On a few small acres in the hill country of central Texas, we live by watching, feeling, and waiting. Together, we come to know by loving and love best when we care enough to understand. Our Loves: limestone, leaf-vein, scales, feathers, friends, and all their shifting reflections in the waters of a small Creek.
We've had two days of rain since the previous post. One day we didn't get enough to register in the bottom of the crusty rain gauge. The other day we received three and a half inches of storm-rain with hail mixed in.
This carp and three more spent their time circling the small pool until
the muddy waters removed them. Others will be seen in their place soon.
We can never get too attached to the Creek's fish.
Constant birdsong, summer tanagers unafraid of our presence in their woods, cool rains, smell of distant burning juniper, giant walking sticks preying on others within the orchard trees, and a Creek that changes daily. Waters are pulled by gravity, ever shifting shapes and humbly re-forming their ways according to the most immediate environments: faultline, hillside, boulder-face, fallen limb, fish scale, strider-leg, or crystal-housed diatom. The waters' devotion to impermanence is reflected in the effect it has on all else, as well, for the humility of waters is balanced by the unrivaled strength of its substance.
Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water. Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better; It has no equal. The weak can overcome the strong; The supple can overcome the stiff. Under heaven everyone knows this, Yet no one puts it into practice.
(Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching, Chapter 78)
Insex
. . . and so it goes.
Back to the Creek as it looked the first week of May (2012). Since then, we have felt several inches of rain, and the waters have turned a muddy torrent.
Waters
School of carp
Fearless jumping squirrel
Disintegration
Decomposing shale on the banks of the Creek
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My Favorite Tree (with chomped leaf, here) American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis)
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Our Creek represents the "frontier" for the American Sycamore
Andrew Wyeth's depiction of the tree
Hunger
Cultivated blackberries
Light of Wing
Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus)
Great purple hairstreak butterfly (Atlides halesus)
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One species of sphinx moth (family Sphingidae) feeding on horsemint (genus Monarda)
More nearly resembling a hummingbird than our usual image of a moth, this family of insects feeds on nectar by hovering at one flower and then quickly darting off to the next (they can fly up to thirty miles per hour, faster than nearly all other insects). Such behavior (hovering in front of a flower to draw upon its nectar) is known to exist in only three groups of animals: bats, hummingbirds, and this family of moths. Notice the extremely long probosces of our species here.
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Life is short. Only ten to thirty days long. Fly fast, sweet-tongued sphinx of our creek-side flower meadows.
Real artists never apologize for their work. And they certainly don't do so prior to a showing. But since the one who compiles all these images and comments for a streamside makes no personal claims, he feels entitled to apologize for the quickshot nature of the following images snapped in haste and quickly pasted to the cloud. So there.
What we see here is an overgrown garden where last year there was barely enough short grass to wither and die in a drought and heatwave. But this year we've already had more rain than the total for last year, so plants grow to waist-high, climbing over, winding around, and nearly hiding the few intentional plants we set out one year ago. The first picture of the little orchard would look different today: I spent the past two days mowing it down and then installing several hundred feet of black irrigation pipe. Now we merely set the timer up at the well and watch water drip out at a rate of one gallon per hour, slowly moistening the sandy soil around blackberries, peaches, apples, pears, plums, and figs. Had we built the irrigation system last year, perhaps we would not have lost three quarters of the blackberry plants. Those few that did survive the record dry heat are now producing green fruits.
Last year we saw hardly any patches of widow's tears, but this spring they crowd every shady spot there is. The trail leading up Whitman's Rough to Priest's Cave is an overgrown mini-jungle of these sweet blue flowers and their thick-leaved grass-like parts. Occasionally a white flower among them can be found.
The prophet in me wants to warn of great swarms of grasshoppers for this summer. The situation is ripe.
Albino day flower?
White dandelion, or Rock lettuce (Pinaropappus roseus)
Indian blanket (Gaillardia pulchella)
Spittle from the spittlebug (Philaenus spumarius)
Among the stones near the Pond.
Garden insect is jump champion
By Jonathan Amos
BBC News Online
Move over the flea - the best jumper in the animal world is the froghopper.
This unassuming six-millimetre-long bug which leaves "cuckoo spit" on garden foliage can spring 70 centimetres into the air.Although the flea can do something similar, the froghopper is 60 times heavier.
"That makes froghoppers the true champions," said Professor Malcolm Burrows, head of zoology at Cambridge University, UK.
"It's not so much that they jump a little higher than fleas; it's the fact that because they're heavier, their jump performance is more impressive," he told BBC News Online.
Professor Burrows reports his investigation of insect jumping in the journal Nature. Super acceleration
The froghopper ( Philaenus spumarius ) is well distributed across the world. It lives by sucking the juice out of plants. The developing young will hide from predators inside a froth blown out of their back ends earning the insects the nickname spittlebug.
Adults leap from plant to plant. They have long been known to be good jumpers but Professor Burrows has now measured their performance.The froghopper's secret is found in two hind legs that are so specialised to the high jump task that they are simply dragged along the ground when the insect is walking.
When the bug needs to leap, the legs form part of a very powerful catapult system. The limbs are lifted in a cocked position, held by ridges on the legs.
Two huge muscles, one controlling each leg, are contracted, and when they build up sufficient force, the legs break the lock and the insect springs forward.
"The legs snap open and all the force is applied at once," said Professor Burrows. "It accelerates in a millisecond up to a take-off velocity of four metres per second. That's phenomenal."
The scientist calculated the initial acceleration to be 4,000 metres per second per second. Brain input
The G-force generated was more than 400 gravities in the best jumps monitored. In comparison, a human astronaut going into orbit on a rocket may experience no more than about 5 gravities.
We have always been led to believe that fleas are the jump champions of the animal world but Professor Burrows believes the record books should now be rewritten.
"The legitimate comparison is to look at how much force per body weight each animal can generate," he explained."A froghopper can exert more than 400 times its body weight; a flea can do 135 times its body weight; a grasshopper can do about eight times; and we can do about two to three times our body weight."
Professor Burrows studied the insect's athleticism as part of his research into how animals' nervous systems control body movement.
Insects are used in this type of study because their fewer brains cells are often larger than in more complex organisms, making it easier for scientists to see the processes involved.
