2008 April Archive at Beside the Stream

Archive for April, 2008

The Chicks Arrived

Published on April 30, 2008 in birds. 5 Comments

The phone rang around 7 AM, and the caller ID said United States G. I checked Sam’s bedroom before I called back–when the government calls, you want to know where your teenager is–and it turned out to be the Post Office, with chicks.

The label on the box said ‘hatched on 4/25/08 at 8:36:57 PM’ and the notation from the Post Office was ’4/28 called 6:48 AM’, less than two and a half days after they hatched. They were all very perky.

The first few hours after they arrive they need to learn how to eat and drink. The directions said to lay newspaper over the woodshavings and sprinkle the paper with food, so they learn how to eat chick mix instead of wood shavings. The water is spiked with a little sugar, and the instructions say to dip each chick’s beak in water. I don’t know if I get them all, but everyone is having a ball, peeping, scampering, pecking and drinking. Two times different chicks sat down for a while, looking weak, and I picked it up and dipped its beak in water, and it shook itself off and got busy eating and drinking again.

They are ridiculously cute (I like the feathered legs).

and very busy.

Sam said, did you ever wonder how they sent us 25 males? Japanese guys squeeze out the chick’s poop and look up their butt to sort them. Really. You should look it up.

So I googled “chick sexing”, fearing for the worst. But there it was in Wikipedia, a listing for chick sexing that told the story of the professional vent sexer, typically Japanese, who turns the chick upside down and squeezes out feces to open the cloaca, allowing the sexer to see the male’s small bump. “The professional vent sexer has studied their external appearance, which can fall into as many as fifteen basic patterns, and learned to identify which ones are male and which female.” So some time after 8:36 last Friday night, someone was looking for bumps up these newborn chick butts.

Strange territory.

Rick’s Rock Garden

Published on April 29, 2008 in gardening and working out of the house. 3 Comments

When they were younger, Rick and Janice bought a lot on the edge of Durango that butted up against a mountain. Part of their lot was relatively flat, but part of it was a steep slope of naked earth. He had no intention of watching that slope erode, so he stabilized it with stone.

A lot of stone. Rick built channels for the mountain’s run-off to flow through, and stone bridges over them.

This is my favorite bridge of his,

and this one is also lovely. There is a complete system to channel run-off, with a detention pond at the bottom

and there is also a network of paths built of stone.

Most people use pebble paths, or flat slabs. Not Rick. His stone paths are built of honking big stones.

He likes to relate the size of the rocks in his path to the immediate environment. Here the rocks are modestly proportioned as they arc around a tree

and here, where you stop to smell the roses, they are ginormous.

When you first see this rock garden, it might look like a pile of rocks. Instead, the closer you look, the more you see. Rick is a rockhound, and has collected rocks his whole life from an area that spans many states.

Take this one small section of garden here: he has this monumental rock at the base,

but when you look closer you see that every single rock is something special.

Really: nearly every rock is something special.

Over the years, Rick built this garden with his back, his hands and a prybar. Now, we all know what a prybar looks like. Rick is a married man and I’d not be doing Janice any favors posting a photo of his back online, plus you can see one like it in any beefcake mag. But his hands are something else.

Rick’s hands have moved so many rocks for so many years that they are no longer supple, but they are very, very strong,

and very thick.

Our bear woke up

Published on April 27, 2008 in bears. 12 Comments

Traditionally the bears near Durango are supposed to wake up on tax day, April 15. I think our bear woke up about a week ago (the dog has been out in the middle of the night to chase something twice last week) and I finally saw the bear around 6AM Sunday morning crossing the field. I ran ran ran to get my glasses, camera and shoes, and by then he had walked out our driveway and was crossing the road.

He headed on down towards our neighbor’s Honey House

very calmly.

There’s a sapling obscuring this shot, but can you see how the hair on his neck stands up like a mane? and look how completely he turns under his foot with each step.

Glad he’s back.

Chicks are arriving!

