Author Unknown

Day 110: Well, this is a little embarrassing. However, when I stand back and really look at it, it's also hilarious.

While out on a four-mile walk on the relatively new and extraordinarily ugly levee trail in Orting yesterday, I was searching for anything noteworthy for my daily posts. I thought I'd struck paydirt when I found a script lichen unlike anything I'd seen before, multiple examples of it occurring on several young Red Alders on the bank of the Puyallup River. I could not remove a sample without damaging the bark. Nor did I have a hand lens, so I took close-up photos of several different examples and conducted a visual analysis with my nose to the tree. The lirellae (the type of apothecia unique to the scripts) seemed to be incised into the bark rather than rising above it. I knew that some species have lirellae which lie beneath the bark surface, so I was sure that would narrow the field when I began searching for an ID. I kept thinking, "They look like dirty thumbprints in wet paint...how very odd!" and reviewing my eidetic memory files, I couldn't recall having seen anything with that morphology in either Brodo or McCune. A diligent page-by-page search of both field guides confirmed my fears: this one was going to be problematic. In the end, I gave up and for the first time in well over a year, sent photos off to lichenologist extraordinaire Katherine Glew, explaining that "I just can't make this one fit in anywhere." I had a note back from her in my morning email clarifying the authorship of the unusual script: "This looks like grazing by a snail or slug."

Live and learn. I do not get to add another lichen to my Life List, but at least now I will be able to recognize the marks of snail teeth. Whodathunkit?

A Good Word, "Resupinate"

Day 109: It's a good word, "resupinate." You ought to be able to pick up a clue to its meaning if you parse it. In everyday language, to be "supine" means "lying face upward." It's the opposite of "prone," which of course you know means "lying face downward," because you are a literate person and appreciate the semantic distinction. A resupinate fungus, therefore, is one which is growing upside down or, if you prefer, pores up. Think of the more familiar shelf fungi. They have a hard upper surface and pores or teeth on the lower portion. Resupinate fungi grow the other way around, as this beautiful specimen of Irpex lacteus demonstrates.

You never know what you may find when you take a closer look at Nature. I'd decided to walk the restored levee trail in Orting from the bridge north, and was rather thinking I'd made a very bad choice after the first mile of barren gravel. Well, it's the top of a levee. What did I expect? It was built to keep Orting safe from flood, so it's raised above the wetland by ten feet or so, essentially a berm of fill which keeps the river on one side and the city on the other. It is singularly ugly, but of course I didn't know that when I started out. The sides are lined with riprap, so there was no way to get within touching distance of anything even remotely vegetative, unless the occasional invasive (Japanese knotweed or buddleia) was to your liking. It was only after I'd reached the end and was coming back that I noticed a lightly lichenized cottonwood next to a short trail leading into a housing complex. Eh, it was worth a look, so I sheared off from the main trail and almost stepped on a small branch bearing a little colony of bright orange Xanthoria. I knelt down to take a photo (desperation!), picked up a second branch harboring an Usnea and a non-sorediate Ramalina and...what in the world? There was the resupinate in all its glory. For what it's worth, Irpex is common worldwide, even if I'd never come across it in my travels. Two inches of a fungus (which to my mind looks rather like a tromped-on slug) really made my day.

Lecanora Pacifica And Friends

Day 108: I'm taking advantage of the shelter afforded by my carport to acquaint myself with the luxurious lichen population growing on the wisteria. I'd never really looked at it closely, and therefore was unaware that its main trunk, as big around as my biceps, shows hardly any bark at all between colonies of assorted Lecanoras and some sooty-black Mycoblastus. Lecanora pacifica seems to dominate, its greenish disks often layering over one another on the shady side. In fact, I've spent a lot of this month analyzing bark and fence rails in my yard, unwilling to brave the incessant rain.

Let me put this in perspective for you. I've been keeping weather records more or less continuously since March 1975, here since 1990 and near Olympia prior to that date. Average annual rainfall at my present location is roughly 45" per year. There have been years when it was substantially lower, and there have been a few when it was significantly higher. We usually get our heaviest precipitation in November and March and occasionally in January. We are having one of those drenching January deviations. There has not been a single day in 2020 that I have not recorded precipitation in some form or another, maybe a few snowflakes or a light shower, or maybe an utter downpour. In any event, as of 1:59 PM today, my gauge shows a total of 10.38". We still have two and a half days to go.

I do not hike in the rain. I did my time in the rain when I worked at Carbon River, penetrating rain which demonstrated that the Goretex of the era wasn't quite as refined as the manufacturers claimed. I often came back from my patrols soaked to the bone and mud up to the neck (or farther). I figure I've put in my share of drowned hours, but now I can pick my hiking days according to the forecast. That's not to say I won't hike in light drizzle, but I will not, repeat not go out in a frog-strangler unless I am compelled to do so by unassailable reason. Today I am wondering: does wanting to kill something count? I NEED OUT!

Paradise River Dam Reprised

Day 107: There's a reason I'm posting photos from eight years ago. It has to do with Morris dancing. Yeah, that's what I said: Morris dancing. Last night, our side (Sound & Fury) held its annual "Mistletoe Faerie" gift exchange, similar to the traditional office "secret Santa" swap. I was certainly not prepared for what Mark O'Kelly had in store for me, not by a long shot. Since we'd drawn names in early November, Mark (who is very talented) had been doing research into the activites of your favourite ranger, and had pulled them together in a song to the tune of "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain" and presented it to me both as a written copy and in live performance before the rest of the group. I was laughing before the first verse had concluded:

"She's been ranging round the mountain through the years
She's been ranging round the mountain through the years
Through the forests and the valleys
She doesn't dilly dally
She's been ranging round the mountain through the years."

