My official greeting of the day began as usual at Morning Thunder where I like to read the Sunday paper, then, time permitting, write or draw in my journal. This morning the paper was late and a friend walked in. She usually reads books that's she's reviewing for a library group. We settled for conversation. She just returned from a week at a nature preserve in Arizona, where they don't really have a winter. Here I am, chomping at the bit, waiting for spring to arrive, which it already has in fits and starts, punctuated by brief snowstorms. TIME OUT. Family duties call. Will finish later.
I'm back - only to discover that this software I haven't mastered keeps rearranging the photos after I click POST, sometimes overlapping them, etc. I will now try to correct the photo positions before continuing my typing.
I'm back. Still fighting the software. Got the photos to where they're not overlapping, but it blocked out the word "paper" after Sunday. Who knows what might happen to THIS text after I click PUBLISH again. [Hey, I'm back on Monday morning to find that the word "paper" is back. But, who knows what might happen after I post this correction?]
Anyway, that morning conversation embraced frog lore. My friend mentioned a great book she was reviewing about "hip pocket frogs" which I'd never heard of. I told her about spadefoot toads which I knew lived in that area of Arizona she visited. Then, when I got home I looked up hip pocket frogs which live in Australia and have leg pouches for their young when makes them superficially resemble marsupials. I'd love to see that!
Our conversation also reminded me of various things I've written, photographed or drawn over the past year or more, and prompted me to go back through my journals. I discovered that I had done a lot more drawing than I realized. The wooden post that appears to have rope wrapped around it was by the seashore and the rope was actually a steel cable. When I arrived, there was a handsome alligator lizard sitting along the cable. I photographed it with my old film camera, and I'm sure it's in my negatives file somewhere, but the lizard then climbed to the top of the post and pooped before dashing off to the underbrush. I then made the drawing I've posted here. I was impressed by how much lizard poop resembles bird poop, and, in fact, in my journal I mistakenly labeled the drawing "bird poop." Minor point, though, as some zoologists consider birds to be reptiles - descendants of the dinosaurs, in fact. If you're not too squeamish, ponder this: the darker portion of the poop is actually poop, that is, a product of the intestine. The white portion is actually urine, a product of the kidneys. They emerge together from an internal sac called the cloaca which also receives the sperm in males and the eggs in females before they exit. Cloaca is the Latin word for sewer. The drawing of the oak gall was done beneath a California black oak, for which my publishing business is named, and was in Mendocino County. These galls are, of course, nests. The residents are sometimes mites, sometimes wasps. The gall is actually a growth of the tree branch in response to being stung by the insect, although some can be caused by fungi. Sometimes, after the bug that causes the gall departs, ants may take up residence. The swallowtail butterfly is one I drew when I was designing a nature calendar. Never did complete the calendar, but I saved the drawing. Maybe a calendar for 2011?
I drew the frog some years ago to accompany a newspaper article I wrote called "Our tree frogs don't like trees." I mused about having met the tree frog clan as a student in Florida where there are many species of Hylas. I first met my California hylas back in 1965 when they were still called Pacific Coast Tree Frogs. I even named my first daughter Hyla. Maybe my article was prescient because since then the herpetologists have decided that California's Hyla regilla is not a tree frog after all but belongs with its allies, the chorus frogs. Now it's called Pseudacris regilla. If I remember correctly, the new generic name means "false cricket." The drawing of a Stellar's Jay feather was done partly out of inspiration from the feather I found, but also to test a new type of pen. I like the "micro" size and am always trying out new pens. The last drawing is of red alder, seen from my canoe on the Noyo River which enters the Pacific south of Fort Bragg, CA. The red alders near the coast grow very tall, but the alders where I live now in the Sierra are usually bushes or small trees. Both have the cute pine-cone-like female cones and catkins that resemble those of other broadleafs like oak, birch, and cottonwoods.
The photos were all taken near the Quincy library and they, too, started my mind racing in many directions, after having already been sent racing by the aforementioned breakfast meeting. The crocus is always one of the earliest to arrive here, even before the snow has finished melting. They seem able to survive getting covered with snow, sometimes more than once, before the snow is gone for good. The dandelion is the first "wild" flower I've seen around here this spring. It was close to the violets which were growing out of the lawn. The violets will undoubtedly get mowed soon, but the dandelion will survive the mowing because it was behind the wooden barrier defining the "garden." However, it might get "weeded." The violets may or may not survive the mowing and grow back, again and again, but I suspect that, being weakened by domestication, it will give up after a few mowings. The dandelion, on the other hand, usually grows rather tall the first time out after winter. However, after getting mowed, or pulled up without getting all of the root, will flower sooner, that is, shorter, the next time. As I watch the dandelions outside my office window get "cut down to size," mowing after mowing, they keep coming back, and eventually will bloom with practically no stem at all, below the height of the mower's blades. You've got to admire that! Thank you, Sherry, for energizing conversation today.
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