Plant Pictures

Here are some pictures from a walk down my road the other day.


Wild Strawberries:

Wild hydrangea:

Still working on ID. If you know it, please let me know:

Ninebark flower:
Milkweed, one of several varieties around here:
Giant Solomon's seal stem and leaves:

Giant Solomon Seal flowers:
Daisy: Prunella/Allheal:

A good kind of exhaustion

This weekend I've been working on my garden beds. Here’s a pic of retaining walls in progress. Definitely they are not like the awesome rock walls built by early settlers in this area. Some are on this property, too. Those walls were built just to have somewhere to put rocks cleared from fields. They helped contain sheep, as well.

As water moves down the hill, it carries sand and small pebbles with it. When it reaches the wall, it’ll leave that behind and the ground gradually will build up behind them. As this happens, I’ll raise the wall higher until the slope is almost level on each terrace.

This will take years, of course, perhaps most of my life. My gardens, as are almost everything else I do, lifetime projects.

My grandparents down in Louisiana would be amused to see how far behind we are in gardening here in NW Arkansas. His tomatoes have probably already given ripe fruit and mine is just putting on the first flower!

Second earthquake in Benton County.

The second earthquake in less than a month in Benton county, AR happened at 7:01 this evening. I actually got to feel this one. The last one came and went on April 29 without my notice. This time, all of us were working late at the lab and we heard a sudden boom. It shook the building and felt like a truck had run into the outside somewhere. Everyone went to the doors to look, but there was nothing.

Here's a link to find out more about the details: USGS website.

Graduation 2010 - Gabrielle

Here are a few pictures from Gab's senior portraits. She surprised us at graduation by being a recipient of $15,400 in scholarships, with another $4000 pending.

Even if the pending one doesn't come through, she'll have enough to make a lot of headway toward her degree.

She's decided to go into Pediatric Nursing and will pursue an RN from North Arkansas college in Harrison. In addition, she landed a job which should begin next week at the hospital there in the same town. They'll work with her to schedule her hours around her classes.

Bluff Dwellers' Cave

Today we went on a little hike down a steep side of the mountain to see a cave where Native American bluff dwellers used to live. It's a private site. This is the cave. You can see where the roof has caved in. The original floor level is a few feet down. Silt has accumulated over the years.

A few grinding rocks and scraps:

More grinding rocks and a collection of bone shards:

A bigger pile of bone shards: