From a week or so ago: first time on the beach in a while.
Affectionate messages in the sand.
Sand mushrooms. Same time and place as last year.
And pretty resilient — this just after Benji ran into them.
Beach walk
Category: Nature
General observations, generally during dog walks
Half a lemon times two
Some people consult the Farmer’s Almanac and moon phases for best times to prune trees. I don’t.
For me, there are two “best times“ to prune a tree: 2) when I feel like it, and 1) when the wife tells me to do it, as she did today.
So, log-handled loppers in hand, directed by her, squinting into the sun, I lopped off the biggest branch first. As it fell, so did a lemon. But when I picked it up, I found half a lemon — seriously, almost exactly half a lemon, neatly sliced lengthwise.
Where was the other half? You guessed it: still attached to a branch overhead.
What are the chances of perfectly cutting in half a lemon you didn’t even see?
Well — maybe greater than one would expect with a tree that seems to be trying to communicate with us.
Treework
Amazing to watch tree workers in action. Yesterday (yes, Sunday) involved removing all the lower branches from pine trees at the house of friends.
Quite a show.
His brother removing an acacia that was leaning over the roof. Not a bit fell onto the roof in the process.
An old stump five meters high had a non-functioning light fixture on it. That was removed, stump cut down, and birds flew in to feast on the ants inside, mostly oblivious to me standing two meters away.
And another surprise: look at how the rings grew on that angled limb in the first two pictures!
I find it quite amazing that none of these trees has come down in severe windstorms during the six years the owners have been gone, but it seems much less likely now. And, a lot fewer pine needles to clear off the roof.
Ant hills
The ants have been busy lately in our dog walk area. For some reason, sand beneath the surface is a different color, making the hills particularly conspicuous. I find it interesting how many of them have appeared.
I don’t think they’re always there. Do they appear and disappear, like the several kinds of frogs, from one day to the next?
We also spotted a little snake, ~ 25 cm long, that all six dogs (happily) didn’t notice. From a clump of grass, it zipped between my legs to the safety of a nearby hole. No photo. Happened in seconds.
So how many ant species are there in Uruguay? I’m not counting.
How many ant species do you think there are in the world? Seriously, take a guess, then click here.
Pine from pine
Pine trees don’t regrow from stumps, unlike eucalyptus trees. But you wouldn’t know that from looking at this. Apparently a pine cone sprouted inside the rotting stump. How it fares as the stump continues to rot will be interesting to watch!
Throwing a stick for Benji at the beach
When we go to the beach, this is what we do, over and over and over and —
Photos: Mihai Vasiliu
Sunrise
It’s not often I get up early, but I was awake this morning and thought, if I leave by 6:15, I can watch the sunrise on the beach. I looked at my clock (which involves picking it up and pushing the button to light it) and saw that it was exactly 6:15. Two minutes later we were out the door.
The eclipse
I had spent the morning up to my eyeballs in accounting. When we sat down to Sunday brunch, we were both noticing that the day wasn’t very bright. Clouds? The respite from the hot sun was welcome.
It wasn’t until I finished my omelet that I remembered: the Ring of Fire eclipse!
Alas, we missed the best part, but here’s what we did see, projected through a binocular lens.
Ironically, yesterday I made a little device for a friend to do first- and last-light shadow observations for a small group of pilots who are somehow convinced the earth is flat (pilots!). For those of us who are NASA-brainwashed, we at least have Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation is that a spherical object is passing between this spherical planet and the sun. I’ve asked him to get the explanation of the flat earthers. If past experience serves, it will no doubt involve physics that can’t be duplicated or observed in any other aspect of the physical universe.
During my brief interaction with flat-earthers, I made a graphic for them.
Mangos, sort of
A couple years ago, after one of their distinctly non-native mango bushes died, Syd and Gundy gave us the other. The first couple winters, I built a custom greenhouse around it. But it has never produced fruit. Sure, lots of flowers, and lots of tiny starts, then they simply disappear.
But this year, it has produced a few tiny, very dry, somewhat tasty fruits. As you can see, something got to a couple of them first. The lemon is normal-sized.
The mango bush/tree is completely uncontrollable, as was the anacahuita (small leaf shade tree) next to it that had become so ungainly that I cut it down a few years ago. After two years, a new shoot appeared out of the stump. I carefully pruned it, until one day it became clear it was not connected to the stump, and had virtually no root system. So I pulled it up and got rid of it.
I’m not convinced that the mango bush-tree is the best use of this space.
By morning light
A spider set up shop on our bedroom balcony last night.
Alas, the empty web tells the tale: location is everything.