Missing Mistletoe

A friend and I got together about 10 days ago to plan a garden club program.  Our objective was to lead our fellow club members in making kissing balls.  Neither of us had ever made one, but we had done our research and she had begun gathering some supplies for the project.  We divided up the chores and supply list, pleased that we were well on our way in preparations.

At the top of my list was gathering fresh greenery, especially mistletoe.  After all, it wouldn’t be a kissing ball without mistletoe.  There has always been lots of mistletoe here at Kalorama.  Some of the water oaks have so much that it they hardly appear to loose their leaves in winter.  At least, that’s the way it was a few years ago.  When I began looking for some that I could reach, I realized that there was none, and I couldn’t remember when I had last seen it in the trees.  Several years back, it seems.  I looked more thoroughly, especially in specific trees that I recalled hosting it.  I found one dead, brown clump in the elm tree beside the Visitors Center and no evidence of any elsewhere.  Now when I say there has always been lots of mistletoe here, I am not kidding.  I recall a sprig growing out of a poison ivy vine that was growing up a pine tree about 10 years ago.  It didn’t survive more than a year.  Guess it has low tolerance for poison ivy.  Oh, and the mistletoe itself is very poisonous.

Mistletoe is a parasitic plant spread by birds.  The pearly white berries consist of a substance that hardens like cement.  The birds eat them and then wipe their bills on the limbs they are perched on or poop them out on the tree.  The seeds are then cemented to the bark, where they sprout and send their roots into the live tree.  Occasionally you may find it on your car.  When you do, it will take a razor blade to shave it off.  It is very popular with Cedar Waxwings and Robins; two species with the habit of traveling in flocks devouring every berry in site.  Rarely do you see a single clump of mistletoe.  A lot of seed gets “processed” and planted by those guys.

Back to the search for some mistletoe.  I began studying the trees in earnest as I drove around running errands.  I rode shotgun on a trip along La. Hwy.2 from Bastrop to Homer last week, checking out the trees along the way.  No mistletoe.  Then I rode from Monroe to Shreveport along Interstate 20, watching for mistletoe in the trees along the way.  Still no mistletoe.  This morning, on the way home from church, I spotted several clumps in a single ornamental sugar maple tree in a yard in Bastrop.  I checked all the trees nearby, but there wasn’t any more.

I don’t know why it has disappeared.  The horrible hot dry summer of 2011 is not likely the culprit.  I think it has been gone longer than that. I am going to keep scanning the treetops, looking for mistletoe.

Beautiful Colors

Fall is beautiful on the hill and elsewhere this year.  It was lousy last year.  I've noticed when it is not wonderful one year, it more than makes up for the following year.  Not only is it beautiful, but it looks like it there is going to be color for a long time.  Some things are really bright right now and some things are still mostly green.  


Today I drove to Ruston and back.  The pale golden leaves of the muscadine vines were really showing in the trees along the roadside.  The individual leaves are about four inches across and shaped like a rounded heart with jagged edges.  They look like ornaments scattered across the trees.  We have them here at Kalorama, but they are not draped across pine trees like they are on the roadside, so they don't catch the eye among all the other colors.  I do love this time of the year at Kalorama.  Everything is golden and glowing with the sun shining through.  


Here are a few pictures taken this week. 

Cocculus carolinus, Carolina moonseed

Camellia sinensis, Tea (yes, this is the plant whose leaves give us that wonderful Southern iced tea.  The blooms are about the size of a quarter.)

Parthenocissus quinquefolia, Virginia creeper.

His Eye is on the Sparrow

If the Creator of the universe cares enough about the humble birds to care for them, why would He care any less about us? God provides for the birds' needs; as He loves us even more, we can count on Him to provide for us as well. Matthew 6:26. NAS

Around here, some parts of the bottom of the bottom of the food chain are doing very well.

Yesterday evening I was tending a brush pile fire which is sort of a captive audience-type task.  The bugs joined me in this endeavor. I don’t remember a time when the gnats have been this numerous.  You notice I am not saying the gnats are bad.  Their presence always reminds me that hungry birds, especially hummingbirds, should be getting plenty to eat.  In this case, between the gnats, mosquitoes, and eventually the flies that joined us, my thoughts drifted to the Bible verse above.  Then, the words to the old hymn, His Eye is on the Sparrow came to mind.  And as time wore on, I thought it would be great if one of those sparrows would drop by and perch on my shoulder and gobble bugs.  Before I was done, I was thinking I wouldn’t mind if a big old stinky cattle egret would come hang around with me and scarf some of the flies.  Gnats may be too small for cattle egrets.

It has been a hard year for plants and animals and humans.  As annoying as the bugs are, it is nice to see prosperity on some level, even if it makes hanging around outside mighty uncomfortable.  

Upon My Mother's Rock

Rocks, especially the kind you can pick up in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, have been a part of my life from the beginning. My mother gardened with rocks, and her mother did as well. They lined their flower beds with them, paved their paths, propped up bird baths, and used them as garden sculpture. They both gardened on a hillside, and rocks were used for retaining those hillsides. A newly planted shrub or perennial always had a few rocks placed at the base of the plant to discourage armadillos or dogs from digging them up. When our parents, and then our grandparents passed away, it was the rocks that I and my siblings were most eager to haul to our own gardens. Lots of these rocks were large. Playing around them as a child they were pedestals to stand on and maybe get a head above the rest, or reach that bottom limb of a tree to climb even higher. They were also places for critters to hide. Of course, I was always admonished to use a hoe or similar tool to turn over a rock, a habit I adhere to this day. One small retaining wall became a haven for box turtles, and therefore became a regular stop when making a “perimeter check” of my backyard. The rock in the picture was one of my mother’s prized rocks because it had moss growing on it. It also had a piece of resurrection fern growing among the moss up until a couple of years ago. Got to see if I can get that going again. All that green dressing made it highly desirable in my eyes, too, so it was one of the first ones I carted off. It is a big one. I am sure my husband did some major heating pad time after moving it. We hauled it to our first home in South Louisiana, and a couple more after that before bringing it to Morehouse Parish. Of course it came to Kalorama when we moved here, and when I set up the fountain as it is now, it got the place of honor to the right of the statue, “Katy.” The moss and resurrection fern was much remarked on by visitors. And then the other day I noticed a small garter snake sprawled over the rock, gazing out over the water. A fine perch, indeed, though highly exposed, as is often the case when one elevates themselves above the others. I was happy to see it enjoying my mother’s rock.

Goodbye Summer

Summer at Kalorama has produced quite a few encounters with these little stinkers. So cute when they are young and quite willing to live in close proximity to humans.

This one (pictured right) was indignant at being discovered outside in the daylight but it just didn’t have enough “stink” to run anyone off. I figured anything that determined to stand its ground needed its picture taken. A campaign to encourage the little family to move out into a den out in the woods somewhere dragged on for weeks. The dog got a lot of baths. Many weeks have passed since we have seen or smelled one. We are cautiously optimistic that the skunk family has retreated. Such is life on the nature preserve.


The end of summer signals the start of serious seed collecting around here. The bigleaf magnolia, Magnolia macrophylla, (pictured below), prized for its enormous leaves and spectacular blooms in May also has a big showy seed pod. The seeds are very popular with the birds, so it is always a challenge to beat them to the pods. We try to harvest the ones on bottom, leaving plenty up in the top of the tree for the birds.

In spite of the intense summer heat, the meadow areas had spectacular displays of prairie flowers in late June, July, and early August. It is amazing to see how those areas have spread over the years. There is room for a lot more. Typically, those areas are covered with butterflies when the flowers are in bloom. This year butterflies were seldom seen during the spring and summer. As of now, lovely orange Gulf fritillary butterflies and yellow sulphurs are regularly flitting around the Turk’s cap flowers in the butterfly garden. This annoys the ruby-throated hummingbirds to no end as they consider the Turk’s cap to be all theirs.

New Orleans Day 2

Today was more or less a play day. I set up my native plant exhibit, registered for the convention and shopped with like-minded friends. We walked across the street to the Canal Place Mall. I was surprised to discover that the Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn stores were no longer there. Later, driving down Magazine Street, there were more shops closed or going out of business. Signs of the recent recession, I suppose. There is quite a bit of residential property for sale in the French Quarter and on and around Magazine Street. This afternoon I went to Bridge City to a nursery I had heard about as having more variety of plants than most. It was interesting, but I could tell they had sold quite a bit of plant material recently. This was confirmed when I ran into someone at the hotel that told me the nurseries around here were having a very good spring because so many people had lost plants when the temperature dropped to 19 in February. Everyone had rushed out and bought plants as soon as possible to replace the dead stuff. He told me of another nursery I would probably like that is a little closer on the west bank in Marrero that I will try to sneak off to sometime tomorrow. I have a breakfast meeting, lunch meeting, and need to be able to raise my hand at the end of the meeting in between. Last thing of the day is high tea at the Windsor Court behind this Double Tree. This evening, we donned our sashes and decorated umbrellas and second lined around the hotel ball room. Afterwards a group of us headed across Canal Street for dinner at Morton's Steak House. For those who are interested, I had the jumbo scallops wrapped in bacon with apricot chutney. We shared a souffle for dessert that was fabulous. No pictures today, but I did manage to get the link on yesterday's post for the pictures I took on the tour.

New Orleans

I am in New Orleans for the Louisiana Garden Club Federation state convention this week. I spent today on the pre-convention tour. We boarded buses at the New Orleans Botanical Garden in City Park this morning and toured three gardens in the garden district. Each home had the landscape architect that did the grounds on hand to tell us all about it. All three were magnificent homes, but I only found one of the gardens to be a little interesting. We had lunch on the grounds at Longue Vue Gardens, and walked around the gardens there. I was able to get lots of Louisiana Iris pictures. I needed some those because all my pictures are from years ago and are slides. I was glad to get some digital pictures of one of the most spectacular Louisiana native flowers. We were bussed back to the botanical gardens for tours there, and I got some more pictures of different things. It is amazing how both gardens have recovered from Hurricane Katrina, both the wind and the flooding. However, things are able to grow year-round down here, so it grows twice as fast.

I bailed out before the bitter end and came back to the hotel and collapsed for a little while. Later I went out to eat with friends at Commander's Palace. I had never eaten there before. I had Crawfish and Tasso Mac Choux and Ponchatoula Strawberry Shortcake. It was all good!

Here is a link to pictures I took today. Pardon the iris enthusiasm.

New Orleans

Sticking the tractor

Perhaps winter, and my hibernation from blogging, is over. Dismal cold weather produced nothing but mundane thoughts in my head and severely curtailed my activity, which was frustrating to the extreme. Mundane thoughts and feelings of frustration are two things I do not care to share. Today, the sun is shining and it is HOT outside. Somewhere along the way between now and last October, when we started down the path of 30 inches of rainfall, a big chunk of the driveway near the house here caved in. It was on the edge of the driveway, and far enough over that none of us regulars were likely to drive into it, but close enough that a delivery truck or some of the folks that drive in to look and see what is blooming could definitely find it. For several weeks we have been tossing chunks of concrete, broken brick, broken flower pots, and assorted other non-biodegradable stuff in the hole. The fill had just about reached the top. I had put the front-end loader on the tractor a couple of weeks ago in anticipation of getting the dirt to fill in the hole and some other tasks that the front-end loader make easy. I decided today was the day I could finish filling the hole. I planned to go down the to the bottom of the slope below the washed out place and get some of the dirt that is constantly building up as it is washed out of the hill. I headed down the trail with the tractor. That path involves crossing a ditch in two places to reach the area that I can access the fill dirt. I didn't have any problems going down, of course. I got a bucket full of dirt and started back up the hill. I did a little slipping and sliding on the steep part in the layer of oak leaves that covered the path, but made it up to the top and dumped the dirt in the hole. I figured the path was good for one more trip and went back for another load. Coming back out with my second load, the rear wheels began to spin on those oak leaves and the wet slope underneath. I maneuvered around, trying to find a spot I could get a grip on without success. Now this steep spot is just above one of the ditch crossings. The trail is a loop, and I decided perhaps I could just back down the hill a ways and bring the dirt out the other end of the loop. Everything was fine for a few feet--after all, gravity was my friend going down the hill--until I reached the ditch. I got the back wheels across, but at that point, I was parallel to the hill. Slipping and sliding around, trying to use all the tricks I had, I managed to get a front wheel off of the ditch crossing and into the ditch. At this point, it crossed my mind that I might have to summon the backhoe to bail me out. Then I remembered the the first three people on my list of backhoe-drivers-to-the-rescue were kicking up their heels in California wine country, ostensibly shopping for equipment to bring all communications to my house via fiber optics. I had to dig myself out of this hole on my own. I had already given up on moving the dirt and dumped it out of the bucket to get rid of the weight. I was already getting tired. Driving this tractor, you are straddling the stick shift, with your right foot on the brake and left foot on the clutch. The brake is separated so that you can brake only one wheel, which is very useful when one has a good grip and the other wheel is spinning. No help at all when both are spinning. The brake is not a power break and at times like this I end up standing up to put enough weight on it to hold the tractor in place. When that happens, I also am standing on the clutch. Doing that puts it all the way to the floor, and in that position, the hydraulics don't work, so I can't operate the bucket. The bucket is what has to get me out of the hole. It is quite a wrestling match, mentally and physically. After several instances of bringing the lip of the bucket all the way back and down to the ground, then straightening, causing the front of the tractor to lift out of the hole and be shoved backwards I was able to once again get an a position where gravity was my friend. I headed to the other end of the trail loop with an empty bucket and the knowledge that the hole would not be filled today. I breathed a sigh of relief when I reached the top of the hill since there was some spinning climbing on that end of the trail also, but nothing major.

Species-type daffodils are in full bloom this week at Kalorama. I noticed the snowflakes, which are not nearly in full bloom were looking wilted in the hot wind. Got to be the sunshine and heat. They have plenty of water. The bulbs pictured are called Texas Star or Tazetta. They are a natural cross between Sweeties and Paperwhite types.

This week was the first time this season that the temperature dipped down into the twenties. Around here that means it is time to drain the water lines. I was a rookie at outdoor plumbing fifteen years ago when we began laying irrigation lines here at Kalorama. Our friend, Rector, directed that project. It was his idea to put a drain in a box in the ground at the lowest points on the water line. The man that ran the irrigation supply store that I did most of our shopping at sold me drain valves that could be turned on and off with a special tool without having to get on my hands and knees and sticking my hand down in the hole. That is really a fine thing indeed, because critters love to hang out in those drain boxes. The last drain on the north side of the driveway has had a rough green snake living in it for the past two winters. A rat snake lived in it before that.

I gathered up the tools necessary for the job and along with Dixie, headed out on the BadBoy to drain the lines. Everything went just as planned, and the green snake didn't seem to mind being bothered, though it was way too cold for it to care. It had wrapped its tail around the valve handle, so I had to be careful to keep from pinching it. While we were out, I took a few pictures of what I knew would be the last of the pretty leaves.

The red leaves and berries on the dogwoods were spectacular this year. The little silver buds are next spring's flowers. The yellow-bellied sapsuckers are in the trees all the time eating the berries.

Early in December the first narcissus begin to bloom. I don't know the name of this variety, but it is the earliest of paperwhites. It is very white, and has a lovely scent. I have a lot of interest and help when I get down to ground level to take pictures.





































The gingko tree was really pretty this year. It is one of the last trees to turn and is always bright yellow. The tree here at Kalorama doesn't have a great shape because it has grown up in the edge of the woods, but the leaves are especially pretty carpeting the ground.

















Several years ago we planted a Witch Hazel tree behind the Visitors Center building. It is a fairly common tree of southern woodlands. It has pretty yellow leaves in the fall, and very interesting yellow flowers November through January. I discovered it was blooming the other day.

After Thanksgiving

It has been a long hectic couple of months. I got so busy and so tired that I completely forgot about my blog. October was mostly a blur. House training a puppy is exhausting. That is done, thankfully, and it was comparatively easy. There were still many nights of hyphenated sleep involved. Also mixed in there were my son and his wife moving nearby, my husband's cataract surgery, and both my husband and myself having some sort of respiratory infection or virus involving several days of high fever and lots of congestion misery.

One of the high points was Dixie catching her first mole. She entertained herself for quite a while playing with it. I think she finally moved it to a spot with a hole in the ground and it escaped. I did get some pictures. Since then, she has been looking for mice and other varmints when she goes outside, which is exactly what she is bred to do.

The fall colors have been spectacular here at Kalorama this year. There are still some lingering on the trees. The whole hillside glows golden when the sun manages to shine. I hope to get a few pictures before they are all gone.

Dixie

We have a new member of our household this week. She is an Irish terrier puppy we have named "Dixie." She is 9 weeks old. Terry and I drove to Little Rock Sunday evening in the pouring rain and spent the night with our daughter. Early the next morning we drove to southern Missouri to the breeder and picked her up. Why would you go to so much trouble for a dog, you might ask. Well, we didn't think it was trouble to drive to the southern part of Missouri this time of year. Actually, we made a similar drive last year, just to look at the fall color and wildflowers. We were a couple of weeks earlier this year and the wildflowers were much prettier.

We lost our beloved Sadie, a sharpei-yellow lab mix this year. She was a wonderful, faithful companion for 16 years. She lost her hearing a few years back, and in the past year had really developed problems with arthritis. It was pretty empty around here without her. Dealing with Sadie's sharpei-isms and lab-isms led me on a hunt for a dog about the same size as Sadie, without the shedding and allergy problems that plagued her and us all those years.

There were a handful of breeds that fit my criteria, with the Irish terrier having the least amount of health problems within the breed. Of all the breeds I pursued, an Irish terrier in southern Missouri was my closest option. We were not eager for a little puppy to housebreak but the IT rescue folks would not place an adult dog in a home with a cat. Our cat is not thrilled with the puppy, but at this point, she is larger than the dog. She has swatted her on the head several times when she grew tired of the attention. The cat loved Sadie, and missed her as much as we did when she died. We are hoping she will grow more tolerant of Dixie and appreciate the company when we are gone.

Terry and I are getting a whole lot more exercise, walking a puppy every hour. Right now she gets tired way before we do, but it won't be that way very long.

From Mammals to Reptiles

The morning after in the pantry, I affixed, with nails and screws, the panel that blocks access to the area below the afore-mentioned stairs. I finished off the edges with caulk and Great Stuff (spray foam). Then I put everything back in the pantry. The cat is no longer interested in the pantry. Good sign. However, last night early in the evening, I heard mouse sounds on the other side of the wall when I was standing in the hall. I called out to the miscreant that I hoped it was gnawing on the tasty poison bar I had placed in there the day before. I have decided to clean out the other pantry to make sure it is still mouse-proofed. I am glad I live in the country and only have to deal with little mice. I have had to deal with rats once, when we lived in a subdivision in town. Rats are much more of a town problem. They got after the dog food in our garage store room, and transferring it to a metal can they could not chew through discouraged them enough to move on to greener storerooms. Rats are high on my icky list.

