Around Our Yard...

While working outside yesterday, this tarantula hawk (a large wasp) landed on my arm.  I took its picture after it finished resting and set off again on its quest for a tarantula.  This is the third time this has happened to me over the years we've lived out here, and it's a thrill each time.  First there's the sense of danger: the sting of the tarantula hawk is rated as the second most painful sting in the world (on the Schmidt sting pain index).  Entomologist Justin Schmidt, the creator of that index, describes the tarantula hawk's sting as “Blinding, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.”  Yes, he's actually experienced it.  Then there's the tarantula hawk's appearance: its body is an iridescent deep blue, and its wings are a shimmering orange.  Then you think about its lifestyle: the large female wasps spend their adult lives hunting for a tarantula spider (yes, we have them here), which they sting, paralyzing it – after which they lay their eggs in it.  The wasp eggs hatch inside the tarantula and the hungry little wasps then consume the entire thing.  It's thrilling to have one of these land on your arm!

The acacia in our yard just started blooming.  Various parts of it will be in bloom for the next few weeks.  These blooms are large enough to be attractive even at a distance, but up close they're much better...

And our “Desert Museum” palo verde tree just keeps getting better.  There are more flowers on it now than we've ever seen before, and the yellow carpet of fallen blossoms below it keeps getting thicker.  The tree swarms with honey bees, bumble bees, and hummingbirds.  Awesome!

Palo Verde Tree...

Several years ago we bought a Palo Verde (Desert Museum hybrid) tree from Kniffings and planted it in our front yard, next to our hummingbird feeders.  We'd read that the blooms attract hummingbirds, and the twiggy aspect of it seemed like it would make good perches for them.  It's a native to arid regions with high drainage, so it should do fine in our yard even without irrigation.

We can report now that on all counts the Palo Verde excels. It's thriving – growing faster than the references say it should, and putting on quite a show with its flowers for several months out of the year.  Right now it's in prime:

It's about 12 feet tall now.  The tall trees behind the gazebo are 50' to 60' tall eucalyptus...

Standing next to a branch, when you look down you see the branch covered with blooms, and the ground littered with the earlier blossoms...

Get down on your knees, and you see a carpet of dessicated petals...

Thousands upon thousands of these right now, visited frequently by hummingbirds, bees, and big fat black bumblebees...

Crotalus ruber...

Crotalus ruber

Otherwise known as the red diamond rattlesnake, the most common species where we live (in the mountains of San Diego County).  I had a slightly unusual experience involving Crotalus ruber yesterday.  The photo at right is not mine, but it looks very much like the rattlesnakes we see most often here.

Rattlesnakes are quite common out here in the summertime.  They need fairly warm weather in order to be active (a consequence of being cold-blooded animals).  From roughly May through October it's not at all unusual for us to find rattlesnakes in our yard.  During the warmest months (July through September) they're most common.  We know they're not particularly dangerous to us, but they certainly are to the two cats we have that live in an outdoor cattery, and to our four dogs.  We keep our dogs vaccinated against the rattlesnake toxin, which mainly buys us time to get a dog (if bitten) to a veterinarian for treatment.  We've never had one of our dogs bitten.

Debbie and I have gotten pretty good at spotting rattlesnakes (they don't always make their signature noise!) and at removing them as a threat to our animals.  Our approaches, though, are completely different: Debbie uses a sharpened hoe to chop them into pieces; I capture them with a snake-stick and relocate them to Cleveland National Forest.  This reflects our different understandings of rattlesnakes: Debbie perceives them as evil incarnate, I see them as an important part of our ecosystem (but not in my yard!).

But back to yesterday...  I was working from home, and around 11 am I wandered out to our living room to watch the orioles feed for a minute.  I heard what sounded sort of like a continuous rattlesnake rattle, but it didn't sound quite right (had an odd sort of warbling going on), and it never stopped (normally the rattling is frequently broken by periods of silence).  From inside the living room, all I could tell about the location was that it was somewhere in the direction of our outdoor cattery.

I ran outside, grabbed the snake-stick from its hanger, and got a five-gallon covered pail.  Then I (carefully!) went out to the cattery.  The first thing I saw was Koa and Kama (the two outdoor kitties) standing right in the middle of their cattery, wide-eyed and carefully watching something to the south side.  They were fine.  I walked around to the south side of the cattery, looking for the rattlesnake – which was still making that odd-sounding rattle.  Usually the rattling lets me locate the snake immediately, but this time I was having trouble – the rattling didn't seem to come from a definite place.  Suddenly the sound changed: it sounded like what we usually hear, and it was coming from a definite location.  WTF?  I spotted the rattlesnake, curled up just outside the cattery.  But then the sound changed again.  By this time I was a little closer, and I figured out what was going on – there were two rattlesnakes there! 

