Fun Gal

May 10, 2013

So I’m heading off to Mt Rogers for the umpteenth Naturalist Rally today, drizzles notwithstanding, and at the end of a two hour drive, hope to have a bit of dry skies to do the traditional loop around the Grindstone Nature Trail. That was the first place I ever discovered ramps, though I did not [...]

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BLAH BLAH BLAH

May 9, 2013

I’ve tried a half dozen times this morning to find a way to post something here without giving myself the dry heaves. Maybe this 11th anniversary of Fragments this week represents a titer of blogging antibodies such that I am now in some kind of rejection of the tissue of my own words. The dog [...]

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Where to Find Morels

May 7, 2013

Answer: where ever they come up out of the soil. We’ve had this notion since we first discovered our “morel patch” early after moving here in 1999, that this was THE place to go to find these delicious if elusive fungi. We usually find them a day or two either side of April 25. So [...]

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Spring Cleaning

May 6, 2013

I am the only one who sensed it at this particular time and place, but there has just been a distinctive modulation in the gear ratio of life, and change is afoot–nothing big, mind you. With several life-dominating tasks behind me, and the final one almost so, I feel like I’m rediscovering ME again. And [...]

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Rufous-sided TWOhee

May 4, 2013

Maybe I have just not had my ears on all these years here on Goose Creek. The Towhee is one of the most common birds we share our space with, and a bird that doesn’t mind getting close to human habitations. There’s been one just below my window since first light doing the chicken-scratch/jump back [...]

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You Aim Too, Please

May 1, 2013

Or: A Fix for Aimless Males. Sorry no picture, for technical road-related dysfunctional reasons, but you can see plenty of pictures. And this fact alone makes me feel better: I am far from the only person in the world to have taken a picture of a urinal in a men’s restaurant in an airport terminal. [...]

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Nature Unknown

April 29, 2013

Your assignment for today is to ID this creature from forest, seashore or stream bottom. At least you should classify it to a general group of living things. More detail is possible, and it is quite interesting the ways this creature works in nature as well as in human economy and health. Leave your guesses [...]

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When Push Comes to Shove Us

April 25, 2013

The Fabric of Floyd: TEDx in Floyd, Virginia  April 27 Crunch time. Very structured crunch time–number of minutes, format, four cameras shooting simultaneously, most all aspects of this multiple-local-speaker event are guided by the TED requirements. And that’s probably a good thing for quality control and branding of  their name. But it is not what [...]

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Trilliums Aplenty

April 24, 2013

So the pup and I will wander up the valley again today and see what’s new. We’re still expecting to be surprised by morels, but so far, they have eluded us. We also have a bumper crop of turkeys this year, and they have a better eye for the “merkels” than we do. I’ve wondered [...]

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Skunk Cabbage: A Pleasant Putrescence

April 23, 2013

I confess I don’t always follow my own advice. “Scratch and sniff” is a standing rule when exploring new plant discoveries (not recommended so much for animal discoveries.) And particularly when the known name of the plant suggests an olfactory feature, to have lived this many years knowing Skunk Cabbage and only this year to [...]

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