Evening light

 

 

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher.

 

 

Update

 

 

Several people have asked about the compost tumbler.  It’s called a Hotfrog.  It’s available on Amazon:

 

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IFN972U/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

The description says it can turn around a batch in as little as two weeks.  The best I’ve done in our hot humid climate is a month.  Initially, it seems like it fills up pretty fast, but as it composts, the volume reduces, and you can just keep adding bits to one side for a month while the other side finishes.  If the yard clippings seem too big, we pile them on the ground, run the little electric lawnmower over them, and empty the catcher into the composter.  For the bigger branches and palm fronds, we’ve got a small electric chipper.

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077YDZ725/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

 

 

The dogs and the frog.  (We know it’s a toad; sometimes we just want to say frog.)  They get along fine.  Where the little guy lives in the fountain pond is the same place the dogs go to drink out of the “mountain stream”.  He and the dogs don’t bother each other at all.

 

 

 

No running or barking required!

 

 

The Composter

 

 

It’s working great!

 

 

Another finished batch today.

 

Yard trimmings

Kitchen scraps

Paper bits from the shredder

Egg shells

Coffee grounds

Paper towels

Potato peels

Apple cores

Orange peels

 

Composted down to mulch and returned to the earth.

 

 

Baxter Black

 

 

Cowboy Poet.  Philosopher.  Former large animal vet, and prolific dispenser of country wisdom.

 

https://www.npr.org/people/2100231/baxter-black

 

 

“I count myself very lucky that I get to be a part of the wonderful world of horse sweat, soft noses, close calls and twilight on the trail,” he wrote. “I like living a life where a horse matters.”

 

We love the sound of his voice.

 

Aged 77.  Succumbed to leukemia.

 

A fountain on the deck

 

 

With a freeloader.

 

A little toad, living on and around our deck…

 

…and in the little fountain pool.  We think it’s a Gulf Coast Toad.

 

It’s totally charming.

 

Truth varies

 

The governing body of Formula One racing sets standards for how Formula One cars have to be designed.  Within these standards every team does the best they can to create the fastest car on the track.  The standards don’t stay the same forever.  Once every few years, the standards are updated, upgraded, to take advantage of newer technology, and all the teams have to design and perfect new cars.  Here is what the 2022 Ferrari looks like.

The revisions that took effect this season incorporate more “ground effects”.  That means the underside of the car is designed to reduce air pressure underneath the car, pulling it down to provide more traction, allowing it to corner at higher speeds.  The underbody of the car kind of acts like an airplane wing, but instead of providing lift, it works in reverse to pull the car down tighter to the track.  An unintended consequence of this design revision resulted in “porpoising” at high speeds however.  Porpoising is when the car is pulled down so hard it touches the track, or bottoms out the suspension, breaking the suction underneath so that the car bounces back up on the suspension before being pulled back down by the ground effects, until the process repeats, and so on.  At two hundred miles per hour, that can be a problem.

 

Now, halfway through the season, with the constructors unable to solve the problem, drivers of these newly designed cars are claiming that this bouncing is so hard on their bodies that it is a health risk, and a safety risk.  They may suffer physical damage from the pounding, and they may become unable to control a “porpoising” car at high speed and crash.  “Change the design parameters.  You have to protect the drivers from injury.  It’s not fair.”

 

Hard to argue that.  We can all tell the problem is real just by watching this all unfold in front of us on the television screen.  But wait.  There is another perspective.  Of the ten teams trying to deal with this inherent design issue, a couple of the teams have done better than the others at minimizing the porpoising of their cars.  They say, “Not so fast.  We’re not having a problem.  You’re going to change the rules so the people who can’t figure out the solution can catch up to us?  That’s not fair!”

 

Uh oh.  Competing truths!  Porpoising cars are unsafe to drive.  True.  Change the rules.  But some of the teams have figured out the problem, now have the advantage, and changing the rules in the middle of the season would award an unfair benefit to their competitors.  Also true!

 

The governing body of Formula One is called the FIA.  They created this mess.  They’re going to have to figure it out.

 

 

Truth varies

 

 

This abundance chart is accurate.

 

For Red-winged Blackbirds, in this area, at any time of year, the chance is high that if you’re looking in the appropriate habitat, you are highly likely to see a red-winged blackbird.  Our experience suggests that is absolutely true, but there is more to it than that.

 

Earlier this year, we stopped feeding birds for a few weeks because the feeders were being overwhelmed by hundreds of red-winged blackbirds.  Now, almost all of them have moved on.  We’re seeing one red-winged blackbird each day.

