Gaillardia pulchella achenes

These parts enjoyed a spate of rain in May which encouraged the Gaillardia pulchella (fire wheel, Indian blanket, etc.) to grow big and tall plus put out plenty of achenes.  But now, having produced plenty of achenes, and with no more rain forthcoming, the plants are pretty much punked.  Yet the stems are much branched at the top and four feet high.  Yes.  They are big, unsightly and dead looking. 

So,  Ray decided to swing hoe the lot of them (maybe 50 square meters).  But it's super hot outside  so Ray decided to wear shorts.  Which means that as Ray whacks at the weeds the achenes are likely to fly everywhere, many alighting in Ray's shoes or on his white socks.

Many know that white socks are the best color for socks in most situations.  However, white socks are also perfect vectors for firewheel achenes.  The reason is these particular achenes are topped by white colored awned scales which blend in with the white color of your socks, making them almost invisible to the naked eye.  Meanwhile the other end of the achene is poking through your sock, sticking into your skin.  Ugh.  Plus, these achenes are hard to extract from a sock once rooted in. 


The twain achenes below were extracted from one sock.  While in the sock they irritaed Ray's foot to the max.  Irritated, I tell you.  Uh.  The bottom one's awns got messed up during the extraction procedure.  Anyway!  This goes to show that even beautiful, native wildflowers can have an evil side.

Brutal, Brutal I Tell You, the Heat

Ray has pretty much given up on identifying the CB robber flies.  Nevertheless, he follows their progress.  Today's featured robber went for a swim in the water pot, fixing to avoid the terrible heat.  Course, she couldn't get out by herself after she went in.

This particular robber fly species is the first to appear in the spring.  It is on the small side, 16-18mm and slender.  It likes the shade and the dark.  We have a picture of a pair fornicating on a window screen at night; the only robbers we have ever seen out in the stygian darkness.

Goddess Spare Me!

Too hot for man or beast!  Correct!  Yesterday Austink and environs suffered through this year's first daily record all time high for that particular date ever.  The high was 109. 

The day before yesterday was hot too.  This black-crested titmouse came by for a nice drink of cool water.  Titmouse panting.  Mercy!

The plants and animals acclimated to these parts are not acclimated to diurnal temperatures above 105 with a corresponding high humidity.  The plants and animals, given these conditions, suffer and die. 

The evil doers make it hotter.  Like, you may have heard of Hell on Earth.

Jupiter and Venus

We are considering the planets, not the Roman Deities.

The Bosom Brotherhood likes to take pictures featuring two or more heavenly bodies together.  In this example, taken this morning, we espy Jupiter, top, and Venus.  Interestingly, if one zooms in on a planet, one can easily espy how many blades the lens used features.  That would be five, making the lens the Canon 50mm 1.8.  Actually, this is not especially good.  But nor is it evil.

Compare and Contrast

While doing a meditation or nap, whichever, Ray realized that the twain solstices, like today's, are verifiable.  Yes.  Our holidays show everyone what days are longest and shortest.  Our holidays are scientific.  Compare and contrast that with the holidays of our major competitors.  Their holidays play up  juju or mumbo jumbo exclusively.

Consider, for example,  the Holy Trinity of the Christians;  Jesus, Santa Claus,  Easter Bunny. 

Love, on the Blackland, Gone Bad

What's gone bad, the Love or the Blackland?  Obviously it's the Blackland featuring mesquite.  Mesquite is what you get where you once had prairie.  It's an ecology joke.

The Love though, looks good.

Stinky Valley Environmental News

It wasn't long ago that Crumby had never seen this.
 

Or that.

What this or that is, is dog shit in plastic sacks. People actually put the dog shit, or in the first example, most of it, in plastic sacks. Then the people, also known as evil doers, leave the plastic sacks lying about, presumably for someone else to pick up. How crazy is that?

The first time Crumby espied one of the little plastic sacks, he didn't know what it was. Crumby stared and stared. He almost picked it up. He almost, for Goddess sake,  opened it. But the WG warned Crumby to overcome his curiosity. Crumby, She warned, you need to leave that alone.



Much later, Crumby espied this, a source of the plastic bags decorating the landscape.  For Heaven's sake, Crumby thought. And though I shall never put any of my dog's shit in any of those bags, ever , those bags should be good seed collecting bags when I have forgotten my regular bags.  For Heaven's sake.