Reading ahead of Mark's singing, I began to get a feel for how deeply he'd delved when I hit the third verse:

"She'll snowshoe to the cabin when it's cold
She'll snowshoe to the cabin when it's really really cold
No matter if it's freezin'
For her it's just a breeze in
She'll snowshoe to the cabin when it's cold."

But I really lost it when I hit verse five:

"Then one day in Paradise she found a dam
One day in Paradise she found a long lost dam
She released the river's waters
Now she's one of Neptune's Daughters
One day in Paradise she found a long lost dam."

Never mind a slight historical inaccuracy (I did not bust the dam), at this point I said, "HOW THE HELL DID YOU KNOW OUT ABOUT THE DAM?" but Mark just kept on singing.

One would be rightfully shocked to know how much information the internet holds about one's personal, private self, but at that moment, I could not recall having ever mentioned the Paradise River Dam to anyone outside the Park colleagues who had sent me out to find it. Mark had managed to find an article in our Volunteer blog, an interview with yours truly in which I told the story in brief. I realize now that I had also posted it in more detail in 365Caws, a reprise of which follows. Mark, I know you're not on Facebook, so I hope someone from Sound & Fury shares this with you. This was the BEST Mistletoe Faerie gift ever. Thank you!

*****
July 20, 2012
Follow the Penstock

When the call went out for a photographer who was willing to bushwhack through dense brush given only vague directions for finding an old and dilapidated concrete dam on the Paradise River, I waved my hand furiously in the air while jumping up and down yelling, "Me! Me! Me!" There is nothing I like better than an Adventure, and when only a handful of my colleagues had any remote idea that this dam even existed, let alone knew where it was, I couldn't resist the lure.

I suppose I should offer the backstory here because it's quite amusing. Some time in the last couple of weeks, Mount Rainier National Park received an edict from the Federal Government stating that all hydroelectric dams were to be brought up to a particular standard by such-and-so date. The Paradise River Dam was on their list. At eight feet high and approximately fifteen feet wide, it wasn't much of a power producer even in its heyday; nevertheless, its kilowatts had gone on record and no one had ever bothered to mention that it had fallen into serious disrepair. The wooden penstocks have been maintained where they are close to a trail, but where they debouch into the forest, they are often in the condition shown here if, in fact, there is even that much structure left. Mossed over, buried by soil, crushed by fallen trees, the penstock was what I needed to locate in order to track it to its source, the dam.

Well, as I said, I love an Adventure. When I lost the visible sections of the penstock, I began thinking like an engineer, puzzling out where the pipes might lay. I followed a variety of subtle visual clues, a slight subsidence of the land, a cutbank where there was no natural reason for one to occur, and eventually, I came upon an exposed section of the wire framework which held the wooden slats together. I spent some time disentangling blueberry bushes from my glasses, unhooking bootlaces from unseen sticks, freeing my packstraps from snagging branches, but yes, I found the dam. I spent a couple of hours prowling over the structure taking photos from various angles, estimating length and width and surface area of various components. It was only once I was content with the data and images I had gathered that I happened to glance up at the sky. We'd had a morning of hard thundershowers, and it looked like another system was moving in. I packed up my gear, pleased with my success, and followed the penstock back to easy trail and down the miles to the car.

Chessie

Day 106: They say you should be careful what you wish for. I have absolutely no regrets with respect to wishing that chickadees would discover my feeders. Today, the contorted filbert's twisted branches are populated with a dozen or more in a single flavour: Chestnut-Backed. Yesterday, an equivalent swarm of Black-Capped dominated the census. Some days, the two species dine together. What governs the 'Dee-dee demographic? I'd love to know. As yet, I've had no Kinglets, neither Ruby-Crowned or Golden-Crowned, but that brings another question to my mind: does each kinglet species pair with a type of chickadee, for example Golden-Crowned with Chestnut-Backed? I haven't paid attention to their associations when I've observed them in the forests. I'm embarrassed to admit that I've been too preoccupied with trying to catch one in a photographic "trap" to make any scientific observations. Perhaps now that I'm swamped with resident chickadees, I'll be more keen in studying the behaviour of their wild counterparts.

Cluny Tatting

Day 105: A very long time ago, I was quite active in a mediaeval reenactment group, and naturally was part of the needleworkers' guild. Our Guild Mistress was...well, there's really no polite way to say this...she was rather too convinced that her scope of knowledge included all there was with respect to the needlearts. I had lost my instructions for cluny tatting and couldn't remember the complicated lacing of the thread between the fingers, and approached her, hoping for assistance in finding a source for written instructions. My inquiry was met not simply with rejection, but with outright dismissal: "There is no such thing as cluny tatting. You mean cluny crochet." I suppose I must admit to a little of the same pride in the extent of my needlework knowledge, but at least I try to remain open to the idea that there might be something I've never heard of. She was not, even when I tried to explain the method as best I could recall it. However, somewhere down the line someone else confronted her with photocopied pages from a vintage booklet showing how to do "petal tatting," and thus it was that copies of the copies came to me some three or four years later without a word of apology.

Now in those days, I was still tatting with a shuttle, and the process of creating cluny "leaves" like the ones shown inside the row of typical tatted "clovers" in the photo on the right was a tedious and tangled process. I did very little cluny as a consequence, although I kept the instructions where they could never again go astray. Recently I was searching for fine-weight crochet thread and discovered a source for tatting supplies of all sorts. Their catalog offered a leaflet on cluny tatting, and something called a "cluny loom." I thought it looked like a gadget, i.e., something which would only serve to complicate the process, but I bought one, and I have to admit that last night, I kept shouting, "This is just the greatest thing since sliced bread! Look at these cute little clunies!" until Tippy moved off my lap. The instructions for the loom are almost idiot-proof, not only printed on the loom itself, but also in a photographic step-by-step guide. The loom can be used with shuttle or needle, and the cluny leaves come together very quickly and easily. The Guild Mistress is no longer with us, or I would be tempted to send her one, just for snark.

