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.

Dry

    Here is a great comparison photo below.  I never knew that snow-on-the-mountain changed the white edges of its leaves and bracts during the period when its flowers are developing.  The first photo of two blog entries ago shows the plant as the first flowers were blooming, and the one below displays the full-bloom stage of the leaves.  Such a change obviously augments any of the flower's attempts to draw the attention of pollinating insects.

What might be a carpenter bee (Xylocopa) on snow-on-the-mountain (Euphorbia marginata)

     When things out at the Creek get just too hot for us to work at anything productive (we hit 112 degrees yesterday), we take to the purely useless.  Like stone-balancing.

     I really didn't think that the Creek would still be wet this deep into the hot drought, but water continues to seep up into the upper stretch of the stream, and if not exactly working a brisk flow, it at least is able to keep up enough of a presence to sustain the usual Creek life.

     The Pond continues creeping northward, away from us, now at a distance of about seventy-five feet from the original water-meter.  I don't know, but this comes to about an eight-inch step per day, and down about four or five feet in actual elevation fall.

  (The water-meter stick is hidden in the dry grasses bottom left.) 

   

Purple bindweed/Sharp-pod bindweed/Tie Vine (Ipomoea cordatotriloba)   

Honey bees (Apis) scavenging for water among wet and muddy stones.

     And a couple images of the progress on the Creek house.