Published on April 26, 2008 in birds. 4 Comments

I have 25 chicks arriving Monday or Tuesday. I ended up choosing them by temperament: there was one kind of meat chicken that people commented on as having the nicest disposition, so that’s what I got. Light Brahmas.

According to Murray McMurray, Light Brahmas are a big old breed that probably originated in India, with fully feathered legs and toes. They’re good in cold weather, and exceptionally quiet and gentle; the hens are good layers of brown eggs, especially in winter. “Cockerels develop a tremendous frame, grow rather slowly, but when fully fleshed make a beautiful roasting chicken.”

If I wanted a mixed run or females, I had to wait until June. So I’m getting 25 roosters and hoping for the best. I have the kiddy pool that used to belong to Shaq the Newfoundland filled with a few inches of wood shavings; I bought a 2 ft. feeder, a one gallon chick-waterer, and a 250W red bulb. I’m good to go. And I’m keeping them in my office while they’re babies (at least I think I am.)

Prairie Dogs

Published on April 25, 2008 in what they eat. 3 Comments

In Colorado, many people hate prairie dogs. Since they are easy to poison, the acreage tunnelled by prairie dogs is estimated to be about 2% of what it used to be: 98% (or more) of the prairie dogs have already been removed. Prairie dog tunnels provides homes for burrowing owls, rabbits, tortoises, and many other species. Since prairie dogs are prey, their eradication has been a problem for predators like kit foxes, eagles, hawks, and literally dozens of other animals who relied on their towns for food. Prairie dogs alter the landscape and provide a variation in habitat that many landowners dislike. Buffalo and pronghorn graze preferentially in prairie dog towns, but cattlemen hate ‘em.

This photo is taken in the midst of a prairie dog town at about 7,500 feet on top of a mesa, a flat-topped mountain, in a vacant lot at the entrance of Fort Lewis College. All that naked earth in the background is prairie dog territory, and there’s a prairie dog tunnel entrance and mound in the foreground. The dead thistle at the left is an alien species that grows about 3 feet tall and no one eats.

Every time I drive by this town, I see prairie dogs doing interesting things and a hawk or two overhead. I thought it’d be dead easy to get some good photos, but I was wrong. I spent 45 minutes lying in the dirt on the edge of the prairie dog town, and the only thing I got was windburned and sunburned. So I got back in my car, and a prairie dog popped out: as a human, I’m a predator, but as a car I’m invisible.

I saw prairie dogs at two speeds– very very still, and super fast. See how small this guy is compared to the size of his mound?

and so beautifully camouflaged that

I couldn’t tell if you could see him.

There were two prairie dogs that were chasing each other out one hole and into another, scampering along like a streak.

they’re almost flying

chasing each other close as can be

and here those two kids have all eight feet off the ground at once.

Those kids. I don’t know where they get their energy.

Garden Club has a luncheon

Published on April 24, 2008 in Colorado women, Old-timers, Small town life and gardening. 1 Comment

Once every three years, the Animas Valley Garden Club hosts the spring meeting for the area’s three garden clubs. This was our year. The day before, we gathered at the grange and set up the tables and chairs. The tables, homemade with folding legs, had been made by Ruth’s grandfather.

The menu was soup, salad, and desserts, and we all cooked the night before. (I made cheesecake and 3 salad dressings.)

That morning we decorated the tables.

Each person got a little coleus plant grown in Jennifer’s greenhouse. Ruth and I wrapped each coleus in waxed paper, and tied raffia around it. There’s a poem about gardening in pink paper, and a lavender agenda. The baskets of flowers are borrowed from Kelly’s store; the tablecloths are borrowed from a grange member who has a full set of tablecloths for all the grange tables.

Miss Roberta particularly enjoyed the desserts. She said that she wasn’t used to not doing it herself, but she certainly thought we did a fine job. She said, I thought the club acquitted itself very well.

Time: Three weeks

Published on April 23, 2008 in gardening and time. 1 Comment

This is Suzy’s greenhouse three weeks ago.

