An inquisitive old fart with a camera
General observations, generally during dog walks
We were remarking on the extraordinary new growth on the pine trees a few days ago, when I spotted this, a pine whose new growth looks like an upside-down office chair.
I’ve been watching a couple days now for another example, but haven’t seen one.
What do you suppose “inspired” it?
Coming from a different direction, the “boo” tree offered a dazzling display of color, pattern, and texture, again set against a beautiful clear blue sky.
I blogged about the last avocado on the “big” tree a short while ago. Seeing the new red leaves sprouting, we both got the feeling that the “little” tree was ready to be fully harvested, so today I scampered up the ladder and removed the last dozen or so,none of which is particularly visually appealing.
And I find this quite interesting: the last avocado (because I left it there) has been eaten on the limb, the first time (happily) we’ve seen this.
Likewise, as with almost every day the past few weeks, there was another half-eaten on the ground. I left that in place as well, for the critter/s to continue their end-of-season feast.
Returning from our walk today I noticed the tethered horse and her colt, looking great in the late daylight. I put Choco Mocha Latte the dog in the car, returned to take a great photo, and, um, no. Colt decided it was time to lie down now that three humans and six dogs had safely passed by. The light would have been better rendered by a real camera, which I don’t carry anymore.
There was no chance for a photo earlier, when the colt was happily running in circles. That got the dogs rather excited.
Who does the horse belong to? Who knows…. It appears tied in various places within a few blocks of Syd and Gundy’s house.
Also chickens wander around from time to time, but disappear quickly when they see the dogs. For some reason.
At least for paltas (avocados) in 2018. I took the last three off the “big” tree, including one that managed to remain hidden and is undoubtedly the record-holder for this year’s crop:
858 grams, or for those of you in Myanmar, Liberia, and the Untied Snakes:
1.892 pounds. Or 1 pound 14.271999979939547 ounces. Or if you want full ‘Murkan, 1 pound 14+34/125th ounces.
6-1/2 x 4.25 inches / 16.5 x 10.8 cm.
I decided that the overgrown nature of our yard needs to be addressed, and in doing so discovered the extent of the comedreja’s (possum’s) raids.
The tree above this pile still has 30+ smaller avocados. It’s fun to remember two years ago, when our total harvest was 30+ avocados, and the comedreja getting one was devastating! This year we (and friends) have had avocados for almost seven months!
Meanwhile, both small orange trees are laden with flowers. Not very many bees, but some, and doing their job. Hopefully we get more than three oranges next year.
I’ve walked by this many times, but this day it caught my attention: burned-out (from the fire that deforested our dog-walk area) trunk of a pine tree. Charred outer bark, and inside the wood is disintegrating in rectilinear chunks. Huh?
Then, a snake. OK, just a snake – but no, the air was quite cool; the sun was quite hot, and the sky was blue dotted with puffy clouds, and it was lying still, almost into the sandy trail. We tried to keep the dogs from noticing it – and they didn’t – but because Syd and I stopped to look at it, three dogs came back, curious about the unusual human behavior. One almost danced on top of it, but amazingly none stepped on it. And still it didn’t move.
My best guess is it got to the side of the trail in lovely radiant heat from the sun, but when a cloud blocked the sun the cool air took over, its energy went away. I am not a biologist, much less a herpetologist. If you know more, I’d be interested to hear if I’ve got a handle on this.
It appears to be Lystrophis dorbignyi, or South American hognose snake.
A few days ago, arriving at the dogs’ favorite watering hole, we found that some troglodytes had made an extraordinary effort to ruin it. Plenty of places to dump stuff nearby, but they put it here: from one day to another.
But another day, and it wasn’t there anymore. Note arrow indicating sand road said troglodytes use to carry other trash to the middle of nowhere, and tend to their bees, cow fencing, etc. (of course none of this is actually their property). Maybe they dumped it where they did so they wouldn’t have to look at it?
And, being card-carrying troglodytes, they had to include plate glass in the load, positioned so that it would shatter when they dumped it. What would have been a 5-minute cleanup job became a 20-minute job because of that glass…
… now prominently on display across their “road.”
