Fragments From Floyd

It’s getting almost past time that the pasture should be cut. Another windy thunderstorm and the waist-high grasses will lodge over and be lost to mowing for hay. We’ll hope the neighbor has time to get to it this week.

Ann, as usual, has kept the walking path around the pasture edges open, lawn-mowing a green channel into tall grass not unlike the white tunnels we used to create when we shoveled a heavy snow off  the walkways.

The dog, in his usual warm-weather fashion, stopped by the “swirley pool” and zipped past us as we returned on our walk yesterday. I had Ann call the dog back towards us, knowing that this time, he’d have to come right toward me down the grassy corridor of the path. All I had to do was be ready for him.

You can see the creek water spraying off of Tsuga The Creek-Streaker here, and get a sense of his wild jubilation that happens every time he gets wet and cool from a dip in Nameless Creek! Heck I might just try that myself someday soon. (Click for larger image.)

Today I think I’ll take the metal thermometer that sits on my desk (I found this particular thermometer stuck in the sand on the banks of the Black Warrior River in Alabama in 1965, but that’s another story) and stick it in the garden soil. Whatever temperature it tells me will be a few degrees below the soil temp it takes to bring about reliable seed germination. The garden is too cool yet and seeds are just sitting there.

In our zeal (and in spite of my insistence that it was too early yet) we put out peas, beans and corn at least a week ago.  Germination is very spotty, a sprout here and there, and I can’t dedicate our very limited space for empty stretches between the occasional future pea plant.

I’ll give it another week with the hope of warmer days and nights (for the garden’s sake, not the gardeners’. I’ve been quite happy with COOL!)  We’ve gotten good rain, but not enough heat–so far–which is why my rule in recent gardening years has been to not jump the gun (as she convinced me this year to do against my better judgement), to plant seed crops only after the first of June when the ground down in this deep valley warms up so seeds don’t rot.

I can say, however, that so far, we have not had any deer footprints in the garden soil, though somewhere in the green-shadowy forest, a young deer dreams of being the first to vault over the 8 foot fence and into Deer History (and our freezer.)

I was disappointed that the weather didn’t cooperate with my photographic hopes for yesterday. Fog, wind and dripping drizzle kept the big camera under wraps, and I pulled the Canon out of my coat pocket just long enough to grab a few shots, but didn’t get many keepers. The light levels were so low, the autofocus generally didn’t.

Here’s an unusual view of a pink lady’s slipper under a pine canopy, snapped while one of my hiking buddies held an umbrella over photographer and tiny camera, waiting for a lull in the winds.

A cold front passed through while we walked a magnificent private preserve on the Blue Ridge Parkway; the temperature dropped almost ten degrees. I hadn’t dressed for upper-forties and the warmth of the car felt good on the return trip home.

It was cool enough Monday morning that I decided I’d come in and have another cup of coffee, as much for the warming of my hands as for the chemistry of caffeine. I don’t know what exactly made me glance over toward the woodpile except perhaps the brilliance of the first rays of sun just then spilling over the top of the house. Ah spring! AHHH!

I don’t get freaked by spiders. This one freaked me.

This particular wolf spider had a leg-span the size of my hand, body the size and thickness of my thumb. I kid you not. And so I forgot the coffee, found my camera, and because the air was still cool and the spider sluggish, I was able to creep up close enough for a couple of shots.

He (she?) was still there an hour later when I came back out, but when I moved within ten feet of where I had snapped this picture, the spider zipped back into the woodpile, fully warmed by the same sun I was by then enjoying on my way back down to the garden for another round of puttering.

Germany has banned a family of pesticides that are blamed for the deaths of millions of honeybees. The German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) has suspended the registration for eight pesticide seed treatment products used in rapeseed oil and sweetcorn.

The move follows reports from German beekeepers in the Baden-Württemberg region that two thirds of their bees died earlier this month following the application of a pesticide called clothianidin. link

This insecticide is a neonicitinoid previously implicated in bee die-offs and suspected as part of the Colony Collapse mystery.

Philipp Mimkes, spokesman for the German-based Coalition Against Bayer Dangers, said: “We have been pointing out the risks of neonicotinoids for almost 10 years now. This proves without a doubt that the chemicals can come into contact with bees and kill them. These pesticides shouldn’t be on the market.”

And this from the New York Times…

Chris Mullin, a Pennsylvania State University professor and insect toxicologist, recently sent a set of samples to a federal laboratory in Raleigh, N.C., that will screen for 117 chemicals. Of greatest interest are the “systemic” chemicals that are able to pass through a plant’s circulatory system and move to the new leaves or the flowers, where they would come in contact with bees.

One such group of compounds is called neonicotinoids, commonly used pesticides that are used to treat corn and other seeds against pests. One of the neonicotinoids, imidacloprid, is commonly used in Europe and the United States to treat seeds, to protect residential foundations against termites and to help keep golf courses and home lawns green.