Lichenscape

Day 104: I love my fence, although it's a source of great frustration. It supports an astonishingly varied lichenscape, mostly Cladonias which unfortunately are very difficult to differentiate. Still, the utter lushness of the colonies give me reason to pause beside the posts on all but the rainiest of days, hoping to find one visual clue to aid in identification. This particular post holds Cladonia parastica among others, that in itself unusual since the species has not otherwise been recorded in the Pacific Northwest. How they arrived alongside my driveway is a mystery, but they respond quite convincingly to any chemical test I've been able to perform. Some day, I may ship a specimen off to an expert in the field, but for now, I'll be content to admire their spires and towers, a city in microcosm along the route to my mailbox.

Purloined Snowdrops

Day 103: My walk on the Bud Blancher Trail a few days back was multi-purpose. I needed photographic material for posts. I needed to get Out. And I wanted to see if the Snowdrops had come through the ground in my secret spot. I had a cunning plan which involved a small plastic bag and a well-worn trowel, items which have served me in good stead many times over, including previously at my target location. I'm not quite sure who owns the property. At least one of the locals uses it for a post-hunt bone dump, although it seems to be on the boundary of Pack Forest. In any event, the Snowdrops are not native. However they managed to establish up an abandoned and overgrown path is anyone's guess, but apparently they've been there for years. They are quite well entrenched, the bulbs often buried deeply under a layer of heavy gravel which resists my most vigorous efforts to budge it. My previous excavation hasn't diminished the Snowdrop population, and in fact the fruits of my prior labours should be blooming in my front flower bed in the next few weeks. However, on this occasion, I wanted to bring home another small batch to plant on Skunk's grave with the grape hyacinths, daffodils and violets I've put there previously. My old kitty-girl has been gone almost a year now, and both Tippy and I miss her. It occurred to me only a few days ago that she had been with me longer than any other creature except my late husband, and that, only by a few months. I think Snowdrops are a fitting tribute.

Raison D'être

Day 102: Platismatia glauca - pale greenish-grey, often turning pink with age; ascending and irregular lobes 3-20 mm. wide, margins often with abundant granular soredia/isidia; habitat: Douglas-fir and spruce forest, esp. on branches; apothecia rare.

(I might as well warn you right now that this is going to be a long read, and it's not a natural-history post. Proceed at your own discretion, and learn a little more about the Crow.)

The first paragraph of this post is a sample of the type of writing I will be doing for the portion of the Burke Herbarium's image gallery which includes lichens: bald facts inserted into a template as tidily as possible. It's not creative writing. It's Science, plain and concise. This "new gig" (as one friend termed it) comes about as a result of a casual inquiry I made to the collection manager about adding a description to four lichen photos I'd just uploaded. Very few of the lichen species in the gallery are described scientifically as yet, so in response, he suggested that if I was willing, he could open that portion of the database to me. I agreed, and will be starting work on the project shortly.

This was an exciting development from my point of view. I was thrilled with the prospect of having another venue in which to further education of the public as to the wonders of natural history, but I let my enthusiasm get somewhat ahead of my thoughts when I posted the news on social media. I did not consider that most of my readers might think the "Burke Gallery" was an elegant building parked somewhere on the University of Washington campus; I simply assumed that they would know it was a web page. I also assumed that they would realize that this was yet another volunteer project. I was surprised this morning by a collection of congratulatory comments from people who assumed there was a certain amount of prestige attached to the job. I was also stunned when one person commented, "Finally a paying gig! Now you'll be a published author!" Waitaminit, sez I to self, and I started immediately composing a partial retraction to set the record straight.

First of all, I already am a published author. My works have appeared in a few small publications and one notable one, the latter yielding a whole $50 in payment, not once, but twice. So there. I am not only a published author, I am a PAID published author! But that's beside the point, and actually in conflict with the nature of this post.

Those close to me will have heard me say at some point or another that I don't believe in money. I don't. It's an artifical construct, and it's been responsible for much of the world's woes since some nitwit invented it. It's arguable whether my disbelief in the monetary principle originated from never really having had much contact with non-vegetative green stuff, but that also is neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that I have lived on the margin of poverty almost my entire life, sometimes on one side of the divide and sometimes on the other. Since being forced onto Social Security, my income has placed me anywhere from a dollar and a half to twenty-five dollars above the level of eligibility for any type of public assistance. I lead, as have many naturalists before me, a hand-to-mouth existence, but the bottom line is that I am doing what I love at a cost I am willing to accept.

Let's back up to that "paying gig" comment again. I have to say that I am puzzled as to why the idea of doing anything for free with an eye to the greater good is so far beyond the grasp of so many people. Perhaps it's because as an impoverished member of society, I was restricted from accessing such privileges as a higher education that I now feel that knowledge, particularly knowledge of the natural world, should be readily available to every man, woman and child on the planet. Who knows what brilliant mind out there might be too focused on finding a reliable food source to be pondering a cure for cancer? The assumption is that the poor are stupid. Why? Because they're not making money. Thus, they are limited in how far they can elevate themselves academically (as I was), and because they have no credentials with which to obtain a position, they are caught in a vicious circle. I was fortunate in that certain people in the Park accepted me as knowledgeable even without a string of letters after my name. Okay, acceptance in the Park doesn't buy groceries, but as I said, I'm doing what I love even when the table is bare.

