Okay, I have a little something to say. After all that iNaturalist work last weekend, it was this weekend where I met some goals, or desires, or whatever.
While walking around, I remembered to open up a balloon flower to find the seed. My friend Linda Jo was right! They look like little yin-yang symbols!
Balloon vine seed, and my fingerprints.
While we were walking the horses, Sara very patiently let me try to get photos of all the butterflies and moths swarming in the pasture, even when her horse stepped in fire ants.
Waiting for Suna to take pictures.
Everyone’s patience was rewarded, though. I saw a butterfly on the fence. It sat still. I got its picture! It was an American snout, the ones we saw so many of last week! Finally one stood still.
No, not a great photo, but you can see the snout!
After achieving that goal, I felt fine. Then, on my way home, one of the dragonflies I’d been seeing all summer finally stood still. I was really curious what they were called, but they are very dart-y ones.
Hello, black saddlebags!
These always look like two mating to me. I was happy to see what they actually look like. Cool insects, and another goal met.
I looked at my iNaturalist totals and was happy to see I hit 1800 observations today. I’d been disappointed not to get there last week. Luckily, there are lots of interesting things to see on the Wild Type Ranch, where we walked!
Most recent observations. Over 1800!
I think that’s good for someone who has jobs and stuff. Still, I look forward to lots more in the future. We hope to visit neighboring counties with few observations and see what’s there!
Here I am looking for bugs with my “helper.”
Glad I found my voice. Sometimes I just need to shut up. Hee hee.
It’s about time I paid tribute to some trees again, don’t you think? Enough of that introspection hoo-hah! Today I was inspired to write a little something about my favorite Texas tree, the cedar elm (Ulmus crassifolia), because it just keps showing me how wonderful it is.
Also these beauty berries keep telling me they are beautiful, so okay, I put them in here. There are cedar elm leaves around them.
The cedar elm was the first native tree other than the live oak that I learned to identify. Yes, before the Ashe juniper (the one that’s not cedar, but is called cedar). There was one in my neighbor’s front yard, and it looked so different from the other lucky natives the developer had left that I just had to look it up. Then I got confused. Is it a cedar, or is it an elm? Apparently, it’s an elm. Here, read what something official says:
The common native elm in east Texas where it is planted for shade. Called Cedar Elm because of the rough, cedar scale-like texture of the leaves and because it is often found in the western part of its range with Ashe Juniper (Juniperus ashei), which is locally called cedar. The Latin species name means thick leaf.
The ranch is chock full of them, which makes sense. We have their favorite terrain: near water, flat, and with a saucy hint of limestone to make them happy. The limestone is why they’re all over the hill country. The terrain is why they are all over Milam County.
Don’t confuse the cedar elm seeds with these inland sea oats. Of course you wouldn’t; this is obviously a grass, right?
Cedar elms are very easy to identify by their leaves, which have sawtooth edges and aren’t very big. Nature conveniently deposited one on my arm today.
Cedar elm leaves turn yellow just before they fall to the ground. Then they turn brown.
They’re deciduous, which makes me happy. That way I see a lot more in the woods at the ranch during the winter. Their leaves are dropping right now, and it’s like a gentle rain.
They make pretty displays.
As the picture above shows, they shed their little fruits and seeds at the same time that the leaves are falling. That’s a rare trait in the elm, and an easy way to know you have a cedar elm. Squirrels will eat them, if there aren’t nice juicy acorns nearby. Check this out!
By September or October, the branches are thick with clusters of flat, oval seed packets called samara. The samara looks much like a tiny green round ravioli, or those dots of explosive caps for toy guns of the past. These are the fruit of the elm tree, with the seed forming a reddish bump in the middle.
Here are little branches blown down by the wind that show the seeds and leaf size. Look at all those leaves on the patio (those are just from today, since the building staff obsessively sweeps).
Since these are native trees, they also feed lots of native creatures. Here’s some sort of tent caterpillar or something that has made a home on a cedar elm branch.
Looks yucky, but, yay Nature.
The seeds appear pretty prolific, because they can easily become over crowded. We have some that need to be thinned out, which is always hard for Ms. Tree Hugger. But they can really grow thick, which makes it hard for them to grow tall and strong.
I’m happy to have them, filling the cedar brakes (limestone landscape common in the center of Texas) with something to break up the monotony of those dang Ashe junipers!