Important Druid Holiday, Summer Solstice, Upcoming

Multitudes fear Ogma, the terrible Sun God or star. Why do we fear that terrible, fiery visage?  Easy that.  We fear Ogma Sunface because we can not look upon his face directly.  Also because he is liable to explode, thereby incenerating tiny planet Earth, home to most of us. Or, assuming Ogma's exploding flames or shock waves don't get us, then the icy vacuum of space, will.  Yes.  Once Ogma has exploded, even if Earth is not evaporated, then we shall easily freeze to death due to the absence of our warming star or God.

Multitudes may have forgotten the Summer Solstice is on June 21.  Yes.  The longest day of the year in these parts is upcoming anon.  The time when Ogma , due to the inclination of Earth, is at his most powerful, relatively speaking. So be ready to join the Druids on Summer Solstice Day in asking Ogma to spare himself from those various behaviors that could potentially cause His untimely demise.  Like sunspots and solar flares are OK and normal.  But Ogma needs to avoid  activities more strenuous than those typically therapeutic exercises.

Yes.  Ogma Sunface, the Druids beg of you, keep yourslef cool and calm at all times.  No temper tantrums.  Yet if you do need to burn and rage, incinerate the evil doers in these parts.   But spare the Druids.  Yes.  Smiting the evil doers with fiery flames while sparing the Druids would teach everyone an important lesson.

 

Ogma Sunface, an artist's conception.

Apium leptophyllum Is Delicious

Most of the Apium leptophyllum now gracing the CB arrived many years ago with the now deceased buffalograss.  Did you know that buffalograss won't grow everywhere?  Did you know that buffalogras is a weak sister?

That buffalograss sod was expensive and now most of it is dead.  Dead I tell you.  But the Apium has thrived despite heavy grazing.  Heavy I tell you. 

Here is some of the CB Apium thriving.  Mercy.  Most all the herbage in the foreground and along the fence is Apium.  It's the dominant plant, for heaven's sake.

And here, as we look closer at the Apium leptophyllum is its principal  grazer;   Papilio Polyxenes, the black swallowtail caterpillar. The CB presently features a great many of these caterpillars.  Hundreds, I tell you, maybe.

Tawny Emperor Caterpillar

As everyone knows, the CB is blessed with an abundance of emperor butterflies, both hackberry and tawny.  Yet Ray has failed to espy any caterpillars.  Until now.  And here it is, a tawny emperor caterpillar.  Alas, it appears to have a few ectoparasites in the vicinity of its "neck".   Soft hearted Ray was fixing to squeeze the bejesus out of the parasites with tweezers.  But by the time Ray found the tweezers, the caterpillar had departed for parts unknown.

Chigger Chow and Gaura drummondii

Gaura drummondii, also known as Gaura odorata has a poor presence on the World Wide Web (WWW).  The sad fact is, most references feature Gaura drummondii as a troublesome weed in California, where it is introduced, probably by environmental refuges from the Tejas Republico.

So, Ray decided he would rectify the scanty attention paid to this rhizomatous Gaura, since we have plenty of it at the CB.  Here is an underexposed and massively post processed picture of Gaura drummondii growing adjacent to the north fence.  See.  There's plenty of it at this location.  Ray thought briefly about going back to take another picture since this one is underexposed.  But nope.  No more chigger chow for those chiggers in that chigger habitat. Uh.  We had to censor Ray from featuring a photo of some of his chigger bites with this article

Here are some pictures of the flowers and fruits as well.


Flower fairly fresh.

Flowers faded to pink in the sweltering heat.

Fruits.

Many of the fruits on this plant abort early, so fruits are sometimes hard to come by.

What if these ants were someone's pets?

For goodness sakes, how does this happen, ever?  These ants somehow got themselves trapped in an exudate.  That's correct.  Totally trapped.  Now their friends and family may never know what happened to them.  Plus.  What if they were someone's pets?

Ray, for one,  would especially  like to know how this happened?  Where did the exudate come from?  Is the exudate a product of the annual sunflower to which it is attached?  Or, more likely, is it resin that dripped from the pecan tree which spread its branches above the sunflower?  Mercy.

