Riders on the Storm

We missed seeing the sun at dead center on First Street yesterday because storm clouds were gathering all morning and half the afternoon, with rain falling in earnest by two-ish on the Spring Equinox.

Does it seem wrong to have thunder and lightning, hail and rain on the First Day of Spring?  If so, think of the equinox as the middle of spring as it is and it won't seem ruinous at all.  The middle is squishy, flows from one end to the other, not as importune as the First or Last.

Various scenes from a blustery, wet and cold equinox include a propeller spinning in a gust,


a lavatera bud, the dried holiday wreath,

wisteria in full bloom, a monarch caterpillar on a twitching stem,

smoke from a cozy fire,

osteospermum blossoms glowing, a garden snail on Juan's aeonium,

a mourning cloak pupa hanging in the euryops, and last but not least an opossum mom and her five babies.


 
 The opossum (Didelphis virginiana) surprised me as I was surveying the property this morning after the hail and wind.  There she was in broad daylight staring at me.  I went to grab my camera, and as I reappeared from behind the privet hedge she seemed appalled, in a slow opossum-like way, that I had come back.  She slowly turned away from my unwanted attentions and scuttled behind the fence with her babies clinging to her back.

Opossums eat snails and slugs and all sorts of other things, some of which I don't necessarily want around, so I'd say this family is a good addition to the garden fauna.

We also missed viewing the supermoon as it was obscured by cloud cover Saturday evening. A nice man on a video on the internets had advised us "the supermoon is not to be feared, it should be observed, either alone or with someone, maybe a romantic interest or just the person you will spend the night with."  Oddly personal advice coming from an astronomer.  So, yeah, sadly the moon was not in view on the eve of the equinox.

Later After the Rain

So then it stopped raining and the sun came out.  It was pleasantly warm and fresh; the birds were chirping and I went out looking for, oh I don't know, rainbows?  butterflies?  smiley faces?

 

The stapelia flower had opened, and some drops were caught in the hairiness along the petal's edge.  These flowers mimic flesh in appearance and odor to attract flies, which are their pollinators.  The flies lay eggs inside the flowers which hatch to no avail, the food-less maggots eventually dying, drying up and dropping off to the soil below.  Btw, I've not yet gotten a stapelia seed from all this pollination activity.

I was checking out the ripening seeds of the amaryllis belladonna, when a pair of hands on the soil below popped into my field of focus.  Gak,  I had almost stepped on a young possum that had quite recently died right there in the pathway. 

 
Flies were being attracted, including green bottles (Lucilia sericata) and boatman flies (Pogonortalis doclea) even though there was no discernible odor of decomposition yet (other than the nearby scent of stapelia).  I dug a hole and buried the poor thing, its tail letting go of a clump of coconut geranium as it slipped into the ground.

Owens River

Today I am in the Owens Valley avoiding the extreme heat at home by enjoying the normal heat found here in what some people consider the desert.  We went off highway to check out two access points to the rewatered Lower Owens River.  Some locals were found enjoying the afternoon sunshine.

On a fence along Aberdeen Sta road near the bridge, this lizard looks smug, and so it should when you consider the lush insect producing environment found at the foot of its fencepost.  A bee nearby visits flowers on a rabbitbrush, Chrysothamnus nauseosus I think.  These shrubs are abundant, still green and in bloom throughout the valley in late September.  Is this because of the water flowing in the river, peculiarities of the weather this year, or do I just not remember them being so lush in past years? 

We rejoined the highway, then got off again near Manzanar and stopped to check out the old airstrip not far from 395.  Its asphalt surface is still there, checkered with cracks and pigweed.  There I found this grasshopper, but just barely, due to its excellent camouflage.  Then we continued up Manzanar Reward road to a peculiar put in spot on the river crowded with barbed wire.  People were fishing there where the river passes under a bridge in dual 3' metal pipes and goes on its way toward Lone Pine. 

Flow on, Owens River.

Nassella and the Cats

Nassella tenuissima (Mexican feather grass) is grown in my garden for its fine texture, beautiful seed heads that glow when backlit, and wonderful movement in the slightest breeze. The neighborhood cats (the ones that never leave their owners' yards) favor this plant as a bed. After repeated cat naps, the clumps of grass become squashed down, pretty much eliminating the previously mentioned positive qualities of the plant. At this point, it is good to cut back the Nassella, pull out any dead portions, and start over. That is, short of caging the cats.








Is N. tenuissima invasive? It self-seeds readily in the garden; often found growing in pavement cracks as shown here. It is also very easily pulled out. On the other hand, given the prodigious amount of seed it produces, very low percentage of those sprout in the garden. Maybe combing and discarding the seed before it ripens would cut down the self-sown numbers even more.

Bats

It's a great time of year to sit out in the yard at dusk and feel the cooling evening breeze flow over the compound wall and fill the space between the plants, the stuff in the yard and the fences. At this time of day, as the sky faded from that indescribable purple-grey-pink-orange color into dark I saw a bunch of bats hunting overhead the other night. They were wheeling around about 40 feet or so overhead in broadly erratic circles. They looked to be maybe 6 inches wingtip to wingtip as they flew soundlessly (to my ears) catching insects. I was hoping they were hunting mosquitoes, since this summer the little bloodsuckers are a bit pesky.

