmost petals actually belongs to the Bloodroot. And that thick dry parchment of a bent stem belongs to something else too -- the tender Bloodroot stalk is slightly visible just below it.

Although it's obviously not much of a diagnostic photo, it's still my favorite of several I took over the weekend.

Eastern Gall Rust

I took this picture in April 2005 but only recently figured out what it was. When looking up something else I ran across a photo of Eastern Gall Rust (Cronartium quercuum). It's similar to the Cedar Apple Rust that I wrote about last year. They are both heteroecious, which means that they require two unrelated hosts to complete the life cycle.

I learned that $10 word from the Rust page on James Worrall's excellent Forest Pathology site, where you can also learn about cankers and wilts and so many other problems that you'll be amazed that trees can survive at all.

According to one site, the portion of the tree beyond the gall normally dies, which I suppose explains why I haven't noticed this gall since the spring I took this picture.

So. Central Pain

I'm sorry to be absent lately. My back improves, but then gets worse. Not after big, incredibly stupid things, but following little, surprisingly innocent things.

Also, we will be at the Cottontails Village craft show the first weekend in March. So it's taking a little longer to prepare, trying to baby myself (more than usual).

One news item: Jasmine's new favorite pastime is cramming her large self into the tight, tiny crawlspace under a shed, and making Hubby have to use a floor jack to rescue her.

Let me know if I get in your way

I don't think cats understand reading.

Black Fungi

I took a couple of exceedingly bad photos of a small black fungus growing in the grass.



It's possibly Craterellus fallax, or Black Trumpet, a type of Chanterelle.



A black jelly fungus:



Looks like the same type that's in many Chinese soups.

I'm not sure enough about either ID to try to eat them, though.

Game cam in action again

The previous location for the game cam was getting zero pictures, so we moved it. The new location is not exactly Grand Game Central, but we did manage two shots.


Doe trio. The leftmost deer seems smaller -- I wonder if she was just born this past spring?


Teenager turkeys!

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Rather fight than switch...?
I did fight it, but this morning I was forced to switch to new blogger. I'd been holding out due to all the problems I'd seen on other blogs (mainly the inaccessibility of archives). Please let me know if you have any problems.

Puffed sky

Puffed sky

Sorry for not being here. I still can't sit for long periods of time without my back letting me know (via little shooting pains down my right leg) that I shouldn't.

Not much has happened. The night of a thousand sleep interruptions was followed by the morning of entirely too much caffeine. Complete with hand tremors! (I hummed TMBG's Lie Still Little Bottle all day long.)

I had finally gone to the doctor, and came home with three little orange bottles. (I was reminded that I am really and truly an adult when I can say things like, "Please give me a shot.") I'd thought muscle relaxers always enduced drowsiness, but the original brand of horse pills he prescribed put such a hair trigger on my sleep that I had to call and beg for something else. Near-total deprivation of REM sleep might not necessarily turn me into a serial killer, but I wasn't willing to experiment. The new ones are tiny, and leave me a bit loopy, so if none of this makes any sense, that's why.

Canada Geese have seemed restless, honking their way across the property several times a day, and even at night, which was new for me. Maybe I just slept through it all before.


Puffed sky at sunset with river of grackles (click to enlighten)

Sun dog

When I was researching heiligenschein recently, I also read about Sun dogs a.k.a. parhelia or false suns. I'd heard the term but had never seen the phenomenon, although it's apparently not rare.

OK, so if sundogs are fairly common, I should start seeing them once I started looking for them, right?

Yep.



Sun dog!



Cool.

It looked much brighter in person. There are usually two, spaced evenly on either side, about 22º away and at the same altitude as the sun. I couldn't see the twin on the other side, even when I moved to a vantage point without trees. The clouds on that side looked different. Thicker.

When I first saw it, I thought it was a rainbow, or rather cloudbow. It looked like the lower arc in this picture, with the addition of a bright white spot just to the left. We were almost home from the grocery store, but by the time I rushed in to grab the camera, the long "bow" portion of the parhelic arc had vanished, and never returned. The sun dog got brighter and dimmer as the clouds shifted.

I was a happy camper.

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Parhelia are formed by light passing through horizontal hexagonal plate ice crystals in the clouds. Certain types of clouds produce them more often, and they are most often seen when the sun is low. (See here.)

Another good site for atmospheric optics:
http://www.meteoros.de/indexe.htm

Water features

From the same garden as the pictures of last week. Four views of a fountain:









A daisy bath among white iris.



Another fountain.



A small waterfall. I believe this was a new feature in the garden.



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I very brilliantly strained my back while lifting some 50-pound pails of soapmaking oils (without using my back brace). Sitting bothers it the most, so I may not post as much or visit other blogs as much as normal for a little while.

Easter Egger

I interrupt the series of garden tour photos for this picture of a chicken.

In comments, Ki suggested that we try Araucana chickens. I've looked into it, but they're expensive and difficult to find in the US. And even if you do, they'll most likely be Americanas instead, or Easter Eggers. Those we do have, and of all the chickens we've owned, they're my favorites.

We free-range our chickens, but even with a livestock guardian dog there's somewhat of a predator problem,



and the heavier chickens we've had (Dominiques, Buff Orpingtons, Marans) always seem the first to go. The lightest chickens (Rhode Island Reds, White Leghorns, and Lakenvelders) have also tended to be the flightiest, which is no fun when you're attempting to remove eggs from under them. (They freak out.) Easter Eggers are somewhere in the friendly but wary middle ground.

True Araucana chickens lay blue eggs, but they are difficult to breed. So hatcheries sell Easter Eggers (even if they call them something else), which usually lay green eggs, but sometimes blue or pink.

Two of our girls started out laying bluish eggs, but this year they're more greenish. (A particular chicken's egg color usually changes over time.)



It's OK though.



I like them all.

That purple wall

Jenn commented on the purple wall in yesterday's garden tour post.


It was my favorite focal point of the garden.


A bold choice of color, as they say.


As you get closer, you can see that there are several other colors mixed in with the purple.


Detail view.


I couldn't decide which angle I liked best.


I wondered how many people on the tour rushed home to build purple walls in their own gardens?

Spring break

I took a break from the recent gray days and worked on some pictures from last spring. This is the same garden from the Shoals Garden Tour that I posted about before. The "more pictures later" part only took me eight short months! Oh well.


I'd never been on a garden tour, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But this garden alone was worth the price of the tour. It's difficult to believe that all of this was on 3/4 acre.


Calla lily.


So much of what I love about this garden is the hardscaping. This purple wall was a favorite feature, and if I ever build a garden, I'm now convinced that I'd want to include a lot of statuary. (I think this is Apollo.)


Piney path.


Cherub planter.


Shady rest.


From the more traditional front of the house, you'd never guess that all that was going on in the back.

The garden has its own web site.

Country life

Evidence of beavers upstream.


Evidence of people upstream.