The title implies there were reptile encounters today, and there certainly were. I had a garden club come to tour the grounds today. They arrived around noon. I spent the morning doing the last minute stuff to get ready. I began by fogging around the Visitors Center building for mosquitoes. Mosquitoes love the Visitors Center building, with all the porches and the deep entry. After fogging I went off to do something else while it did its work. I returned an hour later and immediately spotted a medium sized speckled king snake up near the front doors of the building. I studied the situation and realized it was small enough to make it through the crack at the bottom of the door into the building. I really didn't want it in there. Too many hiding places. I tried scaring it away from the door on the inside, but it wouldn't move. I ended up with a broom, trying to encourage it to go out into the flower bed in front of the building. It really did not want to go. It fought me out the whole way, coiling and striking at the broom over and over. It was so determined, that for the rest of the day, I kept peering into the entry way to see if it had returned. I knew it would not be popular in there with the garden club ladies. Fortunately, it stayed out of sight, and I didn't tell them about it.

After snake wrangling, I wandered around on fire ant patrol, waiting for the ladies to arrive. Much to my dismay, I spotted a very large piece of scat, freshly laid, right up there by the building in the middle of the driveway. It was clearly from a large canine. I grabbed a shovel to dispose of it, wondering what on earth thought it needed to mark the driveway right there. Moving it, I noticed that there were some persimmon seeds (they are fairly large, so easy to spot) in it. I figured it must have belonged to a coyote. They have done that before in the driveway.

My husband had a more exciting encounter at work this morning. His secretary opened the back door to the office, saw something, and called him to come quickly. There was a live alligator, about three feet long right out the door. Someone had to have put it there. They called LDWF to come remove it. He said it was injured, like it had been run over or something.

Sorry I don't have pictures to illustrate all these encounters. I was really wishing I had my camera with the snake. It had recently shed its skin, and was very bright and colorful. I wouldn't have posted a picture of the scat, probably....

Mickey & Minnie

This past week I learned that I have a mouse problem in the house. Last Wednesday night, our daughter came in from Little Rock to leave for the wedding in College Station the next day. After she moved out, I transformed her upstairs bedroom into my sewing room, and I still had some pre-wedding sewing going on when she got there. She decided to sleep downstairs in her brother's old room. She was upstairs in our room sometime after 1:00 am that night telling me there was a terrible noise downstairs. Once I was awake enough to respond, I called the cat's name. She was nearby; not downstairs making noise. I scooped up the cat and went downstairs. I heard a noise in the wall between the back staircase and the hall to the downstairs bedrooms right away and knew it was mice. The cat perked up because she heard it, too. I put her down and she walked up and down the hall sniffing the wall, but couldn't do any more than that. I couldn't do anything about it because we were leaving the next morning. Now, I assumed this was a new event, with the temperatures about to change. We don't get evidence of mice every year in the fall, but it has happened often enough over the years to be half way expected. It is a big, country house on piers that turned 80 years old this year. Sometime over the four days we were in Texas for the wedding, our son and his new bride heard the story and chimed in with their own versions of hearing the mice while staying downstairs. I was appalled that it had been going on for that long and nobody had mentioned it. Can't fix it if we don't know about it.

Today I bought a supply of mouse bait. This evening, I emptied out the floor of the food pantry that has an access panel to the area beneath the stairway. The cat and I had heard the mice last night. I pried the panel off and saw where the little beggars had removed some of the sealant I had plugged holes years before with and had gotten in. I was expecting to see a whole mouse circus set up under the stairs when I opened the panel. I was relieved not to see much of anything. I had cleaned behind it years before and it still looked pretty good. I called the cat to come check it out. She walked all around the area for 15 minutes or so, sniffing and investigating. When she was done, I tossed in some bait and closed the panel. I will re-seal it tomorrow. I left everything out of the pantry so the cat can patrol it during the night. I will toss some bait up in the attic and between the floors tomorrow and hope that will work as well as it has in the past.

On the outside, I was glad to see the hummingbirds are still here. Below are some pictures I took last week. They are all over the red turk's cap flowers. Gulf fritillary butterflies also enjoy the turk's cap.

Road Trip

Today my daughter and I drove from Collinston to College Station, Texas. It was a very long drive--387 miles in 7 hours, including a brief lunch stop, a gas stop, and an after lunch pit stop. The problem is you just can't get here from there. A further problem for me was that we had a very long stretch from Henderson to Buffalo and there were no interesting grasses, no wildflowers, and the only birds I saw were crows and vultures.

Somewhere along the way, I noticed that we must have crossed a "frost" line because the trees were full of ball moss. That is a close relative of our Spanish moss that grows in tight balls in warmer regions on nearly any aerial surface. I have seen it completely covering utility lines in southern Texas. It grows in the Baton Rouge area in Louisiana and places south of there.

