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:

Morels are here!

My garden isn't growing yet, but Zack found the season's first morel a few minutes ago. Now I really wish I was off tomorrow, because they're only good harvested in the mornings. Maybe I can just go in late...

Hillbilly Driving Directions

These could also be redneck directions...or it could be that my daughter just isn't that good at directions:

• Take road across from cemetery
• Will get to a 'y' in the road
• Go up the 'y' on Sweden Creek
• Will pass 2 1/2 bridges (1/2 bridge??? son scratches head at this one, wonders what the 1/2 bridge will look like...)
• House will have electric box and a pole thing
• House is on left, driveway goes slightly upwards

There, that's all crystal clear isn't it? Directions from my daughter to my son on how to find her at her boyfriend's house...

More Spring Photos

From yesterday's walkabout. These are all indicator plants for good ginseng habitat. First is a yellow trout lilly. They're called 'trout' lillies because of the mottled appearance on the leaves. Some have darker markings than this one and the flowers are almost finished. I was lucky to find one still clinging to the flower.

A second-year ginseng just beginnning to open. It was the only one I could find during my walk, but I didn't go all over the mountain, just stayed near the house. Hopefully there are more survivors elsewhere. I'm curious about the ginseng market and where it will open and end this year.

A grape- or rattlesnake fern just opening up (with a trout lilly leaf in the background):

And my favorite photo of the day, Christmas fern fiddleheads. I want you to know I got very very close to the ground, in fact had to lie completely down to get this shot. It was late afternoon and the sun was coming in from low in the sky. It made a nice setup with the lighting from this angle. It's a wonder I didn't get full of baby ticks!

Jealousy

No pictures, yet, but Gabrielle has made her brothers jealous again.

She went turkey hunting this morning with her boyfriend, Kylan. He called and she shot. She bagged her very first turkey.

This is just such strange activity coming from a girl who would run the blackbirds off before her older brother could shoot any with his bb gun. I recall nearly violent arguments about how people shouldn't be hunting animals when there's so much food to be purchased in grocery stores. Days of cold shoulder toward her brother for what she considered the unjustified killing of a deer.



Turkeys are very elusive and difficult to hunt. Kylan must have done a good job calling, and she must have done a good job shooting. When I get pictures to post, I will.

In the meantime, here's some of the others from Friday. The first is Zack on my grandpa's old tractor. He's moving the tire brusing rocks from one spot to another on the driveway. I need to order a load of gravel, and I'll do that in a couple weeks. Then he can move rocks with better results, I hope!

Here's a picture of Loretta:

And one of Garrison:

More Pictures

Cutleaf Toothwort (Dentaria laciniata) is blooming right now:

Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) is one of my favorite early spring flowers and today I finally have a picture of it:

Spring Pictures

Finally got around to snapping a few frames. My camera battery went dead and my card was full before I finished, but a few raindrops were beginning to fall anyway, so I guess I was out long enough.

Here's a patch of bloodroot. The flowers are almost done already. They're one of the first things to bloom in spring:
Wild plum blossoms are in full swing:

This old rock wall still looks pretty wintry, but the moss is greening up on it a little more:

These little violets are so common, it's almost easy to overlook them:

The peaches are just beginning to bloom:

Spring has Arrived in the Ozarks

Finally,everything decided it was time. Forsythia, Dutchman's Breeches, and Bloodroot all were blooming. Spring peepers have been announcing it, but until I see the blossoms on the county roadside, it isn't official.

Tomorrow I'll try to get some pictures.

Hell Freezes Over

Some people I know liken where I live to hell. It's closer to heaven to me, but for the fun of it I'm going with the hell analogy.

Today is the first day of spring, or at least I think it is. I haven't checked a calendar to make sure. All week we had the most beautiful weather, whetting my appetite for the weekend. I couldn't wait to get off and planned to get some outdoor work done.

That was before I found out what was in store for us. This morning has been overcast and chilly. Now it is raining, but at least not freezing yet. Tonight we should expect the white stuff to come down, and more than a light dusting's worth. A possible 10" could accumulate. What?? How can that happen after a week like the one we just had, with another one just like it scheduled to begin on Monday?

It seems unfair to work next week after this. Sooner or later, I guess the weekend will be good for outdoor fun. For now, I'll just clean house and write.

Nothing much

I don't really have anything to blog about tonight, just wanted to swap out my title picture for the aster one I took a few years ago. Just found it recently, hiding among some other files where it didn't belong.

There have been a few more signs that Spring is not far away. The roosters have started crowing regularly again, and sparring among each other. They're trying to establish dominance to see who gets to escort the main group of hens around. The battle was between the barred rock and the golden-laced wyandotte. The barred rock won and now the wyandotte has to settle for a few of the less desirable hens, I guess. I'm not sure what criteria roosters use to judge the girls, but maybe the ones who lay the most eggs are most desired.

The hens have started laying again. That was the other sign that Spring is near. Oh, and the skunks have been coming out of the woodworks, another signal.

Rain

Well, I thought we were going to miss out on our 100% chance of forecasted rain, but I was wrong. Just as Garrison and Cody left on the 4-wheeler to go down the road to a friend's house to explore and hunt arrowheads, the bottom dropped out. I'm sure they got soaked. They'll stay there now until the rain ends, most likely.

I changed the title picture to something greener. I'm tired of winter weather and would like to see the greening of the hills begin.

February Snow

These are some pictures I took along our driveway and county road, on my way to and from work today. It's been snowing all day, but not much is sticking to the roads, yet, which is a good thing. In the morning, all the mud will be ice and that's actually easier to get through sometimes than simply mud. We'll see tomorrow morning.

(Uncle Larry, if you're reading this, copy the pictures onto your computer (laptop?) or a CD if you can, and show them to MawMaw and PawPaw)

Driveway, just past the gate, going in:

The old schoolhouse where my neighbor's parents went to school:

Felkins Creek:

The bluff line by the big valley (Walton's property) on the way in:

My jeep after digging it out from under the snow:

The driveway where the creek crosses:

And by the way, if you haven't already heard, Zack is going to be a daddy. He and Loretta are expecting their baby in October 2010. I need to get a picture of Loretta, too. For now, here's one of Zack and his first 'baby', Chester.

Favorite Pictures

Gabrielle is going to be graduating this May and I was going through all the photos I have on disk. We're trying to pull some to use in the senior yearbook. Gary scanned and put everything we had on CD's before he moved and today I was very thankful for that effort.

Here's my favorite picture I found of Gabrielle. I like it because of the black night and white snow:

NAIS News - Good news!

From the headlines of the Business section of NYTimes online edition:


U.S.D.A. Plans to Drop Program to Trace Livestock

This is excellent news, but we need to stay alert for the 'new' plan they devise. Keep talking to your representatives.

Fun in the Snow

A little fun in the snow today.

This is not me, by the way - that's Garrison.

Garrison pulled out the old sled and talked me into trying it. That was a blast, but very exhausting! We'd be in much better physical shape if it snowed much around here because just the effort of walking on level ground is a workout. Walking uphill is a ramped up workout. See, that's the thing about sledding downhill. Going down is so easy, but coming back up is not.

The horses watched Garrison go by. They think we're nuts.

Forgot my favorite picture

Comanche's eye, with icicles. They don't seem to be bothering him at all. He and Shasta both have them all down their backs too. They can stay under the stall if they wanted, but they prefer to go outside.