Lions In The Grass

Day 123: Four sequential haiku upon the less pleasant side of the growing season:

Lions in the grass!
Mowing season comes too fast.
The gardener tills

And toils at growing
Fruits and veg, but loses ground
To damn-de-lions.

Weeds win the battle
For root space in weary soil,
Exhausted by them.

Go on safari!
Hunt them into extinction!
Damn-all-de-lions!

Quilting Bee

Day 128: As close friends will tell you, my mind works in strange ways. Oftentimes when I make a joke, it goes undetected for weeks (sometimes forever) before the person to whom it was directed says, "Oh, NOW I get it! That's what you meant." As a general rule, my humour involves word-play in some form or another, even when it translates to the visual in my quilts. Nearly all of my quilts have contained some private chuckle which, if you don't think like a Crow will probably never be recognized. For example, the quilt I'm currently piecing contains several nursery rhymes, including the Owl (obvious) and the Pussycat (also obvious) who went to sea (a nautical motif) in a beautiful pea-green boat (fabric colour but no boat, alas), all pieces within the same block. I don't plan it that way; it just seems to occur as I'm selecting fabrics for assembly. Sometimes the "joke" appears in the stitching, as above. It came to me as an afterthought one day as I was stitching the hexagon quilt. Flipped over to the plain white back, the honeycomb design was too obvious to let go unremarked. I decided it needed a bee...you know, a "quilting bee"...somewhere. Shown with a needle for scale, how long do you think it will take before the recipient of this quilt finds it?

Periurus Acernis, Perjured Maple Moth

Day 129: While many insects exhibit camouflage colouring and wing form, none does it quite as well as the Perjured Maple Moth (Periurus acernis). Only recently discovered in Washington state, it is easy to see how it might have been present here for centuries without being noticed. I was fortunate to find this specimen (a male - it lacks the abdominal sac typical of females) at Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. The stiffly-haired thorax affords it protection from nut-eating mammals such as squirrels and small children. During its mating cycle, the wings are shed and the thorax ruptures to expose its reproductive organs.

You can't make up stuff like this...or can you? 'Fess up! Who bought into my little joke?

Point, Laugh

Day 121: Here's a little Crow humour to start your morning off right...another one of those "things found in unattended cameras" from last week. Yesterday's contribution was a profile of George Washington at Mount Rushmore as viewed on a computer screen.

Earlier in the day, Kevin had suggested to me that we might stop by Kautz Creek for a short hike in pursuit of a specific lichen where Red Alder is abundant. I had declined, saying, "You'd be bored to tears with me stopping every five feet to spend ten minutes looking at tree bark," but the crestfallen look on his face haunted me for the remainder of the day. As we were preparing to leave the office, I reopened the proposal and he quickly agreed, saying that we should at least check the trees closest to the boardwalk. The end result was a 45-minute exploration of approximately half an acre of new-growth alder interspersed heavily with Doug fir. We did not find Graphis scripta, although we discovered several other species of interest.

At one point in our adventure, I had gone to examine a long-dead standing trunk some 15' in height and about 5" in diameter. As I rested the camera against the tree to photograph a developing slime mold, it snapped off eight inches from ground level and went crashing down. Behind a stump and therefore unable to see me, Kevin called out, "Are you all right? What happened?" I paused for effect, and replied, "Termites?" Indeed, the base of the tree was riddled with holes in the core. With the trunk on the ground, the slime mold was much easier to photograph, Kevin holding his cell phone to light it while I took the picture (bottom left).

Having a field day (literally) with a like-minded friend is not something I do often, and sometimes I forget how enjoyable it can be. Two sets of eyes are always better than one when searching for the unusual or rare, and the delight in discovery is exhilarating regardless of who makes the find. Perhaps there is no Graphis scripta in the Kautz Creek drainage. We won't know until we've surveyed every tree. We're weird and we know it, out there with our magnifiers studying bark with infinite curiosity, but at least we're in good company.

A Crow Walks Into A Bar...

Day 203: A Crow walks into a bar...

When you belong to a photography group which issues a monthly list of assignments a la a scavenger hunt, you never know what you may be asked to do. This month, it was "leave the comfort of your familiar surroundings and go somewhere new. As you experience a new environment for the first time, capture your feelings with your camera." Given that, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and didn't have to go too far from home to achieve my goal.

