A Mini Macro Post on Thanksgiving Day

Dennis found a set of close-up lenses for my Canon 18-55mm on eBay for a great price -- $15.00! There are 3 lenses, 1X, 2X, and 4X. I tested them out on my seasonally challenged Christmas cactus that was in full bloom several weeks ago; more of a Halloween cactus, I suppose. Below are some of the resulting photos.

I am very happy with the photos that I got in the end.  But it took me several hours and over 100 shots to begin to get proficient with the lenses.  On this Thanksgiving Day I am thankful for digital cameras!  ;-)

I am also thankful for my fantastic family, dear friends, good food, the beauty of the natural world, and my fellow bloggers who capture that beauty for all to see. 

Cheers!  Wilma

Phoenix, Part 3

So first up, I need to correct a bird ID in the first 2 Phoenix posts.  I had photographed a female hummingbird and assumed she was a ruby-throated hummingbird because she looked so much like the ruby-throated ones in the eastern half of the US.  But they don't occur in Arizona. It is hard to ID the females, but in the second post I had photos of a male hummingbird, and from those I was able to positively indentify it as a Costa's hummingbird.  The Costa's have a more purple color to their throat and cap feathers than the ruby-throated, and a nice white stripe from the outer corner of their eyes.  And the Costa's live in the desert.

I took all of the photos below as Dennis and I enjoyed the remains of the day on our little patio.  The first 2 shots are of a very shy female Gila woodpecker.

This male and his mate spent a lot of time at this hole in a Saguaro cactus, possible a nest hole.  The sun was sinking quickly into the west, resulting in a long exposure.  But you can see the little red cap of the male.

The pair settled on the pergola as twilight came.

As the sun set, the gibbous moon rose.

The details of the moon's surface show up so clearly in the dry desert air.  What a gorgeous finish to our last day in Phoenix.

Phoenix: Part 2

I got up early on Halloween day to take a walk around the resort in a fruitless attempt to catch some bird activity.  At least I got some nice shots of the landscaping.

This lavendar-hued cactus must be a variety bred for landscaping.  We saw it in many places in Phoenix.  Looks kind off trippy to me, in a very cool way.

These next 2 shots are of the area around our patio.

After eating our leftovers from dinner for breakfast, Dennis and I headed out to South Mountain Park for a "short" hike.  We stopped at a produce stand that I had been to the last time we were in Phoenix to pick up some food to take with us (along with our waterbottles, sunscreen, hats, camera gear, binocculars, etc.) on our hike.  We got fresh, cold concord grapes, dates, and date bars for the hike.  (aside - Arizona is a major date-growing area.)  South Mountain Park is a city park, but is on the outskirts of Phoenix and covers a huge area.  We parked at one of 2 park entrances that is just off Baseline Road at the southern edge of Phoenix.  There is a large scale map posted at a kiosk, but no hardcopy maps to take with you as you hike (cue scary music).  At 10:15 am, we set off on the Javelina Trail, one of the shortest at only 1.7 miles, that connects with the Mormon trail for the return to the car.  We took our time, lollygagging actually, stopping to take in the views and take photos along the way.

 

This male Costa's hummingbird let me get pretty close for these first 2 shots.  See how he raises up his throat and head feathers to display his red throat in the second shot.  Be sure to click the photos to enlarge them.

Then he flew to the other side of the bush where he continued to flash his wealth.

Don't those ruby feathers look like sequins?

We continued on the Javelina Trail as it rose up to cross the RidgeLine Trail.

We crossed the Ridgeline Trail and headed down into the next canyon on what we thought was the Mormon Trail to head back to the car.

You can see the signs of water erosion on this rock formation; hard to envision that muchwater in this dry environment.

After walking another 1.5 miles, we realized that we were not heading in the right direction.  We decided to stay on the trail we were on (whatever it was) and take the next left to get us going the right way.  Since this was Saturday, there were many hikers out, so we weren't worried about getting hopelessly lost. 

As we walked along the rocky trail, this red-tailed hawk zoomed by us, doing a series of victory laps around the canyon while carrying its prize snake in its talons.  You will have to excuse the fuzziness of the photos - I was standing and turning in circles following the hawk through the view finder while hand-holding the camera with the long zoom lens at 300 mm.  It is a wonder I didn't tip over from dizziness and excitement.

By this time we realized that we still weren't getting closer to our car.  But there were no other trails to take to the left. 

The scenery had changed a bit because we were in an area with a lot of flash flood activity during heavy rains (not an issue while we were there!).  The photo below is of the Pima Wash, after the local Pima Indian Tribe.  Right now it is a river of sand, but when the rains come, it is a real river that can carry you away.

We could still see the city of Phoenix from various points.

 

We wound up going way too far east and ended up at a different parking lot miles away from where we started.  We took this opportunity to top off our water bottles.  

Fortunately, Dennis recognized the high tension power line from our hike in this park last year and we were able to get our bearings again.  We didn't have to backtrack at all.  We could see the trail that went toward the power lines, so we followed that. 

It was a steep hike over the ridge.  Check out the gray squirrel atop the rock formation on the left.

As we crossed the ridge, we saw this Gambel's quail.

We followed the powerline for a short distance.  It was eerie to walk under the powerline because it sang its wailing and humming sound overhead.  Finally we saw a trail that we recognized from last year that headed back toward our car.  It was a relief to be back in familiar territory.

We got back to the car at 2:30, a mere 3 and 3/4 hours from when we started, no worse for the wear.  Dennis' bad knee did OK, too.  We even had food and water left over.  We looked at the map at the kiosk and figured we walked at least 6 miles instead of the 3 we had intended.  But if we hadn't gotten lost we wouldn't have seen the hawk with the snake or the Gambel's quail or heard the power lines sing.  Once again - here's to getting lost!

The next blog will have a few photos from our afternoon back at the resort, the 3rd and final part of our trip to Phoenix.

Where was Wilma?

The photo posted a few days ago shows rocky desert overlooking a city in a valley where Dennis and I had gone for a long weekend. So, let’s see – close enough to get to fairly quickly from Minnesota with desert and mountains. It must be somewhere in the US southwest. The valley is Sun Valley, the desert is the Sonoran desert, and the city is Phoenix, Arizona. Dennis had half a day of business to tend to, but the rest of the time was a little mini-holiday for us. We stayed a very posh resort at the outskirts of Phoenix (courtesy Dennis’ work) for 3 nights.

Phoenix is located at the northern edge of the Sonoran desert, and it can reach temps that rival those of Baghdad in the summer.  But the fall weather is nearly perfect. While we were there, the daytime highs were about 80F and the lows were in the 50s with no clouds in sight.  

While Dennis was working Friday morning, I went to the gym for an early workout and then cooled down in the refreshing morning air with a short walk to check out the beginning of a hiking path into the desert. It looked promising, so after my shower and breakfast, I grabbed my water bottle and sunscreen (essential here), camera bag and binoculars, and hat and sunglasses, then headed out on the short hiking path. I hiked a fairly rough, but short, trail that went partway up a rocky outcropping and got some pretty nice photos. There were perhaps 15 other people that were hiking there. 

The view shown below is the hillside which the trail ascends about 2/3rd way to the top.

Here is a view of the city of Phoenix.

I love how these chollas look with the sunlight scattered by their pale golden thorns.

And these fishhook barrel cacti have lovely pastel spines.

Previous hikers have left stacks of rocks along the trails.

As I sat still to wait for wildlife to resume activities, I saw a pair of black-throated sparrows busily gathering seeds.  They were only about 8 feet away from me, but were not deterred by my presence or the clicks of the camera.

After watching the sparrows for a bit I moved on to another vantage point and watched a Gila Woodpecker for a bit.  It never did get very close, but I managed to get a shot of perched in a thorny shrub.  You can just barely make out the red crown on the tawny head.

I also spotted a mockingbird just within range of my zoom lens.  I took a number of pictures of it and then suddenly it flew right me as I was looking through the viewfinder and landed a mere 15 feet away.  It posed for me like a pro!

I met up with Dennis back at our suite as he finished up his business. Our suite (not really sure what to call it) was a small efficiency apartment with a combined sitting/bedroom and a small patio outside the entrance. The entire resort was beautifully landscaped with native desert plants that looked quite lush compared to the surrounding desert simply because the resort used drip irrigation and kept plants trimmed for best blooming. Like many places around the world, this resort was far below capacity in number of guests, which made it nicer for us, although not so good for the resort. We ate our lunch at the poolside restaurant where the house sparrows and grackles quickly captured all errant crumbs.  Unfortunately, no photos because my camera was back in our room.  :-(

I did, however, go back out with camera to try to capture a female hummingbird.  Below is the bush of Mexican Bird of Paradise (not a true bird of paradise at all) that the humming bird had been in earlier.   Wait!!!  Can you see the hummer perched just above the seed pods?  Click to enlarge. 

She sat quite still as I moved in closer and closer.  You can tell she is a female bacause she lacks the colorful throat of the male.

Finally, when the camera was within inches of her, she decided to put a little more space between us, so I let her be after this last shot.

After lunch, we went back to our suite and spent some time on the patio where I took more bird photos.  All of the remaining photos were taken on our patio.

What could that be in the palm tree?  It really is a starling with its lovely speckled winter plumage.  Who knew they would perch in palms?

An entire flock of Gambel's quail came around from the back our suite and were very skittish.  I managed to get a couple of decent shots (out of 15 or so) by moving ever so cautiously around the corner to catch them unawares.  This first one seems to be saying "You don't see me.  You don't see me.  You don't see me" as it walked down the branch.

This lovely curved-bill thrush was scratching around on the ground underneath the orange tree.

But my favorite bird was the enchanting cactus wren.  They are not shy birds and will go about their business while letting you get within mere feet them.

This one is shuffling along in the fallen pink bougainvilla sepals.

And here is one getting dried material from a dead cactus for its nest material.

I love the white streak above its eyes and the brown spots on the pale cinnamon-colored underparts.  It is fairly large for a wren and has a very engaging manner.

Later on we made a foray for wine and cheese at a nearby wine shop so we could enjoy wine and cheese on the patio before going out to dinner later that evening. We ate at the Bonita Grill and had green corn tamales (incredibly delicious), azteca soup (fantastic), mahi mahi tacos (yum) , lamb with black beans and grilled veggies (great combination). Believe it or not, we had the leftovers for breakfast the next day! More on the rest of our holiday on the next post.

Too Busy To Blog

Like the title says, I have been too busy to blog.  Here is a photo as sneak preview of my next blog which I will try to post over the weekend.

Lazy Birdwatching

The weather was lovely this past weekend. Lots of sunshine and highs in the low 50s F although a little windy. I took full advantage of my “lazy birder” setup and got many photos of bird activity around the feeders. The goldfinches nearly filled all available perches at the thistle seed feeder (see the 2 sets of tail feathers peaking out from behind the feeder?).

So I cut some of the coneflower seedheads from the front garden and wove their stems into the latticework of our trellis to see if any goldfinches would go to that instead of the feeder. At least one goldie seems to approve.

Down below the thistle seed feeder, a mourning dove scavenges the spilled seed.

Meanwhile over at the mixed seed feeder, a chipping sparrow or 2 chow down on the millet seed.

And 3 purple finches (only the males have the reddish coloring) visit the mixed seed feeder and the thistle seed feeder.

