Early Summer

          It’s easy to become depressed. 

          It’s also easy to become happy. 

          If we swim in water we become wet, and if we immerse ourselves in the right environment, we sometimes can become happy. This is old news for those who favor an “environmentalist” sociology and the same old foolishness for those who favor a “bootstrap” psychology. All I know is that when I am around friends, when I eat clean food from the garden, when I am lost in creative activity, or when I am silently looking deep into stream waters I forget how to be depressed. Afterwards I realize that I am happy.

            Though there’s no guarantee that a morning spent immersed in natural surroundings will cure whatever anxieties or depressions are killing us, I cannot recall a time when looking closely into the compound eyes of an insect or watching small fish hunt the shallow riffles did not result in a healthier and more grounded attitude afterwards.  Crawling on all fours in a grassy field or sitting still in dappled shade and watching for birds is a fairly reliable and inexpensive happy-pill with few adverse side effects.  And working a hoe or watering a plant at any time of day, alone or with a friend, is an activity for which we seem hardwired.

            Sadness and depression, like unhealthy weight gain, happen over time, and if one thinks about the long series of mistakes, wrong turns, or injustices that have built this unholy feeling, he or she might become even sadder with the loss of any quick fixes.  But as the Chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.  The second best time is today.”  And that’s done in small, well-placed efforts.  Like making the next meal a plate of fresh colors or the next expenditure of calories a walk up a hillside with a friend. 

            We cannot all of us grow a garden big enough to feed us every meal, but we can begin by at least sneaking in a handful of bean seeds beside the house or sharing a space of soil with others and sowing carefully enough seed to produce a fair basket of vegetables and fruits.  A seed is not a guarantee when seen from the perspective of planting-day, but from the perspective of harvest-day, that seed is seen as an absolute necessity by an order of magnitude infinitely more sure than any other sort of promise.

            I envision sharing the Creek and its ancient loamy dirt up on the second cut.  Even if someone else cannot live in a small cabin beneath the boulders of Whitman’s Rough, and even if someone else cannot work the garden or tend the vines in an intentional community every day,  two or three others might be able to drive out here for a day of shared labor and shared meals at a board set in the shade of a tree planted before any of them were conceived.

          Until then, we settle for only the occasional explorations with only a few friends.  That's what we are sharing here below and elsewhere on this site.

Below is a short clip of what I'm guessing is the caterpillar of a five spotted hawk moth (Manduca quinquemaculata) . This isn't a positive identification, but it comes close. If it's not the same, it's close kin to the tomato hornworm that invades gardens and can strip a tomato plant of its leaves in quick order. One reason I remain somewhat skeptical of my identification here is that I recall that our specimen was feeding on the leaves of Gaura parviflora, and this is not in the Solanaceae family. And it's my understanding that the hawk moth's larvae feed on plants within Solanaceae (tomatoes, tobacco, peppers, eggplant, potatoes, etc.). See the video clip of the sphinx moth under blog entry "Early Spring" for a moth that closely resembles this caterpillar's eventual adult stage. Maybe.

Virginia Tiger Moth (Spilosoma virginica)?

The red phase of this Central Texas Leaf katydid often appears in periods of a population breakout such as what we are witnessing this summer. Some of the katydids we are seeing are truly red. Marvelous.

The hens must be getting used to their new surroundings quite well
because egg production has not slowed down since their move to the creek.

And from Harlin:

Invisible Scenery
I’m pretty sure that if the sepals shown in the close-up photographs were many inches across, they would be widely collected as strange objects and used to decorate all sorts of household items throughout the land. As it is, they are just barely visible even while squinting. The Shinner’s key says they are distinctive: “fruiting tepals varying from spiny-toothed to subentire” is one of the indications this is Rumex pulcher.

For me the invisible didn’t stop there. There are the three larger tepals with the reticulate surface and the yellowish ornaments, and there are three small linear ones as well. I had the whole assembly magnified and it took several tries to see all six. I guess it was all those spiny edges which camouflaged the three smaller ones. When the larger tepals are pulled apart the three sided seed falls out (one per flower).

Fiddle Dock (Rumex pulcher)

Fiddle Dock (Rumex pulcher)

Fiddle Dock (Rumex pulcher)

Fiddle Dock (Rumex pulcher)

. . . My will to identify is ebbing. How can there be so many damselfly niches in couple of hundred square feet of rock and water? The color blue isH not a sure fire characteristic; I think all of the following are sometimes brown depending on sex or some other accident. Not only does blue not distinguish among the damselflies, but blue butts don’t either. Many damselflies have the last few segment mostly blue.

Springwater Dancer (Argia plana)

Aztec Dancer (Argia nahuana)

Powdered Dance (Argia apicalis)

Ruby Spot (Hetaerina americana)

Eastern Pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis)

Widow Skimmer (Libellula luctuosa)  

Thank you, Harlin, for the photography lessons......

