 |
Dragonflies frequent the plants in my backyard. The little guys come in so many colors. I've seen tan, red, purple (like this one), bright blue, bright green, and black. This little guy was resting on top of a plant stake and he let me get close enough to take one macro shot before he flew away.
Labels: nature
I realized tonight that I've only made three short posts in the past three weeks that AREN'T about my miscarriage. Part of me is tired of thinking about it, and I am sure that my readers, all two of you, are tired of reading about it too, so I'm going to try to move on to other topics now for the most part. I can't promise there won't be the occasional "woe is me" post, but I am trying not to let the woe engulf me and writing about normal things will be an exercise in getting my head out of that sadness.
So. Onward!
Last.fm
Doc turned me on to this cool site called Last.fm. It's a free service (similar to Pandora) that keeps track of what music you listen to, streams music that it thinks you'll like on your own personal "radio stations" (and does a darn good job, by the way, of choosing music that I like), connects you with people that have similar tastes, and introduces you to independent artists and music you may not have heard before.
Try it! It's very easy to install and operate. It imports your iTunes listening history and then is able to custom-tailor "radio stations" for you.
The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You
I absolutely love Cracked.com's lists. The people who write them are hilariously witty and razor sharp. Even if I don't have any interest in the topic, although I usually do, I still read them for the quality of writing. Here are just a few choice quotes from a recent article about six adorably cute animals that can fucking kill you. This shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
If animals could talk, they would spend most of their time calling us dicks and telling us to get off their land. The traits we think of as "cute" are often simply tricks animals have developed to get tourists to throw them food.
There is no way you could look at a big, fat, happy, squishy, huggable hippo and not think, "If she could talk like a human, she would sound just like Jada Pinkett Smith and be oh so sassy." You would totally name her Sassybaskets and she would be your tutu-wearing, ballet-dancing, strut-walking pal for life. Just you and Sassybaskets against the world! Look out, New York, here comes Sassybaskets!
The platypus is mother nature's way of saying, "I made this thing out of spare parts I found on the workshop floor, and it can still fucking cripple you."
It turns out swans are now and have always been vicious, mean little motherfuckers who will not hesitate to snap your fingers off one by one for daring to pollute its presence. And then going off to laugh with all their friends about what a huge loser you are.
I thought I was afraid of bees and wasps BEFORE I read this. Did you know that the Japanese hornet can reach up to 3 inches in length and can fly 50 miles a day? Did you know that 30 of them can decimate a colony of 30,000 honeybees in just a couple of hours ("In three hours, there are piles of limbs and heads and just fucking bits of things that could possibly have been alive at one point, and the hornets have stormed the hive and flown away with all the bees' children. Who will then be eaten.")? I swear I'm going to have nightmares.
From the article "The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World:"
It's the size of your thumb and it can spray flesh-melting poison. We really wish we were making that up for, you know, dramatic effect because goddamn, what a terrible thing a three-inch acid-shooting hornet would be, you know? Oh, hey, did we mention it shoots it into your eyes? Or that the poison also has a pheromone cocktail in it that'll call every hornet in the hive to come over and sting you until you are no longer alive?
Think you can outrun it? It can fly 50 miles in a day. It'd be nice to say something reassuring at this point, like "Don't worry, they only live on top of really tall mountains where nobody wants to live," but no, they live all over the goddamned place, including outside Tokyo.
Forty people die like that every year, each of them horribly.
Labels: nature
Cephalopods can be masters of disguise, and this video is proof. The whole video is fascinating but just wait till you see the octopus at about 4:15 into the movie. You'll find yourself rewinding and watching it over and over.
On a related note, I am digging this "TED: Ideas Worth Spreading" website. They tout themselves as providing "Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers," and that's exactly what it seems to be: a collection of talks and lectures on interesting subjects by interesting people. I think that TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.
Saturday evening, Doc made me laugh so hard I literally fell out of my chair! I was doing some work on my computer and listening to Genesis' Fly on the Windshield, and he waltzed into my office and began performing interpretive dance to the song. At the very end, when he mimicked the fly stuck on the windshield, wide-eyed and one wing flapping in the wind, I completely lost it and doubled over laughing, lost my balance, and slid to the floor in hysterics.