And finally a comparison of the relative sizes of the hairy woodpecker (top) and the downy woodpecker (bottom). Notice the solid tail feathers of the hairy and the barred tail feathers of the downy.

A Notion to Cook and a Peek at the Jungle

It must have been all the cool and wet weather that gave me a notion to cook (not that I don’t cook almost every day any how). On Sunday I started cooking about 10:00am and was still going at into the evening. It was very satisfying. So, what did I cook? I started with homemade sofrito. Sofrito is used as a component in Puerto Rican/Cuban dishes. It is pretty easy; basically you throw all the ingredients into a food processor and blend until it reaches the consistency you want. I like mine so you can see the separate colors of the ingredients, but you can’t tell what veg it came from. I used fresh local yellow and red tomatoes, lots of garlic cloves, poblano peppers, Serrano peppers (they had gotten semi-dried while languishing in the fridge), onion, fresh cilantro, and salt. The nice thing about sofrito is that you make a big batch and can freeze it in small plastic bags to use later. Most recipes call for about ¼ cup.
I started with the sofrito because I wanted to use it in black beans to serve along side or over rice. I sautéed a chopped onion, sweet red bell pepper, Mexican oregano (different from Italian oregano), and dried epazote leaves. I added that to a large saucepan with canned black beans that I had rinsed really well, and then cooked it up on the stove with ½ c sofrito and a can of squished up whole tomatoes. The final touch was to add dried roasted chipotle peppers to give it the flavor of roasted peppers. This made about 6 servings, so I froze 4 servings for later.


While all that was going on, I was chopping leeks for 2 other dishes: lentil soup and chicken-barley casserole. I caramelized the thinly sliced leeks and added crushed garlic cloves to the leeks destined for the soup. The soup was made from dried lentils simmered in chicken broth, leeks and garlic, fresh spinach, sautéed Porcini mushrooms, and Moroccan spices. Again, there was enough to freeze 6 servings plus have 2 later in the week.

Last and easiest of all was the chicken-barley casserole. I hadn’t cooked barley in at least 15 years, I think because it is hard to find in Minnesota. We finally found some at the organic food store that we like to go to. This was very simple, I put barely, chicken broth, chicken pieces, sautéed button mushrooms and leeks, into a casserole dish and baked it for about an hour. There were 9 servings from this recipe.

They all turned out to be very tasty.  Now, I have cooking out of my system - for a while at least …

Like a few other bloggers who have posted recently, I am having to dig into my rainy day file of photos. So here is a small selection of some jungle plant life from Belize. The first 3 shots are of a plant called Crepe Ginger (Cheilocostus speciosus). It is not a true ginger, but is in a family closely related to ginger. This plant, originally from Southeast Asia, is a non-native garden escapee and is pretty common along roadsides. It is pollinated by carpenter bees.

The part I find attractive is the spiral that its newest growth makes.

The flowers are impressive, too.  If you clikc to enlarge, you can see the ants that are attracted to nectar producing glands at the bases of the red bracts.

This last shot is of the sunlight streaming through a break in the canopy to illuminate the inflorescence of this epiphytic bromeliad. To me, this captures the essence of the jungle and takes me back every time I look at it.

Fall Birds Coming and Going

A few weeks a go I mentioned that I had cleared away some of the coneflowers.  I left most of them because the birds love the seeds.  This is what a coneflower seed head looks like after a Goldfinch has been at it.

American Goldfinches aren't too picky about what they will eat.  They eat  fromthe feeder that I fill with mixed seed and at the one with thistle (Nyger) seeds.  Here we see a goldfinch sharing the perch of the mixed seed feeder with a nuthatch.  

Their companionability didn't last too long, though ...
 
The goldfinches are the major customers at the thistle seed feeder.  They will be flying south for winter soon; we'll see them again in spring and all during next summer as they breed and raise their young.

The feeder above doesn't get quite as much business as MidMarsh John's feeder gets from his goldfinches (click here).  American goldfinches are a little smaller than the English ones and are also less colorful, especially in their winter wardrobe.  Here are a couple of pictures showing very toned-down gold.  But just wait until spring when they start to court and spark.

How many birds can you see below? 

There are at least four; 3 goldfinches and one female slate-colored Junco.  For brief periods in autumn and spring, these species overlap here in Minnesota as the goldfinches mass to migrate south and the juncos arrive to spend winter here.  We are not too far from the northern limit of the juncos' winter territory.  They breed all across northern Canada and Alaska.  Then they migrate south to Minnesota (and much farther, too) for the warmth; they must have some good insulation!  Below are a closer shot of the female and 2 shots of a male. 

This next bird, the ruby-crowned kinglet, is just passing through on its way to a more reasonable winter climate all across the souther states and into Mexico.  I may even be able to spot some in Belize when we go back in February!

This one is either a female that doesn't have the ruby crown or a male that is hiding his like they sometimes do.  They are both less than 4 inches long.  in this cold snap, they are all puffed up to stay warm.

The purple finches shown below are also just passing through to their winter grounds in the southeastern states.  They don't venture as far south as the kinglets do.  Only the males have the lovely redish head, back, and breast.  This one is probably a juevenile male.

I'll finish with this handsome chipmunk that scavenges seeds spilled from the feeders.  We usually have 4 or 5 of them around.  They gather up the seeds into their check pouches and then go hide them somewhere.  We find clumps of grasses, sunflowers, and other things growing in the oddest places; most recently in our potted plants that had been on the patio before we brought them indoors for winter.

A Few More Birds

I am trying the newest version of the editor for this blog.  I hope it let's me place the photos more easily than the old one.  Here we go ...

I believe the photo below requires no explanantion other than the birds are American Gold Finches in their drab winter clothing.

Now, can I put the next photo where I want it?

Yes, that part works OK.  Above is a female Downy Woodpecker.  She lacks the red head-patch of the male.

And now we have a Blue Jay.  Most people don't care too much for blue jays.  I really like them, though.  They are lovely to look at and really quite smart.  The family that has lived here for the past 16 years (probably longer, but that is how long I have lived here to observe them) have learned to call like a red-tailed hawk.  That scares all the little birds away and give the jays clear access to the feeders.  Pretty clever.

I hope that this new editor will allow my blog readers to click on images to enlarge them.  It was like that before we went to Belize, but while in Belize that changed.  I haven't been able to figure out how to reset that feature.  I have my fingers crossed ...

Changing Seasons

Soon after we returned from Belize, I was making a tour of the garden with the cats and camera in tow and saw many signs of the impending change of seasons. The bur oak trees in the front yard have a fine crop of acorns this year and the hazelnuts have fruits that are starting to turn a lovely orange-yellow color (below). On a more recent rainy Sunday morning, I spotted the Huechera that I planted in August. I like how the raindrops have been caught in the leaves.
Below is a photo showing the flaming colors of the maple tree in our back yard. This is always one of the first trees to change color.
The clematis, which didn’t do very well this year, had one last blossom (below). You can see the color of the maple tree in background.
Keith at Holdingmoments had a terrific post on English robins recently (http://holdingmoments.blogspot.com/2009/10/robin.html). American robins, which are much larger than the English robins, are thrushes and their red is only the breast. This robin youngster has lighter orange that hasn’t quite filled in all the way. In Georgia, where we lived before we moved here, robins were year-round residents. Here in Minnesota, the robins are seasonal and they have begun to migrate south. They will be a much welcomed herald for spring when they return. Last weekend, we had a male Downy Woodpecker make repeated visits to our bird feeder. He would be at the feeder for 3-4 minutes to accumulate a supply of seeds and then fly to the nearby hickory tree to insert seeds into crevices in the bark. I tried to get photos, but couldn’t get outside without scaring him away. So I was inspired to take apart the window that looks out to the feeders. This is a double paned window that has mini-blinds between the panes of glass. So I undid the clips that hold the inside piece of glass in place, removed the glass, unhooked the bottom of the blinds from the bottom of the window, slid the top of the blinds out of their slot, and removed them entirely. Then, while the window was apart, I washed the inner side of the outside pane, both sides of the inside pane of glass, went outside and washed the outside of the outer pane, and then re-assembled the window. Voila! Now I can be a very lazy birder. I can sit in my favorite chair with my feet on the ottoman and take pictures using my zoom lens. How lazy is that? I moved the thistle (Nyger) feeder to a position I can also see from my chair. The cats also have window-side seats from which they can watch the birds to their hearts content, or perhaps discontent, since they can only watch, not pounce! Here are some of the pictures I took last weekend after I changed the window. This little chickadee is one of the most chipper and cheerful birds we see here. They stay around all winter and can brighten a very dull day.

The nuthatches also stick around all year. They are only a little bigger than the chickadees. They almost always perch upside-down on tree trunks.



And last but not least, the inspiration for setting up the lazy birdwatcher's blind, is the downy wood pecker. It is the smallest woodpecker in these parts, only about 5 inches long. This one is a male, as you can tell from the red head patch.

It is very selective in what seeds it will take!

After it selects a mouthfull of seeds, it heads to the hickory tree to hide the seeds in the bark.

This view from the back shows the distinctive identifying features of the red head patch, a hint of barred-tail feathers, and white stripe on the back. It is like a small version of the hairy woodpecker, except the hairys don't have barred tails. A handsome little guy, don't you think?

Our place in Belize

Today (Oct 3) has begun as a dreary, wet, and cool day. The rain may ease up a little later, but will remain cool with highs not even reaching 50F. Thus far the morning has been spent sleeping in (a rare treat for us), puttering around the house, and working a bit more on photos from Belize.

Our cabana overlooks the Caribbean Ocean. As I explained in a post about the earthquake that hit the area earlier this year (http://southenglishtown.blogspot.com/2009/06/earthquake.html), our cabana is built on 12 foot high concrete pilings. Below is view of the cabana from the end of the dock. The water is quite shallow here, barely 4 ft deep at the end of the dock.

A closer look shows the 30x10ft screened-in veranda that runs full length of side of the cabana facing the ocean. We spend most of our "indoor" time on the veranda. We have our dining table on the veranda and hang our hammocks there too. Just under the stairs that lead to the veranda is a big black vat that collects graywater from the kitcehn that we use to water the plants in the dry season.

Below is a view from the top of the stairs to the veranda looking toward ocean. The big tree on the right is a seagrape tree. It has great tasting purple fruit in bunches like grapes. The fruits each have a large central seed pit covered with a fairly thin layer of juicy flesh. Birds and other animals (including people) eat the fruit.
Below is the same view at sunrise. Sunrise is different every day and each is beautiful in its own way.

Some days are clear enough to see large cargo ships way out at the horizon. You can barely make one out at the center of the picture below.

And some days you can see the Maya Mountains to the northwest. The photo below was taken from the back veranda. Beyond the roof and bamboo pole for the TV aerial at our caretakers' cottage, you can see the distant mountains.

We are situated on a narrow strip of solid ground between the ocean to the east and a marsh that edges Black Creek to the west. The narrow strip of solid ground grades from sand at the beach to sandy soil at the jungle adjacent to the marsh. The picture below was also taken from the back veranda, this time looking south/southwest. About 4 years ago we cleared out the dead and damaged trees and understorey plants that were leftover from hurricane Iris and had room to plant bananas and other food plants. We kept all the healthy jungle trees like gumbo limbo, craboo, acacia, and others I still don't know the names of. This site had been cleared decades ago when the original Englishtown was there. We also found some domestic plants from that time including a huge mango (just behind the bananas in the photo below) and a cashew tree.I started out this post today with the intention of showing some of the very few birds I photographed on this trip, but it evolved into something else. The only birding I did was on our little patch of jungle and beach. We haven't built any bird blinds or hides or observation platforms yet, unless you count our tiny back veranda that is about 12 feet off the ground. Still, I got a few shots of some lovely birds, usually from a great distance. I'll finish up with the beautiful black-headed trogon that live in the area. I love its blue eye-ring and bright yellow underparts. Although they were around most of everyday, they were usually flitting around in the dense canopy. The pictures below are from the only time they were situated so that I could get a clear shot of them. It is a fairly common bird at the edges of jungles and woodlands in Belize.