Those are small ants, less than half the size of the generally better known acrobat ants.   Was one of those ants attracted to the gummy yet delicious exudate?  Did it become trapped?  Then, did its pitiful cries for help eventually ensnare its mates?  Too many questions?  Mercy!

Venus Transit, Si Senors y Senoras

Yes.  The Bosom Brotherhood was ready.  We got to see from when Venus the Planet just began Her, I mean its, journey before Ogma's fired up visage.  Mercy!  We took 17 pictures that lived, employing a variety of filters. 

We got to watch from about 5:05  until a little after 6PM when high clouds obscured Ogma Sunface. 

Here's a sample picture from when all of Venus was in there.  In there, I tell you.  No color filter.  That's all Astrozap. 

Duh.  We need to find out if those are sunspots or scope boogers.  But so far, we have not found any picutres for comparison.

Venus transit at 5:09 PM, Stinky Valley, Texas

More notes on the Venus transit

The Bosom Brothers discoveed that maybe the easiest way to track the sun is emplying the finder.  No.  You don't look at the sun directly.  What you do is line up the finder as close as you can get with the sun.  Like you can do this by putting your good hand behind the finder and then watch the shadow of the finder on your hand.  Once you have the sun lined up fairly well, you want to continue adjusting until you see a spot of bright light on you hand plumb in the middle of the finder shadow.  Whey you see that, you are lined up on Ogma Sunface.  Also, once you have it lined up as previously described, you can keep the finder aligned by keeping the bright spot of the sun's reflection  in the center of the eyepiece objective.  Course for this to work in the scope, the finder and the scope need to be collimated together as even Heck the Pup knows.

Also, those extra dark spots or squiggles are not scope boogers.  They are actual sunspots.  Alas, they are poorly resolved due to the inabilty of the C5060WZ to focus even though they are tack sharp with the C90 plus whatever cheap plossl.  It' like dude, you may need a better camera rig to do tack sharp sunspots.  Actually,  Crumby thought about employing a different camera.  But heh.  Once you've seen a sunspot or two, you have seen them all.  So what's the point, maybe.

Venus (the Planet) Transit

Always, make it clear what you are discussing when it comes to Venus.  Are you talking Love Goddess?  Or, are you talking planet?

Many may recall how the Bosom Brotherhood botched the Mercury (planet, not winged footed messenger) transit.  That's right.  We could not get the telescope to focus on Ogma Sunface in time.  That's right.  Wily Ogma eluded us, hiding behind Earth's curvature before we could draw a bead. 

But this time we are fixing to be all set and ready.  The fact is, we are fixing to practice today, Goddess willing and if Ogma's out this afternoon. 

Only about three probable possibilites could keep us from actually taking a picture of the Venus transit. 

1.  Clouds

2.  Inability to find Ogma with the scope.

3.  Other technical snafus. 

Regarding 2.  You would think that finding the sun is fairly easy since it is the largest appearing of all the heavenly bodies we have visible from Planet Earth.  Yet recall that you can't use normal means, like your telescope finder, to line up.  That's becasue you'll burn your eye out.

Regarding 3.  Our tripod is the worst possible.  It  is only adjustable for a few degrees before you need to get out the crescent wrench and readjust. 

So,  total failure is likely.

Here's the Venus transit rig:  astrozap filter, Celestron C 90 scope, camera adapter, cheap 40mm plossl,  C5060WZ camera.  Uh.  Ray,  maybe we should take the finder off the scope just in case one of us forgets and looks through it. 

No way Crumby.  I'm fixing to just tape over the peephole.  Then we can maybe sight over the top if one of us is super careful.

A Click Beetle Lounge

How many times have click beetles entertained you with tumbling tricks?  Yes. Those lovable click beetles sure are acrobatic.  But as Ray found out, click beetles won't tumble, and are consequently no fun, once they get drunk.

For Goddess sakes!  Ray likes to sneak up on this particular feeder which is favored by the click beetles.   Then, once he has snunk up, Ray thumps the feeder on its underside.  Ha-ha.  Makes the click beetles do massive and crazy tumbling tricks.  Ha-ha.

But somebody poured fermented sugar water into the feeder.  So when Ray thumped it, the click beetles just sat there, drunk as lords.  Too drunk to tumble.