A Spider in September

The single window in our garage looks at to the west, meaning that at this time of the year, the later afternoon sun comes in more-or-less directly. Last weekend I noticed a large web near the window, something new for the summer.

Spider!The image distorts its size to make it seem large, but tip-to-tip I’d say it’s no more than about an inch. The web’s large, though — a couple of feet in diameter, so I guess our spider friend’s been working on it a while.

I doubt that anyone else will disturb it, or even notice it. I plan to check in every now and then to see what it does as things get colder.

Summer Insects

Unusually moderate weekend for August, though not too cool. The temps barely broke to 80 degrees F, especially on cloudy Sunday, and most of the time felt lower than that. The August summer stasis equivalent of a few days in February winter stasis that are warmer than usual.

Just before sunset on Saturday, I went out on my deck with my handy digital recorder to record the cicada buzz. It bothers some people, but for me it wouldn’t be summer without them.

Cicadas, Aug 8, 2015

A few hours after sunset, I went to the same spot and recorded the crickets. A mellow evening song — Venus Flytrap to the cicada’s Johnny Fever.

Crickets, Aug 8, 2015

Listen carefully in the background and you’ll hear the year-round background sound of the suburbs: cars driving by.

July Back Yard Flowers &c.

Time for a summer interlude. Back to posting around July 19.

What this country needs is another summer holiday, sometime between Independence Day and Labor Day, and I nominate July 20, to honor the Moon landing. Or the fourth Monday in July, since the 20th is a little close to July 4 — a  Monday holiday to honor the astronauts’ return on July 24, recalling the bit about “returning safely to the Earth,” since the lunar mission wouldn’t have been complete without that.

To keep the accounting snits happy (we can’t afford another holiday!), Columbus Day can be de-holidayed. It’s truly the most insignificant of federal holidays anyway, whatever you think of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

New Horizons will fly by Pluto during my interlude. This week’s “glitch” was alarming, but the craft seems to have recovered. (I like the Wired caption: “Among with gobs of planetary science, New Horizons is capturing pictures of Pluto that are increasingly less crappy.”) I will be watching the news closely. Yesterday I came across theses proposed names for geographic features on the Ninth Planet and its moons. Interesting lists. The IAU might not be so keen on fictional explorers and their vessels, however.

Chanced recently across another musical act that I’d pay money to see (and there aren’t that many), namely the Ukulele Band of Great Britain. Pretty much on the strength of their version of the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Too bad the closest they’ll be to me this year is Muncie, Ind., and that isn’t close enough.

Here’s some speculation: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s playing a deep game with the $10 and $20 bills. He proposed making Alexander Hamilton second banana on his note to elicit a wave of support for the first Treasury secretary — at the expense of Andrew Jackson. A common notion now seems to be, “Go ahead, get rid of Jackson, but not Hamilton!” Previously, the idea of tossing Jackson in favor of a woman wasn’t so warmly received. But now…

This is a recent headline that amused me: Google Self-Driving Cars Head to Austin, from PC Magazine, which further says that “the company has selected the city to be the next testing location for its autonomous Lexus SUVs…” Austin’s a very safe choice, I figure, especially if you turn the vehicle loose on I-35, where it won’t move very fast, if at all.

Just ahead of rain earlier this week, I went out to take some pictures of flowers. I went no further than my back yard.
July 2015July 2015July 2015July 2015July 2015O Summer,
Oft pitched’st here thy goldent tent, and oft
Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld
With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.

Thursday Scraps

Last year my part of the suburbs was lousy with skunks. For whatever ecological reasons, the population was up — so much so that both Lilly and I saw them prowling the streets at night.

This year, not so much. This year, it’s rabbits. Yesterday I looked out my office window, which faces my front yard, and saw two, each helping to trim the lawn. I’ve seen single rabbits frequently in both yards, and in parks, but never two at the same time.

rabbits June 2015The dog would have had a barking fit if she’d seen them. But she didn’t.

Not long ago I woke up thinking, why are sidekicks just for superheroes and singing cowboys? Why not for other, less fictional occupations? Some examples:

Ben Smith, CPA, and his sidekick Tuck.
Deepak Patal, Ph.D., and his sidekick Hadji
President Clinton and her sidekick Slick (still hypothetical)

Earlier this month I was driving west on North Ave. in Glendale Heights, Ill., which is a western suburb, and decided I needed to go east, so I turned north on Glen Ellyn Rd. to find a convenient place to turn around. And then I discovered Easy Street. So I drove down Easy Street, just to get a look at the houses of the people who Live on Easy Street. More carports than usual in the Chicago suburbs, but other than that it looked fairly ordinary.

Occasionally, as in once every few years, the urge to listen to early ’80s German-language rock ‘n’ roll is just too strong to resist. We all feel that way. No? Well, I feel that way now and then, and the Spider Murphy Gang is just the thing for it. There’s always “Schickeria.” or “Skandal im Sperrbezirk.”

Pacific Northwest Ephemera

Thirty years ago this month, I took a trip to Seattle and other parts of the Pacific Northwest. I hadn’t been there before and I haven’t been back, though I want to go. That was where I saw an enormous fallen tree in Mount Rainier NP and the excellent-in-every-way Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC.

WAferries85I took no camera. It was that kind of trip. I did return with a lot of ephemera, though. Such as a Washington State Ferries schedule. I was staying with a college friend of mine the first weekend I was there, and took the ferry with him and friends of his. From Seattle to Winslow, I think, but in any case across Puget Sound.

We were the last car in, shoehorned into the back of the ferry, and during the crossing mostly sat in the car listening to a tape of United States Live by Laurie Anderson, which was fairly new at the time. I distinctly remember her relating a story about an obscure Chinese dialect in which the word for “Heaven” and “Moon” are the same, and how it was reported in this part of China that American astronauts had traveled to Heaven. If I were feeling that kind of ambition, I’d listen to the five disks of United States Live to find out where this bit occurs. I don’t feel like it — I’d rather retain this odd amalgam of a memory, made up of her strange story and the trip across Puget Sound, unimpaired by hearing the story again.

That weekend we also spent some time under gray skies on one of the beaches on the sound, playing volleyball and hunting geoduck. Or at least one or two members of the party were looking for geoduck, which I’d never heard of before. From a hole in the sand, they managed to pull up the neck of one of those clams, which was long and gross, but not the body. “That’s one hurting geoduck,” said one of the fellows who pulled it up.

It’s pronounced “gooey duck,” incidentally, and later at the Seattle Aquarium, I saw an entire geoduck. They might be good eating (I didn’t eat one), but they’re also remarkably ugly.

It was also on that beach that I found a shell partly covered in barnacles. It’s a little hard to get an image of it, but here it is anyway, top and bottom.

shell1shell2I’ve had the shell ever since, though some years ago a child managed to break it. I glued it back together. There’s something about it.

BCferries85There was nothing much as memorable about crossing from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay in British Columbia. That time I was in my own rental car, and drove to Victoria, a fine little city.

On this trip I covered a lot of ground in my car, admiring the forests, except where they’d been clear-cut, and fond of the fields of blooming Scotch broom, which I later learned is an invasive species in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe not quite in a league with kudzu, but bad enough.

One more item, which I kept because you don’t see this kind of thing inland so much: a tide table. It was a lagniappe from the handsome Kalaloch Lodge, which is on the Pacific coast, and actually within the boundaries of Olympic National Park. Kalaloch85I spent the night there. Lovely place, though most of the scenery was obscured by drizzly clouds. Still glad I went. If only to go to a place that gives out tide tables to its guests.

Ants!

Ah, spring. When ants scurry through vast cities and elk eat weeds. We took a walk in the Ned Brown Forest Preserve (Busse Woods) on Saturday, among the flush of new green trees and carpets of light purple flowers in the undergrowth (phlox? They have five petals). Just next to the paved path I noticed the largest ant hill I’ve ever seen, distinguished by dark earth a bit darker even than the surrounding rich Illinois soil.

It had a rectangular shape, about 10 feet by four: 40 square feet of ant hill surface. Puny by world standards, but still big. A close look revealed a multitude of active mid-sized black ants. I don’t know exactly what kind, but does that matter? (They’re all bent on world domination.) Someone had put three footprints in the ant hill, probably just to stir up the ants. The ants marched through the foot-sized depressions without any trouble.

Wonder how deep it went. If a cursory investigation’s any indication, a fair ways down. Something I didn’t know existed: ant hill casts.

Other insects are emerging. The season’s first mosquito landed on my arm. It was sluggish, and in a moment I snuffed out whatever existence it enjoyed as a mosquito. But more of its ilk will soon be on the wing. At Busse Woods in particular, which is marshy in a lot of places, and sporting a lot of puddles, since it’s been raining nearly every other day lately.

We saw larger creatures too. Elk Grove Village maintains a small herd of elk in a large fenced enclosure near the intersection of Arlington Heights Road and Higgins Road. Usually they’re off in the distance, but on Saturday they were near the fence and easy to see: three males with short horns still, three females. Mostly going about ruminant business. They seem fond of dandelions.

Back at Mallard Lake

Last week was distinctly cool, in the winter direction of the seasonal seesaw of March. By Saturday, things were tolerable warm, but then Sunday was cold — and today, we received a few inches of snow. It won’t last, but for a while it looks like January again.

Before all that, on Saturday, we took a walk on some of the trails at Mallard Lake, a 942-acre unit of the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County. This wasn’t our first visit. Except when it’s covered by short-lived snow, the landscape is still browns and grays against sky blue, unless it’s cloudy.

Mallard Lake, March 21, 2015Along with deadwood, no doubt providing nutrients for future trees, or at least the grass.

Mallard Lake, March 21, 2015Only a handful of fishermen were around.

Mallard Lake, March 21, 2015Hard to believe it’ll be lush green in a couple of months.