I'll do more birds and other wildlife in a later post. I think this one is long enough already!

TADPOLES TO FROGS (#50)

Because this is my 50th post, I want to make it a little extra-special. What to do??? Perhaps highlights of our recent trip to Belize? No, I want to make that last for a number of posts parceled out so I can make it through the upcoming winter. Something about our cats? Oh heck no, too boring for everyone except me (I can hear you thanking me for nixing that idea). Photos and ruminations on the change of seasons? Too depressing to even contemplate. So I took a wander through my photo collection for inspiration and found --- TADPOLES TO FROGS. I hope you enjoy reading and looking as much as I enjoyed writing it and taking the photos.

It is the old chicken or egg conundrum; start with the adult frog or the baby tadpole? Well, since I choose to start this series in early summer, we will begin with an adult frog that inhabited our little garden pond. I believe this a Northern Leopard frog. There must be at least one other of the opposite sex around, although I saw only one at a time. This species reaches sexual maturity in 2 to 4 years, so these have been around for a few years at least. They seem to like the abundant mass of filamentous algae that is in our little pond.

The second picture is the last time I saw this little frog. I am suspicious that it was eaten by raccoons that raid the pond almost nightly.

This next adult is either Cope's Gray Treefrog or the Gray Treefrog (the Gray has twice the number of chromosomes as the Cope's). You may recognize this one from the post I made earlier (http://southenglishtown.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-much-is-that-froggie-in-window.html).

So, we have two kinds of frogs around. Will we see tadpoles of both in the pond? Below are photos of the tadpoles in chronological order. The little tadpoles seem to graze on the algae or critters in the algae. Perhaps that is why the adults like the algae so much.

A month or so later, these little guys and girls have gotten bigger. They really like to graze on the submerged rock ledge, probably so they can soak up the sun's warmth while eating. It just doesn't get better than that!

Pretty soon, they start to develop rear legs.

And now you can see that there are 2 kinds of tadpoles in the pond. See the little green at the bottom right? That one is going to be a Northern Leopard Frog. And I believe that others will be Gray Treefrogs.



After the rear legs start developing, the front legs show up and the tail starts to get pretty darn skinny.
Just look at that sweet little froggie face.

At some point the Gray Treefrogs leave the pond environs. I found some young frogs in surprising places. Here is one on a wild raspberry bramble. That out of focus white thing in the second image is my thumb (for size comparison) - that is a wee little froggie.



I had never thought to look for frogs on flowers. This one looks quite happy on the Black-eyed Susan on a damp day.
You can see the markings that are prominent along the sides of some of the Gray Treefrogs.

JD helped me look for frogs, or so he said. I think he was really looking for birds! ;-) You didn't really think I go for this long without a cat picture, did you? I have not found any of the newly transformed Northern Leopard Frog out of the pond. My reference says that it overwinters in the water, so they may just stay put. The Gray Treefrogs hibernate during winter and can withstand freezing. That will come in handy here!

back in Minnesota

We got back to Minnesota yesterday after spending 2 weeks in Belize. When we left for Belize on Sept. 7th, it was still summer. Here is what we came back to:

a patio and lawn dusted with the first fallen leaves of autumn. We knew it had to happen sooner or later. Sigh ...

But there are still some flowers and visitors to the flowers in the garden, like this amazing painted lady butterfly on purple liatris (blazing star)

After I get a little more settled and back into the routine of going to work (!), I'll post more about our Belize trip. Plus I have lots of blog reading to catch up on; it seems the writers of the blogs I follow are very prolific with posts far too good to skip. :-)

Visit to the Mennonite Nursery

Saturday, September 12, 2009
After we left the Belize Zoo Education Center, we drove to Belmopan to buy some supplies from Prossers’ (fertilizer), Builders Hardware (mildewcide) and ate lunch at the open-air market (chicken empanadas, yum). From there we drove down the Hummingbird Highway to the village of Armenia. We turned off the highway onto a dirt road and followed the signs to “Fruit and Nut Nursery” which took us up into the hills a bit through some Mayan milpas farms and finally into a Mennonite settlement. Sue and Chris had been there before and immediately recognized the shade house along the road and the nursery. We stopped the truck and got out. Very soon a Mennonite woman and her very young daughter came to greet us and show us the nursery. Martha was her name and she was very familiar with all the plants in her husband’s shade house. She had a book with photos of the plants and descriptions of how to grow them. She personally told us which fruits she had used for pies, jams, or just eating straight off the trees. It was a very small operation, but had an amazing number of different plants. We bought some that we though would stand a chance of growing in our low country, beach environment if we coddle them enough; Mulberry, black raspberry, Cambodiana Mango, Mangosteen, Guava, Breadfruit.

Inside the shade house, there were quite a few butterflies. I will have to key them out when I get back home to a better internet connection and to my reference books. Thanks to Andrew at Quicksilvercountry blog for ID'ing both butterflies. Both are peacocks -the first is a white peacock (Anartia jatrophe) and the second is a banded peacock (Anartia fatima).
The nursery is really up in the high hills; the countryside is beautiful and the air is much cooler than in the valleys and low country. There are cows grazing on the hillsides, and several Mennonite horse-drawn cart and buggies pass up and down the road.

After covering our purchases to protect them from the wind, we turned around and went back down to the Hummingbird Highway toward Dangriga, where we got on the Western highway and continued to Monkey River Road turn off. The Monkey River Road is our last stretch before home. It is a dirt road that goes through some orange and grapefruit orchards, but the closer to the river you get, the more jungle there is. During the wet season ( which we are in now), the road is often impassable due to high water; but it was OK with just a few big puddles this time. Below is a photo of Monkey River Village as seen from the dock on the north side of the Monkey River. The next photo is of the mouth of the Monky River emptying into the Caribbean.

At the end of the Monkey River Road, we unloaded the truck, Sue returned the truck to Martha and Sam’s place for safekeeping, and then we loaded all our purchases onto Lloydies’ boat and he brought us back to South Englishtown. During the next few days, we got the plants settled, and even planted most of the seeds we had brought down with us; things like different colors of Frangipani, cardoon, capers, Calabasas, and guanabana. We also planted avocado, mango, and pitiyaya (dragon fruit) seeds from fruit we had eaten.

We also have the fruit trees that we had planted in earlier years. Some of them are doing well and others are suffering in the salt wind and nutrient-poor sandy soil. The breadfruit, seen below with Joy, is one of the trees that is doing very well.

The Belize Zoo by Night

Friday, September 12, 2009
After dinner cooked by the Education Center staff, Jilario took us on a guided tour of the Belize Zoo (www.belizezoo.org/). Ordinarily, I am not a fan of zoos; I prefer that animal stay in the wild. But the Belize Zoo was started by Sharon Matola for two purposes: 1) to be a place where injured wild animals or wild animals otherwise unfit for living free could be cared for and 2) to be a place where Belizeans and visitors to Belize could learn about the wildlife native to Belize. All the animals in the zoo are species that are native to Belize, although they may have been obtained in nearby Guatemala, Honduras, or Mexico. The Zoo is supported entirely by donations, so they are small and are not able to afford programs to reintroduce animals to the wild.

The tour of the zoo by night was fantastic. There where on the 4 of us (Sue, Chris, Dennis, and I) and Jilario, our guide. Jilario was wonderful and his passion for his work shines through the whole tour. First up were the snakes, with the yellow-jawed Tommy Goff (aka “Fer de Lance”) leading off. The Tommy Goffs are quite poisonous and a bite from a Tommy Goff may be lethal. You can imagine that it is important to know what they look like and where they are found! We each (except Chris) had a turn at holding the boa constrictor. It was a lovely snake and seemed to enjoy being held.

Next we saw the gibnuts (aka “The Royal Rat”). They are attractively spotted, largish rodents that get to about 20 pounds. When Queen Elizabeth visited Belize before it became independent, she was served gibnut at a banquet, hence its nickname. From firsthand experience, I can tell you that it is delicious; if you can imagine the veal equivalent of a piglet you will have a pretty good idea of how tender and non-gamey it is. Gibnut are a delicacy in Belize (jaguars love them, too) and fortunately they are abundant in the wild.

Belize is home to several wild cats, all of which we got to see and feed at the zoo. The animals know that they will get a treat if they come up during a tour, and so we got to feed a puma, an ocelot, several margays, and a jaguar. They were all gorgeous, impressive animals and, like all the animals there, each had its own story of how it came to be at the zoo.

Although we caught only glimpses, the howler monkeys were impossible to miss due to their indescribable howling. These monkeys aren’t true zoo inhabitants, in that they can come and go as they please. This troop just happens to live on zoo property. The property is kept very natural with special water sources added for the gibnuts, etc.

Perhaps the cutest animals were the kinkajous. They are similar to possums and raccoons. They love to hang upside down and use the tips of their tails and their hands and feet grab hold of supports. I say “hands” because their front feet are very primate-like with thumbs and fingers. Check out the photos of them hanging on the wire fence when we visited their enclosure.

Only a few species of birds are kept at the zoo – spectacled owls, harpy eagles, and curassows. The owls and eagles were happy to show their faces to us, but the curassows only mooned us (see photos)! The harpy eagle is majestic and very beautiful; the photos really don’t do justice to the birds.
Near the end of the tour we also saw 2 big American crocodiles. Belize has 2 native crocs, the American and the Morelet’s. The Americans tend to be larger than the Morelet’s. Both are largely fish eaters, although they may take the small mammals, including dogs. The American crocs at the zoo are very acclimated to the tours since it brings them their evening treat of chicken feet, so we were able to get excellent photos. Check out the photo of a lovely moth that stayed at the side of one of the crocs (see photos). I love the juxtaposition of the defenseless moth mere inches away from the powerfully fearsome hind claws of the croc.

I’ll close this entry with how we ended our tour and perhaps what were the most bizarre animals, the tapirs (aka “Mountain Cows”). They have long prehensile noses, similar to an anteater, and are cow-sized when mature. We felt very special to be the very first tour to hand feed the newest tapir, “Indy”, a bottle (see photos). That was a very fun experience and the entire tour was incredible. A note of caution however -- tapirs express their urine to the rear, and so you need to be mindful of their position relative to you. (Dennis added this last sentence).

The Belize Zoo may be small, but it has a big impact. In addition to the nighttime and day tours, they hold courses, and have two other activities in which you can participate. You can be a “zookeeper for the day” and you can also get to get up close and personal with the young jaguar named Junior Buddy. They have built a small enclosure within the main jaguar enclosure that permits up to 4 individuals enter and be inches away from the 2 year old jaguar. This sounds very cool and you can read a blog at Moonracer Farms with another account of a zoo visit that includes a visit with Junior Buddy (http://moonracerfarmbelize.blogspot.com/2009/05/margaret.html).

