December Creek

(from Open House for Butterflies, by Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak)

In Robert Burns' Scots way of speaking, a "brae" is a hillside or slope, and the "braes" would refer to an upland area.

                        Afton Water

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,

Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;

My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,

Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Thou stock-dove, whose echo resounds thro' the glen,

Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,

Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear,

I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair.

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,

Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills;

There daily I wander as noon rises high,

My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,

Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow;

There oft, as mild Ev'ning sweeps over the lea,

The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,

And winds by the cot where my Mary resides,

How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,

As gathering sweet flowrets she stems thy clear wave.

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,

Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays;

My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,

Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

 --Robert Burns,  and written in 1786

Here's the lovely (no, goddamned amazing) Nickel Creek performing maybe the best version ever sung to the lyrics of this poem:

(And for what it's worth, Sweet Afton was also an Irish brand of short, unfiltered cigarettes made with Virginia tobacco.)

Creekside switchgrass at season's end

Coffee break

95% off the property:
baked sweet potato, steamed mustard/chard, and fried deer.
Getting there.

And this is the view yesterday morning driving down from the top of the property to The Creek, with its own bit of cloud.

End of October

Late October,  2015 

The year that our sixteen year old Henry David Thoreau entered Harvard College, the German explorer and naturalist Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied worked his way to the edge of the American frontier, studying Indians, plants, animals, geology, and just about anything else he came near. Maximilian concluded his American explorations a year later and eventually published the account of his travels (the London edition came out in 1843, two years before Thoreau went to live at Walden Pond). 

While Thoreau was still at the Pond, he began studying Indians as, perhaps, a way to connect to his idea of The Wild.  This was his primary interest for the rest of his life. And as he poured over the Harvard library’s collection of books on native Americans, Thoreau kept detailed notes (his twelve Indian notebooks run somewhere around 3000 to 4000 pages). One of the books he eventually found was Philipp Maximilian’s. And I can’t help but imagine Thoreau’s heightened interest in this intelligent explorer’s account of all things Indian and all things Nature.

All of this is a dreadfully boring lead-up to our observation last week of what is for us here at The Creek a new flower: Helianthus maximiliani, the Maximilian Sunflower. Right. The idea is that our German friend encountered this native to the Great Plains on his explorations, and so he gets his name attached to the plant’s binomial name (along with several other plants and animals).

The generous Project Gutenberg has put online some of the writings of Maximilian.  For those at all interested in early 19th Century naturalist writing or amazingly detailed firsthand accounts of Indians, these links would be hard to beat:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38784/38784-h/38784-h.htm

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48235/48235-h/48235-h.htm

Helianthus maximiliani,
Maximilian Sunflower

A few days back (Oct 21), I squatted near the shallow yet quickly running piece of Creek about 30m upstream of the Pool. There, on a foot-wide stone half-submerged, loads of damselflies were perched or hovering in their famous reproductive posture known at the wheel or the heart. The male has sought out his mate and, perhaps while in-flight, grabbed her thorax right behind her head with the clasping structures of his tail-end. She then swings her tail-end back under herself and forward to a segment of the male’s tail where he has prepared his sperm for her taking. The pair will remain attached as the female deposits her eggs, generally into plant material under water or near the water surface. The whole time, the male (still grabbing her thorax with his tail claspers) is guarding the process from rivals, helping the pair to fly here and there (freeing up female energy so she can focus on egg-laying), and sometimes balancing himself at the water’s edge while his mate remains underwater to deposit eggs. 

Depending on the anthropomorphic bent of the human observer, it’s a process that involves beauty and ugliness. And absurdity. Three days ago, healthy damselfly eggs by the hundreds were inserted into Creek plants with the hope of filling this stream with larvae and other flying generations. But last night the rains began in earnest. When I looked out the windows this morning, I could not even see the Creek, it was still so low from our drought. But no less than ten minutes later, it was churning with white foam and tree limbs, spanning almost a hundred feet in width. Flash. Flood. And all those countless damselfly eggs somewhere down in the Colorado River and on the way to the Gulf. Many of the larvae that have attached themselves to the bottom of larger stones will emerge here again in a few days. Those that attached themselves to stones smaller than a boulder will also find themselves in the bellies of River fish soon. 

But when I think of what a single damselfly of a mated pair had to go through just to be washed away, my anthropomorphic mind cannot un-conclude that the whole show is absurd. The female herself had to feed and fight underwater for a year to three years as a nymph. Then she emerged one sunny morning and pulsed fluids through her newly expanding wings, morphing into the flying wonder we associate with these and similar waters. And then the quickly maturing process, the formation of eggs, the mate-clasping, the air-borne copulation, and the final and unlikely placement of tiny eggs into calm waters beneath my gaze. Now, though. The torrential loss just seems absurd.

And other images...

       Praise

1

Don't think of it.

Vanity is absence.

Be here. Here

is the root and stem

unappraisable

on whose life

your life depends.

2

Be here

like the water

of the hill

that fills each

opening it

comes to, to leave

with a sound

that is a part

of local speech.

(Wendell Berry, The Country of Marriage)

Late Summer 2015

So yes, a warm summer, but still not as warm as the past few years.  Rain dominated the late spring, and then it was dry. Only dry. And mercury-heaving as we made it into mid-August.

Looking down on the place from halfway up the east side of the canyon.

And still the lambs do not disappoint. Now we're learning to eat heart, kidneys, liver, etc.  Here a simmering, thickening mix of offal seasoned like they do south-of-the-border.

...served with fresh corn tortillas.

 (is this still a Creek blog?)

BBQ-style lamb ribs.

We bought a couple pickup truck loads of compost, and soon we had cantaloupes and honeydew melons springing up unannounced. Someone out there having fun, tossing random seeds into the compost pile? Sweet.

The wax moth wanted something sweet, too, and destroyed the bee hive.  We were able to catch a small remnant of the escaped bees and their queen, placing them in a smaller box.  Small chance of success, but we're hoping.  This colony has given us quarts and quarts of the best tasting honey we've ever eaten.

Just a nice one with whom to share a few acres.

2015 May to June

May 29, 2015 Floodwaters 

And by June 2nd, the waters were still fast, but clear again.

And with all the rains (wettest May on record), we've been able to enjoy all sorts of mushrooms and fungi.

Perhaps some Amber Jelly (Exidia recisa) on an old walnut log.

Lemon Yellow Lepiota (Leucocoprinus Birnbaumii) up next to the house.

Growing beneath the Big Oak.

.

Sex among three black and yellow mud daubers (Sceliphron caementarium).

None of this sort of excitement has anything to do with flooding creeks.

Hang on.

After our Big Rains, the harvester ants in the video below appeared about six feet away from their old nest entrance at this new entrance. The ants go back and forth between the two entrances now:

Trumpet creeper blossom on the vines in the hens' yard. 

The century plant caught some dew this morning.

Newest of the several small gardens around the place. June 2.

March 25-April 14 2015

Hog-plumb

   One of our favorite of the humble shrubs in these hills is the hog-plumb.  The only time one might even notice it is the one or two weeks that its bizarre flowers attract every winged insect around. We've yet to witness another single plant with so many admirers.
   These were found at noon on April 24, 2015.

Watercolor

Agave Americana

Young Agave Americana. 6"x8" watercolor.  4/20/15

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis

Single Hibiscus. 6"x8" watercolor. 4/21/15