And so will it come to a showdown between l’il David, the desperate beekeepers fighting for their livelihoods, versus Goliath, the giant AgroChemical industry (Bayer and others)? Given the odds, who do you pick to win? And will the playing field be leveled in the years to come as we evolve beyond the “bigger chemical hammer” approach in our relationship with nature?

(This image from our garden in 2003. I haven’t seen honeybees on the corn since then.)

I’m sorry. That blog post title is a cheap shot segue to an unusual post here–about the world’s most famous amphibian, and the ventriloquist, Terry Fader, who–I am speechless, see my lips not moving–is just phenomenal.

I confess I watched every one of these. And the spoiler: Mr. Fader won $1 million as America’s Best New Talent.

So, if you’re down and troubled, and you need a helping hand, start with the next to last video. In. Cred. Able.

The good life: a fenceless pasture, a verdant tray of food surrounding you, underfoot everywhere you step, and your job is simply to eat. In this case, we don’t know for sure, but this peaceful scene (aimed over the “sights” of our mailbox) may have been one of the last meals enjoyed by these two bovines.

The new neighbors to whom these two head belong discovered after two days that they were loose, found them in our pasture, and decided “tomorrow” would be soon enough to come fetch them home.

They were not to be found, and they have not appeared back inside the unconfining confines of their poorly fenced pasture ever since. Hamburger, anyone?

Ah, and there’s another advantage of the sturdy fence around the garden. Once when we lived in the Wytheville area and had a garden 10 times the size of ours today, a neighbor’s 500 pound pig got loose and breached our fence and helped itself to a vegetable buffet. What it didn’t eat it stomped on or bulldozed with its porcine mass. Let’s see you try to get into our garden NOW!

More than whiskers on kittens or catching snowflakes on my eyelashes are May days like this one when cloud shadows dip and rise and race away south over parklike pasture. Flicker of light and shadow, warm-coolness, earth and sky–a kaleidoscope of energy and mood, color and composition. And not possible to capture in time and two dimensions, a thousand words much better than a picture of a single instant of a single perfect spring day in Floyd County. Click for larger image, as in a thumbnail of a landscape, so much is lost in translation.

Help needed from those who know Macs and Apple Soft/Hardware better than I do…

Suggestions–what software do I need:

…to create a multimedia program from still images? I need powerpoint-like transitions, need to be able to set image timing coordinated with voice narration and with the possibility also of musical clips as transitional acoustic “bullets” between sections of the program.

A few of you might have seen the “visual essay” I created in Powerpoint (and cobbled a B-grade version as a flash presentation lacking the luster of the full program.)

Now with the Mac, I’d like to do something similar, better, and easier than I did using PPT which is not really designed to do what I tried to make it do. You can get there, but t’aint easy.

Final Cut Express–the dumbed down version of the software–is still not cheap and designed for movies, not stills. I imagine it will do what I need but I’m not certain. Any ideas out there? Or are there simpler, cheaper programs for my simpler needs?

Of course I need to be able to save in a format that can be saved to disk and then projected via a digital projector.

SECOND NEED: My APC 350 uninterruptable power supply is going on the fritz. And I read somewhere that the Mac Pro requires a bit of a step up from the run-of-the-mill UPS. I’m heading to Roanoke today for a meeting, so could pick one up. Chime in if you have experience, ideas or suggestions. It’s really EASY to spend somebody else’s money!

IMAGE: cinnamon fern fronds unfurling (say that fast five times!)

For nine years each spring, we’ve walked down the “New Road” that follows the far side of the steep valley that holds our pasture. And every year, we’ve seen the same small tree that every year, we think a tree thus disfigured surely will not be back the next. But it is.

Regular as clockwork, the leaves come out in the spring, and they sprout these odd red tumors (each containing tiny insect babies.) It is grotesque, and I’m always curious about it. I don’t think I’ve bothered to take pictures until this week, though.

I would have said, off the top of my head, that this was the work of gall midges–small mosquito-looking flies that deposit their eggs in plant tissue. Then, depending on the unique chemistry of the species,  the growing pupae release a chemical into the flower, stem, or bud and a charateristic plant response–different for each species of midge–produces a ball, spindle, spine or other thickening called gall. Hence, the insects babies wave their chemical wands, and a protective shelter swells around them, made of food!

I can’t find a picture of just this particular gall associated with midges. There are other sources for galls (see Waynes Word for instance) and if anybody out there has the *gall to tell me, I’d be interested to know the source of these ugly red pustules on this poor plant that seems to be unperturbed by its hideous warty leaves each spring–a kind of commensalism where one member (the midge, or who-ever, benefits, and the other member is apparently not harmed).

* I can find no relationship between this plant gall and “of all the gall”, the latter related to a very old word for bile (think “gall bladder”) , implying bitterness and hence vexation, annoyance, malice and spite. Some galls might be gall bladder shaped, hollow inside, green of course, and hence the origin of the name. Dunno. Anyone?