Belizin' It

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Dennis and I flew into the Phillip Goldson International Airport just outside Belize City and made it through Immigration and Customs as usual. We lost one of the 10 bags along the way, but it will be shipped to the Placencia Airport in a day or so. From there, we flew on a 12 seater to Placencia with a stop at Dangriga. I took the next 3 photos with my cell phone from the airplane. This first one was taken as we approached the Dangriga Airstrip.

This one is the approach to the Placencia Airstrip. As you can see, the Placnecia Pennisula is quite narrow.

In this shot, we are turning around at the end of the runway, and yes, that is the shadow of the wing on the road (on paved in the last month or so) that the truck is driving on.

We went by boat on the 45 mn trip down to our place in South Englishtown, population doubled by our arrival.

Friday, September 11, 2009
Yesterday, Sue, Chris, Dennis and I got Richard (our caretaker) to take us by boat on the 10 min trip to the dock on the north bank of the Monkey River. Chris and Sue leave their truck with our friends Martha and Sam, who live almost at the end of the road near the dock. While Sue went to get the truck, we unloaded our overnight bags to start our trip to Belmopan (the capital) and Belize City (the former capital, and only actual city in the entire country of less than 300,000 people). Our plan was to stay for 2 nights at the Education Center that is associated with the Belize Zoo while we took care of business in the city and did some shopping in the village of Spanish Lookout and Belmopan. We did our shopping at Spanish Lookout before we got to the zoo. As we drove into the Education Center, we were met by John, the zoo manager, who told us where our cabanas were. We had pondside cabanas with lovely verandas. In the pond were fish, turtles, and crocodiles and some lovely plants. Those photos will come tomorrow.

in belize

It is 8:40 am EST, Tuesday September 8th. Dennis and I are sitting in the E concourse of the Miami International Airport waiting for our flight to Belize. The past 2 weeks have been totally hectic for me, with 2 major grant proposal deadlines today. On the flight from Chicago to Miami, I was still writing on one proposal, continued to do so last night at the hotel until midnight, and then got up at 4:30 am to finish my section so I could email it to my colleagues who will combine with their parts and submit it to NIH. Now I am ready for vacation.

Dennis outdid himself with packing this time. We checked 6 bags with an average weight of 60 lbs. Plus we each have 2 carryons that are packed to capacity. Included in the checked bags is an inverter to replace the inverter at our cabana. The inverter converts the direct current (DC) from the bank of car batteries that are charged by a diesel generator to alternating current (AC) that is the standard for house current. Dennis found the perfect bag to pack it in; the bag is a big round thing that looks like a bass drum would fit in it, mostly because a big bass drum would fit in because that is what it is designed to carry. The inverter weighs 62 lbs. Dennis used bed pillows to cushion the inverter. He also packed 2 drills, 3 circular saws (Belize is tough on these power tools), and I don’t know what else. I’m still pretty brain-dead.

Our mission this trip is to construct and install a solar water heater for our cabana. Dennis found a design that uses a highly reflective foil similar to a very heavy mylar with an adhesive backing. You use this to line the concave surface of 8 inch PVC pipe that has been cut lengthwise. Essentially you wind up with 2 troughs aligned to maximize solar gain. Water is circulated through the troughs and into an insulated water tank to store the heated water. Part of the installation involves making the support structure for troughs and situating it either on the roof or on a platform attached high on the south side of the cabana.

Dennis just got an email from Chris inviting us to join him and Sue for dinner at Central Englishtown this evening. Sue is a great cook; I hope I can stay awake long enough to appreciate the fine dinner and the fine company. I can hardly wait …



Friday, September 11

Computer baterry is almost dead. Will post an update later. Having a terrific time.

Confused Flower

Don't really feel up to writing very much today, so I will just post this photo of a confused coneflower. It has flower stalks growing out of the center of the flower and petals that are green on the underside, with a flush of pink on the top.

Ambushed!

This week the Jagged Ambush Bugs (genus Phymata) came out on the Blackeyed Susans and Coneflowers. They are small little critters (less than 1/2 inch) with lots of attitude.

The one below was posing with its lobster claw-like modified forelegs held at the ready. These modifed legs are characteristic of all ambush bugs and differentiate them from assassin bugs and other true bugs. The club-like antennae also separate them from the assassin bugs.


This individual is resting on its modified forelegs (reminds me of Popeye's forearms). This perspective gives you an idea of how small the heads are relative to the rest of their bodies. This one has its antennae swept back.


Here you can see how flared the abdomen is. It is wider than the little stubby wings are. And again - look at that little head with the simple eyes.


As I was assembling these shots and inserting the commentary, I asked Dennis if I should finish with the image of a mating pair or meal-time. His reply was "In my observation and experience, you should always feed them first." ;-) Hearing the universal truth in his reasoning, I have put a shot of an individual (probably a female) eating a small beetle below. Its right foreleg is grasping one of the beetle's legs and its rostrum has pierced the beetle's abdomen. It liquifies the innards and slurps out the resulting smoothie. Yum ...

The final shot shows a mating pair. The male is much darker than the female, but they are similar in size. Both have salmon-pink eyes, although the eye color shows in better contrast against the male's darker coloring.

These are facinating little bugs. I like that they sit still waiting for prey, which makes the photography much easier. The hardest part about photographing them is their small size; even with the autofocus on my camera set for center, they are too small to focus on accurately. Out of every 10 shots, I probably kept just 1. Another reason to love digital; I use that "erase" button frequently.

Happy Two-Second Accident of Timing

A short post today that covers a total of 2 seconds of time. I was taking some pictures of Gallardia flowers in our wildflower garden. I took the standard head on, dead-center shots and decided to try a three quarter profile. This first shot (pretty nice, I thought) was with the ISO set at 800, f9, and 1/25 sec exposure time. Since this was hand-held, I planned to take a couple of shots to insure that neither I nor the flower wobbled in at a least 1 shot.
:-) I didn't even notice that JD was in the background.


According to the time stamp, this next shot was 2 seconds after the first shot. During that 2 seconds, JD walked into the center of the frame to see why I wasn't paying attention to him. He sniffed the flower, pushing it toward the right as I snapped the picture. And -- it was IN FOCUS!

This has to be the sweetest picture I have ever taken and I felt compelled to share it (i.e., inflict on the blogosphere).

"How much is that Froggie in the Window?" and "Going Batty"

OK, I admit it. I stole this idea of photographing the frog from inside the window and juxtaposing it with the same frog photographed from the outside from MidMarsh John who recently showed a seven spot ladybird photographed this way on his blog (http://midmarsh.blogspot.com/2009/08/3-thanks-and-7-spots.html). This is a little tree frog of some kind. It was sitting on the window next to our front door a couple of nights ago.



That was an exciting night. It started with Jazmin sniffing the vent that is the air intake on our fireplace insert. The vent is connected to the chimney. We couldn't tell why she was sniffing, but in about 3/4 hour we knew -- we heard the chittering of a bat as it crawled out of the vent, with Jazmin only inches away, waiting to grab it. Instead I grabbed Jazmin, Dennis grabbed a dish towel, we crashed into each other as I was heading away from the bat and he was heading toward it. I got the cats shut into the bedroom and Dennis got the bat into the dish towel. But before he could get to the front door to put the bat out, the bat got out of the towel and began swooping around the house.

Oddly, our house doesn't have too many doors; the den (where the fireplace is), kitchen, diningroom, livingroom, and foyer are all contiguous. So for the next hour we tried to get the bat to fly out any of the 5 windows we had opened for that purpose. We both really like bats, and would never kill one by intent, but since some are known to carry rabies in this part of the country, we proceeded with due caution. Finally the bat flew into the laundry room, which fortunately does have a door and a window. Dennis went into the laundry room long enough to take the screen off the window and open the window and then shut the door behind him as he exited. Then we left the bat to its own devices. As we checked around the house to see if there were any other domestic-minded bats, Dennis noticed the frog on the window.


Well, that prompted me to get my camera out and I took the two photos of the frog. I really like the suction cup toes. As I took photos from the inside and outside I remembered MidMarch John's ladybird composite photo and tried to reproduce it for frog.


While I had the camera out, I took a couple of pictures of the bat. By this time, it was hanging from the ceiling. I couldn't get a good POV because its head was pretty close to the wall and I was a little more timid than usual (probably a good thing, I often throw caution to the winds) because a colleague of mine is currently going through rabies vaccination shots after getting bit on the head while he was in the wilderness of Wisconsin. The vast majority of bats do not have rabies, however, if you are bitten, you really need to have the vaccinations and also get gamma globulin injections. My colleague says the gamma globulin injects are very painful. With that on my mind, I did not get the step stool so I could get the camera to within 18 inches of the bat. Instead I stayed at least 4 feet away! ;-) I'm afraid that is as much caution as I can muster. In the picture below you can see the bat has one wing partially stretched out with what I seem to recall is its little finger equivalent hooked onto the ceiling.

These bats, called little brown bats, are quite small, only about 3-4 inches long. Their wings make them appear much larger when they are flying. I got a little closer in the next photo by standing on a sturdy plastic box (and I also cropped the photo severely). You can make out an ear toward the bottom left; its "tail" is at the top of the picture.

The bat was still there when it was time to go to bed, so we just left the window open and the door closed in hopes it would fly out during the night and not invite all its buddies to this new place it found to hang out in. Luck was with us and the next morning it was gone.

Things with Wings

No time to get out and take more photos or even enjoy being outside for any significant length of time while there is daylight. So I have gone back into the recent archives searching for "things with wings" as the theme.

Some birds have such recognizable and distinct profiles that you can ID them from afar. That is certainly the case for this Great Blue Heron that I snapped quickly as it soared overhead along the other side of the Zumbro River in early July. We have no other herons of this size in Minnesota, and the way herons fly with their legs stretched out and their necks tucked in shows clearly even in this tiny silhouette.

And many birds have such distinct plumage that you can ID them from a single feather. Here is some clear evidence that a wild turkey is nearby. Let's see where they can be ...

Ahh ... here they are. These are the half-grown chicks having at the birdseed I put on the ground for them.

And here is one of the hens with a couple of the other chicks in the flower bed I just planted. They let me get to within about 7 feet of them. I think they must feel fairly safe when I am on the patio and they are above me on the ground. She and the chicks are keeping a sharp eye on me, never-the-less.

The next pics are of insects, some of them I know and some of them I don't know. Even if I don't know their common or scientific name, I can usually tell which Order of Insecta they are in. Of course this is what I am remembering from my undergraduate classes many years ago, so my knowledge is not current (or easily retrieved from my the dim recesses of my brain). This will at least get me started on keying them out.

Even I can tell you that these are honey bees. Now whether they are the Africanized bees or straight domestic bees is beyond me. They weren't aggressive, which is a behavior characteristic of the Africanized ones. Regardless, they are in the Order Hymenoptera along with the wasps and ants.

Coleoptera, the beetles. More insects are in the Colecoptera Order than in any other order. Was it Darwin who said that God must have a special fondness for beetles? It seems that this particular beetle has a special fondness for yarrow...

Pretty sure this is a leafhopper,which puts it in the Order Homoptera. I think this one looks like a clown car.

This one is probably a planthopper, also in the Order Homoptera with the leafhoppers. But I'm not certain. It is a real comical looking creature, isn't it? Click on it to have a closer look at its little red button eyes and cabbage leaf wings.