I guess the family isn’t used to me really, really enjoying myself. But I did this weekend. I didn’t have to worry about work issues, people issues, or world issues. I just hung out with nature and relaxed. I recommend that.
Camphor-weed. I got that right!
I’m a taxonomists at heart. I like labeling things. That’s why I feel such satisfaction identifying things successfully on iNaturalist. It tells me where things belong (when I get it right).
Couldn’t figure this one out. Had to upload it as unknown! All the suggested flowers had five petals.
I also enjoy helping research on what grows in Texas, especially places that hadn’t had much coverage. While Jacob’s Well had lots of observations, since Master Naturalists volunteer there often, the place we stayed at had only three that weren’t by me, all from 2018! I did science! No wonder I was happy.
You can see where I walked!
Plus, I got to “spontane.” I could go wherever I wanted, as long as I wanted. No one told me to stop taking pictures, walk faster, or stop talking to the birds and cows.
This one had five petals. It’s a bluebowl or Giliastrumrigidulum. It’s only found in the part of Texas where I was.
And there was something new around every corner. Yes. I WAS happy. I still am. I got to see my animals tonight, including the chicken that just doesn’t seem to lay eggs, ever.
Suna, that’s not a hen in that henhouse.
Before I get back to thinking about Kanban cards (and yes, I dreamed I was trying to capture my weekend activities in Agile stories), I’ll leave you with a few more interesting plants I saw. I can’t believe I made over 100 observations this weekend. All fun.
Biggest spray of cardinal flower I saw.
One lonely dandelion
Texas creeping oxeye. It was everywhere.
Trailing lespedeza.
Woolly vervain clump
Pink sorrel.
Edwards plateau five-eyes.
Scarlet pea
Pasture heliotrope (in a pasture)
Dakota mock vervain
Maybe they’re weeds. Maybe they’re wildflowers. But I know who they are!
I say to you, go find your fun. Now more than ever, we need to balance our lives and bring in some fun. Have a good work week!
Switchgrass. I even got a GRASS right! This was in a beautiful prairie restoration with many blue stems, gramas, and other native grasses.
Finally, we are daring to have a meeting at the Hermit Haus again. Our Master Naturalist class wanted to finish its sessions, so we figured out a way. Only the students who have Zoom trouble and 3 staff are in the building. Each audience member is at a separate table.
People wear masks unless eating.
The rest of the class, as well as anyone else who wanted to attend dialed into the Zoom meeting.
That took a lot of planning and figuring out our needs. I am proud of our Master Naturalist board members for hashing it all out.
Our tech guy, Don, spent a lot of time getting us a good setup for the mix of online and in person attendees. He got us some nice speakers and microphones so people can ask questions. We tested it all earlier today and it worked great.
Now I know.
There was a weird glitch with our speaker being unable to join the meeting, but I got it working by signing him into our organization account. Yes!
And the talk is going great! Sound is good. Speaker is Hilary in a Dad joke kinda way. Whew. I’m so pleased to be able to give to our community by hosting events again, while still being careful.
Loamy sand and sandy loam.
And I now know a LOT about soil. And saw some of my friends. Everyone seemed so pleased. And I got to wear my cool new mask.
Look! It has a raven and a feather.
Thanks to Robyn at Coffee and Cotton for the high quality products
This will be a fun weekend! It’s already been great, because I got to go meet my friend Janet at Bird and Bee Farm, because she needed new hens. Her “ladies” are all retired. I’ve known Janet since soon after I moved to Austin, and we have had many adventures together. Many adventures. She now lives in Groesbeck with her partner and horses, just far enough away to make visiting not too easy. So, we haven’t seen each other in a while.
So, we were glad to see each other at the chicken farm. I showed Janet all the hard work our Master Naturalist team had done with the Wildscape project, and she really liked some of Catherine and Rosie’s great recycled decor ideas.
This chair fountain’s particularly cute.
I was all excited about some butterflies, and tried really hard to get good pictures, but these pipevine swallowtails are not the kind that sits still. My best picture had something weird in the background.
What’s that behind the butterfly?
It was one of the resident guinea fowl, just clucking away at me and peeping over the flowers.
Howdy!
