2008 May Archive at Beside the Stream

Archive for May, 2008

Teaching an Old Dog new tricks

Published on May 7, 2008 in birds and dogs. 3 Comments

From the time my dog was very young, Jessie’s mantra has been: good dogs get treats and a place by the fire, while bad dogs get the short end of the stick. She has worked this angle her whole life. She was the star of her puppy class. She’s the only dog in town with manners enough to sit outside the door at the bakery doing tricks for treats. She can walk a few inches from me, fast or slow. She knows good dog english, including “out of the garden”, “go for a walk” “out of the road”, “where’s the bear” “ride in the car” ”bakery” ”get the deer” “want some food” “go swim”. She had the world wired… until recently.

The day the chicks arrived, I left Jessie in the office with the kiddy pool, and came back to find two chicks dead on the floor. I think she took them in her mouth and shook them, breaking their necks. Poor dog was punished all day: no car ride, no good times, and every so often I’d hold a chick corpse right in front of her face and call her a bad bad dog. She was mortified.

A week and a half later, and she can still barely bring herself to look at them.

When I specifically ask her to look the chick in the eye, she will, but given her druthers she wouldn’t be within 20 feet of them.

The truth is, this blog has been a hard stretch for her. New rules for an old dog takes a lot of concentration, and she’s been knocking herself out getting things right. First she’s not allowed to chase the deer and wild turkeys, and now she’s not allowed to touch the chicks.

If not for the bear, she wouldn’t be having any fun at all.

An Act of God (Time: one month)

Published on May 7, 2008 in time and water. 2 Comments

In early April, this debris flow was liquid and the wall of the irrigation ditch was cut to allow the material to keep moving downhill.

A month later, the ditch wall is finally repaired, the ditch is filling, and there’s a plan. I got the scoop from an engineer who worked for the ditch company, which had come to an agreement with the landowner, the county and the Army Corps of Engineers.

This is the problem: a big chunk of the cliffs at the top of this mountain crashed down in 2001, leaving a huge pile of pulverized limestone hanging 1,000 feet above the road. It’s that upside-down triangle at the top of the mountain. This spring, millions of gallons of limestone and water slurry moved downhill, and the rest of the pile is expected to come down over the next ten years. There are four loose boulders up there that are as big as houses, and that is a problem. But they have a solution for the pile of pulverized limestone.

The ditch is going to be put in a culvert at this point, and wing dams will be built to funnel the slurry over the ditch and down through this orchard to the river. There’s no way to stop it and no way to move it, so the plan is to let it flow.

The pulverized limestone has dried to the consistency of cement, and both rows of apple trees will be dead before long. This debris flow is considered to be an Act of God, so the ditch company pays for the ditch work, the road department pays for keeping the road clear, and the landowner has to pay for the construction of a slurry channel through his land. I wasn’t clear on who pays for the wing dams, but it might be the Corps.

According to Wikipedia, ”an Act of God or act of nature is a legal term for events outside of human control, such as sudden floods or other natural disasters, for which no one can be held responsible.” (attributed to Black’s Law Dictionary).

This debris flow is classified as an Act of God, but it sure looks like an Act of Gravity to me (no higher power required). If God was involved, perhaps it was that the limestone and water slurry was so liquid. If it had been thicker, said the engineer, it would have swept all the trees along with it, and then you woulda seen a mess.

Chicks don’t want adventures

Published on May 6, 2008 in birds. 5 Comments

In another couple of weeks the chicks will be pastured, so I thought they’d like to have a field trip. Sunshine and grass, I thought. From office life to the wild world. At least they’d like to see the catmint (or so I thought).

They were so not interested.

This guy peeped peeped peeped

all the way back to the box. The other two chicks in the box were peeping just as loudly. Marco! Polo! Marco! Polo!

The chick had no interest in adventure, so I let him go home and pulled out another.

This chick was more interested in the world, but wasn’t a big fan of the bark mulch. I thought he might like the grass

but he didn’t. He’s a chicken. He wants to go home with all the other chickens and the warm red light.

He knows what the world is supposed to look like, and it doesn’t involve grass or catmint or any of that field trip stuff. He likes the world of a kiddy pool, a heat lamp, waterer, and excellent kind of feeder with a bar that spins if you run over the top. It’s probably be different if these chicks had a Mom, but without one, they love the simplicity of routine and very few choices.