Like the honey bees above, this wasp is in the Order Hymenoptera. I love the contrast between the green thorax and head and the deep yellow of its back legs. At first I had assumed that the yellow was pollen that had collected as the wasp had been feeding, but upon a closer look it seems that the yellow is hair on the legs. Click on it to see the details and let me know what you think.

Today, I looked at the coneflowers and they are beginning to fade pretty rapidly. Tomorrow I may cut back the oldest. Sometimes that encourages another round of flowers, although the second round is usually smaller. The days are definitely getting shorter and signs of fall are all around; the white snakeroot is in full bloom, the apples are turning red, and the yellow jackets are getting more active.

Jazmin Climbs a Tree and Other Photos

You may recall me mentioning Jazmin, our newest cat that we found starving and injured back in March. She is healing pretty well and has gained a lot of weight. She is incredibly active and agile, and she jumps up onto the top of kitchen wall cabinets, about 7 ft above the floor, and bounds around the upper reaches of the kitchen. We decided to keep her as a mostly indoor cat, with only brief, supervised, excursions to the out-of-doors. I took her out today for a bit and she chased a female cardinal all the way up a tree. Below is the picture I took of her 25 feet up the tree, looking somewhat concerned about where she wound up and how to get down. She managed a controlled crash to get back down on her own.

I had a comment that my previous "spider at meal" post was a little "gruesome". It was, wasn't it? So that readers don't get the wrong idea about me, I have some prettier, less gory , shots below. ;-)

A couple of weeks ago, I took some pictures of bumblebees in the garden. This one, and many of its friends and relatives, were feeding on the pink monardas and purple coneflowers. It is a real stretch for them to reach the nectar in the monarda, but it must be an abundance of the good stuff because they sure do go after it.

No problem reaching the goodies in the coneflower, but they move so quickly from floret to floret that the amounts of nectar at each must be miniscule.

I need help ID'ing this butterfly that I shot on the Zumbro River path. It is a Fritillary, but which one - the Great Spangled, Aphrodite, or Atlantis? All three are found here. I don't think it is the Atlantis because it is lacking the black band at the edge of the hindwing. I'm leaning toward the Great Spangled, but can't really tell for sure. Help appreciated!

It was very cooperative and let me take its picture from above and below before it flew off. The "below" shots meant I was belly down in the brambles beside the path. I did get some strange looks from joggers passing by. They aren't the only ones to whom "no pain, no gain" applies. ;-)

Spider at meal

Fair warning to Arachnophobes - the next 4 shots (after this first one) are up close and personal with a spider enjoying its meal; you may want to skip this post! I just put in this pretty flower picture so that the spider wouldn't show up in the snapshot of this blog. ;-) Plus, I really like the way this daylily looks from the back side with the dark, brick-red streaks against the brighter apricot color.




OK - for those of you still with me, I shot this series of a spider dining on a red and black true bug. This is the same bug that had laid its eggs on the Columbine canadensis that I showed at the beginning of July.



The spider held perfectly still as I took the photos, but as soon as I turned my back it would shift the bug to a new position.



The spider didn't seem to use its front legs to hold onto the bug.



If you click to enlarge the photos, you can almost see the pedipalps grabbing hold of one of the bug's legs to keep it in position.

This last picture was taken more than 2 hours after the first one. I guess it takes some time to liquify bug innards enough to suck them out of the carapace ...

Dandelion and Poppy

Today I have 2 series of photos that I took during July. One is of the seedhead of a dandelion and the other of poppies. The dandelion flower is not at all remarkable; I didn't even bother to photograph it. But the seedheads of this particular dandelion species are beautiful. Below you can see how the distal ends of each individual seed (called an achene, I looked it up) are gathered at the top end and held in place by part of the dried up flower. The ends escape one by one and the parachutes of each seed are free to open up.





A lovely, long, and slender (and cooperative), bug was taking it easy on this seedhead.


Ordinarily, the parachutes open up, flatten out into a disk, and push each other apart, so that ultimately a parachute ball is formed. I think this happens either as the day warms or as the dew dries because on the cool, wet, day I was taking these photos, no spherical parachute ball was in sight. The picture below is as close to a ball is it got that day.




If you click on these pictures, you can see how the parachute spines refract the sunlight into rainbow colors.




The parachute structure is incredibly delicate.



These red poppies are almost surreal in their saturated color. A little hoverfly was visiting this newly opened poppy.


The stamens and anthers form a ring around the stigmatic disc that is a defining characteristic of poppy flowers.


The stigmatic disc looks like the lid to a jewel box. If you click to enlarge this photo, you can see pollen grains that have landed on the stigma.


The stigmatic disc remains on the seed capsule as it matures.



I'll leave you with this photo of a poppy flower and seed capsule that to me epitomizes a midsummer garden afternoon. Although I'm not too sure that the little fly under the seed capsule is still enjoying the afternoon so much. ;-)

Wildlife on the Patio

So, we built the patio to replace the rotting deck and are looking forward to spending more time outside enjoying the Minnesota summer and (early) fall. We had no idea what an attraction the patio would be to wildlife. If we had known, we would have built it years ago! Below is a sampling of what we have seen.

First up is a collage of the wild turkey extended family. This is a group of 3 hens with merged offspring. They started with at least 18 young, but I think a couple have been lost along the way. They are preyed upon by coyotes (which we hear howling almost nightly) and owls (there are least 3 Great Horned Owls that we hear calling back and forth in the woods behind the house). They have been exploring the patio during each stage of construction and are happy to see the birdseed has reappeared. One year we watched all summer long as 11 chicks (or is it "poults" for turkeys?) matured and were excited to see such a large number survive, only to come home from work one day to find little lifeless turkey bodies strewn across the road where they had been wiped out by a vehicle. That was a very sad day. It is a successful breeding season when a handful survive to the next year. We will keep our fingers crossed for this bunch.


This tattered butterfly was attracted to the sun-warmed, damp soil that had been delivered for the new flowerbeds. I was not able to get very close to it, so this photo is severely cropped and of fairly low resolution. JD was "helping" me with this shot. ;-)

Another butterfly first for me was this Red Admiral (I think) that was sipping water from between the patio pavers. You can also see the birdseed between the pavers.

This wasp stayed on the window screen while I pulled a patio chair over to stand on to get closer to it. The light was rather dim and I didn't have the camera flash set (duh!), so the picture is a little blurry due to the long, hand held exposure while I was standing balanced in the chair.

The last set of photos is a series of little muddy pawprints on the retaining wall. Raccoons had actually made mudpies on the patio in the early morning hours after a torrential rainfall during the night. I didn't think to photograph the mudpies before I hosed them off, but the pawprints were still there when I got home from work. You can clearly see how hand-like their paws are.

They are very endearing creatures and amazingly smart; with those opossable thumbs, they also have a lot of destructive potential. A number of years ago, we saw a mother raccoon showing her 6 little young the very sophisticated birdfeeder that had 5 tubes for different seeds that we had hanging over the bench on the deck. I looked out a little later and, no lie, saw the little ones making a pyramid of 3,2,1 on the bench so that the top one could reach the bottom of the birdfeeder. The next morning, we discovered the birdfeeder disassembled. We were not able to figure out how to put it back together. I left it out hoping the raccoons would reassemble it, but nothing doing. ;-)

Of two minds ...

Another quick post today, as I have a deadline looming and need to be writing on that rather than this. I did take a few pictures today and have a couple from several days ago of what I think may be figwort; at least it looks like what Rambling Rob identified on his blog (http://wightrambler.blogspot.com/2009/08/down-vicarage-lane.html) as figwort. What do you think, Rob? I didn't see any flights from wasp airlines, though.

The only other photo I want to show is of JD, my geriatric 17 year old cat, enjoying catnip al fresco.

I tell myself as I read other blogs, write this blog, and wander through the garden with my camera that these activities free my unconscious mind to be composing the document with the looming deadline. That is my story and I'm sticking with it! ;-) The strategy does seem to work because I have made progress throughout the day when I sit down to write. Now back to work -- how much more did my unconscious mind manage while the rest of me was posting this?

Monarch Butterfly and New Garden Flowers

Today was a clean up day; scrubbing all the dirt off the patio and off the pots the plants came in and general tidying up of the "stuff" left behind from the construction. Aside - the pots will go with us to Belize in a few weeks. Believe it or not, plastic plant pots are hard to come by in Belize and we want to start our seeds off in pots. We plan to get a lot of things started while we are there since we will be there in the wet season.

I hung the birdfeeder back up just a few hours ago and so far have seen chickadees, nuthatches, a chipping sparrow, and a male cardinal visit it. Poor birds have been without a feeder since May. I hung the feeder in a new spot that will be easy to fill come winter when there is snow on the ground. And it is now perfect for the cats to watch from the cat stand in front of the window in the den. Jazmin, our new cat who is strictly an indoor cat, has figured this out already. Plus, I can see it from my chair in the den, too. ;-)

I took some time out from cleaning to take some pictures. First up are a couple of a bedraggled Monarch butterfly on the coneflowers. If you click on the first shot below, you can see how the scales are worn off the wings.


But from below, the Monarch still looks robust and healthy.


Next up is a pretty fly (I will have to look it up to ID it), also on the coneflower. I like the slightly flawed symmetry of the first shot below.

From the side, you can see the tip of the yellow abdomen is black.

Now to some of the new flowers. Balloon flowers are new for me. I've wanted to try them for some time. I don't think they are especially good for attracting insects or hummingbirds, but I will enjoy looking at them. They last a long time and are very interesting to watch as the "balloons" swell until the petals peel apart to open the flower.

The toad lily flower is a little jewel. It is the one that looks waxy and orchid-like. It does attract insects, as do most of the other flowers I picked out.

The toad lily buds are handsome, too.


That is all that I have pictures for so far. It was a challenge to pick out things that can survive in zone 4 to 3, are deer resistant, and attract insects and/or hummingbirds, as well as meet the other size and shade tolerance requirements for this new garden area. We'll see how they survive the upcoming winter ...

Patio and Flower Beds

After all the black dirt was distributed, the guys loaded the bobcat back onto it's trailer and drove it away, taking the excitement with it. You can see the tired shovels below, leaning against the wall.

I took a day off from work today to go buy plants and get started on the planting. I went with herbaceous perennials. Below is a about 1/4 of what I got set out today. Lungwort is a new plant for me. I planted 2 different kinds. Then I got dark pink and white astilbe, which I have always liked. I can't remember the name of the other plants that you can see at the extreme right of the photo, but they have a lovely little purple-ish flower that is quite orchid-like. I still have a lot of work to do, but it will wait for the weekend.

It's a patio!

We have been working on home improvements for a while, most recently was the demolition of our old rotting deck and its replacement with a patio and a retaining wall to change the water flow off the hill behind our house (the cause of said rot). This process started last October (!) and the end is now in sight. :-) I have some of the older photos of the progress in a Picasa web album (http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/DeckToPatio20082009#). Below I have some of the more recent photos.

More tomorrow. I'm too tired just looking at this to write more tonight!

Monarchs

You know it is bad when your Friday morning has you trying to figure out if your computer is on or is it off, crawling under your desk to check connections, pushing buttons in all combinations in fruitless attempts to get something -- anything! -- to happen. Various green lights were on all the components, but nothing displaying on the monitor. Even pushing the green-lit "off" button on the CPU couldn't make it change color or power off. The last resort - pull the plug from the wall. Well, that did the trick; at least it shut fully off. Holding my breath I plugged it back in. Yea! It boots and even let's me log on!