Money aside, neither am I concerned with prestige, although I have to admit to being thoroughly jazzed at the thought of being the Burke's "lichen writer." My name will not appear as a by-line in any obvious context. If you wish to see how many lichen descriptions I may have authored (none as yet!), you will have to find one of my photos in the gallery and click on my name in order to get a summary of my various contributions, both photographic and descriptive.

That said, I am not without ego, by any stretch of the imagination. Although it will be impossible for me to know that it has occurred, my deepest desire is that some day, someone somewhere will be browsing through Park archives or the Burke, Nisqually Land Trust files or those of the Invasive Plant Council, or even the Bird Phenology Program, and that person will turn to their companions to ask, "Who's this Crow guy whose name keeps popping up?" If one of the companions turns back to that person to reply, "Oh, that was a woman back at the start of the 21st Century. She was instrumental in advancing knowledge of the natural world through her works in several organizations," I will have had all the reward I need.

Penny Perspectives - Baeomyces Rufus

Day 101: Although not as small as some lichens, the fruiting bodies of Baeomyces rufus (Brown Beret) are still tiny things, as this Penny Perspective demonstrates. The white stalks (podetia) and their tan caps (spore-producing apothecia) are only part of the lichen. The thallus (main body) is the pale green crust from which they arise. This species can be found growing on rock in shady locations. A similar species (Dibaes baeomyces) has a white thallus, and grows on soil.

When I set off on the Bud Blancher Trail a few days ago, my goal was a particular tree by the river which I knew to hold Graphis scripta, but as Crow plans are wont to do, this one began developing new legs almost as soon as my foot struck the ground. "Baeomyces!" I said to myself, thinking of potential material for a natural-history post, but I didn't think the "sucker hole" overhead was wide enough to allow me to reach the far end of the trail where I knew the species occurred. Then I remembered the second location, somewhat closer. When I got there, I was dismayed to find that the Baeomyces rock had been entirely overgrown with English Ivy in the space of a year. It took a bit of searching, but I finally found this last outpost of Brown Berets under a tangle of blackberry vines.

Chrysothrix Candelaris, Gold Dust Lichen

Day 100: You might mistake Chrysothrix candelaris for a smear of paint when you first notice it on a trailside tree, but in fact it is a lichen commonly called "Gold Dust." It occurs most frequently on bark, but also occasionally on rock. A hand lens will show that it is comprised entirely of tiny sorediate particles, truly resembling the dust from which its common name is derived. A related species (C. chlorina) prefers rock as its substrate, and forms a coarser, thicker crust. Here in the Pacific Northwest, Gold Dust can be found along many shady trails and even on roadside trees, particularly Douglas-fir. Take a closer look when you find it.

Penny Perspectives - Graphis Scripta

Day 99: Graphis scripta (Common Script Lichen) is as elegant as its scientific name sounds. The Latin words mean "inscribed" or "written," and it does indeed look like pencilled scribbles where it appears on bark. It is known to occur on a variety of trees (birch, beech and others), but here in the Pacific Northwest, it is most commonly found on Red Alder. As you can see, it is quite small, but when viewed under a hand lens, the unique elongated fruiting bodies reveal a longitudinal split. Where grain lines appear in the bark, these lirellae often follow the path of bark texture. What secret messages are hidden in Graphis scripta's code? Are they telling you to get outside and take a closer, much closer look at Nature?

Box Of Parrots

Day 98: It's not like I only have one bird feeder out there, y'know. It's just that the Parrots know a good thing when they see one, and my house has been on their map for years. All the feeders are full of Parrots. The conversational exchanges are heated to boiling: "Get off! You're standing on my toes!" "That was MY seed!" "You already had three! It's my turn!" "Move over!" "Budge up, you're hogging the tray!" Don't get me wrong. I love my Parrots dearly, but they Do Not Play Well With Other Parrots. Jays, juncos, blackbirds, starlings...they just ignore them, but you let one Parrot move in on another Parrot's territory and the beak battles ensue. Male or female, it makes no difference. Here, the prime motivator is food, not reproduction. My job is to be sure there's enough black-oil seed to keep everybody reasonably happy. Waitaminit...is that feeder empty AGAIN?

Tricks Of The Trade

Day 97: My grandmother was an expert needlewoman and taught me almost everything I know, "almost" being a qualifier. Gma did not tat, nor did anyone else in my immediate family, so when I took a job as an art-needlework consultant at the ripe old age of 18, I was determined to remedy this lack of knowledge. One of my co-workers was a practitioner of the art and agreed to teach me to tat with a shuttle, and for years, that was how I did my tatting. Now I needle-tat, a quicker process by far, but that's not the subject of this discussion.

My husband's maternal grandmother, like many of the women of her generation, was also skilled in a number of needleart techniques. She and I hit it off from Day One because of our common interests. She taught me a valuable and simple way to keep my picots even (picots..."pee-koes"...are the little loops made by a single thread along the edges of a ring or chain). Today, you can buy "picot gauges" in a variety of types, but Grandma Agnes' method costs nothing (or next to nothing). Simply make a mark on your finger with indelible ink showing the length of thread (use a ruler) to be left between double stitches where a picot occurs. It will wash off or wear off in time, so make a note of the measurement so you can reapply it at need.

Who Goes There?

Day 96: The time-worn question of "Who goes there?" is a lot easier to answer when the culprit leave other evidence behind. Steller's Jay dropped a wing pinion among dozens of footprinted snow "asterisks" beneath the feeders. Steller's feet are like most birdses feetses: three toes forward, one back. This arrangement makes gripping branches easy, and the more skilled birds like the Corvidae will anchor a seed or bite of other food beneath their forward toes so that they can peck it into edibility. However, the Psittacines (parrots, cockatoos and macaws) have two toes forward, two back, giving them in essence a "hand" with two fingers and two thumbs. Imagine your own hand minus ring and pinkie fingers, but with a spare thumb. You might wind up envying our Psittacine friends their dexterity, even moreso when you throw a beak and nimble tongue into the equation. My Cockatoo could unscrew a nut from a bolt faster than I could twist it back on with my fingers. Putting it back on was a little more challenging for him, but he was perfectly capable of that as well, proving as I knew all too well that Cockatoos are smarter than Crows, especially this one.

