Spider and Bug

Yesterday, while enjoying an after-lunch cup of coffee on the front deck, I spotted a jumping spider on top of the southeast corner post.  She had a bug of some sort in her “mouth”, or whatever that part of a spider is called.

Be the time I returned from fetching the camera, she had crawled over the edge of the post, keeping the fly firmly in her grasp.  When I was within range for a photo, she turned toward me, then rushed back to the top of the post.  I took a few snapshots of her roaming about on top of the post, as if she was looking for a good spot to have lunch.

After snapping the photos I returned to my chair to continue enjoying my cuppa.  As I was sitting there, I decided to take a look at the photos - only to discover that all the photos of the spider on top of the post had  turned out blurry because I and/or the spider moved just as the photo was being taken.

The best of the lot is shown in the photo, above.

I returned to sipping the cooling coffee, wishing I had gotten better photos of the spider carrying its lunch about on top of the post.

As I set the coffee cup on the railing, I noticed that my little friend was coming to see me, carrying bug in front of her face.

I hastily grabbed the camera and captured the photo, below.

Look carefully and you can see the spider coming toward me , under the yellow leaf resting on the railing.










Perhaps the coffee cup on the rail spooked her.  In any event, she would come no closer than the yellow leaf.  She settled down and preceded to suck the juices out of the unfortunate bug.

Maybe she simply wanted some company while having lunch on the front deck.


I was happy to oblige while finishing my cup of coffee.  It was a very nice day to be sharing a lunchtime break on the deck during this accidental encounter.

Free, at Last

Roots 2" has been fully liberated from the earth, and moved to a temporary resting place for cleaning, bark removal, and drying.

Removing the bark will allow quicker drying, and will also prevent tiny bugs (bark beetles ?)  from attacking the stump and carving small holes in the trunk.

The drying process is the easy part - simply set it out in the weather and let nature take its course.

Judging from the experience gained with Roots 1, Roots 2 will be ready for finishing in about a year, or so.  That's when the labor-intensive tasks of scraping, sanding, varnishing, and waxing will begin.

No need to look for Roots 1 . . .

. . .here is a photo of Roots 1 atop the mantel in the living room.

As a reference of scale, Roots 1 is about one fifth the size of Roots 2.

The Digging is Done

06 August 2010

The Digging is Done . . .

. . .so now the roots and trunk must be taken to a place for "processing". 

The roots are no longer in the earth; they and the trunk to which they are attached are suspended by a couple of pulley arrangements that make it possible to lift them out of the excavation.   The block and tackle shown here were once part of the rigging for a sailboat that was my home for a few years, but that's another story.

The trunk and roots still contain lots of water, which makes them much too heavy to be lifted without some sort of mechanical advantage, such as the two block and tackle arrangements shown in the photo.  The two-tackle arrangement allows for lifting, tilting, and rotating which makes the removal process possible.

Notice the tight quarters in which this evacuation of Roots 2 is taking place.  It is not going to be easy to liberate and move this rather heavy object.  There are nearby storage boxes, shelves, etc. that must be moved out of the way before the whole thing can be fully removed and placed somewhere to be washed and dried.  

It will require several months of drying before the roots and trunk are ready for finishing.  Once the drying is finished, the outer covering on both the roots and trunk will be removed to reveal the wood, which will be sanded, varnished, and waxed before it is ready for display.  I estimate the whole assembly will finished and ready for display in about a year, or so.

The Tree Knows

The tree knows that it is no longer harvesting sunlight in the high branches.  It knows that it must harvest sunlight.  It probably does not know why it must harvest sunlight, but it knows it must.  

The knowledge is in the tree's DNA.

The tree also knows it needs leaves to harvest sunlight; and it knows how to grow leaves.  This knowledge, too, is in the DNA, so the tree begins to grow leaves; it sprouts tiny nubbins of leaves at the point on the trunk where the tree was topped in preparation for removal.