I'm still trying to recover from this especially tiring and trying week, so just a short post today with a few shots I took in our yard this weekend of monarch caterpillars and a butterfly.


The caterpillars spend their time on Butterflyweed, a milkweed species (Aesclepias), eating flower buds and leaves.




They extrude the most massive turds; you can see one coming out of the back end at the left of this photo. Both ends of the caterpillars have appendages, so it is hard to tell if they are coming or going, except when they are "going" like this one is. A couple of older turds are on the leaf below the caterpillar.




These are very fleshy and very flashy caterpillars, flashy to advertise their unpleasant flavor from the milkweed.

There really is a gorgeous monarch butterfly in this picture, hiding amongst the orange and purple of the coneflower. (Click on the picture to see it bigger.) Not that they need to hide. Like the caterpillars, the butterflies also advertise their unpleasant flavor to potential predators with their strikingly colorful black, orange, and white markings.

Come fly with me

Do you ever have those days? You know, the ones where you just aren't quite quick enough on shutter to capture that bird or bug before it takes off and zooms out of focus or even field of view? The series below are some of my "near misses". Some are in focus, most are not, but each one is its own little mini-adventure. The one just below is a beetle that had been happily feeding on the daisy until I disturbed it with the sonic autofocus one too many times. A "Focus Too Far", so to speak.


The next picture almost worked, but I was basically unprepared. I was taking pictures of the various insects on the coneflowers, when up zoomed a ruby-throated hummingbird. I had no idea they would feed on coneflowers. I caught this shot seconds before the hummer spotted me. Usually I take time to focus, but this time I just aimed in the general direction and pressed the shutter button; classic off the hip shot. With hummers, you take what you can get.


Below is what the hummer looked like after it spotted me. It flew toward me with its throat patch displayed and then zoomed away into the trees. The autofocus found the brick wall, not the hummer. :-( But I love the shot anyway because it captures the essence of a male ruby-throated hummingbird -- hovering, displaying, speeding away.

The moth below was super-fast, frenetic really, and super-sensitive to the autofocus. I saw it for a split second at rest, and the wings are a dull medium grey with no significant markings that I could detect. But its body is a magnifecent metallic azure blue and its head is bright orange; all of which is hidden when the wings are closed.

I was trying to get these dark indigo blue wasps that were flitting around the garden pond. I took dozens of photos trying to capture the dark blue iridescence, but no matter what I tried, they just looked black. I was focusing on this one as it sat on the rock next to the pond and just I pressed the shutter button it took off. But look! You can see some of the gorgeous blue iridescence on the head and abdomen and on those long, extended back legs.

I will leave you with the image below of a honeybee that flitted from one aesclepias flower to another as I took the picture. I picked this one for last because it is at least in focus. ;-)

Garden Treasures

This is just a quick post with a handfull of garden photos to close out the weekend. I've seen so many perfect butterfly photographs posted by many of the bloggers I follow, that it is with some reluctance that I am posting the next two pics. This one was so intent on feeding, that I was able to get quite close and take a number of shots that are better than most of my butterfly attempts.




Meanwhile, over in the lily garden I found this little spider hiding on the underside of a lily petal. I normally don't a use a flash, but fortuitously I had the camera settings on "portrait" and the builtin flash lit the underside just enough to counterbalance the bright sunlight without creating distracting dark shadows; put a real twinkle in all four eyes!


Finally, here is a gentian seedpod looking like a pot of gold, or at least a golden pot, at the end of the rainbow. But each time I look in the pot, I see little blackened, shrunken, knobby heads rather than treasure. Click on the picture and check it out. Pretty cool, huh?

And now I will leave you with that cheery vision. Hope your upcoming week is full of real treasure.

Work and Rewards on a Cold Summer Weekend

We are having unseasonably cool weather for the past 2 days and on into next week. The only good thing about the cool temp is that it is wax in my ears to deafen me to the siren song calling to me from outside. "Why is that good?" you may ask. It is good because I have loads of work to finish by Monday -- damn deadines! Taking the time to write this post is my reward to myself for being able to cross 3 things off my must do list; now only more 4 to go. :-(

So, how to make the most of my reward? I think I will post some of my favorite photos that I have taken around our house or nearby so far this summer. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed capturing them and writing about them.

This first photo should have been in last week's lily post. Look at how the light shines through the delicate tissue paper of the sun-dried daylily petals.

We planted 5 coneflowers about 5 years ago and they have propagated to form a huge mass that has taken over the flower bed at the front of the house. I love the coneflowers, but they have outgrown their spot. Later this year we will transplant them to areas in which they can go wild in their abandonment. I took the next 2 shots in our front yard just after sunrise. I was drawn to the dewdrops on the spikes at the center of this lovely composite flower. I lose myself in the symmetry of the whorls, sliding in between the whorls with my arms spread wide to touch the dewy spikes on either side.

When Dennis and I were walking along the Zumbro River earlier, a butterfly landed on his sweaty arm and could not be persuaded to leave. I was able to get some good photos of it, including the 3 below.

You can click on any of the images to see them larger. The eyes and furry-looking head are quite impressive in the shot above. That is my finger in the shot below, trying to persuade it to move and open its wings, but nothing doing. (Not a bad shot for holding the camera one-handed, though.) Dennis' sweat must be sweeter than even I had realized! ;-)

This fly was also photographed on our river walk. I was amazed at how beautiful it looks with its pewter sheen. Seriously! Enlarge it for yourself and take a look at the delicate wings, the cool spikey black hairs, and the rich kidney bean eyes. Up close it does not have yuck factor that they normally do when flitting about your dinner.

Below is my best shot so far of a damselfly. It looks so metallic, like mini-robot.

Milkweed was in nearly full bloom. These flowers are so opulent and overblown, almost indecent in their voluptuousness. Yet, in the second photo, you can see how each floret is pristine, almost prissy in its individual perfection.

On the other end of the showey spectrum is this lovely grass flower head. Its beauty lies in its elegant simpicity. If you look closely, you can see several insects and strands of a delicate spider web; an entire world of life and death on a 5 inch stem.

And with this I will end this post. I think I may need another reward before the weekend is over, so visit again soon.

Lily Therapy

What a week this was; too busy at work to even take a deep breath. On top of that, computer issues kept me from posting. So now it is Saturday and I have a chance to take a deep breath or two (in spite of working 4 hours earlier today), my computer is doing just fine, and I got a chance to get outside and take a few more photos. Time to compose a post!

I admit it; I am in love with lilies. I love their texture, their parts, their sensual shapes, the insects they attract, the way raindrops and dewdrops cling to their petals, their rich colors, their delicate colors, their beginnings, their ends. If you don’t like lilies, go ahead and stop now or be brave -- see if you are able to resist these lilies ...

Green and pink buds with a newly opened pink lily. These pink lilies seem to emit a soft, warm glow.


Velvety brown anthers cupped in a yellow petal



A choir of anthers surround the creamy stigma of this blood red lily.



The green grasshopper nymph contrasts sharply with the red of the lily.



This little guy was very sensitive to the autofocus mechanism of my camera. I chased it slowly around the lily while trying to focus on it instead the petal. I finally did get a couple of good shots, though.



It has white bands on its dark antennae.

I will leave you with this photo of the end of the flowers. The petals are gone, but the form remains simply elegant, especially when seen against the backdrop of a stormy sky.

A Slow Stroll Along the Zumbro River

Our walk along the Zumbro River path yesterday was excellent. I have never before seen such a profussion of wildflowers in that area. Lots of good insects and birds, too. We walked perhaps a mile total there and back, taking about 90 minutes because I was taking so many photos; 212 in all. After deleting the failures, I still had 146 photos. So that works out to about 97 photos an hour; pretty rich, I'd say. I was quite taken with this shiny green metallic beetle. If you use your imagination, you can see the reflection of my camera in the carapace of the second one.

The mullien was abundant along many sections of the path. I hadn't realized before how delicate each individual flower in the spike is. The anthers are wonderfully hairy!

I was glad to have my long lens with me to get this shot of a deer on the opposite river bank. At some point after I took the photo, it got spooked by something and we could hear it snorting and stamping and crashing through the undergrowth.

I'll be posting more photos from that walk in the days to come. But don't worry -- I won't make you look at all 146! ;-)

Independence Day

Ben Franklin proposed the wild turkey as the national bird for the USA. In honor of that near miss, here is a photo of a wild tukey hen and turkey chicks (exploring our new retaining wall and soon-to-be patio) on our July 4th holiday. The bald eagle won the honor of national bird, but so far we have not had the pleasure of a visit from one. ;-)

Independence Day Weekend

July 4th falls on Saturday this year, so Friday July 3rd is a holiday for most of the USA. It was a great day for taking photos in the garden. Tomorrow I hope to take more photos along a path that follows the river. But for now I will post some of the highlights from today. I was out just after dawn to get shots of the daylilies. (red)

And the white moth in the dew-coated grass. (white)

This moth is gorgeous. I hope someone can help me identify it. Please excuse the quasi-double exposures; It just wouldn’t hold still long enough for a good photo. (blue)


I honestly didn’t plan the red, white, and blue theme. It really just happened spontaneously and I went back and added the colors after I laid out the photos.

In the Grass

Today was a fine day for insects in the grass. I couldn't resist posting this one right away. I call it "Mothra".

Garden Pics

I shot a few more garden pics today (see below) and added them to the Picasa Album at: http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/MinnesotaGardenInMidJune02#.

A dragonfly was particularly photogenic and cooperative. The patterning of the wing veins and their shadow on the leaf below is striking.


Also in the insect theme is this pretty bug seen with eggs on the Columbine seedhead. It is probably some devasting pest, but quite pretty. In the Picasa album, you can see that this one of a mating pair.

Delightful Friday Evening and Congratulations to Tony

Last night after work I went to a delightful dinner hosted by a friend to celebrate a very prestigious award that he received. Antonino, Tony to his friends, and his charming wife Samantha arranged for the dinner for 15 people to be held at a very posh shop (Sopra Sotto) that sells fancy Italian tableware, stemware, etc. The fun part was that the dinner was really a cooking lesson from an Italian chef, Antonio Cecconi, who is based in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St Paul for those of you not familiar with Minnesota). The evening was marvelous with especially selected wines to accompany the dinner courses. We started with a capresse salad served on a piece of cracker bread that had been drizzled with extra virgin olive oil; so simple and so simply alive with taste. As we ate the salad, Antonio told us about cooking in various regions of Italy. I can’t remember the exact order of all that followed (the wine was very good -- ;-)), but as the evening progressed we watched and learned how to make a fresh dressing for a green salad (the key is absolutely fresh herbs) and a marinade for fresh fish. We watched Antonio make linguine from scratch by hand using durum wheat flour, eggs, and a little water. The nice thing about watching someone who knows how to cook and knows how to teach is all the little hints that can make such a difference, like taking a small handful (1 serving) of linguine to form a little nest that can be frozen and used later just like fresh made pasta. Somehow the thought of making pasta from scratch is no longer as intimidating as it once was. Antonio also made an amazing sauce for the linguine using halved cherry tomatoes, garlic, fresh herbs. To this he added shrimp and jumbo fresh scallops. Once the scallops were nearly done, he added fresh tomato sauce and then let the flavors meld for a bit before pouring the entire pan of sauce over the huge serving bowl nearly filled with the fresh cooked linguine. At the same time the tuna and swordfish steaks, which had been marinating for a while, were placed in the sauté pan and cooked to just barely done before being served up alongside the pasta. Oh wait -- I forgot about the most marvelous mussels! The mussels were cooked in wine and served on another kind of wafer thin bread. The trick he showed us with mussels is that you can break apart the 2 shells and use one to scoop out the mussel from the other half and deliver it safely to your mouth. You can also scoop up some of the sauce with the shell. Then the bread below has soaked up the remaining sauce so you can savor every last drop by eating the bread. We ate the mussels after the capresse salad and before the spinach salad. At some point during the preparations and the eating, Antonio showed us a large platter of luscious strawberries that had been cored earlier. To the platter he added a very generous amount of Marsala wine so the berries could soak as we finished the main courses. For dessert, Antonio made a Zabaione sauce to pour over the Marsala-marinated strawberries. And Samantha had prepared lemoncello to accompany the dessert. All of this, along with interesting conversation, good company, surrounded by the lovely shop items made for a delightful and memorable evening. So - congratulations to you, Tony! And thank you for letting me join in the celebration.