Wonder

  To look beyond these hills and streams for a transcendent meaning is seeming more and more like ungratefulness.  To see the thing--to really see the wonder in front of us--and not to wonder what it means may be the answer which we were not prepared to discover.

  For we add anxiety to ignorance and misery when we search for meaning.  There is, of course, no need for a search, for we swim within meaning as a great whale migrates buoyantly through his great ocean.  Meaning—if we must have it--is our existence.  How absurd for the whale to search for water.

  Just so, we wake in the cool dawn and break our fast with the earth’s meaningful energy in every bite of grain or fruit, and we continue for the rest of the day walking by light, resting by shade, and communing by love with those who share in our labors.  These fruits, lights, labors, loves, and friendships are our ocean waters.

  When man once upon a time became discontent with the given—became ungrateful? Bored? Afraid?-- he made the tragic assumption that his restlessness was a prophetic sign of an End unlike any we had ever experienced. Perhaps this led us to invent a mythological world unlike the given one of our birth in every way: no more crying, no more hunger, no more darkness.  And no more could meaning itself be a part of the familiar stuff.  Meaning, too, must be found in an immutable world of absolute ideas.  Maybe we will find it, but maybe we never will.  And the search began.

  But we can easily, this moment, return to our native land.  We can appreciate its mutability, its roughened surfaces, its tender hearts, its shining fruits, and its inevitable end.  And in returning, we will “find” meaning without having to search for it.   It will be our very existence.  Whatever our opinion of it, meaning and existence will be the same.

  If this does not sound philosophical or spiritual enough, we might do well to accept with humility the possibility that meaning is equally to be had by all people we do not understand and therefore do not love.  It is to be had, as well, by fields and rivers and the shy animals whose crepuscular lives we never will know.  And by whales.

Making June

June 8, 2012


     This evening we walked around the area below the limestone boulders, among darkening shadows and lush foliage well watered (three or four inches of rain above the yearly average by this date).
     The first six images below were taken in deep dusk with the aid of a tripod.

Thousands of bees fifteen feet high in a cedar elm

False gromwell, Marble seed (Onosmodium bejariense)

Plenty of persimmon fruit this year--almost none last year.

And a couple from Harlin:

Sand Bells (Nama hispidum)  

Bladderpod, Buffpetal (Rhynchosida physocalyx)

       Disposable Fly Trap Instructions

“Never seal dead flies in a closed container.”
And that is that.
The wife bought the hanging fly trap—
Clear plastic bucket one fills with
Noxious fluid meant to attract flies.
So it hangs outside the screen door.
But with the fly trap came,
I kid you not, neatly tucked inside the trap,
“Disposable fly trap instructions,” as if
I would keep them for a poem or something.
They tell one how to take and fill bottle
To appropriate level, then hang near flies
(See diagram A). And on and on until
the bottom of the Yellow sheet:
“Never seal dead flies in a closed container.”
How long until I would have thought of
Doing such a bold or happy thing as that?
Will the boys, who have not read
As you and I the yellow sheet,
And who are painfully free from mothers,
Gather now in a neighbor’s garage
Some hot afternoon and secretly
Seal dead flies in a closed container?
Or have I misunderstood?
Is the emphasis on “seal,”
As if one may safely place dead flies in
A closed—but unsealed—container?
No, I rather sense the real meat of the
Warning concerns the dead flies that
Will soon be crowding the surface of
undisturbed fluid like so many housewives
Napping on inflatable mattresses in a
Backyard swimming pool
(See diagram B).
Never seal dead flies in a closed container.

A Posse Ad Esse

Last evening we spent our second night at the Creek house which we began talking about over a year and a half ago. We've spent plenty of hours observing the many other lives here at the Creek since then, but now it really seems as though we have begun our own.  May our lives be as worthy of observation as theirs have been for us.

May Waters--May Lives

Harlin:

Perhaps one thinks to one’s self “it should be easy to find the story behind this creature of the wild”, and then one is reminded that pride comes before the fall. Yep, that’s what happened. I have a full color field guide to grasshoppers and all of the internet so I figure this dadgummed katydid will be no problem. But, after a long time I just don’t know what the story is. The book says that if the wings bow out and there are a couple of wrinkles across the pronotum then that is a sign you are looking at a true katydid (as opposed to the other kinds). The distribution map puts Paracyrtophyllus robustus in the center of Texas. However the back of the pronotum is supposed to be rounded. 

http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/walker/buzz/s131kd1.htm

Maybe not what my picture [photo above] is of. The pictures on the internet are not reassuring either. Here is one in which at least the colors are in the ball park.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/425549/bgimage

Whatever it is, there are many of them and they are enjoying the walnut or pecan tree that is to the north of the central oak. One of the features of katydids is apparently that they are hard to see since they are at the tops of trees where we aren’t very often.