One of them (the one that had been silent) was only about 4 feet away from me.  Their coloring makes them very hard to spot in our soil, and this one was no exception.  It was also curled up just outside the cattery, near the southeast corner.  I picked it up with the snake-stick, at which point it uncurled and I could see that it was a fairly large adult, just under 3 feet long.  After depositing him (not happy at all!) into the pail, I went back and got the other one.  It was bigger – close to 4 feet long – and much thicker.  Into the pail with it!  I closed the lid and tied it down well (wouldn't want it to come open in the truck!), then we took a trip together to a nearby stretch of Cleveland National Forest with no homes anywhere nearby.  There I let them go, and they slithered off in opposite directions, still rattling away like mad.

Two rattlesnakes in the same place at the same time.  That's a first for me...

Some Flowers in Our Yard...

Our yard has been in bloom for months, but now we're near the end of our “flower season”.  First up: our palo verde tree, which is planted right next to our hummingbird feeders.  The birds love it!

Here's a nice bunch of California poppies, right outside our front door:

And finally, a beautiful monkeyflower bush, on the hill above our house:

We're Back...

...sort of.  This has been a weekend to remember. 

On Friday evening, I started transferring my “stuff” from my old Macbook Pro laptop to my new Macbook Pro laptop.  My laptop is full of all the sorts of tools and daemons a developer needs, and this makes the transfer more complex.  Added to that, my old laptop's operating system was two versions older than that of my new laptop, and that indroduced other difficulties.  Even worse, my user's UID on my old laptop was different than my user's UID on the new laptop, and I didn't realize that until I was half done.  Oh, and did I mention that my old laptop had a half a terabyte of data on it?  Bottom line: while I'm using my new laptop right now, many things are still not working on it.  I've got some work to do today!

But it's not that I spent all weekend working on my computer.  I should be so lucky!  Nope, this was the weekend of the “great burn” – Debbie and I were committed to burning the rest of the giant burn pile that's been sitting in our front yard ever since we trimmed up our pines last year.  And we did it, with just a half hour to spare before the 3 pm deadline (the time at which we had to put out the burn pile, per our burn permit).  We even raked up all the innumerable twigs scattered about the yard, and burned them as well.  The big logs – a couple cubic yards worth – that we thought were going to be a disposal problem turned out to be no problem at all.  Our neighbors Wayne and Marissa were happy to take the pine logs, as they have a big open fireplace in which they'll burn just fine.  It was quite a nice feeling of accomplishment to get that intimidating task done...

Then last night, after finishing the burning, I repaired Debbie's “Easy-Up” – a kind of portable folding canopy.  There's a complex-looking mechanism that forms and expandable framework, involving many hollow metal bars with pivots at each end and the middle.  Two of the end pivots had worked loose and fallen out.  I manufactured replacements by getting one inch long 10-24 stainless steel bolts and jam nuts, then using a Dremel tool to grind a cavity in a molded plastic piece of just the right size and shape to hold the jam nut.  I felt like a dentist with his drill, making this teensy little cavity in my big plastic “tooth”.  In the end, the thing was better than new, as the original design didn't use jam nuts and the bolts could easily come undone.

Now this morning as I sit here typing this post, I'm sore all over – my muscles aren't used to this kind of workout!  I'm almost 60, and this morning I actually feel like I'm that old (most of the time I don't feel that way at all)...

Dogly Adventure...

Took the dogs out (all four of them) as usual this morning.  It's a dark and clear night, moonless, with the Milky Way arcing from the north to the southeast.  We went through the usual ritual at the door – all four of them clamoring to get outside, me trying to get the leashes on the three brown dogs while they're wiggling and cavorting.  Race goes out naked – we sort of gave up on leashing him, as he's too darned hard to control with all that rocket-like energy.

All of this was completely normal.  However, once we got outside things changed.  Well, at least for the three field spaniels: they went on full alert.  Everything about their body language said “I'm really interested in this!”  Of course, I had no idea what “this” was – could have been anything at all!

I walked the group down our driveway, alongside the line of pine trees we have planted there.  As we got closer to the end of the pine trees, the brown dogs started acting very interested in the trunk of the last pine tree.  Race was off chasing pine cones, as usual; he was paying absolutely no attention to whatever it was that had the three brown dogs riveted.  I walked (really, the three brown dogs dragged me) toward that last pine, when suddenly a shape detached itself from the pine tree's trunk and scooted just as fast as it could go down our driveway and out the gate.  It was a fox; the silhouette of its tail and head a dead giveaway.  The three brown dogs never made a sound, but they sure wanted to chase it – they dragged me 10 or 15 feet down the driveway before I managed to regain control. 

Race chased his pine cone.  I don't believe he ever smelled or saw that fox...

Selasphorus rufus

Selasphorus rufus

Selasphorus rufus, aka the Rufous Hummingbird, is a migratory visitor to us each spring.  Occasionally individuals will stay into the summer, but usually they're gone by early May.  They're a little smaller than most of our hummers, but quite aggressive.

