Life in the Wind (July 2021)

As we all well know, if we want to preserve a wild hog's head, 

there's labor to be had unless we are wanting just the skull. 

And as you already may be doing, tying scrap bailing wire around the pig's head 

and hanging it in a cedar elm for a couple years will prove effective. 

(A hillside woods-full of such hanging heads 

would make for fun surprises when neighbor boys go a-rambling.)

Katydid eating what we think was a sweet Indian mallow flower at the top of the Hill (July 10)

The eternally enjoyable website bugguide.net tells us that katydids are "Probably mostly herbivorous. Some species reported to eat flowers" (https://bugguide.net/node/view/36998).  Yes.

The brown seeds of the milkweed plant. And the 
shiny silk-like "floss" attached to the seeds.
Growing at the top of the Hill (July 10).

Appears that there are over a hundred species of milkweed in America. Sometimes it's called "silkweed" for that beautiful "floss" that helps the seeds catch wind for more efficient dispersal. (Because it's waterproof and buoyant, the silk was used in WWII for stuffing inside lifejackets. 

Before that in the 1800's, it was used for soft stuffing inside mattresses.)

Milkweed bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus). They love to eat

the milkweed seeds but won't kill the plant. (July 10)

Zexmenia. The book World Dictionary of Plant Names says this name is an anagram of the last name of Francisco Ximenez. Who, presumably, had little to do with sex mania.  Here's some of why Senior Ximenez might be remembered in Central America, where, as it turns out, our Zexmenia plant is native:

    "Francisco Ximénez (b. 28 November 1666; d. between 11 May 1729 and mid-1730), a Dominican priest who translated the Popol Vuh, the Maya-K'iche' story of creation.
    Born in Écija, Andalusia, Ximénez joined the Dominican order in 1688 and was sent to Guatemala to continue his religious studies. He was ordained in 1690. His facility for learning the Indian languages soon became evident, and he was assigned as parish priest in San Juan Sacatepéquez to learn the Kaqchikel language. Under the guidance of another friar who knew Kakchikel, he prepared a grammar in that language and went on to master the K'iche' and Tz'utujil languages.

    While serving in Chichicastenango from 1701 to 1703, Ximénez found a manuscript of the ancient book of the K'iche' people, the Popol Vuh. He translated into Spanish its story of creation and the history of the K'iche' nation. The Popol Vuh is now considered the national book of Guatemala." 

(https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ximenez-francisco-1666-1730) 

"The Popol Vuh, meaning “Book of the Community,” narrates the Maya creation account, the tales of the Hero Twins, and the K’iche’ genealogies and land rights. In this story, the Creators, Heart of Sky and six other deities including the Feathered Serpent, wanted to create human beings with hearts and minds who could “keep the days.” But their first attempts failed. When these deities finally created humans out of yellow and white corn who could talk, they were satisfied. In another epic cycle of the story, the Death Lords of the Underworld summon the Hero Twins to play a momentous ball game where the Twins defeat their opponents. The Twins rose into the heavens, and became the Sun and the Moon. Through their actions, the Hero Twins prepared the way for the planting of corn, for human beings to live on Earth, and for the Fourth Creation of the Maya." (https://maya.nmai.si.edu/the-maya/creation-story-maya)

 Let's just stick with the yellow flowers.

Wedelia acapulcensis or Wedelia texana (Aster Family).
Zexmenia, Texas creeping-oxeye, etc. (July 16)

Mosses and lichen in full-hydration during an unusually wet season
(among the limestone boulders along the cliffside)

And so the word here is poikilohydry. As in the inability to maintain water content when the environment fails to provide it. So we'll see all manor of ferns, lichen, and especially mosses shrivel up into a desiccated piece of crispy brown during a drought--only to green up in minutes once rains pour over them. (Microscopic animals are also adept at poikilohydry, going dormant, and even catching winds and being transported miles high and miles wide across the earth.)

Unseen animals.