Inspired by Antonio’s cooking, Dennis and I decided to try a recipe from his cookbook – polenta with sautéed spinach and pine nuts. We put a Belize spin on it, though. A number of years ago when visiting Tortola, BVI, we had a similar dish of polenta with local greens. They call the polenta "funghi" in the BVI. I had bought a bunch of fresh greens at the Thursday Street Fair Market in downtown Rochester. It looked to me like the greens were amaranth, although the Asian vendor didn’t know what it was called in English. In Belize you can grow amaranth, although there it is called callaloo. He did assure me that Americans do not like it, and he mostly sells it to Asians and Europeans. The massive bunch was $1.00. I also got a large bunch of what he called Thai bok choy. So we used those instead of the spinach and used toasted sesame seeds and sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts. Otherwise, we followed the recipe pretty closely (didn’t have quite enough basil on hand). We paired it with a nice red wine from Tuscany, and it was a delicious meal. I foolishly forgot to take pictures of it, so you will have to take my word for how nicely the dark green amaranth set off the golden polenta. We can add this to our growing repertoire of dishes we will be able to adapt to ingredients easily available in Belize.

Earlier in the day, I took more photos of our garden. Here is a montage of some of them. I added them to the album you can see at http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/MinnesotaGardenInMidJune02#

A little excitment

We have been having some severe weather for the past few days here in the upper Midwest of the US. A couple of evenings ago, we were under a tornado warning in Rochester for quite a few hours. And 35 miles to the south of us a tornado struck the town Austin (famous for being the home of Spam canned meats!). It did considerable damage, but fortunately there was not loss of life. Here are some photos of the damage that were in the newspaper.


The other excitement was the Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton concert that Dennis and I went to in St. Paul last night. That was a fantastic experience. They played together for the entire concert except for a “solo” that each did. Steve’s voice is still super and their guitar skills remain a site to behold and a sound to savor. Our seats were in the stratosphere; we were in the absolute highest row, right up there with the hockey banners. Here are a couple of photos I took with my cell phone that give you an idea of how high we were. The good thing for us was that they had 2 massive rear projection screens so we could actually see what was happening. These and a couple of other cell phone photos can be seen on my Picasa album page: http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/WinwoodClaptonInConcert#

Sunny thoughts on a Dreary Day

It has been a very cool, wet, dreary, and just generally miserable day. To remind myself that the best of summer in MN is yet to come, I revisited some photos I took of our summer garden last July. The 3 wild turkey hens were visiting with their shared broods of 11 chicks, butterflies were swarming the aesclepias, insects were everywhere, and the Jack-in-the-Pulpit had gone to seed. Below are a couple of my favorites and here is a link to the album on Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/MNWildlife#

Colorado, then Georgia

Yesterday, I wrote about our trip to Colorado to go to the Dead concert and to visit some of my family. While we were at my sister’s new place in the wilds of the CO mountains, Dennis particularly wanted to get the details on their solar panel installation, the battery bank, and the inverter for the house current. I had mentioned that they are totally off the grid, just like we are in Belize. But they are able to go a little more high tech than we are. Their house is poured concrete and their south facing window wall is a passive solar collector. This window wall lets sunlight fall on the concrete floor, which is stained a gorgeous deep swirly reddish chestnut color, collect heat and transfer it to the water pipes embedded in the concrete. Then they have a recirculator that pumps the water around so that the shaded floor can be warmed. Very cool system. And their Outback inverter is much more sophisticated than what we have in Belize. We may go with a system similar to theirs when we upgrade to mostly solar after we move to Belize permanently. Right now, we use a diesel generator to charge our battery bank, which is considerably smaller than theirs is. They have a propane generator as a backup to solar. Eventually our diesel will be the backup instead of the primary, but we are not there yet.

We did a lot of hiking while we were there. It was nice and sunny, but the wind was fierce. You can see some of the photos I took if you open my Colorado Mountains album on Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/ColoradoMountainsNearFtCollins#). But here are a few of my favorites.



On Saturday, my nephew, his wife, and their 2 terrific children came for the day. We went hiking to one of their favorite places that they have named “Crystal Mountain”. Crystal Mountain is a huge outcropping of stone that is loaded with quartz crystals. Some of them look like geodes and some are loose faceted obelisks that are clear. Very pretty and loads of fun to search for. We had a picnic lunch there. On our hike back to the house we saw coyote scat with fur and little tiny bones, a mysterious lone little speckled egg in the grass, loads of grasshoppers, and tiny little flowers almost hidden in the grass. It was a great day.

Dennis and I flew back to MN and then almost immediately left for a trip to Georgia. I gave a talk at a conference in Athens, where Dennis and I had lived for many years. We got caught up with old friends while we were there. After that we spent the weekend with my mother, who lives nearby. We spent part of a day with her at a state park in the foothills, Victoria Bryant State Park. Here are links to 2 Picasa albums from that trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/VictoriaBryantStateParkGA#
http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/WaterLightReflectionShadow#
And below are some of my favorites.

Colorado in May

Back in May, Dennis and I went to Colorado for a loooong weekend. Our first stop was Denver to go to the (Grateful) Dead concert. Which was beyond fantastic, btw. Dennis had found a nice package deal for hotel with bus transport to and from the concert. The hotel was the newly remodeled Sheraton in downtown Denver. We flew in early enough to check into the hotel, get our wrist bands for the bus and tickets, and get settled in our room on the 19th floor (fantastic veiw of the city and mountains). We still had time to enjoy a nice glass of wine or two along with some bar food, and the weather was nice enough to be on the patio of the bar. The concert was in the Pepsi Center, which doubles as a hockey arena. Our seats were where the hockey penalty box is during games. The Dead were really at the top of their form, musically. I took these photos with my cell phone held above my head, so forgive their shakiness.

The next day we drove to Ft Collins to meet up with my sister and her husband, who were headed from Lousianna for a short stay at their soon-to-be retirement home in the CO mountains. After getting provisioned (food, wine, etc), the four of us were joined by my nephew and his wife, who live in Ft Collins, for lunch. They went back to work after lunch, but the rest of us drove into the mountains for the weekend. My sister's place is on a property easement next to Nature Conservancy wilderness. It is sort of the mountain version of our tropical place in Belize; totally off the grid, takes some effort to get to, surrounded by incredible natural beauty. The layout of their house is even similar to our cabana, with the entire front being one long room with the front wall entirely windows (in our case the room is the veranda and the windows are only screen) overlooking a spectacular view. Both houses are open with the only interior doors being bathroom doors. Each of us had bought our properties at about the same time and designed our house/cabana at the same without knowing the details of the other party. Either great minds think alike, or my sister and I inherited the same crazy gene for living at the edge, or both. ;-) Come to think of it, my brother and other sister have similar tendencies to take the path less traveled.

Later today or tomorrow I will post some photos that I took at their place. Right now I am going to enjoy some of the fabulous early summer weather here in southeastern MN.

Earthquake

In my last blog posting, I had gotten to the part where we had found and bought our property just north of Monkey River Village. We engaged the services of Sam Scott to be our building contractor, which viewed from the post-earthquake perspective, was a brilliant decision. The May 28th earthquake did some real damage to Monkey River Village and to Placencia. Most of the damage in Monkey River Village was due to ground liquification, which allowed the support posts of many houses to sink into the ground up to 8 feet. Some support posts subsided in their entirety, leaving the houses resting flat on the ground. Concrete buildings in Monkey River Village and Placencia also suffered damage with cracks and deep fissures forming. It seems that wooden structures may have fared a little better than concrete because they can flex, give, and skew with the earth’s movements without cracking apart.

So how did the Englishtown buildings fare in the earthquake? Quite well, as it turns out. None of our buildings have structural damage! Perhaps it was all the luck of the draw, but I think we, along with Sue and Chris Harris, have Sam Scott to thank for his 3 dimensional “matrix” support system that kept our buildings from subsiding. The picture below shows how our cabana is supported 12 feet above the ground on the system Sam designed. You can see the cubic spaces defined by the vertical and horizontal concrete supports. The 20 vertical supports are spaced approximately 10 feet on center. What you can’t see is that vertical supports continue into the ground for about 3 feet and have horizontal supports connecting them, also at 3 feet below the surface. This design distributes the weight of the house out over the buried horizontal supports. The weight winds up being distributed over a total of 310 sq feet instead of just 20 sq feet if the horizontal supports were omitted from the design. This means that if a portion of the ground under the cabana becomes liquefied, the remainder of the structure can still support the cabana without anything subsiding. The matrix structure also permits the sand and any liquefied soil to move around and between the supports without producing enough force to crack them. Anyway, that was the theory as Sam explained it to us, and I believe that his theory has been born out. We have 3 buildings with this support and I think Sue and Chris also have at least 3. Now you might think that Englishtown just didn’t have the same sort of shaking that Monkey River Village and Placencia did, but pictures from Sue and Chris’s house showing much of their furniture knocked over indicates that we had a lot of shaking going on in Englishtown too. And both of our docks subsided a foot or more. So all we can say is “Thanks, Sam!”

May Day

May 1, 2009

It has been a very busy 2 weeks since I last posted a blog. Major work deadlines intervened that, believe it or not, are related to the US Government Stimulus Package for research funding. The stimulus package created a number of different ways to apply for research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health, all of which had one thing in common – get the dollars into the economy as quickly as possible. That translated into quick turn around times to get grant proposals written. So imagine all across America, thousands of scientists hunkering down at their computers to write a grant proposal in a couple weeks instead of the usual several months in hopes that theirs will be one of the 200 funded. No fun at all, but wish me luck! You know what they say about lotteries– “you can't win if you don't play.”

Last time I was writing about our 2004 trip to Belize where we started out at Gales Point in the Southern Lagoon. From there we headed to Black Rock Lodge in Cayo.