I've been thinking a lot in recent years about off-the-grid living. I think it would be really hard, and really interesting, and I'd probably eventually return to The Grid but have the knowledge to make a lot of changes and seriously reduce my "footprint."
So here's the deal: I hate cucumbers. Hate them like no other food on earth. Given the choice of starving to death or eating a cucumber, starving might win.
However, I looooove pickles and I want to make my own. So I planted cucumber seeds this spring. My plant has so far produced exactly ONE cucumber, and this is it. It's about two inches in diameter, and one end has turned orange and swelled to enormous proportions.
Now I don't claim to know everything about how plants work, but I'm pretty sure cucumbers are not supposed to mutate like this while growing. Needless to say, I will not be pickling and eating this little alien fruit.
Oh, by the way, this is part of my Modified Project 365. For the next six weeks or so I'll be taking photos and uploading as I have the time and energy. Hopefully around mid-September I'll be able to return to doing this daily.
Labels: nature
Any ideas what this is? It came from a tree, and it's about 3/4" in diameter.
Labels: nature
I love all the rain we've been having lately. I think it's precipitated to some degree almost every single day for the past month, which is unheard of in Texas, especially considering that for the past several years we've been living under drought conditions. The rain has also kept the temperatures down; normally it's in the upper 90s by now, but we've been holding in the mid to upper 80s. Steamy, but a little cooler than usual.
However, you know who else also loves all this rain? Mosquitos. I have never experienced mosquito infestations like we have right now. I can't even go out to get the mail without being eaten alive.
I mentioned some time last month that I went jogging one morning and was attacked and followed by a cloud of mosquitos. This happened to me again yesterday evening as Doc and I went for a walk. Eventually I just strolled boldly down the middle of streets instead of on the sidewalks, to be as far away from grass as possible.
Doc said that every time we passed near an area where they were hanging out, he could see them approach the backs of my legs, flying in formation to the strains of the Imperial March from Star Wars. He acted as my rear guard and smashed any that landed on me. I still managed to end up with a couple dozen bites on my legs, face, and arms. His cotton full body armor kept him relatively bite-free.
I wonder if I have West Nile virus?
Labels: nature
On Sunday morning I woke up early, as I seem to be prone to doing lately, and went for a jog at 8 a.m. As I left the house, the weather was cloudy, humid, and still. I like to run in a hilly neighborhood a few blocks north of my house, and to get there I walked along the edge of a large park.
By the time I felt the first bite, a few dozen mosquitoes had attached themselves to the backs of my legs, happily sucking my blood and leaving their little disease-ridden venom gifts in return. I freaked out and frantically tried to swat them off (managing to satisfactorily squish a lot of them), but more kept coming at me. I took off running and realized that a big cloud of mosquitoes was following me! It took me several blocks, a couple of right angle turns, and a lot of swatting and smushing to get rid of them. Passing drivers must have thought I was having some sort of insanity fit, flailing and running and slapping myself.
I guess that I walked through a low-hovering cloud of them somewhere along the edge of the park. It's no surprise with all the rain we've been having. Every time I walk out of my house, even if it's just to get the mail, I end up with 2 or 3 bites.
I'm itchy as all hell today.
If you notice me exhibiting flu-like symptoms in the next few weeks, alert the paramedics that I might have West Nile virus.
On a semi-related note, one of my favorite made-for-SciFi-Channel movie titles is "Mansquito!" It sounds like a terrible movie, but what an awesome title!
Labels: nature
Brittney spotted this crazy glossy fungus growing at the base of a tree this evening. Parts of it look like apricot jam, parts of it look like mushrooms. Mmm.... mushroom and jelly sandwich... :)
Labels: nature
Doc and I like to take photo walks when the weather is nice. Usually we just start from our house and head off in a random direction and see what we can find that is interesting. Today we ended up at the YMCA pool in a park a mile or so from our house.
