Something about ponds in dunes always gets me.
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I have pure white digitalis purpurea in the flower bed here. Purple ones grew here and one year my dad decided to remove the darkest colored ones; I think it took at least six years before a white one came up.
Now I get purple ones with white spots and white ones with purple spots!
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That flavor is good also. This one is normally sold out so o went ahead and grabbed it.
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Same here. The coastal areas are some of my favorite places to hike. Reminds me of the black water river.
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That is neat. Here is a creek in the dunes on Lake Michigan where my kids and their cousins were playing a few weeks ago
I was just reading where Alabama has so much forest, it’s something like number 4 or 5 in the nation in percent of tree cover. That is pretty cool, too.
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Or it’s just trying to visualize flying? (Jealously, no doubt.)
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i missed the photo with its chin on the ground. i had been watering, and no doubt the concrete was cool from the water and being in the shade, and the squirrel was trying to cool by putting maximum surface area on the concrete.
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No doubt. (Oh, I just said that. ; - )
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There’s a creek down on the southern Oregon coast that meanders through dunes, first running north a couple of miles behind the former primary dune, then cutting through and flowing a couple of miles south behind the newer primary dune, and finally just sort of wandering out through the beach. What the end looks like where it meets the beach changes somewhat with every storm; the time a friend and I canoed it we came to what we thought was the end and it looked a great deal like the above (though reduce the dune by 90%), but then it turned and raced straight towards the surf. I grabbed out packs and heaved them onto dry sand and yelled “Ramming speed!” and we canoed right into the surf – we were doing quite well right up until the next breaker waited until it was just above the bow end . . . I’d practiced (and taught) righting a swamped canoe many times in lakes and rivers, but found it doesn’t quote work right in the surf.
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Like in Ben Hur? My brother and I used that call all the time as kids! Sounds like fun (and beautiful).
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We’ve got Japanese knotweed. When horticulturists from OSU asked colleagues in Japan how to control it, the response was, “Control??” Here it chokes out everything; there it’s just another plant in the system. It even destroys some swimming holes because it grows right out into sandbars, and when the rainy season brings more sand downstream its dead stems catch heaps, so sandbars that have been about the same size and shape for fifty years suddenly start growing, and the first part to reach a riverbank anchors the whole mess to the bank and proceeds to fill all but the main channel.
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There’s a type of maple that grows here that naturally has an even bottom to its canopy. There’s one that Knox and I walked past today that is monstrous; the trunk is easily four feet thick while the canopy is about 45’ wide and 75’ long – it’s elongated due to the winds at its location.
On an interim term project to California, I happened to be driving the wee-hours shift when we were crossing (IIRC) Arizona. Two of the guys were city types who’d never seen the night sky in its raw beauty, so I pulled over and woke the two in the back up. The only time I’ve seen anything like the awe on those two guys’ faces was in high school when we had three members of another symphonic band staying at the house and my mom decided to take them to the beach. None of them had ever seen the ocean before; the largest body of water they knew was about two miles across which meant the other side was visible.
I got spoiled in university astronomy class: I managed to get on the list to be able to take the active mount along with one of the 4" reflectors. It’s amazing what you can get pictures of when you can focus on one star and let the machine track it!
BTW, I was out one night not long ago while Knox nosed around the yard to sniff out if any critters had been in his turf, and was checking off items in the sky – Jupiter, Arcturus, Venus . . . then I spotted a red pinpoint, thought a moment, and said out loud, “Hi, Mars!” Then I laughed at myself and said, “Knox, we’re in Ukraine!”
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Curious, do you have deer at your location or other largish herbivores? The even, horizontal edge of such trees is often caused by the “grazing line” of herbivores…how high they can reach to munch on the veg.
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We do (you might have seen. ; - ).
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I talk to birders out where I do conservation work and they affirm what I’d guessed: as the invasive species take over more territory, the number of bird species is dropping.
It’s not just birds, either; there are fewer wildlife of all kinds except coyotes and maybe the elk.
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Seems to go that way. Less native plants means less hosted insects which means less food for frogs, lizards and birds which means less snakes and with less birds come less native fruits seeds being carried off and dispersed by them. It means less birds carrying eggs from aquatic animals accidentally from watering hole to watering hole. As less native seeds are dispersed by birds there is less native plants popping back as good meaning higher chances of invasives replacing them because of consumerism. So deers tend to over browse on saplings meaning less trees to grow big to relate the fallen ones. It’s just chaos.
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On a canoe trip down the Willamette River once we swore the mosquitoes were flying in formation. And on one island campground they were so thick it was possible to hear a background hum!
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I saw a fraternity group at Lake Shasta once build “Beerhenge” out of cases of beer – probably the shortest-lived version.
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Sounds like the English Ivy, Japanese Stiltgrass, Kudzu, privet, Japanese Honeysuckle, etc., etc. around here. I really wish there were better options than manually pulling all of it up or using an herbicide for those.
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