This morning I saw the first one this year, an adult male in full breeding plumage, chasing all the other hummers off the four feeders we have up.

The photo at right is not mine, but it's practically identical to the fellow I saw this morning.  Gorgeous, isn't he?

A Fine Day...

Debbie and I had a wonderful day yesterday.  First we worked ourselves into a stupor, cutting and burning brush in our front yard.  I estimate that we cut, carried, and burned between a ton and a ton-and-a-half of pine limbs.  The fire was awesomely hot, to the point where it was painful to get within 6 feet or so of it.  We started around 7 am, and by the time we wrapped it up at around 3 pm we had almost completely cleared the yard; just a few logs remain.  All this to trim up just the first third or so of our pine trees!

After we got done working, we showered and headed for Descanso Junction Restaurant.  There we met up with my cousin Mike D. and his significant other Diane.  They're from Colorado, and they're taking a grand driving tour of the west.  We caught them as they were headed to San Diego for a couple days of sight-seeing.  Though we've corresponded quite a bit in recent years, I haven't seen Mike since I was a kid, close to 50 years ago.  He's 11 years older than I am, so his memories of that event are better than mine.  We had a grand old time, swapping stories and feasting. 

Mike and I both chose the same dish: meatloaf and mashed potatoes with green beans, preceded by a seafood chowder.  Debbie got one of her all-time favorites, the fried chicken.  Diane, the light eater amongst us, got a club sandwich – the look of dismay on her face when she saw the (monster) size of it was priceless.  Mike, on the other hand, nearly jumped for joy when he saw the gigantic slab of meatloaf that didn't quite fit on his plate!  He finished his entire plate off, then eyeballed Diane's remaining half-sandwich.  I suspect that sandwich didn't make it to the refrigerator last night...

We took our separate paths upon leaving the restaurant, but not before we made plans for Mike and Diane to join us for a day of four-wheeling when we're out in Ouray next month.  We're going to take them to Yankee Boy Basin for some wildflowers...

Working in the Yard...

Your blogger is sore all over today, after a hard day's work in the yard yesterday.  We started off by a trip to Kniffing's Nursery – the most beautiful nursery we've seen in San Diego County.  We're kicking ourselves for not having found it sooner!  Not only is it a beautiful place to visit, but the people there are friendly and knowledgable; it felt like being home.  We met Ted Kniffing (the owner), his wife Eva (who helped us find what we were looking for), Hugo (he with the big muscles and the ability to manhandle 300 lb trees with little apparent effort), and Dawn (who was full of great ideas).

Our morning trip had an actual plan: we wanted a Palo Verde tree.  We'd picked the Palo Verde because of it's drought-tolerance, beautiful flowers, year-round green, and (perhaps most importantly) it's “twigginess” – for this tree was destined for a place near our bird feeders, where we have a dearth of nearby perches for the hummingbirds, orioles, goldfinches, grosbeaks, and house finches that all habitually perch before visiting the feeders. 

At Kniffings, Eva walked us around to see the various sizes and varieties of Palo Verdes they had in stock, but it was clear from her discussion that the variety “Desert Museum” was, in her opinion, the one to get.  We thought it was more attractive than the others, so we took her advice and bought one in a 24” square wooden container.  Hugo helped us load it up into my pickup, and away back home we went.  When I backed my truck into the place we were going to plant it, and raised the tree to the vertical, the birds were perching in it within 60 seconds – win!  Our friend and neighbor Jim helped me unload it; I dug the hole (about 12 cubic feet of wet dirt), and plop – in it went!  One beautiful Palo Verde tree.  We like it so much, we've decided to bracket the first one with two more...

I spent the next six hours or so whacking weeds on about a half-acre of ground.  I used the hand-carried Husqvarna with a steel blade to get the mustard plants below ground level.  It's a lot of work, but puts a real dent in the mustard's level of enthusiasm.  We also got ready to pull our out-of-control pampas grass by using the whacker to chop off all the blades.  This made about a cubic yard of debris – what a mess!  Also, using the whacker at head height was a lot of work; my arms are feeling it this morning.

After that we took another trip out to Kniffings, and picked up seven beautiful salvias for Debbie to pot and display (she's doing that today).  Then it was off to Wal-Mart to pick up 25 bags of large pine bark (they have very nice quality pine bark at a very reasonable price – over 1/3 less than the going price at the nurseries).  We were up near Alpine, and it was 5:30 pm, so we ran up to Descanso Junction restaurant and had a splendid meal of grilled mahi-mahi.  Then back home and spread all 25 bags of pine bark over a big bed that Debbie had cleared while I was weed-whacking.  Today Debbie is putting those salvias on display in the bed, in elevated pots.  They should show very nicely against the pine bark.

Whew – what a day!  Today I'm in my little home office, working on software.  Sitting, for once, feels very good...