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.
Redstripe ribbon snake (Thamnophis proximus rrilineatusub) belly is bigger than its mouth. The leopard frog (Rana) got away after a half-hour struggle.
Ah, yes.
Those blue eyes....
Fox scat on the trail down to the Pond.
Palafoxia (Palafoxia callosa) is the most ubiquitous flowering plant
down in the stone-field of the dry creek bed.
Zexmenia (Zexmenia hispida)
Golden-Eye (Viguiera dentata)
.
Golden-Eye (Viguiera dentata) in big-bloom all over this country now.
Velvet-Leaf Mallow (Wissadula holosericea)
Velvet-Leaf Mallow (Wissadula holosericea)
Wood-Sorrel (Oxalis Drummondii)
Common Wild Petunia (Ruellia nudiflora)
Tube-Tongue (Siphonoglossa pilosella)
Texas Lantana (Lantana horrida)
Curlytop Gumweed (Grindelia nuda) with its sticky
leaves (growing mostly in the stonefield). Indians of the
Southwest would treat ant bites with a poultice made
from this flower.
Sometimes its tops are white instead of yellow.
Spittlebug (see 4 April, 2012 entry)
Snow-on-the-mountain
Tropical Sage (?)
Frostweed
So, daughter K. arrived last weekend with the solution to my paradox-of-choice. I wake in these cool mornings with too many projects, large and small. Stone walls to build. Stones to find. Stones to haul. Juniper to cut and burn. Soil to turn. Scrap to haul away. Pens to build. Steps to complete. Paint to paint. And because the list is so long, I am always paralyzed with the many options and then regretful into the first few minutes of the project because I can't forget the other projects I probably should have chosen instead.
That's when K. suggested that we write on slips of paper the individual projects and label them as "7-hour," "3-hour," and "1-hour" projects. We wad them up and stuff them into an empty cashew jar. Then when I have, say, a full day or most of a weekend's worth of time, I reach into the jar and blindly pull out any one of the 7-hour project sheets and get to work. This process eliminates the paradox-of-choice. I have no choice but the one slip's assignment.
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.
Below are a few weak illustrations of what we are seeing a couple places along the creek. The bluegill will spawn from now until way through the summer. Before and after eggs have been placed in the creek bottom, the male will guard the nest diligently. The nest featured here takes up about a square foot of cleaned gravel where the fish has removed all algae and the diatoms which make up most of the creamy white "scum" across the floor of the creek and the pool into which it flows. These fish have chosen a spot right at the confluence of creek and pool, on the downstream side of a boulder. The only other bluegill nest in the area likewise is situated on the downstream side of a boulder.
The individual bluegill here is small, about five to six inches long, with aqua-blue lighting up where the sun shines on its fins and tail. A faint reddish ring circles its eye.
Most of the time, the male here is chasing away any other fish that swims close to the nest. When it is not feeling threatened, it sometimes appears to stand up on its tail and flap it back and forth as if sweeping the nursery floor of silt.
The obscure view of a bluegill's nest, center of the photo.
Male Bluegill Guarding Its Nest
A short movie, featuring a nervous father protecting his childless nursery in the middle of a stream.
Up the hill from the Creek, we have had test holes dug where we hope to intall a septic tank and field. This photo is meant to show the soft sandy loam down for about five feet where rounded river stones take over.
Still don't know what this fossil of leafy swirls might be.
Within the Stonefiled near the Creek, hundreds of these sorts of rocks can be found.
More of the same riffle bugs.
The rear-end view of a honey bee feeding on water willow blossom.
Venus' Looking-glass (Triodanis perfoliata)
The cricket frogs have taken on a greener color than when we saw them earlier in the season.
Dewberries almost ripe.
This is a difficult one, based solely on the photo. It could be a Clippedwing Grasshopper (Metaleptea brevicornis) or a Cattail Toothpick Grasshopper (Leptysma marginicollis) or some other. (Anybody have a suggestion?) It was found in the short bushes near the west side of the Creek.
