finding what's lost

overheard conversation

2007-12-21T15:39:00.000-08:00

"...and the only other option is to freak out, and I don't like to do that anymore."

December flowers

2007-12-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

Every year I like to watch to see what flowers make it to December; there are usually at least a few, even here in frigid Duluth. It's usually non-native weeds, although one year I did find some liatris (aka Blazing Star) with a little bit of color left to its petals. This year, however, I didn't have very high hopes, since we've recently had a string of sub-freezing (and occasionally sub-zero) temperatures. There was a clump of tansy I had my eye on, but when I checked on it this morning the little buttons had lost their bright yellow and were now more of an rusty mustard ochre. There was plenty of tansy (and other forbs) with green leaves, but that doesn't count. I'm looking for flowers.

And it is sweet clover for the win! The little patch of sweet clover behind work saves the day. The leaves were grey and shriveled, but as of 9:00 a.m. yesterday the flowers were still soft and fragrant (not quite as heady and intoxicating as they are after the first frost or two of the year, but they definitely still had a sweet clovery musk, and I didn't have to get all up in their business to smell it). I tried to get a picture, but sweet clover is actually rather hard to get a decent picture of, especially when one does not have one's Good Camera and only has one's crappy six-year-old digital point-n-shoot.

2007-11-26T09:45:00.000-08:00

I'm not normally a fan of holiday decorations, but I do make a few exceptions. Like this. The mansion on the corner decked out its lion for Christmas.

2007-11-18T06:31:00.001-08:00

Have you heard the news?

Andy Lipke Rulz at guitar.

Now the question arises -- who made this statement? Was it Andy Lipke's girl/boyfriend? Or was it, sadly, Andy Lipke himself?

2007-11-17T09:04:00.000-08:00

Today's flowers in the snow count is this: Toadflax (aka Butter-n-Eggs (seriously)), White Sweet Clover, Common Tansy, Tansy Ragwort (no relation), and some kind of yellow Sow Thistley thing. But that is just counting the urban wildflowers in the few blocks distance between the bus stop and work, and did not take into account the cultivated flowers in people's yards (my geraniums are still flowering!!!)

2007-11-09T19:39:00.000-08:00

Last night into this morning we got our first real snow of the year -- before this there had just been a few fey little flurries that disintegrate before they hit the ground. It kind of caught some of the flowers off-guard.

Most of them look pretty tough, though. I think they'll hang on a bit longer.

By my work there's some White Sweet Clover, which I didn't get pictures of because it wasn't artfully draped in snow/ice, but all of a sudden today the scent was knock-you-over intoxicating. I've noticed this before with the sweet clovers, that their perfume, which is already pretty luscious, tends to get even more powerful and alluring after a cold snap. I wonder if it's a similar chemical reaction that makes grapes sweeter after a few light frosts. But it's charming, and it's one of the reasons I love sweet clovers, even if they are all non-native and invasive.

at the bus stop

2007-10-19T17:19:00.000-07:00

There was a very light, gentle, misting rain, just enough to turn the pavement dark, and when the wind picked up and blew the leaves away, there were dry, white, leaf-shaped silhouettes speckled all over the sidewalk.

2007-10-04T10:29:00.000-07:00

There's a little patch of woods, kind of between Mt. Royal Fine Foods and Woodland Middle School. On my map of Duluth it's not even marked in green, it's just an open spot, but I assure you it is quite green. I'm not sure who all the land belongs to, but the Middle School put some official trails through it a year or two ago, and there are many more nonofficial trails. It feels more like abandoned, overrun land than an actual park, but it's a very nice place to go walking.

I've run into deer in there before (I think the deer know their way around the green spots in the city better than anyone else) and it's usually a decent place to look for birds -- yesterday there were White -throated and White-crowned Sparrows, and some Ruby-crowned Kinglets (I tried to get a picture of the kinglets, but, gosh, it didn't turn out). The wildflowers are pretty much done for the year, but there were some asters still blooming (Large-leaf was the only one I could ID with any certainty, and there were others that could have been Lindley's and Calico), and some goldenrods (mostly Zig-zag), a few buttons of Tansy, and a few Mullein with a few still-yellow flowers. Now and then there was a stalk of Creeping Bellflower, and when I saw it out of the corner of my eye I would get all excited for a second because I thought it might be some rich purple colored aster, like New England. And there was one resolute stalk of buttercup looking somewhat out of place.

But the big attraction yesterday was the lichen and moss and fungi. The weather yesterday was sunny and gorgeous, but it's been raining on and off for weeks now and stuff is sprouting up all over the place. Sometimes it is very tiny. And also very cute.

The leaves are starting to turning, too. The birch and aspen are still green, but the maples are the color of flame, and the oaks are gold and rust, and the sumacs are a lusty red.

Another discovery that I made --or rather, that my companion made and pointed out to me -- was that apparently pussy willows start making their catkins in the autumn, when the leaves are even still fresh and green. Check it out:

And then over by the Middle School I found a pile of bones.

I'm not sure if they're from the same animal, or even what body part each one belongs to. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I brought them all home in a ziploc bag (one must always be prepared with ziploc bags), so I can take more pictures if need be.

2007-10-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

While I was waiting for the bus early Saturday morning, I watched three deer, a doe and two half-grown-up fawns, cross Superior Street, from one forested yard to another. A few minutes later, a flock of about fifty Canada geese went honking by overhead. Sometimes waiting for the bus isn't so bad.

2007-09-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

This is some kind of Inky Cap mushroom, about three quarters of the way through EATING ITSELF ALIVE. Okay, not quite, but I have one book that calls the process autodigestion, so it's fun to think of it that way. It is actually a way of dispersing the spores. Another book calls the process "autodeliquescence," which is prettier sounding but less gruesome, and it's kind of a gruesome looking process.

Some species of Inky Caps are apparently edible if you get to them before they've slimed themselves, but I mostly only see them in some stage of slimeitude. This patch was in the boulevard in a fairly quiet part of the hillside, but I've also seen them in the boulevard on London Road in the neighborhood of 30th East, so they obviously don't mind traffic exhaust too much. But I really don't think I'd eat a London Road mushroom.