We were picked up at Gales Point by a driver from Black Rock Lodge who drove us along the Manatee Highway to the Hummingbird Highway to Belmopan. At Belmopan we turned onto the Western Highway to get to San Ignacio. The drive was beautiful, and all along the Hummingbird Highway wave after wave of the wonderful smell of orange blossoms filled the van. The road to the lodge was nearly impassable by my gringa standards. In places it was no more than deep washed out tracks that threatened to rip off the undercarriage of the van. But the driver persevered and delivered us to the lodge with no damage to us or the van. The lodge was lovely. Luxurious landscaping screened the cabanas so each one felt like the only one. The outdoor covered dining room/lobby overlooked the gorge through which the Macal River runs. Dinner was family style each night, and it was always delicious. They also had a well-stocked bar where I had my very first Caipirinha, the national drink of Brazil. A Caipirinha is made with cachaça, a distilled liquor made from a by product of sugar cane processing, poured over crushed ice on top of lime slices muddled with raw sugar. They could also make a mean mohito. Birdwatching at the lodge was great. We saw our first lineated woodpeckers there starting a nest near our cabana.

We met another couple there, Sikke and Neeltje Sikkema who were visiting from France, also watching birds. The four of us went on a canoe day trip on the Macal from Black Rock to San Ignacio. The canoe was an ungainly aluminum 4 seater that weighed a ton and had the maneuverability of a school bus. The trip was great fun even though we had a run in with some aggressive overhanging tree branches when we came out of a small rapids wrong way around. My little point and shoot film camera bit the dust on that one. If you take a look at the slide show you can see water damage on the film of the last photo I took on the canoe trip. :-( We passed by herds of long horned cattle wading in the water. They disdainfully ignored us for the most part. A cow is pretty big when seen from the perspective of a canoe seat. We stopped for lunch at a posh lodge on the river and took a tour through some lovely ornamental gardens there. From there it was easy going to San Ignacio. One of the nice things about Belize is how easy it is to find kindred spirits. We have kept in touch (sporadically, I must admit) with Sikke and Neeltje and they were kind enough to host us for a several absolutely delightful days when I had a business trip to France a couple of years ago. We hope they get a chance to visit us in Minnesota before we move to Belize! And especially after we do move to Belize.

On the way to Black Rock and the way out, we passed by some properties for sale. Most of these were ranch sized with gorgeous houses and prices to match. The driver from Black Rock also drove us to Calico Jack’s at the north end of the Placencia Peninsula.

Here comes the really cool part …

We checked into Calico Jack’s and the manager (who was checking us in) asked us if we had been to the Monkey House a while back. Our mouths dropped open as we wondered how she knew. It turns out that our names had rung a bell (how many Wilmas do you know?). As you have probably figured out by now the manager was none other than Martha Scott from the Monkey House. She had been away when we were there in 1999, so we had never met. But she remembered us from the photos I had sent them of Sam and of us. So we finally got to meet Martha and she got us caught up on what happened to Sam and the Monkey House during Hurricane Iris while she was still in the states. The hurricane washed most of Monkey House away and almost washed Sam away. Sam saved himself by hanging on to a filled water vat as the storm raged around him. The storm surge at Monkey House was 16 ft. What a trauma! So with Monkey House “gone with the waves”, Martha was making ends meet working at Calico Jack’s while Sam was working on reconstructing the remains of the workshop into a liveable structure. He did a fine job of it, too. You should see it now with the workshop area converted into downstairs living space and kitchen, the dining room and sitting room overlooking the ocean, and upstairs a large bedroom, laundry room, and bathroom. The wall on the ocean side is a huge series of gorgeous mahogany louvered windows.

Talking to Martha was like talking to a long lost friend, we settled into a comfortable conversation like settling into our favorite spots on the sofa. And of course, sooner or later it came out that we were looking for property to buy. Martha made some phone calls to Monkey River Village and arranged for Ralph Zuniga, an excellent tour guide, to show us property owned by Sonny Garbutt. Long story short, we wound up buying 2 blocks from Sonny in Englishtown. It took a year to get it all settled, most of which was long distance communication with our lawyer in Belize. Another cool aspect of this is that the 2 blocks we bought from Sonny had originally been deeded to his ancestors by Queen Victoria.

Sonny had 6 blocks for sale. Now these blocks had seen quite a bit of damage from Hurricane Iris and were filled with downed trees and regrown jungle. The land here is fairly low, so we needed to check out which lots had the best features. At this point Dennis was about 17 days post knee surgery, so I volunteered to check out the literal lay of the land. The jungle had grown up so densely that I had to weave my way in three dimensions almost like a snake to get back into the lots. I was looking for standing water (bad) and hardwood trees like gumbo limbo (good). The southernmost lot were the lowest, but the 4 other lots were all pretty good. We selected what we thought were blocks 5 and 6 when counting from the southernmost lot. The approximate center of the blocks we selected could be identified from the sea by a tall tree covered with Devil’s Guts epiphytic cactus. There were various mis-communications, mis-measurements, mis-adventure, that ultimately resulted in us actually purchasing blocks 4 and 5. This was the best thing that could have happened for us. It turns out there is a legal battle over block 6. I am so glad that we did not wind up in the middle of that. So here’s to mis-communication, mis-measurements, and mis-adventure! May they live long so we can prosper!

Stay tuned for the next post when we start planning what to do on the lots. Until then enjoy May Day weekend.

Recalling Manatee Lodge at Gale's Point, 2004

The next morning at breakfast, we asked Nicole and the manager (sorry, I can’t remember her name at the moment) if they knew the person who had property for sale on the Northern Lagoon. We had found an ad on our internet search for 40 acres. They didn’t know the owner, but we were able to call him and arrange for a young local man familiar with the area to take us to see it. In the meantime, we made plans for a trip out to the cayes to snorkel and got our bearings for Gale’s Point. Gale’s Point has some international fame for its Garifuna drumming school. We walked south on the narrow road; in places the lagoon water was only feet away from either side of the road. We passed the drumming school and Gentle’s Cool Spot. We stopped in for coffee at Nicole’s friend’s place. This tiny enterprise, only ~10x15 feet, was also a dressmaker’s place and a tattoo parlor.

The weather was atrocious the entire time we were there, but we made the best of it. We made the attempt to get to the cayes. What a mistake! The first part was fine even though it was little drizzly as we made our way north across the Southern Lagoon to the Bar River. At the mouth of the Bar River is a protected area for sea turtle nesting and turtle count activities. But the force of the wind and the waves raised by the wind hit us when we got to open sea. We optimistically hoped the weather would clear and continued going. This was our first encounter with a Norther, and this one didn’t quit for a good week. We endured almost an hour of spine-breaking, air-born travel over high waves before we called it quits and headed back. Of course that meant another hour of return travel. Makes my butt hurt just to recall the pounding that we endured.

The next day, we set out with George to see the property on the Northern Lagoon. Again, the day was wet, but the wind was not as bad and the air was warm. It was an enjoyable trip. Very little of the shore of the Southern or Northern Lagoons was inhabited; the few structures that were present were primitive fish shacks nailed together from miscellaneous assortments of wood. We did see a fine dock and house/office that George thought was the beginnings of a development at the southern shore of the Northern Lagoon. We got to the property, which was very lovely. There was a dry weather “track” to the property from a dirt road which led to another dirt road and then a paved road. All-in-all not very accessible by land and several hours of serious travel away from supplies. Gorgeous, but not very practical. We did see jaguar prints (see slide show) and a couple of snakes that I wouldn’t let George kill. It would be a terrific location for a jungle lodge, provided you had enough money to put in a road. We just weren’t ready for that kind of undertaking. After exploring the area, we headed back to Manatee Lodge.

One reason we had chosen to stay at Manatee Lodge was its proximity to an underwater spring of warm water that attracts manatees. We took the canoe out a couple of times and saw quite a few manatees. We also explored the bit of land that separates the Southern Lagoon from the ocean and found a couple of abandoned houses and garden plants gone feral. What we didn’t see was other people, and that suited us. There was very little boat activity on either lagoon; maybe because the weather was not fine. We paid a visit to Gentle’s Cool Spot early one evening with some of the other guests from Manatee Lodge. Mr. Gentle makes wine from cashews, blackberry, and other fruits. Mixed with sprite, they were not bad. It was a real treat to sit on the veranda at Mr. Gentle’s Cool Spot (as I learned “cool spot” is another name for a place that serves alcohol). It was actually his home, as are most of the places of business along Gale’s Point. Manatee Lodge has a very nice library, which was another place we spent rainy days.

From Gale’s Point we went to Black Rock Lodge near San Ignacio. But that will be in the next blog.

Spring is here in southern Minnesota!

This week has brought us our first sustained real spring weather. The daffodils are beginning to bloom, bluebirds are picking out nest boxes, robins are pulling worms from ground covered with green grass. The trees are still bare, but flower buds on the maple and sarvice berry trees in our yard are swelling and will break forth at any moment.

Earlier this week I was out in the front yard with our two cats, JD and Max, checking out the status of the daffodils, etc. when I heard another cat meowing. I looked over to see a young, scrawny cat tentatively emerge out from under the mugo pine. I quickly picked her up so our cats wouldn’t chase her off. Poor kitty was skin and bones, in fact some places didn’t even have skin. It looks as though she was thrown or leapt from a moving car and is recovering from serious road rash on her left flank. Of course I took her in and gave her water and food. Over the course of the next 4 hours she ate 2 large cans of cat food and wanted more. Her road rash seems to be healing quite well, but it covers an area about 3 inches by 3 inches with a square inch in the center still scabbed over. From the looks of it, I estimate it happened as long as 3 weeks ago. We are keeping her in the sunroom while we check with the neighbors to see if any of them are missing a cat. I hope we don’t find them because I want to keep her. JD and Max aren’t too happy to have another cat in the house, but they are behaving pretty well. She is very affectionate and is sitting in my lap purring as I write this.

In last weekend’s blog I started telling the story of how we wound up in Belize. After our first 2 trips to Belize in 1998 and 1999, during the next 4 years we had winter vacations in Puerto Rico (including a side trip to Vieques), Bahamas, Baja Mexico, Tortola British Virgin Islands, and Kona Hawaii. We had previously been to St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John in the US Virgin Islands, Maui Hawaii, Culebra Puerto Rico. It seems that with each warm place we went to, each of us was, independently and without the other knowing it, scoring the location as a possible place to live. We finally realized that both of us were thinking this way, possibly in reaction to moving from Georgia to Minnesota in 1993. ;-) Our highest ranking places were Culebra Puerto Rico and Belize. Neither of us likes crowds or has a need for poshness. Not to say that we don’t like our comforts or are antisocial, but we do like a simple life. Belize won out for a number of reasons, cost of living being a major factor.

So it was that in February of 2004 we set off to Belize, checkbooks in hand just in case, to look for property. We started our vacation at Gale’s Point. Gale’s Point is a low, narrow, finger of land that juts straight out into the Southern Lagoon from the south shore. We flew into the Phillip Goldson International Airport, took a taxi to the dock at the Save-U store in Belize City. We were met at the dock by John Moore who boated us to Gale’s Point Manatee Lodge. The journey was wonderful. We started on the Belize River, then a canal to the Sibun River. The Sibun River took us to the Northern Lagoon. All along the way we watched birds in the tropical jungle plants along the water’s edge. Once in the Northern Lagoon we made a brief detour to Bird Caye. It lived up to its name. We couldn’t stay long because evening was approaching and we still needed to navigate through the maze of waterways connecting the Northern and Southern Lagoons. The sun was setting behind the mountains as we arrived at the Manatee Lodge dock. We checked in to the lodge, put our things away, and went down to a quiet dinner before bed.

To be continued …

New slide show

As promised, I have scanned in my old film-based photos of our second trip to Belize in 1999. You can view them with their captions by clicking on the photos that show to the right of this blog. Enjoy!