This sky, and the one below, don't help us to appreciate the recent haze caused by Saharan dust blowing in from the east. But it's not just sand that blows in. The "skeletal" remains of gabillions of diatoms are all mixed up in that dust, too. Maybe a third of the dust is comprised of the desiccated algal-like plankton that once swam within the now dried-up lake Megachad (bigger than all of our Great Lakes combined). 7000 years ago, with a different climate, north Africa was loaded with lakes. That was then. Now the skeletal remains, meters thick with these microscopic lives, get all caught up in the winds and float in great clouds to land in the Amazon, the Carribean, and the asthmatic lungs of some who live on the banks of this Creek.

So diatoms fly away:

“The low density, high surface-area-to-volume ratio, and large aspect ratios of freshwater diatom particles suggest a mechanism by which they can be carried great distances aloft.” https://miami.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/atmospheric-transport-of-north-african-dust-bearing-supermicron-f

Diatom-art of German artist and biologist Ernst Haeckel.

This is from his Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature).

1904

And not just microalgae do fly. 

   “Many small animals, mainly arthropods (such as insects and spiders), are also carried upwards into the atmosphere by air currents and may be found floating several thousand feet up. Aphids, for example, are frequently found at high altitudes.

   "Ballooning, sometimes called kiting, is a process by which spiders, and some other small invertebrates, move through the air by releasing one or more gossamer threads to catch the wind, causing them to become airborne at the mercy of air currents. A spider (usually limited to individuals of a small species), or spiderling after hatching, will climb as high as it can, stand on raised legs with its abdomen pointed upwards ("tiptoeing"), and then release several silk threads from its spinnerets into the air. These automatically form a triangular shaped parachute which carries the spider away on updrafts of winds where even the slightest of breezes will disperse the arachnid. The flexibility of their silk draglines can aid the aerodynamics of their flight, causing the spiders to drift an unpredictable and sometimes long distance. Even atmospheric samples collected from balloons at five kilometres altitude and ships mid-ocean have reported spider landings. Mortality is high". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroplankton

More unseen animals
in the sky.

Non sequitur...

For the first half of the month, we were still gathering
fenceline-blackberries for breakfast

Creek 2021 (satellite) vs 1953 (animals in an airplane took this photo)
Note the absence of pond, except for a small pool where the Spring lies in 1953.

Desaguaderos

Old maps tell us things. 

This turn of the eighteenth century one 

tells us nothing about where we are in central Texas, though. 

(Unless "desaguaderos" is meant to suggest something about those of us 

who live in the drain of Texas.)

May Day: Horse-crippler Cactus, Agave, the Greenhouse, and Others

     These first two images show one of our favorite plants of all time: the horse-crippler cactus (Echinocactus texensis), also called pincushion-cactus or devil's footstool. Blooming season lasts only a few days, but spine season is perennial. I've read that it takes twenty to forty years of growth before one of these will put forth flowers. Skeptical, but provisionally amazed.  Skunks, coyotes, pigs, and very hungry people enjoy the fruits that will be forming here shortly.  
     Harvester ants also enjoy the fruits. And I love harvester ants about as much as anything else that lives. I watched the workings of our biggest harvester ant colony yesterday. It's over next to the second gate coming in our place. I'm telling you where it is because either you don't also like harvester ants--in which case you've probably never been down into this little place in the Creek's canyon--or you do like harvester ants and you won't be inclined to disturb them. Anyhow, they've increased the size of the main opening in the ground, and their population doesn't appear to have suffered any loss. The world is good when harvester ants abound. Now I'm thinking about transplanting one horse-crippler over to their yard. All things stinging and poking are fine by me.
     I've included the second photo of the horse-crippler just to emphasize two things. One, the obvious, is the beauty of these spines. But I've also included it here to say something about our drought. Weather people are telling us that we just enjoyed the third driest winter on record for central Texas, with only about an inch and a half of rain. Yet the flesh of this crippler cactus remains healthy. In drier seasons, the down-curved spines will be tilted upward as the flesh dries and shrinks.  

