The Revenge of Yuri Andropov

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Boolie

I recently had a nightmare where I was living in a Soviet dacha and when I looked out the front window, saw a group of locals gathering to do me harm. But they were disorganized and in no hurry and had primitive weapons, farming tools mostly, so I was concerned but not overly so. Yet with each passing minute more people would arrive, better organized and better armed, and my anxiety began to escalate.

The KGB arrived with the night and began planting explosives at the front of the house. I knew I had to get out fast and without even taking the time to find my shoes ran out the backdoor. I hoped to creep through a maze of shadows to safety but was shocked to find the street lit as brightly by street lamps as if by the mid-day sun. I cursed the efficiency of the Soviet state and woke up.

At first angry at my subconscious for torturing me so, I soon burst out laughing. The efficient Soviet state? Was I the victim of a failed plot by Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB before his short stint as head of the Soviet Union, to plant subliminal propaganda into the dreams of American youth during the height of the Cold War?

Only perhaps the plot was not failed but delayed and I wondered if other middle-aged Americans were waking to the praises of a long-dead empire.

But apparently not. Sorry Yuri.

A Nice 4th of July Weekend

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Boolie

An adult bald eagle flies from a tree at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

This adult bald eagle left the tree to (successfully) steal a duck captured by a younger eagle.

The 4th of July weekend started off with my wife running errands while I stayed at home to face the rigors of sleeping in. She picked me up a few bags of bark mulch so I could spread it underneath the new and new-ish plants to protect them from the drought to come. I’ll water to get them established since mother nature will turn off her spigot for the next few months, and the mulch will help keep the soil from drying out and the weeds to a minimum. I was going to order a big load of mulch but decided to put that off since there are a few bushes out front I want dug up first, but in the meantime this little bit will protect the plants most at risk.

The past few days have been nice and low key, a mix of yard work, hedgehogging, walks in the park, belly rubs and head scratches, sorting pictures, and sitting on the porch. It’s not going to be easy to go back to work tomorrow.

Boolie vs. the Garden, Summer Edition

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Boolie

All part of my evil plans to attract the entire world's hummingbird population to our little yard. MUHAHAHAHA!!!!!

This past weekend we went to the nursery to pick up a few plants for the yard. I wanted to replace the lobelia the slugs devoured last fall, and pick up a couple of hostas and maybe a fern for the shady spot out front. We went to pick up a few plants and came home with twelve. And a bird bath. And a little stone owl.

We started a hummingbird garden last fall in memory of my mother-in-law, plus a dogwood for the backyard and a handful of plants for other parts of the garden. This is more of that story. In the first picture, I’ve labeled the plants of the hummingbird garden, as well as whether they were planted last fall or this summer.

I also labeled a few plants in the back I transplanted in previous years. The patch of daisies at the back is where many of my insect pictures are taken, including this ladybug that remains one of my favorite pictures.

When we moved in, this little patch had an overgrown grape vine above and overgrown weeds below. I dug those out and then the raspberries and mint took over until last summer when I cleared it down to bare dirt. And then again and again until it stayed clear enough that I could get the hummingbird garden started.

And while the slugs got the best of the lobelia I planted last fall, I did get to see it bloom, its brilliant red flowers against the maroon stems and leaves, and knew I wanted another. We got two for good measure, we’ll see how long they last. I’m thinking of setting up some really tiny electric fences.

I'm going to sit up all night beside the lobelias, cradling a shutgun, for as long as it takes. You hear me, slugs, you hear me? It ends here! It ends now!

The other plant that appears not to have survived, done in not by slugs but by the long wet spring, is one of the salvias (I haven’t given up complete hope, not yet, and left it in the ground just in case). We picked up another salvia ‘hot lips’ since we like the one we got last fall, as well as another salvia ‘black & blue’ since the black and blue flowers are both arresting and provide a nice change from the red flowers of many of the other plants. And a salvia we haven’t tried before, ‘icing sugar’, with more pinkish flowers.

The bee balm I planted last fall has come back strong so we added a little dwarf beebalm at the far edge. Both varieties of coneflowers survived the winter and spring, the little green coneflower in the front and the ‘hot papaya’ variety behind it (of all the plants I was most worried about that one as it isn’t as hardy, but it has grown like a champ and is about to bloom).

Then there’s the zauschneria, a native to the Western U.S., which has soft leaves and should bloom orange-red flowers in the fall. Our cat Emma was giving it such rapt attention that I thought she was eating it, but on closer inspection she was just sniffing each and every leaf. I thought back to last summer when she discovered the catnip for the first time and had such a wild look in her eyes that I began to fear for the safety of Sam and Scout.

Finally there are the cape fuchsias that I grew by transplanting runners from the plant out front. I planted half a dozen runners in this part of the garden during the fall, hoping one would take, and now five are thriving. I may remove a couple that are in the back since it does spread quickly, but for now it’s filling in the garden nicely.

"Give a hoot, don't pollute! Or let the dog pee on me!"

I’m glad the transplants are doing well because the original cape fuchsia out front, planted by a previous owner, wants full sun but gets full shade. It has never thrived there and was looking rather ragged after the long wet spring, so it was time to dig it up and put in some shade-tolerant plants. This little strip shown below sits beside the steps leading up to the front of the house. The hostas are probably too close together but I didn’t want to leave too much of a gap since it’s such a visible area, I’ll move them later if need be.

The hostas will die back completely by winter, balanced by the helleborus that will bloom during the winter and early spring

On the Trail of the Boolie

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Boolie

My wife recently picked up car chargers for our iPhones so last weekend I used the MotionX-GPS app on the iPhone to record GPS data of my movements during a day at Ridgefield. This takes a hard toll on the battery, and since I was there for 13 hours I couldn’t have pulled it off without the charger.

What I want is to merge the data with my pictures so that I can get a visual map of where I took my pictures, an idea I first had many years ago during visits to both Ridgefield and Yellowstone. The pieces are all falling into place now although I haven’t yet learned how to tie it all together. Next I need to learn how to merge the GPS data with the pictures, then I can use Apple’s Aperture to display the locations for each picture on a map.

The picture above is the GPS data overlaid on a satellite image of Ridgefield and shows how I spent 13 hours on June 19, 2011. I’ve annotated it with the names of lakes and marshes at Ridgefield. I’m not exactly sure where Bower Slough starts and ends as there is a series of dikes and canals, but this is my best guess. Google Maps only labeled one lake and they got it wrong, they have Long Lake incorrectly named as Quigley Lake.

At first I was a little confused by the satellite photo as there didn’t appear to be much water visible, but this would make sense if the picture was snapped during the summer. Many of the lakes are seasonal and even during the spring the shallower lakes fill with vegetation.

The GPS trace shows two main loops with the green and red dots showing where I started and stopped the recording. The larger loop on the right is the auto tour where I spend so much of my free time, the smaller loop on the left is the Kiwa Trail, a short hiking trail that opens up during the summer. Traffic flows counter-clockwise around the auto tour, most of it is one-way but the first stretch does allow for two-way traffic.

Many of the lakes to my eye are really ponds, or even large puddles, but what does it matter? Some of my favorite places to sit and watch are some of the smallest lakes. Some like South Quigley Lake and Rest Lake were favorite spots from my very first visit, while others like Horse Lake and Long Lake took me a while to learn their rhythms and charms and only recently have become favorites.

Here’s a quick rundown of where some of the most recent blog pictures were taken, ordered by their position along the auto tour.

Parking Lot