We drove a short ways on I-45, from Buffalo to Madisonville. Texas Highway 21 from Madisonville to Bryan had beautiful roadside displays of grasses and fall wildflowers and almost no traffic. That's my kind of traveling!

It rained on us several times, and is raining here this evening in College Station. We were very surprised at how cool it was when we got out of the car at the hotel. It was in the mid-60's, and was down to 60 degrees when we got in from supper.

Our hotel is full of police and firemen from New York City. They have been here all week at some sort of training seminar. Strange hearing those New York accents in the elevator. A big group of them came in the front door as we were checking in. I couldn't hear their accents, but they all had a look about them. I asked the clerk if they were having a Bubba convention, and he told me who they were, and that they were leaving tomorrow. I guess they will be replaced by Aggie fans, as this hotel and all others in town are full for the weekend because it is a home game Saturday.

Tomorrow I will go visit the florist and do some last minute gathering up for the rehearsal dinner Saturday night.

Flowers and 'shrooms

I cautiously ventured outside yesterday, hoping the rains had stopped. I took along the fire ant poison, since the little devils were busy building up their mounds trying to dry them out. There were so many mushrooms popping up everywhere that I went back and grabbed the camera. Along the way I found a flower or two in bloom, and then got absorbed in watching the butterflies and hummingbirds on the turk's cap flowers.
This one, called Green Parasol, is newly popped out of the ground, and makes quite a show. They always come up in the same spots when it rains a lot and are highly poisonous. After a day or so, it grows in to a large flat-topped mushroom. The white skin pops open and begins to flake off.























I discovered these lavender colored ones today in the lawn. As best I can tell, they are Amethyst Laccaria. One book says, "edible, but poor" and the other says "harmless, but not worth eating." Don't worry, I won't.








Elsewhere out in the lawn I found Lady's Tresses orchid. They seem to appear overnight scattered in the lawngrass. Sometimes the spike will be 18" or more. This one was barely a foot tall. They are true orchids, as you can tell from the tiny flowers. The flowers are arranged in a spiral formation, which is noted in the botanical name, Spiranthes. It is a terrestrial orchid, meaning it grows in soil, as opposed to the common florist type orchids that have aerial roots and grow in trees.






Scattered all over Kalorama is this bulb which blooms every year in early fall, Zephyr Lily. I was taught that they were not native, but everything I have researched on them so far is stating that they are. My "last word" in botany is the USDA Plant Database web site. It has been so slow for the past month, that I have hardly been able to use it. All that aside, it is a lovely little flower and prolific, showy bloomer.

More pests

I am happy to report that after setting the afore mentioned trap, we had an armadillo in it the next morning. I believe that may be the sixth one I have caught. I have a situation tailor-made for catching them. They like to root along the base of the front porch. It stays damp there from the run-off from watering the container plants on the porch. I place the trap parallel to the porch right up against the base and the armadillo, blind as a bat, just wanders in and trips the door. When I see the signs and put the trap out, I usually catch it the first night. If I don't, and there are new signs of digging in the morning, then I turn the trap around because I know he is coming from the other direction. I thought I might get a picture of the latest catch, because it was a big one. I set the trap on end and opened the door to look at it, and the smell was so foul that I shut it up and refused to open it again for a picture.

After the rain we got earlier in the week, I decided to work on reducing the fire ant population. They respond to heavy rain by building up their mounds in the days after the rain, which makes them easier to spot. I have a wedding coming up in a couple of weeks, and I have been trying to be very careful to avoid any sort of bruises, scraps, or other assorted wounds that I seem to collect on the job, especially on my feet and ankles. Most years I manage to get by with only one or two ant bites, but these past two weeks I have collected more on my feet than in my entire life!

I found that if I patrol for the mounds in spring and fall, I can pretty much keep them subdued. I have learned the high and dry places they like best on the property and I aggressively seek them out and destroy the mounds. I felt like that would be a safe, injury-free task for me to do. While out pestering the ants, I noticed quite a bit of damage being done in an area by an armadillo along the edge of a bed out on the grounds. He had been working in a straight line where the pine straw met the grass. I thought I could put the trap out in the line and I just might catch him. I have never had success away from the porch getting an armadillo in the trap. The trap had been sitting near the back door on a couple of flagstones. I didn't want to put it up until I was sure there was no fresh damage in the front flower bed. I picked it up and set it on the back of the BadBoy, and immediately felt something stinging my feet. Much to my dismay, I discovered that in the short time the trap had been sitting there, a huge fire ant mound had been constructed under it and around the flagstones it was sitting on. Now there were fire ants everywhere--all over the ground, the trap, the BadBoy, and the water hoses that were also on the vehicle. I dusted it all with fire ant poison and went in the house thoroughly disgusted with burning feet. I put some ice and water in a pan and soaked my feet until the burning stopped and pondered the situation.