A few days after the tree was topped, this tiny leaf is reaching desperately for the sun in an effort to harvest sunlight to power the photosynthesis that will feed the tree.  The tree also knows how to do photosynthesis; this,too, is part of the ancient knowledge stored in the DNA.

What the tree doesn't know is that the effort is all for naught.  The excavation of the tree will continue, the stump and roots will be laid out to  dry in the sun, and become wood that will be washed, scraped, sanded, and have several coats of the finest spar varnish money can buy applied, then be displayed as 'Roots - 2' for all to enjoy as a piece of natural sculpture.

But, that's not the end of the story.

The tree also doesn't know is that it's offsprings will continue to grow and prosper, producing delicious fruit year after year, just like this tree did for the pass several years.  The tree's "family" not only provides fruit, but also provides privacy in the form of a hedge between the house and the street.  The photo shows part of the hedge with a couple of young palm trees in the foreground.

The hedge was planted several years ago using bird-damaged fruit from the 'parent' tree as seeds.  Planting was a simple process of spreading seeds on the ground, covering them with a thin layer of compost, then giving them an occasional watering.  There are dozens of individual trees in the hedge; I have never counted all of them, but there must be at least forty or fifty.

Notice that the hedge has two levels.  The lower level is a 'solid' barrier.  There are five 'chosen ones' that were allowed to grow to their full height, and these have produced fruit for the past three years.  No fruit is shown here because this photo was make after the fruit had been harvested.

The 'parent' tree for this hedge is being removed, and will be replaced by a slab of concrete on which a storage shed for gardening tools will be built.

What kind of trees are we talking about here?  The loquat, which is an Asian evergreen that produces two crops of delicious fruit each year.  One of my neighbors told me that the loquat would never make a hedge, but I think it has worked out rather nicely.

Hope to have an update on the excavation for Roots-2 soon.  (See previous post for a photo of the excavation.)

Meanwhile, there are more gardening tasks to do.  It is amazing how much work goes into keeping an 'accidental' garden going.

  

W A V

Last Thursday evening, Connie and I attended a Jazz session at the "Place" here in Ventura.  The Jazz sessions are a monthly happening on the first Thursday of each month.  The group this month was made up of trombone, bass, guitar, and drums along with one "guest" singer and a stand-up comedian for entertainment during the breaks. 

What a pleasure to have world-class  Jazz available just five minutes from home, as opposed to having to drive a hour or more to other Jazz venues.

"PLACE" is an acronym for 'Projects Linking Art, Community & Environment" which is a nonprofit organization that builds alternative-energy communities for cities in the US and the UK.  The community here in Ventura (a 60 million dollar project)  was built from the ground up over the past three years, or so.  Our PLACE community is called the "W A V" (Working Arts Ventura) and it is a jewel of a community where artists can live and work - and it's right here in our own neighborhood - just down the street at 175 South Ventura Ave.

Check it out at:

http://www.placeonline.us/projects/overview.html

Or, simply Google:  Working Artists Ventura

Roots

03 July 2010

It has been a while since my last entry here. So many distractions, and so easily distracted. Wow! Where does the time go??

The "June gloom" here in SoCal has spilled over into July this year, so we are enjoying foggy mornings and sunny afternoons with temperatures mostly in the high 60s or low 70s, night and day. Have been getting some much needed garden work done, such as planting bent-grass ground cover in the back yard, and moving some plants from pots to permanent(?) places in the garden, both front and rear. The macadamia nut tree is beginning to flourish with lots of new growth now that it has been liberated from the small pot.

My ongoing "Roots" project is currently taking most of my 'spare' time. This project requires much time in addition to full use of my modest skills with gardening, woodwork, and interior decorating.

A brief history of "Roots": Several years ago, as I was doing a bit of landscaping along our driveway, it occurred to me that the roots of a small trees I was removing might be turned into a 'natural sculpture', or some such thing. I washed the roots thoroughly, let them 'cure' several months atop the garage, sanded and varnished them, and mounted them atop the mantle in the living room.