Camping In

Day 95: You all know about "camping out." Well, yesterday, I found myself in the unenviable position of "camping in." A combination of wind and snow had been playing hob with my power since early morning, the lights flickering on and off as globs of wet, heavy snow fell from branches and impacted lines. The Park was being hit hard with trees down across the road, and employee access was being limited to essential personnel. For some mysterious reason, my internet was live but my land line refused to give a dial tone; since the two are intimately linked, I was baffled. Then at 4:30, the Weather Gods delivered its hardest blow and my power went out. Now normally, lighting the propane fireplace for the first time each winter is a half-hour process requiring all my father's best tractor-starting words. It surprised me by igniting on my first request. That said, I have a limited supply of propane, so I closed doors to all nonessential rooms, turned the flame down low and settled myself into a nest of blankets and pillows to wait out the siege. I'd had the foresight to charge both Kindles, so I had games to play, and a "pocket light switch" I'd been given by a friend a few years ago supplied enough light to read a library book. However, needlework was out of the question and therefore I was mightily annoyed. Right before bedtime, the lights came back on, but land line, internet and cell phone were as dead as the proverbial doornail. Nor were any of those services available to me when I got up this morning. Roughly half an hour ago, my internet came back to life, but not the phone. Huh? Remember, I live in the Back of Beyond. Internet depends on a functioning land line. It is impossible to access it without working phone service. Typical of CenturyLink, they can't explain it either, but they're sending somebody out to take a look, but not today.

Singin' In The Snow

Day 94: "I'm singin' in the snow, Just singin' in the snow." If Song Sparrow's feet weren't firmly anchored in the white stuff, he might just blow away. The forecast "wind event" has materialized, along with a few flakes ("few" as of this writing, anyway), and it looks like Snowmageddon is revving up for another round. Crow (me) is developing an acute case of cabin fever, but like my little feathered friend here, I'm sheltering in place unless it's absolutely mandatory that I venture further out than the safety of my nest. On the up side of things, daylight has become noticeably longer, a lighter shade of grey than twilight. I've heard rumours of a great golden orb, although I'm inclined to believe the tale is mythological. Perhaps my memory of those halcyon days in wildflower meadows is faulty, or drawn from a dreamscape. There's certainly no evidence to prove otherwise.

Intrepid Explorer Reaches Goal

Day 93: Breaking news: Using only primitive technology, our intrepid explorer was able to reach her goal earlier this morning during a lull in blizzard-like conditions. Almost immediately after her return to the shelter of the porch, heavy snow resumed, accompanied by the cawing and squawking of a horde of hungry onlookers who were anxious for their breakfast. The current weather pattern indicates that snow and wind will persist throughout much of the remainder of the week. Power fluctuations may render it impossible for this correspondent to report on a regular schedule. Your patience is appreciated during these trying times.

Snowmageddon 2020

Day 92: The first phase of Snowmageddon 2020 swept in just after...well, I live in the Pacific Northwest. We don't use the term "sundown" here because few of us have ever seen the yellow orb which graces the sky in other parts of the world. Let's say "dinnertime" then, although that's subject to individual interpretation, but for argument's sake, we'll use it to mean roughly 6 PM. It had not been snowing when I closed the drapes, so it began some time after Gloom and perhaps a little before Pitch-Black Dark. By the time I thought to check against my neighbour's yard light, it was coming down hard and an inch and a half lay on the ground. I stepped out onto the porch long enough to free the Towhee who had locked himself in the squirrel trap, whereupon he made an immediate dash for the shelter of the contorted filbert. I have to wonder how many birds roost inside its tangled branches on cold winter nights. I suspect quite a few, because it offers such good protection against predators. This morning, I woke to 8" piled up on the crow board, and it was obvious that wind had carried some of it away because my footprints were deeper, almost over the tops of my 12-inch muck boots. A mass of cranky birds ranging from chickadees to crows let me know they were expecting breakfast. Snowmageddon is by no means done if the forecast is accurate. Temperatures may dip into the low 20s midweek, and almost every day through Thursday holds the possibility of "an additional 1-3 inches of snow." I have nowhere to go. The fridge is stocked. I have projects to work on and books to read. As long as the power stays on, I can just kick back and enjoy Snowmageddon from the comfort of my living room.

Friends At Breakfast

Day 91: After being given a clean bill of health from my oral surgeon last Thursday, I decided it was time to have my Christmas dinner. I'd bought a nice little turkey in early December, but of course the tooth situation had put my high-flown plans on hold: no turkey, no Brussels sprouts, no cranberry-horseradish sauce despite the fact that I wasn't in any particular pain. So, Friday morning found the turkey still somewhat frozen, so a soak in the sink finished the thawing process and by a little after noon, I had it in the oven. Now it must be explained that my favourite part of the turkey is the soup I make from the carcase. I'm not quite to that point yet (it was a 12-pounder, after all), but part of the bargain is that I share the stuffing and giblets with my friends. This is even more important now that there's some snow on the ground. These two crows seem to be a couple. They stay close to one another, whether on the ground or sitting on the fence. They engage in allopreening and intimate beak contact, both typical of a newly-formed bond. Behaviour would indicate that the one in the foreground of this photo is the female, although it usually takes me a few minutes to sort out who's who when they first land.