One of my sisters introduced me to ichthammol, or black drawing salve when we were in Costa Rica last Thanksgiving. It is primitive stuff--the active ingredient is shale oil extracted from somewhere on the planet. It works pretty well, but smells like tar, and is mixed with mineral oil and petroleum jelly. I had never tried it on ant bites, but thought this might be the time, to see if it would lessen the damage. I am very pleased with the results. It works much faster than baking soda and I had much less inflammation from this round of bites, and I really think they will be long gone by the wedding.

I never have gotten the trap back out. I am really sort of fearful of doing anything out on the grounds, though I know with all the rain we are getting, there will be mowing needed shortly. I guess I could start wearing my tall rubber boots all the time.....at least until after the wedding.

'Possum in the trap

After the cat episode several days ago, I left one of the traps out. It was one of our wooden box traps. Several years ago an aggressive raccoon began visiting the bird feeders. It was large, and would get on a feeder in the daylight and hunker down over the feed and growl if I walked out on the porch. It also destroyed a couple of hummingbird feeders. I tried catching it in a wire trap like you can buy at the hardware store. The old coon was so big that when the door came down its back end kept it from closing, so it got the bait and backed back out. I called the LDWF and asked for the trapper to make a visit. He came along in a couple of days, pulling a trailer with an ATV with several dead beavers strapped on the back. He had been at the country club trapping beavers on the golf course. He listened to my tale of woe and said he had a trap that he thought would work and he would drop it by in a few days. Sure enough, he came by later in the week with a fine trap made of plywood. I was very impressed with it and asked if I could take it to my carpenter and have him make me one. He said, "Certainly, a woman like you needs a couple of them." He went on to explain that one 4 x 8 sheet of plywood would make two. In the meantime, I set his trap that night and caught the large raccoon. Terry hauled it off to the swamp so it could become king or queen of the jungle.

Since that time, I have caught a whole bunch of critters in my traps, mostly armadillos. I didn't catch a cat in it, but set it up on the front porch, still set, last week. In the meantime, we are being visited by a third cat, about the same size as the other two. This one is black and white and comes up on the front porch every evening. Our cat has made watching for this cat a ritual, and lets out a true caterwaul every evening when it appears. It runs when we appear. Well, the weather was lovely this evening, so Terry and I ate our hamburgers he grilled for our supper on the front porch. At some point I noticed the trap was tripped. I figured the stray cat had bumped it. I was pretty sure it wouldn't go in since there wasn't any bait in it. I picked it up and it felt kind of heavy. I turned it on one end and peered down in it, surprised to see a young 'possum playing dead in the bottom. I had notice that an armadillo had been digging at the edge of the porch, so I dumped the 'possum out(it refused to crawl out; insisted on playing dead) and set the trap again, placing it parallel to the porch in hopes of catching the 'diller. Or 'dillers.

Here is a picture of one of the traps.

Summer Plague

August 28, 2009

I have a plague visiting Kalorama right now. It doesn’t seem to bother the visitors who come and go, but I assure you it bothers the curator on a daily basis. It is a tiny little flying insect called an eye gnat. It is actually a fly, and under close magnification resembles a tiny housefly. The males feed among the flowers. Pregnant females feed—warning, this is gross—on secretions of mammals. They don’t actually bite or suck fluids, but somewhere in their mouth parts there are some tiny little spines. Contact with those on the eyelids leads to conjunctivitis and is a common cause of pinkeye. They also seek out wounds and the base of hair follicles.

About the only good news about their habits and life cycle is that they do not lay eggs on mammals so we are not hosting their maggots. They lay their eggs in soil with rotting leaves and are especially fond of plowed or tilled soil with lots of organic matter. That means those armadillos that are plowing up the ground around the shrubs I am watering are catering to those flies. And the fly larva is doing a great service to the planet, along with the earthworms, breaking down organic matter.

This isn’t the first time they have been so bad. I have learned over the years that insect repellent doesn’t do much good. Glasses are somewhat helpful, until one figures out how to get behind them. Goggles are great. I have noticed that wearing a broad brimmed hat seems to baffle them, though after doing some reading on them, that apparently didn’t help the Lewis & Clark expedition. They were so bad yesterday that they were landing on my legs, arms, neck, and face. They impart the sensation of a single strand of hair on the skin and my experience is so bad than even inside, I am constantly aware of, well, the touch of a single strand of hair. So if you see me around town, well out of range of any eye gnats, swatting at myself, you know that I am having mental issues born of eye bug trauma.

Here are some recent pictures:

Spicebush butterfly on Butterflyweed. The butterfly lays her eggs on sassafras leaves at Kalorama.

This leopard frog is probably a parent to the tadpoles pictured in previous blog entries. It was hanging out in the top of a flower pot beside the fountain, very well disguised in the potting soil.

