FIVE SECOND STORIES

In the Neighborhood:

8/2-a cool,muggy and rainy day yesterday with .5" of rain-a nice soaker. 

 

The hydrangea on the right is suffering from the drought and my lack of attention. I gave them a nice drink on Friday and was grateful with what we received the following day.

M/M Redbird visited the Diner, both looking damp and perhaps coming out of molt: 

The Crimson Bros-Mr. Maple out front has a couple of red leafs-evidently influencers who are jumping the gun on fall:

or most likely, they are symptom of drought stress. C has noticed several trees on campus exhibiting changed leaves as well.

We think the remaining chuckettes have finally left the nest as we have not seen them in several weeks. I was looking at past posts to see how long I have been writing about MamaC. If indeed it is the same woodchuck, then she has been coming here since 2022. Chucks start reproducing in their second season so this would make her 5 years old. AI says that on average, they live 3-6 years in the wild although they can live 10 years or so in a protected environment. Our girl is graying especially around her muzzle-aren't we all.

I've noticed with the kids gone, her range has expanded. I see her galumping from the West to the shed-there's a patch of undergrowth in back of Johnny's that she likes to hang out in. I spotted her way to the East at the edge of Benny's property by a fence entry that will take her to Carrier Creek. 
 

I could see that she was having a bite but couldn't figure out what it might be. Benny only puts out seed. Then I saw several squirrels as well (including LG who later came by) and I realized what was going on: Benny's pear tree is fruiting and many have dropped to the ground. Well, buffet time! 

8/5-she brought home take-out and ate the pear like it was corn-on-the cob! 

We were having supper on the deck when a big heron flew up and landed on our dead pine on the berm! We've never experienced this! 

Upon research, I believe this is a juvenile Great Blue Heron based on its monochrome plumage. Kinda tough with it backlit but it lacks the black stripe over the eye or head feathers. They love dead tall trees especially around a body of water-gives them a clear view of things whether to hunt or watch for predators like eagles. Odd to see this one out of its environment although with the drought, perhaps it has expanded its hunting territory. I did not know that they migrate-many do so heading for the Gulf Coast, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Some stay, like Canadian geese, as long as there is open water for feeding. If they are snowbirds, they generally leave when things begin to get icy-October/November. 

Our heron flew from one dead tree to the next-that being a telephone pole! It works!

Later in the evening as we entered twilight, fireflies came out by Bin's Rose of Sharon with its ghostly tulle-covered Sharons. I photoshopped a re-creation. Click to enlarge.

This brought to mind a favorite John Singer Sargent painting from 1885-86-Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose:

Fun Fact: Sargent took 2 summers to complete as this was painted plein air with barely 15-20 minutes to work in the changing light. 

The title comes from the refrain of a popular song "Ye Shepherds Tell Me" by Joseph Massinghi, a pastoral glee for a trio of male voices, which mentions Flora wearing "A wreath around her head, around her head she wore, Carnation, lily, lily, rose". Here is the melody:

Tree Curiosities:

Brazilian grapetree: aka  Jabuticaba, whose fruit grows directly on the trunk.

You probably have never seen this fruit-it begins to ferment after 3-4 days, making it impossible to store and ship.

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The Tree of Ténéré
 

From Wiki: The Tree of Ténéré (French: L'Arbre du Ténéré) was a solitary acacia that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth. It was a landmark on caravan  routes through the Ténéré region of the Sahara Desert in northeast Niger, so well known that it and the Arbre Perdu (Lost Tree)  to the north are the only trees to be shown on a map at a scale of 1:4,000,000. The tree is estimated to have existed for approximately 300 years until it was knocked down in 1973 by an allegedly drunk Libyan truck driver. The Tree of Ténéré was the last of a group of trees that grew along the Azalai when the Sahara desert was less parched than it is today. The tree had stood alone for decades. During the winter of 1938–1939, a well was dug near the tree and it was found that the roots of the tree reached the water table 108–118 feet below the surface. 

A simple metal sculpture representing the tree stands to mark its former location and general appearance in the desert. 

In 2017, a tribute to the Tree was exhibited at the Burning Man festival with an enormous climbable tree with 25,000 LED leaves. A canvas of light and music with infinite possibility.

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Árbol del Tule, Oaxaca, Mexico-from Wiki: The largest tree in Mexico is a massive Montezuma cypress that has the stoutest trunk of any tree on Earth measuring 145-164 feet. It is located in the church grounds of Santa María del Tule in Oaxaca.

 

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There's a biological ceiling of how high a tree may grow on Earth, estimated to be between 400 and 426 feet.

Why Trees Stop Growing

Water Stress: Gravity and friction make it extremely hard to pull water up to the highest leaves.
Constant Drought: Leaves near the very top of a towering tree experience permanent water stress, which limits photosynthesis.
Vascular Physics: Fluid dynamics and the limits of sap flow mean that beyond this height, no leaf size or vascular structure can adequately feed the plant. 