As I circled the pool looking for interesting things to photograph, I kept getting whiffs of strong pot smoke from a couple of guys sitting on a picnic bench near the treeline, smoking. Doc wondered aloud what kind of people come to a public park to smoke out. I said, "People who don't want their parents to smell the smoke coming from their rooms."
Labels: nature, photography
When my parents moved six years ago, they gave us their potted Satsuma orange tree. The first year, it produced a glorious crop of 40-50 little oranges. Then, because I'm such a horrible gardener, it was attacked by whiteflies and black sooty mold, and it took several years of regular treatments with garlic-pepper-seaweed tea, compost tea, horticultural oil, and insecticidal soap (and me spending hours with wet paper towels, gently scrubbing the soot off each individual leaf). The poor little tree was too sick to produce any oranges.
Eventually, the whiteflies stopped coming back.
Last spring it produced dozens of tiny little orange blossom buds like this, which turned into teeny tiny oranges, about 1 mm across... and all promptly fell off after about 2 weeks of growth.
This spring we've got teeny tiny orange flower buds again. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for fruit!
While I don't hate birds, they do kind of creep me out. Especially corvids (crows, blackbirds, and the like) -- they are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. They stare at you with those beady little yellow eyes, and it feels like they're trying to determine the best way to kill you.
As long as I'm at a safe distance from them, I like watching them in my backyard, though. We have a hanging feeder that the squirrels keep figuring out how to get at. We keep trying to outsmart them. I'm not sure who will eventually win. At the feeder we get a mated pair of cardinals (always, one of them eats while the other sits on the fence to keep watch, then they switch), dark-eyed junco sparrows, robins (just in the past week), bluejays, mockingbirds, black-capped chickadees, and doves.
Labels: nature
After my night of misery and sleeplessness, I relented and went to the doctor. She confirmed that indeed I do have a bad case of poison ivy. I got a steroid shot in the hip, and also a steroid cream to rub on the rash. And something called Zyrtec, which I think is an allergy pill, to help me sleep at night.
She told me to avoid hot showers because they would irritate the itching, which does seem to be the case, so I've been taking barely-warm ones. Kathryn told me, though, that hot water, as hot as you can stand it, actually can help once you get beyond the first few minutes of "this hot water is making the itching worse!!" Lots of people have pointed me in the direction of home remedies, which I'm not opposed to, but most of them seem to be geared towards stopping the spread of the rash when you've just contracted it. I got it ten days ago, so I think that the point at which most of that stuff would work is long past.
Today I look awful, but at least I don't feel quite as awful today. With skin cream freshly applied about 2 hours ago, the itching has subsided to a low-grade background noise. If I thought about it I would probably need to start scratching, but it's not an overwhelming urge right now. The cream goes on twice a day, so I didn't even bring it to work, but I do have Calamine to treat "spot itches," although I'm doubting its actual effectivenes.
Other things that I have learned:
Things always seem magnified in the middle of the night -- jokes are funnier, ideas more brilliant, fears worse -- and I think I've figured out why. It's because I'm supposed to be SLEEPING and my body is PISSED at me for not being so, and all events get interpreted through a lens of subconscious freaking out.
Hi. It's 3:30 a.m. and I've had maybe 30 minutes of sleep with more looking unlikely. My body's pissed and now so is the rest of me.
The barely-broken-in upstairs air conditioner chose to cease operations about six hours ago, and since it is Texas in September (not as bad as August but still in the 90s during the day and 80s overnight) we are sleeping downstairs on the futon, which is rather comfortable as a sofa and not bad as temporary sleeping quarters, but it ain't my Tempurpedic. And it is small, so we are sleeping (or not sleeping) nearly touching, and the body heat generated by my wonderful nuclear furnace husband is intense, so even in the relative cool of the one working a/c unit I am hot and sweaty.
I've spent most of the time that I've lain awake trying very very very hard to ignore the fact that my arms are itching intensely due to poison ivy. This is easier to do when my mind is occupied by, say, writing, or work, or television, or running errands. Not so much when I'm lying still and trying to will myself to sleep.