Doing Nothing

Day 90: Seriously, I have tried to do nothing. I think the longest I've been able to sustain the state was roughly 43 seconds before I fidgeted off and picked up some kind of hand-work or went out to pull weeds or take a walk. That said, occasionally I need some type of "brainless project" as a break from my usual level of activity, especially when I've been housebound for any length of time. We are currently under threat of Snowmageddon, although flakes certainly don't seem to be materializing. However, I have recorded 4.70" of rain thus far for January, and that's just not the kind of weather you can go lichen-hunting in. My disposition is foul, my temper is short, my attention span even shorter, so I needed something I could work on in fifteen-second spurts. Tatting! It's easy to lay down, easy to pick up. I prefer needle-tatting to using a shuttle, but this frequently necessitates adjusting patterns to accommodate the different technique. After a few false starts, I had all the kinks (figurative and literal) worked out of an edging and am now on the fourth iteration of one which will be applied to sachets. As for doing nothing, I say, "Not for me, nothing doing!"

Physcia Adscendens

Day 89: Well, I can't count this one as a life-list species because I was introduced to it on a field trip with Katherine Glew, but it was the first specimen of Physcia adscendens I've found on my own. It's recognizable by helmet-shaped lobe tips as well as having "eyelashes," and although you can't tell from the photo, it is quite small. The lobes are under half a millimeter wide, and the whole lichen does not exceed two centimeters in diameter. How did I find it? When I am out shopping as I was today, I always try to park next to a tree so I can find my car again. Cars are so hard to identify! Most of them are silver-grey in colour, and 99% of them have four black tires, white lights in the front and red ones in the back. I do not have a Field Guide to Common Vehicles, and since I don't usually carry my GPS when I go in town, I frequently spend an inordinate amount of time studying license plates in the hopes of coming across the distinguishing feature which sets mine apart from the others. And yes, I have tried to get into one belonging to someone else. Fortunately, there were no consequences attached to that event. On the other hand, a tree is something I will recognize, even from a distance. I pulled up to a small ornamental which was lavishly covered in green and gold lichens. "Xanthoria!" I said, "But what's the grey-green stuff? That's not a Parmelia." I took the main photo in the composite above and then broke off two small pieces in different stages of development. I sat for a few minutes in the car examining them before driving away just in case I needed a larger sample, and that was when I discovered the "eyelashes." Thinking back on recent finds, I assumed Parmotrema, but when I got home and put the specimens under magnification, I realized I was off base. Eventually, having gone forward and backward through several dichotomous keys in both Brodo and McCune, I narrowed it down to two choices: Physcia adscendens or P. tenella. The shape of the soredia-bearing lobe tips and absence of apothecia clinched it: adscendens, predictably the more common of the two. I'll never forget that tree now, even if I can't remember where I put my car or if the person I just spoke to had a moustache or wore glasses. Priorities. You just gotta keep 'em straight.

Ocean, Meet Teaspoon

Day 88: It begins: the 2020 version of dipping the ocean dry with a teaspoon. My first Douglas squirrel of the year showed up on New Year's Day, or at least that was what I thought I had seen with the tail of my eye, dashing for cover under the hellebore. I wasn't certain until day before yesterday when I inadvertently surprised one in the bird feeder. It leapt out, narrowly missing my face in its haste. I went immediately to the garage for the Hav-a-Hart live trap, and then remembered that a friend had sent me a smaller double-door version which she'd never used. I didn't really realize how much smaller it was until I set them up side by side. Doogie didn't show himself until some time in the night or early this morning when his plans for feeder domination were foiled by the Squirrel Trapper Pursuivant. Prisoner No. 1 is slated for transport to Mineral later this afternoon.

Monochrome In Colour

Day 87: It was good to be back in the office today, although after an absence of a little over a month, I wasn't sure I was going to make it through all the emails and applications which had backed up. That said, I was hoping for a few minutes to take a walk in the snow, but it wasn't in the cards. On the up side, Arnie called to discuss the Tomie folios, and with Kevin's help, I may now have some hope of "translating" the cross-written pages. Snow fell almost continuously throughout the day, sometimes drifting down as a fine shower of flakes, other times becoming so dense that I could hardly see the road from our window, Mother Goose shaking out her featherbed with a vengeance. The monochrome landscape was broken only by the occasional bright orange plow. Even the visitors (what few there were) were clad in muted colours. As Kevin and I drove out, snow diminished at the entrance but picked up again by the time we reached Ashford. My yard is as white as Longmire. Winter has come at last.

Hypotrachyna Sinuosa, Green Loop Lichen

Day 86: Holy soredia, Batman! Another life-list lichen, and this one right in my OWN BACK YARD! Winter always leaves me struggling for post material, and I find myself circling my garden spaces like the guy who keeps making trips to the refrigerator to see if anything new to eat has somehow magically appeared. I was certainly not expecting a new species (new genus, actually) to show up on the pussywillow at the corner of my garage. At first, I thought it was a Hypogymnia, but when I broke off a piece to check the colour of the medullary ceiling, I discovered it wasn't tubular at all. The lobes were a single layer, pale yellowish-green on top, black underneath. Was it a Parmeliopsis? No. Examination under the microscope showed branched rhizines confined to the lobe margins. Those of Parmeliopsis are unbranched. Powdery soredia populated the tips of the lobes. "Hmmm...got a little problem here," I said, and began paging through the forty-pound field guide back to front, hoping to find it before needing to break out the chemicals. At H, I came to a screeching halt. "Hypotrachyna sinuosa! Life-list! Bingo!" No doubt about it: it fit all the parameters. Also known as "Green Loop Lichen," it prefers humid, open forest and occurs on small branches of various types of bark. If finding two life-list species in the first week of 2020 is any indication of things to come, this should be a spectacular year, botanically speaking.