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 MADads: Orkin: Yo! Rat w/NYC attitude:

Hmmm, just the thing for our infestation in Washington? What's it's efficacy?

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I was watching a show about vintage recipes from the 1970's, one of many that are around that say they aren't eaten anymore or forgotten. I had never come across this: cheese souffle loaf which advertises you can make a souffle without the worry of it falling and "looked sophisticated but remained approachable". Hmm, I've heard that said about some individuals. 

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C loves early 60's dance and dance music. She incorporated such in the Summer classes she taught in Sligo, Ireland. One example turned up in her YT feed that was featured John Water's film "Hairspray"-The Roach 1961 Gene and Wendell:

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Shylight from Studio Drift-very cool kinetic sculpture inspired by time-lapse of flower blooms opening up:

FUBARland:

Dr. El-Sayed, Will Lawrence and James Talarico all won their primaries. Yay!
 

FIVE SECOND STORIES

In the Neighborhood: The drought continues although the temps have been comfy and supper on the deck enjoyable. 

A tribute to GF Birch:

Buddy resting behind a few leaves of grass-dreamland of his ancient past in the savannah:

There's a male robin, who frequents the leaf mulch around the pool. During droughts, they feed on fruit and berries if available or insects as the worms stay well underground. 

We're starting to hear cicadas in the early evening although it's been a single call and brief.

High in GF Birch, a Nutkin enjoying a bite:

Not surprisingly, the cherry toms have some kind disease. Toms are divas-too much water or too little, they throw a fit. Worse, it looks like the Pruners are trimming them. 

Regardless of how the Chucks felt about the one intact hosta which I mentioned in my last post, the Pruners took it out a couple of nights ago. MamaC enjoying a buffet delicacy-pizza crust!

 

In response of these continued attacks, I'm experimenting with protecting the young Rose of Sharon. The damn Pruners are eating all the new growth so after doing research, I am going with this system:
 

That's right-the ghost Sharons! The fabric is Tulle, used for bridal veils and tutus. The larger Sharons were sprayed with deer deterrent. We'll see.

7/27-28: some rain afternoon/overnight measuring .8". The neighborhood was relieved, less stressed. We were lucky as well missing out on violent storms/hail/lightning which whacked WI, IL. So far, only 1.6" has fallen for the month. 

7/31-8/1: a bit more rain. Weirdly cool yet humid. July rain totals were 2.36"-.58" below average. 

Buddy has another wound on his shoulder. No one has seen The Black Kitty in weeks so is this the result of a fight with an unknown cat or self-inflicted due to overly vigorous itch scratching? He's healing up.

Seen recently in the garden-Northern Crescent butterfly which are only 1"-1.5" wide:

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Curiosities: 

Petrifying well or Mother Shipton's Cave-from Wiki:

Mother Shipton's Cave is at Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, England, near the River Nidd. Nearby is a petrifying well-the oldest tourist attraction to charge a fee in England, and has been operated since 1630. The water of the well is so rich in sulphate and carbonate that artifacts may be put in the well to be "petrified" (encrusted) as a tourist attraction.

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The Rudston Monolith: Located in the village of Rudston in Yorkshire, England. Erected 3500-2000 BC and at 25 feet tall, it is the largest stone standing stone in the UK. Around 1100 AD, the Normans built a chapel and over the centuries it has been expanded and updated to the current All Saints Church.

Cheeky local folklore says the stone was thrown at the church by the devil and missed. Nevermind that the stone was there many centuries before the church was built.

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Lake Chad and Lake Congo 100,000 years ago:

Lake Chad was the largest freshwater lake on the planet at a time when North Africa was filled with grasslands and savannahs due to changes in the Earth's orbital tilt and axial wobble (precession) strengthened the African monsoon. Many human populations lived around the lakes and the rivers that fed into it. This same tilt and wobble changed, shifting the monsoon southward and the land grew drier. Populations were forced to migrate in order to survive. This is where the ancestors of the Egyptian culture came from. They moved East until they came across the Nile river and settled along its banks.

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Our near-extinction event: Chimps living in a single forest in Central Africa possess more genetic variation than the entire human population of 8 million. What caused this?

Roughly 74,000 years ago something happened and our species was reduced to an estimated 3000-10,000 individuals. All of us are related to this handful of Homo Sapiens that were anatomically-modern hunter-gatherers living in Africa, Asia and parts of Europe.

One contentious theory is that the eruption of the Toba Volcano in Sumatra, Indonesia created a volcanic winter where its ash caused global cooling and dark skies for a number of years. Plants and animals perished. Human groups in places like Africa and India adapted and survived, proving resilient rather than going extinct. 