I did finally drift off sometime after 2:30 a.m., but woke myself up at 3 scratching. I just don't know how I can possibly control what I do in my sleep. At least it was only one arm this time, but it was intense and I could not help myself. I forced myself to stop and try to go back to sleep, but holding stock still while that kind of pain (because it is pain) is happening is very hard to do. A few minutes later I went upstairs to douse myself in Calamine lotion, and that brings me to right now, sitting in front of the computer, covered in dried pink glaze, in pain, trying to ignore it but not feeling in the least bit sleepy and knowing that the minute I crawl back onto that futon I'm going to be driven mad.
I'm beginning to doubt my own committment to Sparkle Motion. That's my new name for Calamine. It sounds fancy and might even be a little bit effective, but in the end it's just a shiny pink glaze, a thin veneer over misery.
I have learned the following very important life lesson in the past week:
If you see something that looks like this growing on your back fence, do not go out in your jogging bra and shorts, wearing only gardening gloves for protection, and spend 30 minutes ripping it down.
Leaves of three, let them be. Here is what my stomach now looks like:
And my right arm:
And my left arm:
I posted a few days ago that I thought a little ant or spider had chewed on me in the night, leaving a series of little bites on my arms. WRONG! Little did I know that the inocuous-looking vine growing on the back fence was poison ivy. It took me several days to make the connection because it didn't show up until about 48 hours after I'd touched the plant, and also I've never had poison ivy before. Hi! Love you, poison ivy!
New areas of INSANE itchiness have been gradually spreading across my body, probably because I'd gotten the urushiol oil on my clothing, and did laundry a few days later -- picking up the poisonous clothes once again and spreading it to new areas.
I have learned that Benadryl doesn't do jack shit for the itching, but it sure will put me to sleep, so maybe it kind of accomplishes the same goal in a different way. Topical hydrocortisone also does not do jack shit. Calamine lotion does seem to work a little but turns me a sickly pink color, like I've been bathing in Pepto Bismol.
It's so hard not to scratch. I'm pretty much in a state of low-grade itchiness all the time that I just try to ignore by thinking of other things. Once I start it's basically impossible to stop. Warm showers make me itch like crazy too. You scratch until you bleed, and it continues to itch but now it hurts too much to scratch. I keep waking up in the night scratching.
I'm just glad that it's not in my mouth (my poor husband has little areas on his legs and his side, and he also thinks probably in his throat; I must have spread it to him too) or in other, more sensitive areas. I cannot imagine the misery THAT must be.
Fun Facts About Poison Ivy:
Holy shit. I almost just drank a gecko. How did that little dude get into my glass of water?? He must have been on the inside of the window and just happened to fall right in, kersplash, at exactly the right spot to land in my water glass on the windowsill. He was floating there on the surface tension (he's pretty tiny, maybe a toddler gecko) and luckily I happened to look into the glass just before taking a swallow and there I was, eyeball to eyeball with him.
SHRIEK!
Don't get me wrong. I love geckos. They eat things that I like a whole lot less. Plus they're cute, and when they crawl up the outsides of the windows they keep the cats occupied for long stretches of time. I just don't want to ingest one: bad for me, worse for the gecko.
I'm pretty sure that I usually just drink without bothering to look inside my glass first. I take the purity of my liquids for granted.
I'm also pretty sure that I'm going to change my modus operandi on this whole issue now that I know there's a possibility of live baby reptiles taking a swim in my drinks.
Labels: nature
Living on a creek comes with some benefits (lots of big leafy trees, no neighbors in the back) and some downsides (mosquitoes, critters, flood potential).
One of those elements is frogs. Normally I like frogs. They're cute, they eat icky bugs, they stay out of my way. But tonight, for the love of god, they are MATING and they won't SHUT THE FUCK UP.
The drone is driving me CRAZY. If they were all croaking at different times I think it would sound like white noise and that would be OK. But they've got a whole freakin' orchestrated chorus going on down there and are singing in UNISON.
I don't know why it's getting on my nerves so much tonight! I usually like the sounds of nature.