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     And a few more greenhouse images. We've been pleasantly surprised with the growth of plants inside. Certainly we wouldn't have such a mature stand of vegetables if we had tried to grow them in our many spring freezes and in this drought. Within a couple weeks' time we had freezing mornings and then afternoons in the upper nineties. As long as the thermostat kicks on and the two fans blow cool air from off the floor up into the hanging tomatoes and then out the north end of the house, the temperature inside feels comfortable, even on hot days.

     Vegetables grow down either side of the central walkway, trying to fill out the four-by-thirty-foot beds: pimiento peppers, spinach, basil, pole beans, cucumbers, beets (for their leaves, primarily), onions, broccoli (mainly for its leaves in salads), mustard greens, yellow squash, watermelon, cantaloup, poblano chilies, and tomatoes (about sixteen hanging baskets of small tomatoes, and about eight different heirloom varieties planted directly in the beds). 

     I'll never again underestimate the provisions of a small area.  Every day I eat two large salads (primarily from spinach, onions, beet leaves, and broccoli leaves). Next year we should have plenty of tomatoes about this time since we'll be able to start them so much earlier than we did this first year. 

     As seen in the bottom of the greenhouse photographs below, we've fenced in another area at the entrance to the house, and in it we've planted two four-by-eight-foot beds of flowers.

(the cameraman is tilted rightward, not the greenhouse)

Some interesting patterns on these nice agave plants.

     As the leaves of the agave are just starting to grow, they are compacted close to one another, leaving the imprint of each other on the broad side of the leaf.

     The plant is also known as mezcal or mescal, lending its name to the Mescalaro Apaches, who depended largely on the agave for food, medicine, and material for making such things as rope.

     Agaves will flower themselves to death.  What they'll do is spend ten, twenty, thirty, or more years building up great amounts of sugary starch in their heart, and when this has reached sufficient quantity, either Man will tap into it for the making of a fun beverage, or the plant will use this concentrated energy to produce its one great flowering act: an ungainly-sized inflorescence on a ridiculously tall stem. And die. I love this idea.

hijo

     But clones of this dead agave will live on in their hijos, or sons. These are the little pups that grow up around the parent plant. I moved half of dozen of these over to the south side of our house where summer sunshine kills everything else. These hijos will themselves continue to reproduce little clones, so that the original plant is said to live for centuries. The century plant.

     We've read of many people cutting off the leaves and then roasting and eating the remaining "pineapple" that can weigh as much as a fair-sized child.  Tequila, sadly enough, is made only from the species Agave tequilana grown near the Mexican town of Tequila in Jalisco.  We'd gladly experiment with ours did we not know that some varieties of agave have been used as arrow poison and fish poison and can cause severe skin deterioration. Ironically, some species make a respectable soap. Fiber from the leaves of Agave sisalana is the source of sisal rope. Soap-on-a-rope. And a hangover.

     Oh, and it looks like about half of the blackberry crop has withered off. I don't know if a late frost got the last half of the white blossoms or if the dry weather burned them off. Anyhow, one day I turned around and saw that there were no white flowers on the hundred feet of blackberries. Yesterday I saw many stunted green berries and many brown and crispy once-was flower heads. I drug a hose and pumped pond water on their roots, but the timing may be a bit late.

     Might ought to add that the shrinking Pond no longer flows directly into the Creek, but underground first. This is a blog about a creek.

Quarterly Statement: May, June, July 2013

Before an unidentified source robbed the artichoke plants
of their thistley lives, we enjoyed what we didn't think was possible here.

Gallons. 

Occasionally this solitary roadrunner ventures into the Stonefield.

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) like we've not seen it yet.

Rio Grande Cichlids (Cichlasoma cyanoguttatum), we still think.
One source says the white head appears only when the fish are spawning.
Right or not, these two were guarding half a gazillion fry.

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After deer ate a dozen or more chili poblano plants in the garden,
we planted these four in protected pots up on the deck. They, too, were
eaten by agile deer about three weeks after this photo was taken.

Just water.

The velvet ant (Mutillidae), sometimes called a cow killer.
The 3000 species of Mutillidae are actually wingless wasps.

The three most recent additions to the farm.
(Barbados lamb meat is lean and sweet.)

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Blackberry