The excavation of "Roots 2" in currently underway, and it is turning out to be quite a project. The twin-stump of Roots 2 is much larger that the the original "Roots", and the work required to remove the roots intact has already taken several days - with a long way to go before the excavation is completed.

This photo shows the excavation about half completed.  The work is rather tedious, something like an archaeological dig, because the idea is to preserve as many of the roots as possible.  Simply removing a stump is a walk in the park by comparison because the smaller roots are brittle and easily broken.

Think of filling several wheelbarrows full of dirt each day using a tablespoon as a digging tool, and you get some idea of what is involved.  The fact that this particular stump is located between a concrete driveway and a concrete retainer wall (not to mention a redwood post set in concrete) doesn't help.

Why is the tree being removed?  (You might want to know.)  Not because I simply wanted another 'roots' sculpture, but because a concrete slab on which a storage shed will be built will replace the tree.  The Roots 2 project is simply a way to 'recycle' the stump and roots.

Much work remains to be done  (sigh).

That's about it for today - time for Farmer's Market to open, so must go get fresh fruit, veggies, and pastries . . .

Filling the duck pond and taking the plunge

I have (finally) figured out how to put video into a blog (much ceremony involved!). Here are a couple of brief examples . . .

Filling the duck pond for the first time, and ducks taking the plunge.

Filling the pond. Click the "GO" button (>) to view videos.

Taking the Plunge . . .

Happy Ducks !

Dixie and Lois, an update

Yes, it’s Dixie and LOIS, not Dixie and Louis. Several weeks ago, we found that we had misnamed Lois - - she began laying eggs. For a while, each morning we found two eggs in the duck house when we went out to open up for the day. Duck eggs are not all that different from chicken eggs, except that they seem to be better for baking pastries, etc.

Sadly, we find only one egg in the duck house now because Lois was killed by a raccoon a few nights ago. There was a disturbance about 01:30 in the morning, and we found Lois had been dragged to a spot under the sycamore tree. I immediately prepared a grave near a lemon tree, and buried her there.

We have now made the duck house more secure.

Poor Dixie. She and Lois had been constant companions since hatching, and she is obviously very disturbed by this sudden turn of events. She spends a great deal of time frantically calling for Lois with extraordinarily loud “duck calls” – sounds she had never made before. I spend all the time I can with her now, and she calms down when she knows I am nearby, in the back yard.

We have found a breeder in a nearby town who says he can provide a Cayuga hen about the same age as Dixie, and I hope to pick up this new companion for Dixie within the next couple of days.

16 August 2008

Wild Trees . . .

. . . a book review.

A few days ago, I finished reading “The Wild Trees” by Richard Preston with maps and illustrations by Andrew Joslin.

If you love plants in general, and trees in particular (or a true story of people doing extraordinary things) get yourself a copy of this book and read it.

Until recently, the tallest redwoods were thought to be virtually impossible to ascend, and the canopies at the tops of these magnificent trees had never been explored. This book unfolds the story of Steve Sillet, Marie Antoine, and a tiny group of botanists and amateur naturalists who found an unexplored world at over 350 feet above California in the tops of the largest and tallest organisms in the world, the coastal redwoods, Sequoia sempervirens.

The canopy voyagers were young college students when they began their quest, and they shared little other than a passion for preserving and studying these trees. What they found in these “meadows in the sky” (my terminology, not theirs) was mosses, lichens, hanging gardens of ferns, and thickets of huckleberry bushes, all growing out of soil sitting on massive limbs in the canopies high above the ground. Animal life found in the canopies include earthworms and spotted salamanders as well as copepods living in the moist mosses and in small pools. Imagine that, shrimp-like critters thriving high above the California coastal mountains in the tops of redwood trees!