Here is how bugguide.net explains it:
Order Orthoptera (Grasshoppers, Crickets, Katydids)

     Suborder Ensifera (Long-horned Orthoptera)

          Infraorder Tettigoniidea (Katydids, Camel Crickets, and relatives)

               Family Tettigoniidae (Katydids)

Tettigoniidae

Tettigoniidae

Tettigoniidae

Below is a picture of a small moth. It was on my shirt sleeve and I could see it had a pattern that looked promising. It waited until I finished my sandwich, went with me to get a camera, patiently endured several bad photographs, flitted down to the picnic table for a different view, and finally had this recognizable picture taken.

Really, really nice wings as far as I’m concerned.

The books says the larva of Petrophila bifascialis “scrapes diatoms and other algae from rocks of fast moving streams where it lives in a silken web.” (Peterson field guide-Eastern Moths). Maybe the name translates to two striped rock lover—what do you think?

Hedgehog or Lace Cactus (Echinocereus reichenbachii)

Trumpet Creeper (Campsis radicans)

The unifying theme below is the idea of the seed pictures being at least as good as the plant pictures.

Rattlesnake Weed (Daucus pussilus)

Other common names seem to be “southwestern carrot”, “southwestern wild carrot” and “American wild carrot”. There are small backward pointing barbs on the end of the spine and doing a little bit of searching turned up several terms used to name them: barbed bristles, uncinate bristles, and glochidiate prickles. I think “glochids’ are the small devils that get you when you brush up against the prickly pears. (Actually “devils” is not the correct term but rather a euphemism so as not to offend any government agents reading my electronic mail). I guess “glochidiate” means “glochids in reverse”.

In any case, these are seeds that are designed to catch onto fur in order to get dispersed.

.

Acalypha (Acalypha phleoides)

My pictures of the flowering parts of this plant just weren’t very satisfying. Then I noticed that I might be able to stick two of them together to at least give an idea of what the whole thing looks like. There are female flowers lower and male flowers higher. Some of the male flowers are sporting a spot of white pollen. The female flowers have three styles each of which splits into many ends.

Chenopodium with beetle

(Chenopodium or maybe berlandieri)

The name depends on knowing the difference between “mealy” and “glandular”. I’m thinking this is a case of “mealyness”. Also the seeds do look a little bit like they have a “honey combed” surface and the plant stinks which are other features of Chenopodium berlandieri. (There is a different name on the list I just sent you [see previous post], but I’m going to change it.) This plant is close to the north east corner of your septic tank field. It is a little bushy and has kind of gray-green leaves. Get close and see if you don’t agree that “stink” is the right word.

The Flora of North America has a description of Chenopodium, and my going through the key leads to C. berlandieri. There are many varieties and they all say fruiting in the fall. Well, at least it doesn’t say only in the fall. The key to the varieties is a little more ambiguous, but Google books has the information below. I’d say the tidbit about the smell being like the air from an inner tube nails the identification.

Plants of Deep South Texas: A Field Guide to the Woody and Flowering Species

By Alfred Richardson, Ken King

Below are two photos from plants which we have been seeing for a while. The red seeds that are a little bit winged give confidence that there is a Plantago rhodosperma by the creek. The other picture is of Arabis petiolaris and it shows one of the seeds coming out of the long pods. Also, the older pods become translucent which I think can be photogenic.

One might think that one only needs one sample. One would be right if one had a perfect memory, but I’m not that one. For me there are (at least) two kinds of information overload when doing nature puzzles. The first is that it’s hard to remember whether I’ve seen one of whatever it is previously. The second is that I know I’ve seen one of that group before, but I don’t know enough about the group to know whether the one I’m looking at now is a different from the one I was looking at before. For instance, there are many kinds of winecups and I don’t know if the one today is the same as the ones I saw on the other side of the property last year.

The wild oats seemed like it might be new to the list but the grasses blur together even more readily than those with more colorful flowers. The distinguishing features of grasses are at the millimeter size level and I am not reminded of those traits by just wandering around in the fresh air. So especially for grasses my pattern is to go through the tour of interesting landmarks provided by the plant key and then forget. I think we talked about the possible positive side effect of this: one gets to repeat a discovery of the same thing for several times, but after the first time there is also a little let down that I’ve been here before and didn’t realize it. The outcome of this situation is that it’s often best to get the sample. Either it will be new or I’ll be doing remedial communing with nature.

In this case Avena fatua is new to the list.

One would think that oats would be edible, but the Shinners book says it has a habit of having bad fungus growing on it and says that hay containing sick oats can hurt the horses or cattle which eat it. There is a poison symbol by this plant. In one of the photos below you may be able to see a kind of smudge in the spikelet that is the dust from some sort of fungus.

Wild Oats (Avena fatua)

bug