Cats In Review

Day 85: You might be misled into thinking I was showing off some of the newest kitty prints I've picked up for my next quilt, but in fact, I'm going to be reviewing a couple of movies (you can probably guess what one of them is). I am not a frequent movie-goer, so the fact that I actually went to the theater to see three in the last month is nothing short of amazing. First of all, I saw "The Rise of Skywalker" right before Christmas and...well, it went in the same niche as all the other "Star Wars" films, i.e., "been there, done that, don't need to do it again." It was disappointingly (but not unexpectedly) thin on plot and long on attempting to blast your eardrums out of your head. The second film I saw in the theater was "Fantastic Fungi" which I reviewed a few days back. It was not what I had expected, and fell woefully short in the science department in favour of the drug culture. Next came "Amadeus," which I had not seen previously and viewed on DVD. I was appalled at the blatant and unforgiveable fictionalization of Mozart's life (or Salieri's, rather), and although the costumes were showy, my fiber-Fascist's eye squinted harder and harder with every fold of undisguised polyester. The immaculately dressed wigs were equally bad, obviously synthetic. I will say that the music redeemed the film, but I cannot attribute that to any skill on the director's part. It was, after all, Mozart's work. I was shocked to learn that "Amadeus" took numerous awards. I though it was a piece of utter shash.

And now we come to "Cats," which I'd been looking forward to since seeing the early trailer. Having read a number of reviews, I was ready to be disappointed yet again but, like a dose of bad medicine, I was determined to get it over with, so I drove into Puyallup this morning to catch the earliest showing and was one of four people in the theater. After half an hour of truly obnoxious previews of things no one in their right mind would want to see, the movie started. With the critiques in the forefront of my mind, I immediately found fault with the CGI fur and muscle movement (think primitive Dreamworks), but the cats were so charming and so well-portrayed that my disbelief suspended itself with no particular conscious effort on my part, and only occasionally when the scale of cats vs. scenery was overly different from one scene to the next did I think about the technical flaws. That said, I wish the computer mavens had studied how real cats' ear muscles work (all 32 of them). The singing and dancing was superlative, and Grizabella's magnificent presentation of "Memory" had me in tears. I do think that the storyline might be lost on anyone who hadn't seen the musical or read the book ("Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats"), but I found the film version easier to follow than the play. Maybe I'm just feeling contrary, but "Cats" rescued the winter movie season for me. Go figure.

Star Light, Star Bright

Day 84: A few years back, a hot, dry summer and neglectful watering combined to kill the Hoya bella which was the pride of my small houseplant collection. My hairdresser no longer had the one which had been its clonal parent, but I had sent slips to several friends over the course of time, one of whom had also started slips to give away. She offered to send me the original plant I'd mailed to her, i.e., a piece of the one I'd just lost. I accepted the offer happily, and a few days later it arrived. When I opened the box, my enthusiasm took a nose-dive. She'd meant well, watering it heavily to survive postal handling, but she'd almost drowned the poor thing. I didn't say anything to her at the time, hoping that by transplanting it immediately into drier soil, it would bounce back. Even so, almost all its leaves yellowed and dropped, although the few which hung on gave me a dash of hope. I nursed the potful of stems for at least 18 months before the first small cluster of flowers appeared. It's still not fully recovered, but I am happy to say that with every blooming period, the clusters are getting bigger and more numerous. Once again, the bright stars shine!

Not The Brightest Crayon

Day 83: They're not the brightest crayons in the box, the Columbidae. The family includes both doves and pigeons, and whether wild or tame, there is an absence of intelligence which makes me wonder how they have survived and even swollen to such numbers as to be considered pests in urban areas. Here, my most frequent "pigeons" are Band-tailed and Mourning Doves (Zenaida macroura) shown above), but the occasional Eurasian Collared Dove shows up, to my great dismay. They are considered invasive, as if the Band-Taileds (protected) weren't pests enough. Anyone standing outside my living room might see me rushing headlong at the windows, arms flailing and a ferocious scowl on my face at the height of Band-Tailed residency, or yanking open the kitchen door to yell, "Getouttahere, you g**-d***ed pigeons!" I never thought I could dislike a bird, but Band-Taileds in particular have incurred my enduring wrath for being gluttonous and messy. On the other hand, I rather enjoy the soft cooing of the Mourning Doves, and their soft colours are attractive to the eye even if their tiny heads are filled with metaphorical fluff. Also in their favour is the fact that they only come in pairs or trios, not dozens, and they seldom linger for more than a few days.

Menegazzia Terebrata, Tree Flute

Day 82: Oh, let's start the New Year off right with finding a "life list" lichen on January 1! We weren't ten feet away from the actual trailhead at Grass Lake before I checked up short to investigate the bark of a young alder. Yonit understood...you can't take Crow into the woods with any expectation of going directly from Point A to Point B...and she was very patient as I checked multiple specimens of an unknown lichen for characteristics I could use in making an identification. The object of my curiosity looked superficially like a Hypogymnia, but several macroscopic features spoke against that genus. First of all, it was growing in neat rosettes. Hypogymniae tend to sprawl. Secondly, although the lobes were puffy like a Hypogymnia, the upper surface was perforated, almost every lobe having at least one small hole in evidence. Muttering to myself, "Nope, not Hypogymnia...no, not Parmeliopsis...this one's going to take some diggin'..." I rejoined Yonit and we continued down the trail after I'd taken photos. Fully expecting it to either present multiple options for an ID or to defeat me entirely, I settled in first with McCune's "Macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest" and turned almost immediately to the correct page. OMG! The perforations defined it as Menegazzia, going on to explain that those holes made the genus easy to identify, even for novices. Further delving into the books to find its range narrowed the options to M. terebrata, otherwise known as "Treeflute" or "Hole-punch Lichen." A similar species (M. subsimilis) grows in a narrow band along the Washington coast. Wikipedia says that the genus was described by Veronese Abramo Massalongo in 1854. He named it for his friend, naturalist Luigi Menegazzi. "Menegazzia!" What a marvelous word! And that said, something which is "terebrate" (the second half of the binomial) exhibits punch-like holes or bore holes...you know, like a flute. I can almost imagine faerie chamber music drifting through the woods at Grass Lake on a warm summer night. Mozart on a lichen flute! I'll hear it in my dreams: breathy, delicate, and the frogs will dance.