Eventually we got in, after we convinced Gene I wasn’t here just for Master Naturalist stuff. Janet was after black hens, because apparently hawks don’t go after them, because they look like crows, and crows are mean to hawks. Huh. She got three young Jersey Giants and three australorps, all lovely and dusky beauties.
Native Rio Grande turkeys, since I didn’t get photos of Janet’s new pullets.
Well, I couldn’t exactly go there and come up empty handed, especially since our hen to rooster ratio is so low. I needed three hens. Conveniently, the oldest pullets they had were beautiful, as well. They are called Blue Star or Sapphire Gem, and apparently are a new heat-tolerant breed from Czech breeders. I got two of them, one of which has some gold in her neck feathers. She’s Star and the other is Sapphire. I am not creative today.
At least one is in the sun here. That’s Star.
Sapphire is in front. Bruce wants some action.
You can sorta see the pretty feathers.
My favorite thing about them is that they are large. They won’t have to stay separated too long, though they need growth food another month or two. They have beautiful dark brown eyes, too.
The other pullet I got is a Welsummer, which I had one of before in my first batch, but didn’t last too long due to the owl. No owl will get Butternut, though! She’s safe with us in the cage. I love her buttery yellow legs, which gave her the name, and she has cool light brown eyes that match her body feathers. She’s a bit smaller than the other two, and pretty friendly.
Pretty baby.
I’ll need to re-hook the water hose, and maybe move one of the pipe feeders over to the baby area, but otherwise, they should be fine. Now if I can just figure out how to stop Clarence from crowing under Jim’s RV. That has to be loud!
Anyhow, it was wonderful to catch up with Janet, who I’m going to spend more time with not on a mission very soon. We just wish we could set and eat a meal together, but neither of us wants to chance the germs.
I thought I’d take my own advice and get out in nature this morning, so I made up a project to see how many different vines I could see along the fence in front of and beside the ranch house.
Mustang grape. I know because it’s silver and hairy on the bottom.
It hadn’t gotten stifling hot yet, so Vlassic and I set off. I knew a lot of what I’d see, but figured I’d find at least seven different vines.
Looks boring, right? But if we hadn’t been aggressively mowing, it would produce cool little lanterns. It’s Cardiospermum halicacabum
I actually ended up with 12! At least I hope so. Most weren’t blooming, but I recognized them. The white morning glory had closed up and I couldn’t get to the flowers to photograph.
I was especially glad to see passion vines in more than one place, because I’d worried the poison ivy had crowded it out.
Passion vine with no beautiful flowers.
Also I was glad to confirm that we have sorrel vine here, since the Master Naturalist who lives not far from here has a lot of it.
Sorrel vine or Cissus trifoliata. It’s known as possum grape, too.
Otherwise, it’s the usual prickly, rash-inducing, invasive and/or pretty plants.
Saw greenbrier
Poison ivy mites. Cool.
Round leaf greenbrier
Poison ivy
Dewberry
Pipeline
White morning glory (only one I’ve seen)
Carolina snailseed
Tievine
Of course I had to snap a few other pretty sights. Plus, there’s action around the hen house. There’s a new spider building a web right in front of where I get the eggs from. Luckily I have another way to get eggs.
I hate to move a garden spider.
Tuna should entice the raccoon.
New stuff around the chickens
And Chris put a live trap by the chicken run. We need to stop whatever took almost all the guineas and a hen! Hopefully, once it cools off, he will come up with more safety measures.
These are prettier than water hose, right? Lady Bird’s Centaury.
We do have a much more elaborate water system, though, since the other one was trying to make the hoses explode. Chris used new water hose/pipe and fittings to make a safer temporary setup until we make the fancy underground one. It’s also too hot to safely dig the trench for that.
Mexican ruellia
Mesquite bean.
Lemon bee balm
Silky evolvulus
What’s blooming and fruiting in mid July
At least the dogs are happy we’re inside all day. 102 is too hot for any of our outdoor projects! Happy July.
As hard as it is to find equilibrium these days, I’ve always found my bird watching greatly helpful. Birds just keep going, breeding, eating, being silly. Here are today’s examples.
Finch Family Time
You can’t get close enough to us to get a good picture, Suna!
Over at the Hermit Haus/former church office, I’ve been watching all the birds raising families. The mockingbirds have moved on, but the house finches are doggedly determined to produce offspring in the carport. They built one nest in one corner, but lost that little one. Wah.