Will they get a message from this? I’d be very surprised. But if it causes a couple of obviously-unused synapses in their brains to fire for a nanosecond or two, well hey, mission accomplished.
Hearing the dogs stir shortly after sunrise this morning, I got up to let them out. Almost immediately Mocha started barking at the closer avocado tree (for the record, not the one I put fence around). Aha!
The first year we had avocados, there were 32 of them. So when a possum got one, it was a big deal. This year, both trees have been producing since March. At 6:45 AM, standing naked in the back yard watching a four-legged looter getting ready to steal an avocado, my best course of action quickly became clear: go back to bed.
Later we saw that the critter had indeed had a heart-healthy breakfast. Mocha wonders if it is still in the tree.
Meanwhile, a few feet away, our little orange tree whose first harvest (three oranges?) happened this year, looks primed to do considerably better next. Which would be wonderful. But I have to wonder if it will be as “dumb” as our lemon tree, and grow so much fruit that a branch breaks. Time will tell.
Mexico – January 1, 2009 (southern hemisphere summer): I read Syd’s post about a forest fire which started on the beach side, jumped the Ruta Interbalnearia (main coast road), and did extensive damage to wooded areas on the north side (fortunately not homes, which here are generally not combustible). Three months later we visited, met Syd and Gundy; three more months visited again to check it out in the worst weather; three months later moved. (By the way, Uruguay has been my longest stay in one place since I turned 16 and got my driver’s license!)
Informal loggers moved in, using the excuse of dead trees to remove more than a few perfectly healthy ones. I don’t include in-between imagery because it’s not that good, but clearly shows large areas of dead trees.
Over seven years later, when Benji and I joined Syd and dogs for walks, occasional charred stumps were the only indication that something devastating had occurred. Syd was – and still is – frequently pointing out grown-over paths that used to be a “road,” mostly for horse-drawn carts. And he has frequently told me of areas that used to be forest. I didn’t exactly not believe him, but I was amazed to consult Google/CIA Earth historical satellite imagery and see how vastly the area has changed. The wooded image is from 2006; the barren from 2014. The trees have thickened a bit since then. When stuff grows here, it tends to grow like crazy, but unfortunately the “loggers” of firewood here now do their best to prevent any trees from growing to maturity. We have no idea who the land belongs to.
It’s a lovely area to walk dogs – though not without issues: cows, bees (we were inexplicably attacked near hives we know about yesterday), horses which Mocha hasn’t yet learned to “live and let live,” motorbikes and quads, which happily Mocha ignores, unlike Benji, who went crazy chasing them.
But it’s also for the most part brush. Not particularly interesting. I look at how it was, and can only think it must have been almost magical, compared to now.
Don’t it always seem to go ….
Apparently the Santa Rosa storms have arrived. It’s dreary, and windy, and rainy. So perhaps appropriate to post photos I took a few days ago, on a beach walk, when I thought the weather was just awful, and rightly predicted that virtually no one else would be on the beach. (Hint: no blue sky today!)
This is the access board walkway I have shown many times in the past. Because of a “valley” walkway through the dunes to the beach, “they” built a board walkway. But “they” didn’t realize that, free of erosion, the dune would naturally build back to its original height, maybe 1.5 meters higher than the highest point of the walkway, making it the second choice for crossing the dunes. But it gets “better:” to the left (from this perspective), the new “valley” has now become so massive that it’s actually stripped away dunes from where they grew over the walkway. Great work by whoever “they” are (who BTW also budgeted zero for maintenance).
In the next town over (five blocks away), I am heartened to see that I am not the only one disgusted with the fishermen who leave behind their trash.
Using the formal (su instead of tu), graffiti implores one to take [away] your trash. And then, Mister Fish[erman] (a little confusing to me, since it seems to say pescada, whereas “fish” in this sense (literally caught) is pescado, care for the river. I have explained – but with over 1,000 posts, don’t easily find – that the Uruguayans consider this thing that others might reasonably call an ocean, having no flow nor other side, a river. In fact, an estuary. Whatever.
Anyway, I find the formal and polite nature of this message amusing. Perhaps explains why I found some of my stickers apparently scratched off trash containers, as if they were too norteamericano blunt.
But hey, they got the job done – sort of. More on that later.