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Ancient trek: Fossilized footprints at White Sands National Park in NM reveal an adult carrying a toddler on a nearly 1 mile journey. The tracks show the adult shifting the child's weight and occasionally setting the toddler down.

Distance: 0.93 miles (1.5 km) one-way, making it the longest known ancient human trackway.

Age: Estimated between 11,550 and 23,000 years old from surrounding sediment and seed layers.

Behaviors: The adult's footprints show slips and wider positioning in the mud from the extra load of carrying the young child.

Ice Age Encounters: The path crosses with tracks from extinct animals like a Columbian mammoth and a giant ground sloth that reacted to the human scent.  

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The giant arrows from Atlantic to Pacific:

Google Earth

Beginning in 1927, the Department of Commerce installed giant concrete arrows to help guide air mail and commercial pilots fly across the country.

Major problems with this idea were that these aids only worked in daylight and visible at low altitude. By 1931, they were phased out when new navigation technology advanced.

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Do robots get electric hemorrhoids? 

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A Mom described how she and her daughter survived  the recent EF-3 tornado event in Menasha WI. When the warnings went off, they grabbed a kitty and ran downstairs. The tornado was close-their ears were popping. Over the noise, they heard the cry of another kitty whom they had forgotten in the rush. The daughter ran back upstairs to get it "...and she ran back downstairs because the trees were coming down!" 

An event the girl will always remember.

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FUBARland: 

After trotting out a fake pic and lying that Mitcho is alive and well, the WH has gone silent about the whereabouts/fate of the senior Republican Senator. They claim he is in rehab but the Dems are screaming for proof of life. Like everything else with this administration, just bizarre.

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Our species is really dumb-we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, often because of our own hubris: it won't happen to us. Here's a tale of historical empires and generational issues that asks the question-where are we in this pattern?

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FIVE SECOND STORIES

In the Neighborhood:

The Road Lilies have finished up leaving a late bloomer by his lonesome:

7/14-Temps reached 96° with 7/15 looking to carbon copy. In the afternoon, I was chillin' on the couch, under the fans and Buddy enjoying one of his favorite spots:

Poor Grandfather Oak, the leaf skeletonizers are back again this year. Research indicates that luckily, this only a 2-3 year event. 

7/16-17: Wind shift has brought down Canadian wildfire smoke. Nasty, hot and humid. All the rain has either gone around us or petered out before arriving. We've barely received a .5" since June 26th.

I was fairly successful at convincing Buddy that it was a good idea to stay inside. He'd go out for awhile but at my urging, would come in. He joined us while we were watching a film:

7/19-MamaC's two late bloomers are still hanging out although I've noticed they are much more independent these days.

One surprising thing we've learned about her: we put our elderly leftovers out on the Diner Buffet, most recently, some Indian Kadhai Chicken. She snarfled it down and went after the oily, flavorful drippings left on the plastic container like a kid licking the mixer beaters.
 

Curious: the hostas by apartment porches have taken a beating...except one:

Why has this one gone practically unscathed?

1. It is considered sacred for some reason

2. Emergency ration 

Seen in the East Garden-Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

7/21-another front swung in pushing daytime temps down into the 70's. No rain but the Great Lakes are spared from the Canadian wild fire smoke. These past days have reminded me of the beginning of the film Intersteller: the new Dust Bowl has arrived to huge parts of the country. Disease/pests have reduced farms to planting only one crop-early scenes show fields being burned to try and eradicate the problems wiping out alternative food sources. 

We upgraded our electrical service today and had a pair of hard-working folks here from 8.20-6.30. When C arrived home, we hung out on the deck to stay out of the way. C had good energy-skimmed the pool, then set out digging out major weeds such as thistle and burdock with a new gadget we got couple of years ago. Buddy hung out, having been by himself most of the day outside because of strangers in the house. Here-C is hard at work with her feline supervisor looking on:

7/22-50° this morning! Feels like September! High 40's tonight.

Strange weather acting like those very late August days where Fall first arrives for a couple of days. This year, it came a month early. Still only .5" of rain since June 27 and the lawns are burning up. And, it's brought out the Pruners much like last August's drought. Most of the new growth on the younger Rose of Sharon have been snipped as well as hosta leaves and blossoms. Sigh.

Forecasters continue to predict a very strong El Nino for this winter. For MI, this means a generally warmer and drier than normal season.
 

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Origin story: Kilroy was here.

The ultimate OG of internet memes. "Kilroy was here" was the viral graffiti doodle of World War II. American G.I.s drew the long-nosed, bald character peeking over a wall on every conceivable surface—from the hull of battleships to German outhouses—to mark where they’d been. Historians generally credit James J. Kilroy, a shipyard inspector in Quincy, Massachusetts. To prevent co-workers from erasing his rivet-inspection marks, he wrote "Kilroy was here" in crayon on the ships. Soldiers reading this inside sealed compartments found it hilarious and spread the phrase across the globe.