But, lo and behold, the second nest they built has a little fellow in it. Yesterday I got to watch it waggle its little head around as its parents looked annoyed at me from the telephone wire a few feet away.
When I arrived this morning, two finches flew away, and I realized a second pair was building a nest in yet a third corner of the driveway. I guess those little notches make house finches feel secure (and it IS hard for roaming feral cats to get to them).
The new nest, in the back of the carport, right by where I park.
Earlier Today
As you may know, the past few weeks I’ve been going over to the sad, grass-less horse pen to give Fiona and Apache hay to tide them over until their evening feeding. Well, Big Red, the only hen remaining from my previous flock, has figured this out. She didn’t get to be the only one left by being a slow learner.
Most mornings, there she is, barreling toward me, wanting her sunflower seeds NOW. The only morning she didn’t show up, Chris found that she had laid a sad egg with no shell (she’s old), which has inspired me to get her some actual chicken food this weekend to go with her seeds.
Today, she didn’t charge at me, because she was busy. I’d actually been wondering where she got her water, because I’m not sure her old water trough made from the cabin’s air conditioner runoff is still there.
I may be old, but I’m still quite flexible!
Well, there she was, on the edge of Fiona’s water bucket, drinking away. It was so cute. That inspires me to keep filling the bucket all the way up!
The water was great! Now I’m ready to have my sunflower seeds.
Once she was done, she strode right over and requested her morning ration. I just love that hen.
I’m sending love and hopes for understanding for each of us. Remember, everyone you meet is pretty stressed out right now and probably not at their best.
Do you know how to tell a frog from a toad? Here are some hints from around the Hermits’ Rest.
I bet some of you know this, but I got two good example specimens that will help the rest of you. Both are big ones, which makes it easy to see. But they ARE trying to fool us.
Gulf Coast toad
How did I know this was a toad, sitting in the dog pond? First, she has warts. Toads are bumpy. Most toads hang out on land, but this one is in water, but not swimming. That’s normal. She also has relatively short hind legs, for walking, not hopping.
Pond with exit ramp. Yes, we empty it weekly for mosquito prevention.
The toads like to hang out in the dog pond so much that Lee built them an exit ramp. He said he saw a smaller one in there, too, so maybe mating was planned (males are smaller).
American bullfrog, in the chicken run.
This big fella we found when I moved the new chickens’ water dish. It’s as big as the toad, and too dark to be one of our green frogs. How did I know it was a frog, even though frogs are usually found in or near water and this one is on land?
Well, the skin is smooth (even in the blurry photo). And look at those legs! They are much longer than the toad’s! And it WAS right next to a water dish. I admit it is within a pretty short hopping distance of the pond behind our house, from which bullfrog croaks have been heard.
Our biggest green frog, ready to dive back in the pond. Finally an amphibious creature doing what it’s supposed to.
We are happy to have both the toad and the frogs around here. They eat bugs and all sorts of critters that need to have some population control!
By the way, a toad is a frog, but not all frogs are toads.
Today I have a hodgepodge of stuff to share, but first I want to talk about what’s lurking around the ranch these days. That would be things that bite, and things that jump. Yesterday, I went to sit down on one of the front-porch rocking chairs, when I saw something on the seat.
A member of the widow spider family.
I am very glad she was pre-dead, and that I saw her before I sat. Certainly it confirms my habit of checking for creatures before plopping down anywhere around the Hermits’ Rest! I’m not sure what kind of widow spider she was, but I don’t want any of them biting me. These are the main reason I continue to support having pest control come around the house.
The second reason is scorpions, which I haven’t seen any of, but Lee and Kathleen have killed a few. I love them out in the woods, but not in the house. And I love the spiders, but not ones that could really mess with my health.
I’ve apparently become allergic to mosquito bites, and they make huge welts, so I could do without those right now, too. And biting flies! Argh. There are black flies around here, and horse flies (thankfully not around ME), and deer flies. Whatever. One of them bit me on my FACE this morning. That could have to do with how much poop we have at the ranch
Cool poop mushrooms
Horse poop with plastic in it. GRRRRRR.
Sara disposing of a bag, so a horse or donkey won’t poop it later.
Poop, and things that show up in it.