 

It might seem like we would see some change on the abundance chart between hundreds of birds a day and just one, but the number of birds isn’t taken into account on the chart, just the likelihood of seeing a particular bird, any particular day, in appropriate habitat.

 

The green jay is back!

 

 

Haven’t seen him for weeks!  Suddenly, there amongst the white-winged doves.

 

In search of the perfect peanut.

 

Our neighborhood green jay.

 

 

 

The Great Short Shadow Contest

 

 

The results are in!

 

For brother Tom in the Pacific Northwest, we have a 4 foot shadow.

 

Followed by Christie.  Her shadow was only a little over 3 feet.

 

Farther south, Brian checks in with a 23 inch shadow.

 

And my shadow, it’s barely measurable.   It’s only 3 inches from my toes!

 

It’s all about latitude.  The equator is at zero degrees.  The tropics are defined by the Tropic of Cancer to the North and the Tropic of Capricorn to the south.  These are the farthest points north and south that the sun can ever be directly overhead.  The Tropic of Cancer is at 24 degrees north of the equator.  If I were standing on that line, my shadow would be straight down at high noon on the summer solstice.  (If I were on the equator looking north on the summer solstice, my shadow would be behind me.)  Where we live in Edinburg, TX, we’re less than 3 degrees north of the Tropic of Cancer, so hardly any shadow at all.  At Becky’s house in Erie, CO, they’re 16 degrees north of the Tropic of Cancer.  And in Edmonds, they’re 24 degrees north of the Tropic of Cancer.  At 48 degrees north on the globe, they’re closer to the north pole than they are the equator!

 

Groove-billed Ani

 

 

We’ve been waiting and waiting for the summertime groove-billed anis to show up.

 

They’re just silhouettes in the trees in the morning light, but we got our first sighting of the year!

 

 

 

 

It looks like we might be gathering some nesting material.  That would be nice if they settle in for the summer.

 

 

The Great Short Shadow Contest!

 

 

Any and all submissions welcome!

 

Tomorrow is the official shortest day, highest sun, but plus or minus a day or two won’t make any difference.  The best time of day to take the shot will be about noon, standard time, 1pm daylight.  Even better than timing it by the clock though will be timing it by the compass.  Time zones are just approximations, plus or minus a half hour or so.  At the point your shadow is aligned perfectly north/south, will be the shortest shadow at your exact location.  My best time is at 1:30.

 

For the long shadow contest in December, I was 7 feet tall!

 

I had taken my picture slightly after the north/south sun-peak of the day though.

 

Can you spot the

 

Can you spot the giant moth in this picture?

It’s a Black Witch Moth.  We don’t see them every year.  Last one was 2017.

A male.  Females look a little different.  In Central American cultures it’s historically considered a bad omen, even a harbinger of death if it flies into your house.  In Spanish, it’s known as Mariposa de la Muerte.  Death Butterfly.  Here, we just think it’s cool.  It’s not quite as big as my hand, but still, that’s a pretty big moth!

 

Sorghum

 

 

 

It has such a nice color when it matures.

 

It’s a grain, like corn, but a much shorter plant, and the kernels it produces are in the blooms on top, not down on cobs like corn.  It is harvested as a grain crop and used in people food (It’s gluten free), cattle feed, and silage.  Some of it gets processed for ethanol.  There is a lot of it here.  It’s drought tolerant and likes the heat of South Texas.

 

Before I drove off this afternoon

 

 

I told the dogs “great news” I was going to go get mom from the airport and bring her home from her trip to California!

 

They were thrilled.  They escorted me to the front gate.

 

We fly in and out of that little airport in Harlingen an hour away.

 

 

And the puppy reunion. 

 

 

 

Now, the pack is complete again.

 

 

Crape Myrtle

 

 

Way later than we expect it to each year, the crape myrtle finally leafs out and grows like crazy.  Here it is, leafing and growing.

 

Then, when we’ve totally giving up on it blooming, maybe in July, the flowers pop out.  Nothing to show here.  No flowers popping out.  It’s still just June.

 

There has been a mockingbird in the crape myrtle though.  A pair in fact.

 

 

 

We watched them build a nest.  No photos, the nest was pretty hard to see.

 

It got easier to see when they started feeding the baby that hatched out though.  Got a couple photos of a baby face getting fed.

 

 

The baby fledged and is gone now.  We saw it one morning in the latticework on the back fence complaining and getting fed.  I guess that’s all it took for it to be off on its own.