Gaura is a member of the primrose family. There are hybrid versions sold for summer landscaping that are much more compact and have deeper pink flowers than this tall, somewhat sprawling native. It is often infested with aphids which attracts smaller migrating birds in the fall. On hot days the flowers look like tiny white handkerchiefs draped all over the plant. Each flower only lasts one day.

Cat Tales

Three weeks ago while enjoying dinner with friends and family, one of them spotted a cat on the front porch, right outside the dining room, devouring a blue striped skink. The cat was a gray tabby that looked to be about half grown, as in small, but past the cute kitten stage. It ran away when it noticed all the humans looking at it.

Outside cats are a no-no at a nature preserve. Feral and domesticated cats allowed to roam outside play a factor in species decline in songbirds and other creatures within their native habitats all over the planet.

Within a few days, I again saw the gray cat. Every time I would enter the garage bays where the equipment is parked, it would shoot out and disappear. Then, I realized there were two cats. Most times when I would go out the front door to replenish the bird feeders, a calico cat about the same size would bolt out of the flower bed. Within a couple of days, there were enough feathers under one of the feeders for me to conclude that a blue jay had been taken, and maybe something else had lost some feathers in a fight. We got the live traps out of the garage and I set one near the feeder and the other in the garage. We had eaten boiled shrimp that evening for supper, so I used the tails and shells as bait. I also put out some cat food in the garage in hopes of relieving the pressure on the bird feeder. The next day, the feathers around the feeder where the trap was indicated that a cardinal had also met its maker. I removed that trap out of fear that the cat had used the trap to help it reach the feeder.

After I started putting food at the shed, I didn't see the calico around the front yard anymore. One day when I put food out, I called, "kitty-kitty," and the calico came running, mewing, and wrapping itself around my ankles. That confirmed what I already had figured. Someone had "gifted" us with these two cats. Yesterday, I discovered the trap at the garage was tripped, and sure enough, the gray cat was inside. I didn't know what I was going to do with the cats. Neither one of us has what it takes to terminate them. I didn't know anyone that wanted them, and I did ask around. I put some cat litter in a pan, and some food in a big pet cage and called the calico cat and put it in. The gray cat was not at all disposed to be friendly, but its situation wasn't friendly, so I didn't hold that against it. When I tried to empty it from the trap into the cage, it managed to escape. I was so aggravated. I am sure I will never catch it again. Unsure what to do with the calico, I finally got a hold of my friend who works with the humane society and she said I could bring it. Mind you, I told her it was a half grown kitten because I didn't know otherwise at the time. This morning I got the pet carrier that I use to take our house cat who is never allowed outside to the vet. I placed the calico inside the carrier, and began walking away from the garage toward my car. Now I have a pile of pine knots beside the driveway in front of the garage. The calico was very vocal the whole time, and as I started down the driveway, three tiny white kittens tumbled out from under the pine knots headed straight for us. Aaaargh!!!! I checked the calico, and sure enough, she had been nursing. I caught the kittens and put them in the carrier with her, and she immediately began licking and tending to them. I called my friend but couldn't get her. I headed in to town to the cat shelter where they seemed happy to take them. I gave them a check, too. So far today, I have not seen the gray cat, nor has any of the cat food at the garage disappeared. I am hoping it was so traumatized that it has left us for good. And I hope that the speckled kingsnake that lived in the garage has survived the cats.

Chesney Prairie

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Tonight we are in Alma, Arkansas. We drove up this morning with a good friend to explore some prairies. Our friend had heard a report of bright yellow goldfinches feeding on ashy sunflowers on the Chesney Prairie Natural Area just west of Springdale. We drove up, stopping at the two largest prairie natural areas in Arkansas on the way. We reached Cherokee Prairie and the almost adjacent H.E. Flanagan Prairie right after lunch. We had clearly missed the bloom there, and only heard one goldfinch, so we headed up to the Chesney. Though relatively small (84 acres), and visited by the aroma of a chicken house on one side and a dairy on the other, it was full of ashy sunflowers and yellow goldfinches. There was a butterfly or two hanging around, too. Also, bobwhites were calling constantly. We were never able to get a good sharp picture of a goldfinch. They were not nearly as bold as they are at our bird feeders in the winter time, but I have included some anyway. The sunflowers are Helianthus mollis, called ashy sunflower because they are covered in grey hairs.

The plant with the round white balls of flowers being visited by a monarch butterfly is called buttonbush. It is a very common shrub in the south almost always growing in water or areas that are flooded part of the year. The airy-looking grass is switchgrass. The orange butterfly on the ashy sunflower is an American fritillary. The rosy pink flowers with a monarch butterfly is some sort of milkweed. It was quite tall and full of flowers. I have not researched it's name yet.

We don't know where we are going to visit tomorrow, on our way home.