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Fun fact: The National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, holds the most comprehensive collection of Welsh-language literature in the world, aiming to preserve every book ever written or published in Welsh.Located overlooking Cardigan Bay, it is the largest library in the country with over 6.5 million books and periodicals. As an official Legal Deposit Library, it is entitled to a copy of every publication made in the United Kingdom and Ireland, but it actively purchases and collects any Welsh-published or Welsh-language materials from across the globe to fill gaps in its collection 

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MADads: seen in the past week: Halloween displays in Menards, back to school ad for Target. Sheesh.

Gillette razor-for men who shave their bodies. When did this become a fad?

Fun vids: Female cats-shows how much life in Africa is still retained in their behavior.

 

Firefly sex featuring a femme fatale!

I did not know that each species has its own unique pattern. Makes sense especially if several are together so the ladies don't hook up with the wrong tribe.

Very strange: The Dana Carvey show 1996. Surreal comedy show featuring many SNL and Second City alumni. Due to its controversial nature, only 7 episodes were aired. Here's a taste: Bill Clinton's Teats:

America-Land of Opportunity

A former trucker from the Indian state of Punjab, retires after an accident and opens an Indian restaurant in Bakersfield, CA, a major shipping hub. Fun Fact: there are roughly 140,000 Punjab drivers making up 20% of drivers nationwide but 40% on the west coast. The trucker and his wife wanted to give them a taste of home.

The first American motel:

Star Axis-Giant Land Art located in New Mexico that joins a long lineage of human temples to the sky. A fantastic melding of science and art.

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Major milestone in robot warfare: in the Ukraine, the first surrender of human troops to robots

The task ahead-how does one defend against the robots? 

Some Art History:

Shifting colors in Georges Seurat’s masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

 

The Problem: Zinc Yellow (Zinc Chromate):

• Original: Seurat used this newly invented, brilliant pigment to paint luminous sunlit highlights on the grass, along with mixtures of orange and blue.
• Today: This pigment is unstable and has steadily reacted over time, turning the bright, sunny yellow dabs into dark brown and ochre hues.

Curious tale of a painting that became a cult favorite: Isle of the Dead (German: Die Toteninsel) is the best-known painting of Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901):

 

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FUBARland: With all the things that are needed to be done by Congress to help folks out, what is their latest successful bill to pass the House with bi-partisan approval?: to make Daylight Savings Time Permanent. WTF. Titled the Sunshine Protection Act, it ends the fall behind/spring ahead routine we've had since the end of WWI. The notion that we need our sunshine protected is ludicrous at best and gives one a window to see just what these people prioritize. Oh, it shows they are doing something. How about reining in the Roach and his murderous Icy Brown Shirts? How about...well, the list is as long as one's arm. Worthless POS. 

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Mike Rogers, who is running for US Senate put out this ad:

Claims that our current woes are due to dysfunctional, partisan politics in Washington and the Progressive agenda. 

So, nothing the President, Congress and SCOTUS has done in the past 2 years has had any effect on our lives? What fuckwit would buy this? Evidently, he feels his ignorant base are in enough numbers to pull this one out.

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Speaking of fuckwits, Mike Cox has dropped out of the MI gubernatorial race. His ass-kissing and pandering was not enough as the Roach threw his support to John James. James is a multi-campaign loser and is trying to sell that he is tough on crime-something you don't see much in Black candidates-as you have to cozy up to the White man's racist law and order ideology which is well known to be destructive in the lives of anyone of color. So, it's James and nutty Perry Johnson going up against Dem. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Tough call for MAGA, who don't care to see women in power nor do they care to give it to the coloreds. Will they hold their nose and vote or sit it out?

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JD Vance-livin' large, getting ready to be presidential:

 

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Yep, we've reached the outskirts of hell.

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Those wacky algorithms: an odd pairing on my YT feed-

"When I get low, I get high" made famous by Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb and his orchestra from 1936. Here with the Speakeasy Three from the UK:

"La Llorona"-a striking vid of an old Mexican folktale. La Llorona is Spanish for "The Weeping Woman"-according to the traditional legend, she was a beautiful woman who drowned her children in a fit of rage and grief over a lover, and is now cursed to wander near rivers eternally, crying out for them. The legend of La Llorona serves as an oral tradition, cultural icon, and popular cautionary tale, particularly for children to stay away from dangerous waters. This version is by Carmen Goett and features  another of Mexico´s most beautiful and remarkable traditions: "El día de Muertos" (The Day of the Dead):

Brit humour:

2022 Cornwall brouhaha concerning the sign placement for MacDonald's newest chicken sandwich:

Geez, did Pixar sue this Southampton shop?