Schizophyllum Commune, Split-Gill Fungus

Day 81: Park colleague and friend Yonit invited me to join her for dinner and a show to celebrate the New Year, and appropriate to the occasion, we first took a walk on the Grass Lake Nature Trail near her home in Olympia. True to form, I was stopping at every tree to look at lichens, scanning the surrounding woods for invasives, and carrying on with my typical running commentary along the one-mile loop. As we came back into the clearing at the trailhead, Yonit pointed out where a local group has been working on restoration. My eyes were immediately drawn to a white bracket fungus on a short alder stump, certain I knew what it was even from a distance of fifty feet. Sure enough, it was Schizophyllum commune, Split-Gill Fungus. The colony was well-established, so I broke off on bracket in order to show Yonit the split gills, a reproductive mechanism which I believe is peculiar to this genus. The gills open or close depending on humidity levels, thus husbanding the spores inside until enough moisture is available for them to thrive. Some experts believe that the species was introduced into Washington when infected wood was transported commercially, however the Schizophyllaceae are known world-wide with S. commune being one of the more common species. To me, this raises the question of "introduction" versus "range expansion," and I am more inclined to side with the latter option, particularly where it concerns a very prolific and adaptable fungus. But where do we draw a line, scientifically speaking? How many Scrub Jays must appear in an area previously populated only by Steller's and Greys before they are considered to have expanded their range for whatever reason (habitat loss, new food sources, etc.)? The biosphere is not a static place; it is a living laboratory. As such, it was addressed somewhat superficially in "Fantastic Fungi," the film we saw later in the day.

Brought back for another run at the Capitol Theater, "Fantastic Fungi" drew full-house crowds when it was first shown, and I have to say that the packed theater seats yesterday surprised me. It wasn't until we were about a third of the way into the film that I realized the draw was not so much curiosity about the fungal network (although that was covered rudimentarily by the film) but an interest in a specific genus, the Psilocybes. Almost a third of the documentary was devoted to the use of psilocybin, both recreationally and medically. Other "medicinal mushrooms" were covered as well, notably Turkey-tail and Lion's-mane. While the latter is easy to identify, it is relatively uncommon and I was saddened to see it being promoted as a healthful collectible. Turkey-tail, on the other hand, is not so easy to identify reliably, and while no one is likely to poison themselves by making teas of its look-alikes, the popularity of it as an alternative medicine could lead to over-collection of other shelf fungi as well as Turkey-tail itself. Based on the comments overheard from the row behind us, I got the impression that very few people in the audience had come to learn more about the fungal Kingdom and in fact probably couldn't have told a Chanterelle from a Morel if they'd been presented them side-by-side. That said, the time-lapse photography was beautiful if repetitive, and showed a range of things including fungi, sprouting seeds and flowers opening from bud. However, I was profoundly annoyed when in the middle of a sequence about mushrooms, the cinematographer had elected to include a time-lapse of a slime mold in its plasmodial form. There were no captions, so the uninformed might have assumed it was mycelium. Mycelial connections were only superficially explained, but magnificently illustrated in animated graphics. That said, I could have done without some fifteen minutes or so which were devoted to the hippie-style kaleidoscopic mandalas which were supposed to demonstrate the high attained from psilocybin. Both Yonit and I had expected the film to be more scientific and although some interesting points were made about the interconnectedness of all things via fungi, it struck me as being largely a promotion for one man's business venture. Still, the visuals were beautiful, and if I didn't learn anything in particular, at least I was entertained.

Accidentally Artistic

Day 80: Taking down the Christmas tree is on tomorrow's agenda, a task which won't be as lengthy as in years past because I did some serious weeding of ornaments this year. My original plan had been to return to a theme of "birds only," but expanded that stipulation first to include "anything which might be found in a tree" and then later to include decorations with personal significance. You see where this is going, right? Well, I did manage to thin the collection by about 10%, which at least simplified the process of decorating for the holidays. Now technically, I could have shifted sheep to a different pasture, i.e., they could have been reclassified as knickknacks, but I really don't have much space for kitsch. In real life, Cindy (right) and Ivy (left) were two ewes in my flock when it was at its peak of seven sheep. They were best friends and were always to be found together, sometimes apart from the rest of the mob. One year, I decided to try my hand at modelling them in Fimo, a polymer clay which must be baked in the oven. It has to be said that my artistic skills are rather wanting, but occasionally, I've surprised myself by creating something acceptable, and such was the case here. Hung on the tree side by side and joined by a strand of perle cotton, Cindy and Ivy are each about an inch and a half tall. Their fleece locks were made by rolling out the clay until it was paper-thin, then cutting it into 1 mm. wide strips, short pieces of which were twisted and applied to their bodies with the tip of a toothpick. It was a painstaking process, but I am quite proud of the results. When I hang them on the tree, I have to remind myself that while sheep farming is fun on one hand, those cold, wet nights in the lambing shed and the annual desperate search for a shearer willing to service a small flock more than adequately speaks in favour of purchasing raw fleece or roving for my spinning projects. I'll keep my sheep on the Christmas tree, thank you.