And there is much more, but I will leave that for you to discover in this fascinating book.

“The Wild Trees” was copyrighted in 2007 by Richard Preston, and was published by Random House / New York.

Here are a couple of quotes from Mr. Preston’s book:

“This book is narrative nonfiction. The characters are real and the events factual, told to the best of my understanding. Passages in which I narrate a person’s thoughts and feelings and present dialogue have been built from interviews with the subjects and witnesses, and have been fact-checked. So many stories never get told. My goal is to reveal people and realms that nobody had ever imagined.”

“Botanists have a tradition of never revealing the exact location of a rare plant. Contact between humans and rare plants is generally risky for the plants. Many of the giant trees I describe in this book, as well as the groves they inhabit, have only recently been discovered, and in some cases have been seen by fewer than a dozen people, including myself. To honor the tradition of botany, I won’t reveal the exact locations of giant trees or groves if these locations have not been previously published.”

Richard Preston not only talks the talk, but “walks the walk”. He learned tree climbing skills and joined these intrepid researchers to climb some of the tallest trees on earth.

“Wild trees”, within the context of this book, means trees that have yet to be climbed.

25 July 2008

Vinny, our current “top cat”, loves to take mid-morning naps curled around a small tree trunk.

Sometimes, he turns over and “curls” the other way.

We have had as many as seven cats at the same time.

Now, we are down to three: Vinny; his sister, Vicky; and Bill, our oldest. Bill is a retired top cat, and he sleeps a lot. Vinny and Vickie came to us as tiny kittens a few years ago – we found them under a tomato plant in the garden.

We have learned that cats have varied, distinctive, and interesting personalities.

All tolled, we have shared our home with more than a dozen cats over the past twenty years, or so. All of our cats have been “strays”. They come, and they go. We found homes for some of them, some died from “natural” causes, one died during surgery, two were killed in the street by automobiles, a couple simply disappeared and we don’t know what happened to them.

24 July 2008























These peaches are ripening on a tree that sprouted at the edge of the compost pile about six years ago, and there it remains. I never got around to transplanting the tree. This little peach tree has been blossoming each spring for the past couple of years, and this year it finally set a few peaches.

The tree seems to be perfectly happy right where it is even though it gets little direct sunshine, so maybe I will simply leave it where it sits. With an occasional pruning, and a bit of water now and then, it seems to be doing just fine, thank you.

17 July 2008

Summertime distractions have kept me from updating this blog for the past few weeks. Here is an entry to get things rolling again.

Dixie and Louis, our pair of Cayuga ducks, are now (almost) fully grown. I have found photographing black ducks to be a bit of a challenge. The background must be carefully chosen, else they seem to appear as little more than dark blobs in the photo.

Here is a photo of Dixie flapping her wings.

Dixie has never really taken flight, but she loves to stand on tip-toes, furiously flapping her wings. She bounces up and down as if on a pogo stick. Louis, on the other hand, has actually flown short distances. Louis is larger than Dixie, and his wings are more fully developed, but I have yet to catch him in full flight with the camera.

Here is Louis, waddling about near one of their watering dishes.

Some of the green iridescence is clearly visible on Louis' head.

In addition to their watering dishes, the ducks have a wading pool in which they can splash about and go for short swims.

Here is a photo of them in a couple of their watering dishes.

Louis, in the blue dish, is “helping” Dixie wash a munchie of some kind. Yes, they spend quite a bit of time in their watering dishes (which are plastic dishpans). The ducks seem to prefer their drinking water to be “seasoned” a bit before drinking it.

Their duck house, duck pen, and water facilities are works in progress; they enjoy full access to the garden in rear of the house until such time as I have finished fencing “their” territory. We were concerned that the ducks might destroy the plants in the garden, but they seem to be mostly carnivores, and do virtually no damage to the plants while searching for munchies hidden by the foliage. Snails, slugs, and earthworms are their favorite food. They will eat store-bought food that is formulated especially for ducks, but only as a last resort when they can’t find enough “real” food to satisfy their appetite.

