You’re my hero both in terms of exercise and diet. Before the pandemic I was getting to the gym more days than not. Now I’ve lost my upper body strength and really feel the loss of leg strength and endurance that was making steep uphills so doable. Good luck with all that and we’ll enjoy your occasional postcards from your fertile wilderness when that works out.
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I’ve been there once or twice, but it’s been a few years. That’s only about an hour and a half west (and a bit south) of where I live.
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It’s about 2 hours from where i live, overall the drive isnt to bad, had to take alot of country roads on the way back though.
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Really so much about the light but the tortillas look enticing too.
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I always enjoy all the golden colors and shades of yellow and brown in fall. As the sun is dropping and the angle lights up all the flowering heads , often white fluffs, it just adds a warmth to the chill and is a beauty all in it own.
Also found the unfortunate beetle that climbed into the wrong hole.
Made some veggie tacos tonight. Mixed in a bunch of frozen veggies I did not want and took advantage of my hunger lol. But it tasted good. The good thing about tacos is that the seasoning blends all of the food into spicy flavor. Plus have a bunch of grapes and a apple as well for desert.
Watching a Japanese body horror film inspired heavily by the evil dead. It’s a 80s film called “ Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell “ lol.
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First snow of the season this morning that “stuck” for more than a few hours; ascending a slope towards a sunrise; some rusty bramble leaves clinging on in our blackberry patch; and a sunrise on the way to work last week.
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Thanks for the beautiful potos.
Just 120 miles/193 km SE, we only got a few flakes Saturday. It’s been a relief to my mind to start to see more fall-like weather, in spite of how beautiful our (eerily) extended early fall was. Time to quickly finish up the yard and get the wool pulled out.
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Yesterday while pruning a climbing rose, about 9-10 feet up, above a metal trellis I came across.a bushtit nest. It’s the first one I’ve seen in my garden though I often see them roll through in waves working through my shrubs and trees in search of the small critters they feed on. It was no longer inhabited and was sagging a bit but fun to examine. After pruning away enough of the rose to extract it I hung it I. The sun from a caesalpinia shrub to photograph. Like the hummers they seem to make liberal use of spiderweb and lichen. But a hummer could never make use of a nest like this with their diminutive feet which limits them almost exclusively to flight for mobility.
They move in gangs of 20 - 50 I’dguess continually flitting past where the ones ahead are feeding to the next branches. They are nearly as small as hummers and both like my Iochroma shrubs with their tubular flowers. The hummers defend these zealously from each other but when the bushtit arrive to glean between the flowers the resident hummers defer to them. I took a video of them feeding high up in that small tree with my phone maximally magnified. But I only ever saved that to Facebook and that is becoming less and less reliable. You might be able to see it here in a video I took a couple years ago.
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And over in Michigan, state employees have our noses stuck to the office window, watching the first real snow in Lansing this season.
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Transformative! Miss seeing that from my time in Maryland.
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When I lived in Vienna, I arrived in the late summer or early fall. It was a grubby city compared to Munich. I was so disappointed. Until it snowed. Transformed.
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The Pied Piper of Lansing, luring squirrels with peanuts on our walk today in front of the state Capitol building. Squirrelly politicians, or political squirrels?
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Well, old creation stuff. About 50,000 years old. We visited the Mammoth National Monument site in Waco. Interesting in that they built the building around the site, and have active worksites in the building, and have left the fossils seen in situ. This was probably a watering hole where two rivers came together, and the mammoths (and camels, sloths, and saber tooth cats) were covered in a flash flood.
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I’m glad you like it. It looks like misery to me lol. Pretty. But I hate the cold so much. I am already sick of winter and it’s still fall. The place I work as mentioned before it’s often 120°f-140°f for the bulk of the day. So with the weather now in the 40s-70s ( it swings around ) , when it’s colder though and I come outside from there it’s almost painfully cold feeling. I noticed few days ago even though it was 74°f I had my van’s heater on max and picked up a hitch hiker and they could tell I was making them hot and so I turned it off and they were like “ why was your heater on “ lol.
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We’re getting some winter early in the morning, but no more rain for a while. 
I’ve got a nerdy obsession to share.
I’ve been culling through some photo from Spring of last year, between 3/21/21 and 4/15/21, when I had two specimens of the Echium cultivar known as ‘Mr Happy’ growing across a path from each other. One looked to be getting wider at the top so I finally dragged an 8’ electrician’s ladder to see what was going on with that one. In the first three photos, all taken on 3/21, you can see what I saw from the ground, then the growing tip of the normal one and finally the growing … edge of what turned out to be a fasciated one. To get the last photo I had to get up as high as I dare from the pathway, reach around to its far side and take a picture without being able to see it.
Eight days later on 3/29 I managed to find a stable way to place the ladder on the other far side of the crested one and got this pic. You can see in on the left side middle the final point at which normal, cylindrical growth stopped and growth became ribbon like, shooting off sideways instead of upwards.
4/1 We see the normal one in the foreground on the left and the crested one behind it on the right.
Five days later, 4/6, a side view showing the ribbonlike growth splitting with the wider bit tipping down while a narrower section is more vertical.
Fives days after that on 4/11 the shape of the crested Echium’s division is resolving.
Two days later on 4/13, two photos show it beginning to bloom as the normal one has been for some time, getting much taller.
One day later more flowering
Lastly two photos from 4/15, one day later, looking past the normal one to the crested one beyond starting with a closer up one.
I think it is interesting to think about Evo Devo in relation to plants. Where we get knitted together out of sight in a womb, plants undergo all of their development in plain sight. These plants are usually biennial spending their first year as a big plume of foliage and in the next, pushing up a bloom stalk that will usually reach 16 to 20 feet. I’m not sure if fasciation always happens for the same reason but it is pretty common with Echiums.
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Yeah. We adapt, don’t we. 90 degrees is near my upper limit. We’ve had a few days over 100 in my life, and I thought I would die.
We’ve had an eerily beautiful fall this year in Michigan. Fall and spring are supposed to be tumultuous, dark, changable, stormy — straight out of Poe. Pretty weather during these times is one more sign of serious climate change. I feel guilty enjoying it, because I know what it means.
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It’s a really pretty and cool looking plant. In a odd way, it reminds of a tufa wall. A stone structure with lots of little flowers blooming around it. Also similar to some of the packed palms. Where the palm fronds are not removed and instead are packed with soil and have flowers and ferns planted in them. I daydream of when I’ll be able to start my new garden. I guess I could start some of it now, but I want the house there first and then get a feel for the layout.
The 9th one down the crested one looks like it’s smiling. I was thinking at first, that sort of grinning looking face was why it’s called Mr. Happy lol.
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Well I think it is called that because of its … phallic look. But that picture you mentioned reminded me of a cartoon character which was popular when my younger siblings were growing up, something like Cecil and Benny maybe. I think it has a goofy cartoony looking ‘face’. I hope it works out for you to start your garden so you can give us progress reports, but you’re wise to hold off until you have the time to give it. I think you have your priorities straight.
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