Nonetheless, I am heartily enjoying discussing different kinds of flies and grasshoppers and stuff with Eric in our Master Naturalist class. He not only has good eye for finding them, but he has a good camera, and the patience to work hard to identify them.
Eric wrote me an email today about the coolest thing he saw (a “mystical experience,” in his words), which was he was trying to photograph a large grasshopper:
It jumped off the path into the high grass and when it landed it appeared to turn into at least a dozen tiny projectiles which flew off in all directions like a firework. A closer look uncovered a great concentration of grasshopper nymphs in the area.
Eric N., email 6/6/2020
Of course, he didn’t get a picture, but WOW, what an image!
My grasshopper experience this morning was also something you couldn’t photograph. I was walking back from horse riding (it went well), noticing that it’s definitely grasshopper season. Then I noticed the sound. As I walked, I was disturbing dozens and dozens of them (small ones, since they aren’t adult yet), and my walk seemed to have a rhythm section accompanying it. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap-tap-tap.
I k now a lot of people don’t like grasshoppers (like my sister), and I admit they are annoying in the summers when there are hundreds pelting me as I drive the utility vehicle. At least they don’t bite often or hard. But they are so varied and interesting. I have an AWFUL time photographing them, so I think I’m going to get a good butterfly net soon, so I can get some to hold still.
That’s blurry
That’s blurry
I can’t find anything in this picture.
What Doesn’t Bite?
Roaches. Secretly, I have never been fond of roaches, due to childhood trauma, but I am doing better since I started doing iNaturalist. I recently even found one I thought was interesting to look at. It also lived outdoors, where it should.
Fairly attractive pale-bordered field cockroach
And non-venomous snakes don’t bite humans, often anyway. So, I was sad to see this one in the road this morning. Rat snakes are my buddies as long as they aren’t eating my hens’ eggs.
Poor snakey got hit by a car.
Okay, time to go see what’s outside that will hurt in some other way…
Last week I had a lot of Master Naturalist fun participating in the Texas Invasive Species BioBlitz 2020 that got set up by Texas Nature Trackers. You may remember I talked about it a bit last week. The idea was to see how many observations you could get from a list of invasive species found throughout the state. I knew I had easy access to a few, so I figured I’d try.
Here’s the main page for the event.
I got a good number of invasives pretty quickly, since I knew right where there was some Arundo donax (river cane), Johnson grass, and a lot of nandina on my own properties. I must have spent 3 hours the first weekend looking for invasives (and observing lots of other things, too).
Arundo donax
Common dandelion
Common lantana
Johnson grass (with prickly pear)
Glossy privet
Nandina (heavenly bamboo)
Bad photo of common hedge parsley
By the time I went to Austin on Tuesday, I was doing okay on the leaderboard. Just a few walks around the neighborhood of Bobcat Run produced more “goodies” like Japanese honeysuckle and privets.
My final list of plants.
By the time the week was over, I was proud to be in the top twenty of number of species observed, and doing okay with number of observations as well.
Here I am, number 17, and Linda Jo number 2 (I couldn’t fit number 1 on the screen, darn it.)
Of course, my fellow Chapter member Linda Jo Conn was in second place in number of observations and first place for species. Some other guy had way more observations, because he had multiple photos of some of the species. I did a few, like things I saw both in Austin and Cameron, or ones in distinct locations. However, I could have ROCKED the numbers by just walking across the lawn and taking pictures of Bermuda grass (I would NOT do such a thing, of course).
Regrets
Darn the luck! The day after the bioblitz was over, I drove down a street I don’t usually go by, and there were a whole bunch of mimosa trees taunting me with their fluffy pinkness. Argh!
Beautiful invasive mimosa tree, just one block off of where I usually drive every day.
Then, yesterday I walked to the horse barn (I’d been driving our utility vehicle because I have a sore tendon), and right on the side of the driveway was a cheerful annual bastard cabbage/ wild mustard plant. I’d been looking and looking for one, because I knew they were there! So, that’s two more I could have found if I’d been a bit more diligent.
What Did I Learn?
I think the project did what it was intended to do: it got me much more aware of invasive species wherever I saw them, and because I kept talking about it to friends and family, I raised awareness as well. That’s exactly the kind of thing I want to be doing as a Master Naturalist.
Oh, and also, I had fun. What have been your fun projects while we’ve been not gathering in large groups and such?
The Hermits' Rest 