These guys are excellent foragers!

09 June 2008

Tomatoes, turnips, and onions dominate the portion of our modest veggie garden this year. In this photo, there are some peas and beets hidden from view behind the tomato plants.

This particular garden patch is planted in an area between the house and the street.

Additional veggies, including leek, radishes, and more onions, have been planted in the garden behind the house, but their tiny sproutlings are not yet ready for prime time display.

30 May 2008

Dixie and Louis in their “wading pond”.
We have been using a small wading pond to let the ducklings get some exercise swimming around and diving below the surface.

They LOVE it!

We plan to have a larger and drainable permanent pond for them by the time they are grown. The pond needs to be drainable for cleaning because they love to make Gawd-awful messes while playing in the water. Ideally, they should have a pond with circulating water that cleans itself, but that is a bit beyond our “duck budget” right now.

Speaking of grown ducks, Dixie and Louis are a rare breed called “Cayuga Ducks”. (Yes, they have been officially declared as “rare”)

When they reach full maturity, they will look like this:

Meanwhile, we are enjoying the ducklings and all their cute antics.

26 May 2008



Ducklings . . .









. . . are an interesting addition to our collection of animals.

These guys, pictured here in their temporary home, at about four weeks old, are little fuzz-balls with stubby little wings. They are much too young to be turned loose in the garden.



Their temporary home is a portable kennel that was previously used by a 140-pound rottweiler named Hildagard (as in Hilda, guard dog). Sadly, Hilda is no longer with us – she lived to a ripe old age, and her ashes are now enriching the soil in a rose garden.



Be that as it may, we plan to enclose a small part of the garden behind the house so that the ducklings can “run wild” for short periods of time under close supervision. Once they are full-grown, they can have part of the garden as their very own with little or no supervision.

Their names? Dixie and Louis. It is rather difficult to tell which is which at this point in their development.

18 May 2008

Nothing accidental about this - - a functional, quick, and (relatively) easy retainer wall can be built using concrete blocks and flat steel bars (no concrete mixing, no rebar, no mortar).

This project started when I found myself with a pile of “extra” dirt following a few landscape changes. After thinking about the situation, it seemed that using the dirt to create a small “raised garden” was a good idea. Of course, a raised garden requires some sort of retainer wall to keep everything in place. Having recently suffered “sticker shock” after hiring a contractor to construct a similar retainer wall as a foundation for a fence, I decided to be kind to my bank account by doing it myself. Turns out this decision provided several hours of satisfying activity in the garden in addition to being financially sound.

The concrete blocks I’m talking about look something like this:

Concrete blocks come in a variety of sizes. I used two sizes:
[1] About sixteen inches long x eight inches wide x eight inches high
[2] About sixteen inches long x four inches wide x eight inches high

Where I need a two-block-high retainer, I use the 16 x 8 x 8 blocks as a “foundation”, then stacked 16 x 4 x 8 blocks on top, like so:

Notice that there is a small “lip” on the front of the wall, and a larger “lip” on the back side of the wall. The small lip in the front of the wall served to disguise any small misalignment of the blocks. The blocks can, of course, be mounted flush, without the lip, if you so desire.

The building of the two-block-high retainer goes something like this:

(1) The 16 x 8 x 8 blocks were laid on solid, level ground.

(2) After the foundation blocks are in place, lined up, and squared up, the holes in the blocks are filled with tamped dirt.

(3) Remove any “excess” dirt from the top of the blocks so the upper blocks can be added.
(4) Place the 16 x 8 x 4 blocks on top of the foundation blocks.

(5) Two steel bars are driven into the ground inside the rear wall of the 16 x 8 x 4 blocks.