Tonight Yvonne and I did our first run together. It was a really short one, and we used the nice springy track, but it was over 90 degrees outside and the humidity was probably in the 80% range or better, and the air was really hazy and I just had the hardest time. I ran 1-1/2 miles and then had to slow to a walk for 4 more laps (which Brittney was kind enough to join us for). My airways were trying to close up on me, and I don't have asthma or allergies. I think that maybe it was happening because I was trying to hold a conversation while running, and maybe also because of all the crap in the air and how hot it was outside. I had good energy and muscle strength and cardio endurance tonight, but I was afraid I was going to have an asthma attack if I didn't slow down. Maybe I need to add "open airways" to my Holy Grail.
I also wonder if my breathing difficulty while running and talking is related to what I experience when reading aloud. If I'm just having a normal conversation with somebody, I'm fine. But if I am reading aloud from a book or magazine or anything, my throat gets tight and starts to hurt and my airways tighten up and my voice starts creaking and cracking. Weird, huh?
I kill plants. With very few exceptions, plants that come under my care are doomed to suffer a slow death of thirst and neglect. I love plants and would like nothing more than to live in a house surrounded by tall trees and grass and ferns and flowers and fruits and vegetables and bushes and shrubs and hedges and gardens, but it would seriously have to come with a gardener. I really do mean well, but I just suck at caring for them properly.
Whenever I acquire new plants, I'm terribly excited about them for about two weeks, and then one day I forget to water them, and suddenly it's 3 weeks later and I remember that I have plants to take care of -- make that HAD plants to take care of -- and I panic and run outside and find their dried brown husks frozen in a sun-crisped rigormortis, their slow suffering and piteous cries for water and TLC stamped into their little shriveled stalks and leaves.
Thank god for automatic sprinkler systems, otherwise my lawn would probably be a wasteland too.
One thing I am proud of: I try to do everything organically, without nasty synthetic chemicals that can hurt me, the vegetation, animals, the air, and groundwater. I do read up a lot on organic fertilizers and pest control, and I have all the necessary ingredients for the garlic-pepper tea and the Garrett Juice fertilizer and the liquid seaweed-insecticidal soap bug killer. I use the bug killer when I see bugs and I attempt to remember (but usually forget) to fertilize monthly. Also, I have a compost pile (ok, it's really just a heap by the side of the house where I throw scraps and leaves and junk... but it does seem to be working!)
I did not inherit Mom's fantastic abilities with all forms of vegetation (but I guess if it was between art and horticulture I'm glad I got her art genes instead). She never admits it but she is amazing at growing things. Come to think of it, the only plants I've been able to keep alive for a decent period of time are an orange tree she gave me, a houseplant that she sent me for my birthday one year, and a rosemary bush she grew from the table centerpieces at my wedding.
Despite my limitations, I make annual valiant attempts to grow things in pots on my patio. At about 5 p.m. yesterday I got it into my head that I wanted to try growing tomatoes this year. Last time I tried this, I ended up with one edible Roma tomato that was maybe 1" across.
Clearly, I have no clue what I'm doing.
So now, in big ugly containers on the back deck, are seedlings. I have two Patio cherry tomato plants, two yellow pear tomato plants, and an heirloom variety called Mr. Stripey that I bought mostly because it was called Mr. Stripey.
In another container are some green, yellow, and red bell peppers.
And I have some herbs that Mom sent me a couple of weeks ago... basil, oregano, marjoram, sage, and thyme.
I guess I'm kind of growing a salsa garden. Now all I need are some onions! (one thing that I have successfully grown before).
And -- and I have to take pride in the little things here -- I remembered to water them this morning before work! Of course, watering the plants, and taking out the trash, and forgetting my work shoes and having to dash back home to get them so I wouldn't have to wear tennies all day, made me miss my bus this morning. Argh!
Out walking on Saturday, Doc and I discovered a tree we'd never seen before. It's right on the other side of the creek from us.
check out this crazy thing!! the zz top of lobsters...
it's so crazy, in fact, that they created not only a new species, but a new genus and family as well (remember the taxonomy? King Phillip Came Out From Going Swimming... Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species)
it's also blind, although it appears to have eyestalks... or maybe those are feelers. i also like how the family name kiwaida comes from kiwa, the goddess of crustaceans in polynesian mythology.
Labels: nature
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much better.
Site Feed