2008 July Archive at Beside the Stream

Archive for July, 2008

Puddling butterflies

Published on July 18, 2008 in Insects. 2 Comments

Every now and then, a group of swallowtails gather on moist compost to suck the water. This time,

they had a feast. I thought I might get photographs of some frisky business, but it turns out that it was probably an all-male gathering. They were puddling, or mud-puddling.

Here’s the story: “several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. … In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. ^[27]“

Puddling is an old word with many meanings, including

an obsolete method for purifying pig iron (metallurgy),

a method for producing waterproof puddle or lining an existing area with puddle (engineering),

the process of stripping soil and clay from minerals using water (mining), and

the process by which butterflies extract nutrients from damp surfaces (biology).

So that’s what the butterflies were doing together on the compost.

Here are a few shots of the butterflies at work collecting nutrients for their nuptial gift:

they’re very busy together.

(and I do mean together).

A magnificent rump

Published on July 17, 2008 in horses. 3 Comments

Two draft horses are pastured near here for the summer.

When I saw them, it brought to mind a line from a book I once read where a German soldier was talking about his wife. She has a rump like a brewery horse, he said. A rump you could go to town on.

I tried to track down the quote. I reread Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, and it wasn’t there. I wondered about rereading Gunter Grass’s The Tin Drum and realized I was being ridiculous.

Surely I can post a few photos of some finely muscled draft horses

without dignifying it with a quote from a famous author.

Surely.

Birds and Miss Roberta’s cherries

Published on July 15, 2008 in Colorado women, Old-timers, birds and gardening. 3 Comments

There are hundreds of old sweet cherry trees growing along this road, and just a few sour cherry trees. In the normal course of events, the birds are no problem. They eat the sweet cherries on the top third of the trees, which is dandy because the trees are full sized and too tall to pick. And (glutted on sweet fruit) they leave the sour cherries–mostly dwarf Montmorency’s–alone.

This year a late frost on just the wrong day erased the sweet cherry crop entirely. There’s not a single cherry on all those hundreds of sweet cherry trees, so the birds are turning their attention to the sour cherries instead.

This is Miss Roberta’s cherry tree. Aren’t they luscious?

This is what it takes to keep the birds away from such tender, brightly colored fruits.

At 95, Miss Roberta’s cherry tree strategy is: One for the birds; and one for me.

The Lost Art of Dressing Salad

Published on July 15, 2008 in recipe. 0 Comments

I thought I stopped posting recipes because the photos need a flash and a tripod, and I don’t feel like buying. But the real reason is that photos show everything, and having to clean the stove and kitchen as a first step for a blog entry seems like a cruel trick. Meanwhile, I was recently at a party where women who are good cooks asked me what kind of salad dressing I used on the salad I brought. I realized 1) making salad dressing at home is a lost art, 2) recipes are totally useful blog fodder and 3) it’s time to move the pot of chicken mash, the kettle and the coffee roaster, wipe down the stove, and do some kitchen pictures. So here goes:

Salad dressing starts with olive oil, and an acid like vinegar, lemon or lime. The proportions are three to one. You know it’s three oil to one vinegar because the oil bottle is bigger than the vinegar bottle.

Take a teacup, and pour in oil until the cup is about 1/3 full. Add vinegar until the cup is less than 1/2 full–just a little vinegar. It’s the vinegar that provides the character: for a full bodied dressing, use Balsamic vinegar; for a lighter dressing, use red wine vinegar. Using lemon for the acid makes the dressing taste brighter. Wisk the oil and vinegar together with a fork,

and add salt and herbs. I’ll often use seasoned salts as a quicky substitute: lately I’ve been using Angelo’s Gourmet Seasoning, and sometimes I use Jane’s Crazy Mixed-Up Salt. For a simple vinaigrette, you are done at this point. But I prefer a creamier dressing.

So I add a forkful of mayonnaise and mix it in, and a little heavy cream. It’s just enough to give the dressing some body so it clings to the lettuce leaves. At this point, you have a perfectly nice creamy dressing. But I like to go one step further, and press in a single clove of garlic or a dollop of mustard. And then stop, because your dressing is done. Restraint is key.

Next comes the tasting, and that’s the easiest collaboration in the kitchen. You dip a leaf in and check the seasoning, and someone else tries it too. If it’s bland, try a little more vinegar, and more salt. And then it’s perfect (don’t eat the garlic, though; use the fork tines to strain it out of the dressing as you pour it onto the salad.)

The olive oil you have in your cupboard is twenty times nicer than the oil used in most bottled salad dressings, and this dressing is fresh. In truth, your little mix-and-taste with a fork in a teacup is better than most anything in a bottle. Unlike most little kitchen projects, this one is utterly reliable. Which you know, if you make your own dressing. But if you don’t, give it a shot. You might be startled at the results.

Sulphur butterflies

Published on July 14, 2008 in Insects. 3 Comments

Jessie and I took a hike where to a meadow where there were dozens of butterflies flitting around.

This is a shot of a sulphur butterfly in flight. See how its legs dangle?

Here the butterfly is whipping out its proboscis. To me it looks like this is a pink edged sulphur, but the range of that butterfly is a thousand miles north. (Here’s a photo of a pink edged sulphur from a guide to butterflies).