These steel bars are ready made in various lengths, and can be found at lumber yards and hardware stores. The bars are used when building forms for pouring concrete, but here they are being used to “nail” the retainer wall to the ground so it will not move when dirt is placed behind the wall. These “ready-made” steel bars have become a bit pricey lately. Mine were “leftovers” from some concrete work that was done a couple years ago. Sometimes, you can find them reasonable priced at garage sales, but that could take months.

The steel bars I used are twenty-four inches long, an inch and a half wide, and about three-sixteenths of an inch thick. The dirt in my yard is pretty solid stuff, so the 24-inch bars are more than adequate to hold the blocks. If your dirt is sandy, or has a lot of organic material in it, longer bars should be used.

Does it meet building code. Darned if I know (didn’t ask, so nobody could tell me “no”).

Does it work? Definitely.

NOTE: Probably not a good idea to use this method for a retainer more than two concrete blocks high.

Here is a photo of the wall under construction:

As you can see, one of the steel bars is in place, ready to be driven into the earth to hold the blocks in place. Once all the bars are driven, the openings on the blocks are filled with tamped dirt. Concrete covers for the blocks are available to hide the openings, but I did not consider them to be necessary.

The retainer wall has been completed, dirt has been placed behind the wall, and a few plants have been put in place.

I will post an update when the plants are mature and ready for prime time showing.

07 May 2008

Good jazz and good food with my good wife last evening at Spazio’s jazz club. The music was provided by three world-class musicians: Anthony Wilson (guitar), Jeff Hamilton (drums), and Larry Goldings (keyboard). Life is good!

We were celebrating the event of a beautiful, sunny Tuesday, 06 May 2008.

Why?

Just because.

Having returned home in the wee hours, the garden will be neglected for a day or so while I recover. The days when I could participate in such an event without concern for “recovery time” are long gone, but it was worth it.

The weather is mild, and the well-attended garden will do just fine, thank you. Look at this tomato plant.

The tomato plant, along with its neighbors in the veggie garden, can survive a bit of neglect.

05 May 2008

Here is another “accidental” resident in our garden.

This lily sprouted smack up against the driveway, in front of a gate leading into the entry-way patio.

A few months ago, we did a bit of remodeling, both the house and the front garden. A trench was dug along the driveway to facilitate some of the work, and the lily evidently had its beginning in the dirt that was used to re-fill the ditch and some other parts of the garden.

The lily silently greets us each time we return home. The dogs, the two guardians of the garden, also greet us, but they are anything but silent.

02 May 2008

Speaking of dogs (as in a previous post) here are the guardians of the garden:





Hobo

Happy




Happy is a Pomeranian and Hobo is (mostly) a “blue heeler” Australian Cattle Dog.

The snapshots were taken on the steps leading to the “dog door” that is built into one of the patio doors. This is a south-facing door, and the guardians love to soak-up sunshine on the steps as they keep an eye on things so they can keep us advised of "unauthorized" behavior in the neighborhood, such as UPS delivery trucks.

30 April 2008

Dirt is wonderful stuff.

Without dirt, we could not survive on this damp ball we call home.

That’s what I’ve always thought

My Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, tenth edition, shows numerous definitions, none of which are even close to what I have always considered to be “dirt”, as in the stuff where plants grow. Most of the dictionary definitions for “dirt” have to do with really disgusting, nasty stuff. Not a word about plowing, planting, or plants.

Not, exactly, what I had in mind. OK, I can adjust.

So, how about “soil”?

After digging through all the verbs; “to stain or defile morally”, “to make unclean”, “to blacken or besmirch”, etc., we get to the noun(s) with definitions such as “moral defilement”, “something that spoils or pollutes” “sewage”, “excrement”, “corruption”, “dung”, and . . .

. . . (finally!!) “firm land”, “the upper layer of earth that may be dug or plowed and in which plants grow”.

I would have thought this last definition would have been at or near the top of the list for “soil”.

It seems the editors of this dictionary had their heads in the dirt.