You can see the big masses that make this a passive solar structure–the solid earth beds, the water tank filled with waterlilies and goldfish, and the adobe wall all absorb heat during the day and release it at night. There are still stray piles of snow outside, but after three weeks the greenhouse is busting out.

It has been chilly at night, so some of the tomatoes are still very petite

but some of the hardier starts are looking positively beefy.

These are all heirloom varieties, plants that were domesticated ages ago and refined by our great great greats. They are gifts of our ancestors.

So many different kinds of food, so many imaginations. Those two flats of leeks at the top of the photo–sheer whimsy! to start like a thread in the air. And each plant has a story. I planted Giant Musselburgh Leeks, an old Scottish variety that was introduced to the US in the early 1800s. Enormous and tender, it stands winter well and is a good buncher (or so they say). And those leeks aren’t two inches high and I’m thinking Rob Roy could’ve eaten those very same leeks in 1700s Scotland.

But alas, Rob Roy is far less dashing than Liam Neeson.

Robert Burns was a Scotsman from the 1700s who might have eaten my leeks,

but he looks like he didn’t eat enough leeks. I had to go back all the way to William Wallace in the early 1300s before I found the face that looked like it could’ve been fed by Scotland’s Giant Musselburgh leeks.

Doncha think?

Flowering Apricots, old and feral

Published on April 21, 2008 in birds and gardening. 1 Comment

This is my favorite row of apricot trees.

They were well pruned in their youth and have lived to a very great age.

These are private apricots. But there are a lot of public apricot trees on the county road right-of-way.

Here’s a nice duo with a deer path in between

and the tree to the right is a public tree.

This is everyone’s favorite stop: a steep hillside with a row of apricots that were watered and pruned in their youth, and ended up belonging to the county.

I have a very minor mental map of unowned trees, and some of my friends know the feral fruit trees for miles.

Birds, though, are the masters at mentally mapping food sources. The Clark’s Nutcracker hides around 5,000 caches of pinyon nuts for the winter, and recovers most of them.

Can you imagine remembering that many secret stashes?

Crossing the river

Published on April 20, 2008 in Colorado women, dogs and water. 4 Comments

My friends decided to build a bridge because

a cottonwood fell across the river right in front of their house. It was close enough to where they wanted to cross that it seemed like a reasonable idea.

This is the view from upriver, looking downstream. Of course, it wasn’t this perfect by accident. The tree trunk was moved to the best place and is being stabilized before a handrail gets attached. Christy and Steve moved the cottonwood trunk into place with a comealong. (This comealong sells for $12.09, so it’s definitely the cheapest way to move big weights.

This is the view from downstream, looking up. The structure holding the near end of the trunk is artfully obscured by the red twig dogwood.

This end of the tree is forked, and they built a structure of notched logs to support it.

This is the only homemade bridge I can recall seeing. Most every bridge we cross has state sanction… but not this. I saw Christy scamper across it, but I’m holding out for a handrail until the water is warmer

and the dog wanted me to mention that she has no intention of ever using the bridge. Ever.

Not on Sunday

Published on April 20, 2008 in Photography. 5 Comments

My dearest readers,

This is my 111th consecutive post, and I realized yesterday that I don’t want to be posting on Sundays anymore. So I hope you will still visit me if I stick to six days a week instead of seven.

And ValleyGirl, you asked about what lens I used to take those bird pictures:

Last November when I decided to start a blog, I tried to get the best camera and lens for wildlife photography. After doing some research, I bought second-hand equipment on Ebay: a Canon EOS 10D camera, and a Canon Zoom lens EF 70-300mm 1:4 - 5.6 IS USM. The Canon EOS 10D increases the effect of the zoom lens, and the lens itself has an image stabilizer so you don’t need a tripod. When you consider my lack of background or experience in photography, it’s obvious that I’m using stellar equipment. Plus I Photoshop everything–I started using Photoshop Elements, which came with my PC, and got the full Photoshop program about six weeks ago. Ah, technology.

I hope you have a lovely Sunday,

Alice

Beside the Stream