If it’s not a pink edged sulphur, it’s definitely a sulphur with a pink edge.

These butterflies are busy with the clover.

They consistently alight on a flower facing me with its wings closed, providing a head-on view where it’s hard to tell a proboscis from a leg.

From the side these guys are little miracle bugs.

I particularly like the bulgy green eyes.

The Gem and Mineral Show

Published on July 11, 2008 in Small town life. 1 Comment

My favorite part of the annual gem and mineral show is seeing what Bob found last year. Bob is a desert rat and a rock hound. He finds rocks in the desert that he sells at shows; he has a big saw to slice petrified logs that he finds; and he has a gold mine and an ore crusher. He recently married, which is an excellent thing because every man with a gold mine needs to be married. (Jane Austen put better: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.)

Here’s Bob holding a chunk of ore from his mine. He genuinely prospected a mine, and processes ore.

I bought a big piece of petrified pine from him, and I’m not the only person who checks in with Bob as soon as the show opens–this guy came early for mineral samples, and found what he wanted too.

A very nice Mexican couple had boxes of calcite

in two shades

and a gorgeous box of fluorite

The owner of these quartz crystals said,

Women who come to these shows like crystals, but they don’t understand that I’m a diamond in the rough.

I complimented him on his quartz, and he sighed.

If you’re taking pictures, he said, take a picture of this aluminum silicate.

It’s the best example of it you’ll ever see anywhere. The Best.

Buffalo and Light Brahma Chickens:Things that don’t look alike, but are

Published on July 11, 2008 in Appearances. 1 Comment

The buffalo is a grand American beast (this photo is my edit of someone else’s shot).

Of the estimated 350,000 buffalo alive today, 250,000 of them are privately owned and raised for meat. If you want more buffalo grazing the Plains, buy buffalo meat instead of beef.

Which brings to mind my lovely little chickens. These birds are starting their 9th week. I think they’ve been a little slow growing up because they ran around for those weeks, and because it stays cool at night. But the truth is I been waiting for them to get bigger because I think they’re nice animals.

My frig has never been cleaner, because they love dubious leftovers.

They’re handsome birds,

and they are easily entertained. I rearranged the stump and ramp, and they all tested it: they ran up the ramp and jumped off the stump, and then they changed direction and jumped onto the stump to run down the ramp.

I move the hoop house every day or two, so there is never a chicken poop build-up. They’re no trouble at all. And still I have to make the appointment.

So I bought an extra 50 pounds of cracked corn, and have been cooking up great potfuls and spiking it with vegetable oil, making a tender mash that they adore and trying to figure out this social contract.

Their existence depends on our willingness to eat them.

Or, better to eat animals with a happy life.

Shooting Wild Horses

Published on July 9, 2008 in horses. 4 Comments

Wild horses have been in the news recently: their population on public land is now topping 33,000, while the target population is 27,000. We can’t sell ‘em for meat and can’t get them all adopted, so there’s no choice but to start shooting them because they’re degrading the range. They eat too much grass.

The interesting part of this story is omitted from news reports. The Bureau of Land Management leases grazing rights to 160 million acres of public land in the western states (excluding Alaska). There are over 13 million AUMs, or animal unit months, of grazing leased to over 18,000 permit holders. Translated into English, that means that our public land is grazed by millions of privately owned cattle.

On the 160 million acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the proper number of wild horses has been decreed to be 27,000, or one every 6,000 acres… and any more will be mowed down so they don’t take feed from millions of privately owned cattle. And if you think that’s twisted, consider the buffalo.

Buffalo were once the most successful large grazer on the continent. But are buffalo allowed on our national commons? No. The 161 million acres of land owned by the BLM in the West supported 375 buffalo in 2001, and I think that number has dropped since then (but I can’t find the link).

Lucky horses, that government agencies start shooting when the population exceeds 27,000.

Poor buffalo.

If you want to tell the Bureau of Land Management what you think about the current balance between cattle, horses and buffalo allowed to graze public land, here’s the form!

Time: two months

Published on July 8, 2008 in Colorado women, Do it yourself, gardening and time. 1 Comment

These are asparagus spears on May 8, growing in an eight-year-old bed that is nearing the height of production. Peg has a big market garden, and her asparagus is locally famous.

This is the same bed 2 months later. This patch yielded 125 pounds of spears that sold for $10 a pound. They were exceptional asparagus spears, and now the ferns are six feet tall.

Peg sells iris rhizomes, potted penstemons, and pansies in her salad mix. This is her commercial flower bed on May 8, and

here are those same rows two months later, after selling 125 penstemon in pots. The iris get harvested next, and the pansies are sold every week with her greens.

You wouldn’t look at this garden and think it’s an easy living. But Peg says: I love my life. And you can tell she means it.

West Coast Lady Butterfly

Published on July 7, 2008 in Insects. 3 Comments

I stopped by our welder to have him fix a pot lid, and he wasn’t there but his lavender was in full bloom and some butterflies were working the blossoms.

The West Coast Ladies are like Painted Ladies except for the four blue dots.

I have been finding it very difficult to photograph butterflies. When they’re drinking nectar, they’re buzzing around on a sugar high and never settle down.