They didn’t want to have an adventure at all.

Beside the Stream

Published on May 5, 2008 in water. 2 Comments

The cottonwoods beside the stream are leafing out in an unearthly shade of spring green.

They’re almost fluorescent.

There has been an orderly melt this spring, with plenty of cold nights. Runoff is supposed to peak this month, and the water is running clear now.

Six weeks ago at the same spot (March 22) the water was higher and siltier, and there wasn’t any green.

Love that green.

Transplanting day, with 4 ducklings

Published on May 2, 2008 in Colorado women, birds and gardening. 1 Comment

The day finally came to transplant the seedlings we started last month–the proverbial 13 varieties of tomatoes. I did a few hundred today and have plenty more to go.

They look sort of dazed, but are coming along fine.

These birdhouse gourds are my current favorites: they grow 15′ to 35′ vines that want to be trellised, with gourds that are good for birdhouses. I thought these were quite endearing until Steve arrived with four ducklings.

It’s the bills that slay me.

Prairie Dogs and Water

Published on May 2, 2008 in water. 11 Comments

Around here, people think prairie dogs are terrible pests. Ranchers say: if we called them prairie rats instead of prairie dogs, city people wouldn’t think they were so cute. Which seems like a silly thing to say, because prairie dogs are objectively very cute and don’t have naked tails.

If the people who’d like to remove prairie dogs from the landscape could only see underground, they’d feel differently. If ranchers had x-ray vision, they’d love prairie dogs, because prairie dogs change the pathways water takes through the land. (RDennis, this post’s for you.)

When rain falls on grasslands, most of the water that falls moves back into the air through evaporation. Rain that falls on vegetation will likely evaporate. Some of the water runs overground as run-off, which will possibly join a stream or more likely evaporate. Of the water that soaks into the soil, nearly all of it is taken up by the root systems of grasses and transpired back into the air. As a rule, rain that falls on the grasslands does not soak down to the groundwater, where it could replenish local springs and streams. Unless it falls on a prairie dog town.

The soils in prairie dog towns are moister than the soils in the surrounding grasslands, and higher in organic matter. This may account for the increased populations of tunneling insects and worms that honeycomb the soil profile in a prairie dog town. Macropores are tunnels with a diameter greater than 1 millimeter, and they promote the rapid transport of water through the soil. The macropores in a prairie dog town allow rainfall that would have been lost to evaporation or run-off to trickle down to the groundwater and replenish the local vegetation.

Flury, M., and H. Flühler. 1995. Tracer characteristics of brilliant blue FCF. Soil Science Society of America Journal. 59:22-27.

Here we have a photo (properly attributed, no less) that shows grasslands soil where dyed water was poured on the surface, and then the cross section was excavated. We can see that there’s no zone of saturation moving down from the surface, like we were taught in Hydrology. Instead, the water runs down holes build by animals, worms and beetles, and through channels left by decayed roots.

By allowing prairie dogs to tunnel the grasslands, you change the pathways water takes through the land. Instead of rain disappearing through evaporation, transpiration and run-off, it settles deeply into the land where it can do some good.

If ranchers had x-ray vision, we’d see less of this

and more of this

(Prairie Dog Rapture by Anthony Falbo)

Modern Cinderellas

Published on May 1, 2008 in gardening. 1 Comment

We’ve accumulated substantial brushpiles over the past two years, and I hoped to chip them for mulch. But when we really looked through the piles–posts and firewood sorted out long ago–it was clear that the wood was too small to chip. We burned on Sunday, starting around 11 am.

We use water to make sure that the fire stays low, and the hose is hooked up to the irrigation ditch.

This is dry country, and instead of building a big bonfire you have to feed the fire slowly, all day long. Bob sets us up with a big pile of loose brush next to the fire, and Sandy and I settle in to tend it.

Tending a fire is slow work. Every now and then it’s time to toss on more wood or hose the perimeter, but there’s a lot of waiting time too. Five hours later, the piles are gone.

What a nice afternoon: it was like being Cinderella without the icky shoes.

Beside the Stream

Archive for May, 2008

Teaching an Old Dog new tricks

An Act of God (Time: one month)

Chicks don’t want adventures

Beside the Stream

Transplanting day, with 4 ducklings

Prairie Dogs and Water

Modern Cinderellas

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