I'm not a drinker. Nor do I belong in the same social stratum as the area residents who frequent local taverns. Making it even harder to walk into a bar and order a beer was the fact that I'd been out kayaking and was feeling rather chilled, but I steeled myself for the task and approached the barmaid. "I have a rather unusual request," I said, very conscious that my speech patterns and enunciation invariably make me sound like the "after" version of Eliza Doolittle, moreso when I'm about to tell a whopping big fib. "I am participating in a photo journalism class, and we've been asked to take a photograph which captures the atmosphere inside a pub." Sensing some reluctance in the proprietress' eyes, I hastily added, "I'm perfectly willing to buy a beer."

"Long as it's them," she said, pointing to the six men dropping f-bombs two to the sentence, "and don't have me in it." Agreeing, I settled for an Alaska somethingoranother since she didn't have Moose Drool, the only beerish thing I can abide.

I moved to the far end of the bar to wait for my drink. It arrived in a frosted mug, three times the amount of beer I'd normally consume in a year. I set the camera on the bar and opened the flip screen. As I did so, I heard one of the patrons remark boozily, "I think she's takin' pitchurs," which I was...in between great gulps of bitter beverage hurriedly swallowed in the hopes of making a rapid escape.

Fortunately, I was down to the last inch when the conversation one stool over turned to single women and eligible bachelors who didn't have gun-carrying ex-wives (apparently there are none who fit that category in Morton). I was greatly relieved when at last I pushed my glass to the rear of the counter, thanking the barmaid as I did so and leaving with the impression that the words "thank you" were foreign to her ears.

My legs weren't quite going where I'd intended when I made my way out the door of the Bucksnort Pub (its true name, by my oath), and the full effects of my imbibing caught up to me two miles from home. I seriously considered parking the car on the side of the road and making the remainder of the journey on foot. However, now the assignment is complete, and I profoundly hope we don't have a repeat of it any time soon.

Does Your Chewing Gum...?

Day 154: While I'm participating in the Park's winter fitness challenge, walking the same roads and trails repeatedly, I find my iPod helps relieve the monotony. It must be said that my tastes in music are eclectic for one thing, unusual for another. Much of what my iPod contains is either sea shanties or what I refer to as "silly songs." Among the latter, "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight?" sung by Lonnie Donegan is a favourite.

I don't recall exactly when it was released, but it was some time during the same era as "Purple People Eater" and "Witch Doctor" when most of my peers were swooning over Elvis Presley, a singer I detested. Even then, my sense of nonsense was strongly developed. Today, it manifests not only in my musical preferences, but also in my photography and in fact, in my attitude toward life. If I may quote myself here, "The world needs more silly."

Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?
If your mother says don't chew it, do you swallow it in spite?
Can you catch it on your tonsils and heave it left and right?
Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?

My New Favourite Coffee Mug

Day 274: ...and my thanks to Paul John for permission to use/adapt his hilarious graphic, originally submitted to the Bird Phenology Program! It took me a while to find a place to have it printed on a mug, and several trips back and forth before we got it into a form which wasn't either too wide or too tall to fit in the space allotted.

If you're at all familiar with the family of Flycatchers known as the Empidonax complex, this "field guide" will have you in stitches. It begins in the upper left corner with Least and progresses through Willow, Alder, Acadian, Pacific-slope, Cordilleran, Hammond's, Dusky and Gray, culminating in "Buff-breasted with bad backlighting" and "Heavily oiled leucistic yellow-bellied." All the bird heads are identical, an issue most of us have encountered in the field all too many times.

Flycatchers on the west coast are the equivalent of the east coast's "confusing fall warblers" catalogued over several pages in Roger Tory Peterson's book. There aren't as many, but personally, I think they're harder to differentiate.

Water Restriction

Day 119: Someone's been overwatering the pitiful plant in the Admin Building's upstairs bathroom. We can exclude at least half the staff (those who aren't equipped with hoses). And that, I think, is probably enough said on the subject, but the sign did make me laugh.

Living In Longmire

Day 238: One of the last places you would expect to see a lawn flamingo is in a National Park unless perhaps it cropped up in Everglades as an April Fools prank by some visitor, but this chap seems quite content living in the employee housing area of Longmire. He's been there for several months to cheer us up as we walk from the administrative compound to the community building, apparently content to live on a diet of fir needles and cones. He always makes me chuckle, and I've stopped several times to take his picture, but never knew quite what to do to present him to the public until now.