According to a list of locally occuring bat species, this could be Big Brown Bat, Eptesicus fuscus; or California Brown Bat, Myotis californicus; or even Hoary Bat, Lasiurus cinereus. All of these are said to occur here, all are insectivores.

Of course I couldn't get a photo of the bats. This picture is a set of what I guess are beetle wings found resting in the dodonaea. All of these bats do feed on beetles, so there's a good chance these severed wings, interrupted in unfolded flight mode and now slightly refolded along their resilin joints, are all that's left of a bat snack.

Sunday #2

Thanks, Kolby, for the comment. Yes I believe the reptiles that share the yard with us are southern alligator lizards, Elgaria multicarinata "something", maybe webbii; why not? This one was half-basking in the sun and looked so beautifully colored and shiny. A benefit to having a garden that's at least half-way messy is the critters like this lizard can use the habitat. These lizards hide in the leaf litter as seen here, and lay eggs somewhere unseen; they also climb up into the shrubbery on occasion. I have never handled one of these, but I can imagine they must have a healthy bite. I just leave them alone so they'll feel safe enough to breed in my yard. How can one tell this is a male? I wonder. Pretty soon I expect to see couples of them mating, then in late spring the little tiny lizards occasionally cross my path.

Sainthood

So Suki the old dog owns a favorite spot on the cracked concrete in the back yard. Things move into the yard and out of it, sometimes taking over part of her spot. She doesn't complain, she just gets as close as possible to the spot and assumes The Look of a Saint.

Saving the Salamander

I noticed this salamander (I think its a garden slender salamander, Batrachoseps major, or closely related) in the dog's water bowl. It was active, walking/paddling around the bottom edge either investigating its reflection or looking for a way out. If my ID is anything like correct (and my previous observations of these little guys unclouded) this is of course a terrestrial salamander that lays its eggs on land, so its plunge into the deeps would seem to be accidental. It didn't seem to be in physical distress by being submerged, but possibly that was because it hadn't been under very long. How do salamanders breathe; through their skin? As I watched it was clear the salamander wouldn't be able to escape by climbing the steep slippery stainless steel sides of the bowl, so I bailed the poor thing out.

It seemed appreciative in a cold blooded way, and froze for a photo before scuttling off under something juicy.

Celebrate Independence

and recognize interdependence.

Not-Fit-For-A-Dog Day

The dog says it's hot. We agree, and add that it is darned humid. The flies have decided this is it, this is their moment. Autumn is coming, they must breed. And while they are at it, annoy.

So we left the sweltering house and yard to the flies for the moment, and went on a quest for fly abatement products. I found it hard to believe all four nice, cool air-conditioned stores we tried were out of the tried and true fly-swatters, but there ya go. At OSH, the last place we looked, there was an assortment of other products to choose from that supposedly lure flies to a sticky, icky or otherwise unnatural death. We decided to skip the electric zapper and the ultra-sonic flying saucer-ish thing for the moment, but did pick up some other items I was almost certain would not work.

This first one is a doozy. The day-glo 3-D portals are designed to be irresistible to flies. According to the manufacturer, this product "attracts and traps flying insects, including flies. Special patent pending Silvalure System™ of 3D designs and colors increases the chances of trapping flies." NOT; those flies you see on it are fake, shills meant either to trick the real thing into landing on the sticky surface or to trick the purchaser into thinking the damned thing works. The Indoor Fly Trap has not caught anything at all, not even a moth or a gnat. It does look really cool in the photo, though.

We also tried a long, white sticky tape that was supposed to be ultra convenient because when the tape (white is super-attractive to flies!!) gets full of flies you just cut it off and unreel another length of fly-catching surface. Instead, the tape unreeled itself in the very slight breeze, got stuck to my husband's patio computer monitor, annoying him immensely. It got sticky stuff all over my hands when I bunched it up and threw it away. This happened before I took a photo.

Then there are the traditional fly ribbons, which "have always been effective at catching flies. If you keep saying that over and over and over, it will be so. NOT; so far exactly 2 houseflies have been captured by the four fly ribbons festooned about the yard and patio, as well as several glassywinged sharpshooters, a cobweb spider and random other innocent flyers-by.

We tried a fly trap, where you mix up a nasty looking concoction designed to attract flies inside a plastic jar with four holes in the screw-on lid. Unlike the others, this does seem to draw the flies in and about two dozen of them have met their doom inside the jar. 24 flies, estimated 1/2 of which are female times 150 eggs per clutch = reduction of future fly population by 1800. Yay.

There are plenty of other products on the Victor website we haven't tried yet. Since it's too hot to do much else, why not obsess about flies? Of course the very best anti-fly product is prevention; do not allow them to breed. We oopsed by forgetting to put out two green waste cans full of grass clippings for the trash guys. A few days went by without picking up after the dog. Who knows what the neighbors have neglected to do? Anyway, the weather will soon cool off (won't it?) and the flies will abate as the temperature drops.