Mallard Lake, March 21, 2015We saw a few bugs, including a sluggish bee, a small beetle, and maybe a gnat. Insect pioneers of the spring of ’15, coming out for their what — 400 millionth season as creatures that crawl the Earth? They’re not worried about climate change, assuming worry is an insect concept. They’ve seen it all before.

Two Stops on the Hill Country Bat Trail

Somewhere or other Jay heard about a bat roost near Comfort, Texas, and if that isn’t an incentive to visit that place when you’re already close by, I don’t know what is. So on the afternoon of the 14th, we went looking for it.

Comfort is a small town, pop. 2,300 or so, in Kendall County and, according to the Census Bureau, part of the San Antonio MSA. I’d put it in the Hill Country, though that’s not an official designation. Comfort’s main street (named High Street) is characterized by handsome 19th-century buildings, many made of local stone, put to 21st-century purposes, such as antique stores and restaurants that point out — or should point out — that they offer Comfort food.

To get to Comfort from San Antonio, head northwest on I-10. On Ranch to Market Road 473, a few miles east of town, you’ll find this curious structure.

Bat Roost, near Comfort, TexasAccording to the Texas Historical Commission plaque at the site: “This shingle style structure was built in 1918 to attract and house bats in an effort to eradicate mosquitoes and thereby reduce the spread of malaria. It was designed for Albert Steves, Sr., a former mayor of San Antonio, by Dr. Charles A. R. Campbell, an authority on bats who had served as the health officer in the same city. Named ‘Hygeiostatic’ by Steves, the bat roost is one of 16 constructed in the United States and Italy between 1907 and 1929. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark – 1981.” It’s also on the National Register of Historic Places.

No bats were at home, it being February. I understand that they do live there in the warmer months. Different sources put the number of such towers in this country at two or three. Apparently one of the others is on Lower Sugarloaf Key in the Florida Keys.

North and east of Comfort, not far from Fredericksburg, is Old Tunnel State Park. Formerly a railroad tunnel, it’s now a home for bats. During the warm months, you can sit outside the entrance and watch bats emerge around dusk — a smaller version of the bat flight out of Carlsbad Caverns, memorable enough that I remember it after 40+ years. Again, no bats were around in February. But on hand were a couple of bat enthusiast-volunteers to tell casual visitors about the bat cave, and we talked to them a few minutes.

That’s two stops on the hypothetical Hill Country Bat Trail. Another could be the Congress Street Bridge in Austin, also known for as a bat habitat, or Bracken Cave in Comal County.

Ah, Haleakalā

In his TEDx Talk (see yesterday), Ed also mentioned a transformative experience – maybe transcendent experience — he had at Haleakalā, the enormous volcano on Maui. Brave fellow that Ed, walking into a volcano against medical advice.

Even against the advice of the National Park Service, which says re Haleakalā National Park: “The Summit and Kīpahulu Districts are remote. An ambulance can take up to 45 minutes to arrive at either district from the nearest town. People with respiratory or other medical conditions should also be aware that the summit of Haleakalā is at 10,000 ft.”

Can’t say that my experience at Haleakalā was transformative, except that incremental transformation one gets living day to day, with a handful of those days including things marvelous to behold. The vista down into the cone was certainly that, like no place I’d seen before.

Haleakala79-1Mars. I thought of Mars, with its rocks and rusty terrain. When I gazed down into Haleakalā in 1979, and took a few of my own pictures, the pictures taken by Viking were still pretty fresh. But I knew it was Earth; a rare part of Earth, accessible to the likes of me only because of the twists and turns of history and personal circumstance.

That day I made the acquaintance of the silversword, Argyroxiphium sandwicense macrocephalum, which grows nowhere else, though another subspecies grows on Mouna Kea.

Haleakala79-2Say that to yourself: The Silverswords of Haleakalā. Fun just to say. Sounds like one of Edgar Rice Burroughs lesser-known works.

Silversword79Plenty of fully grown men and women who didn’t exist when I took in the vista of Haleakalā and its silverswords are now loose in the world, so long ago was it. But I get some satisfaction from the almost certain knowledge that the vista hasn’t changed at all since then.

Fall Break

Back to posting around October 19. It’s fall break. With any luck, I might see a thing or two in the next few days worth posting about.

In a grocery store parking lot the other day, a man in rollerblades rollerbladed up to me and gave me some campaign literature from one of the candidates running for Congress in my district. I can say for sure I’d never seen anyone electioneering on rollerblades before.

The weekend was cold, but it’s warmed up since then. Yesterday, late in the day, I spied a cricket on the door to the garage, which the sun was striking directly at that moment. I’d never seen a cricket perched there before. I didn’t realize until I looked at the picture that I also caught his reflection in the door lock.

Cricket, early Oct 2014Worried about his mortality, if crickets worry about such things? October would be the time to do it. I have a feeling they don’t, but I can’t say absolutely for sure.

Come to think of it, why should the grasshopper plan and work and save up for the winter? He’s going to die anyway come winter. The ant’s just being a killjoy.