2008 September Archive at Beside the Stream

Archive for September, 2008

Things that look alike, or, the Continuity of Souls

Published on September 18, 2008 in appearances and dogs. 5 Comments

There’s a saying about Bernese Mountain dogs that goes

Three years a young dog,

three years a good dog, and

three years an old dog.

As David Sedaris put it, there are cheeses that last longer than these dogs. (He was referring to Great Danes, but he could have been talking about Berners.)

I recently read that the current lifespan for Bernese Mountain dogs in the US is 6 to 8 years, which sparked a few conversations about how long much longer we think our Jessie will last. At 8, her hips and elbows are often sore and she has started bowing out of hikes she knows are excessive. She’ll be gone before too long because that’s her nature, and she’s such a fine dog that Bob thought we should build a big pyre and light her up for a bonfire party–really celebrate her passing. Which sounds reasonable to me because I had a female Bernese before and can have one much like her again. Their gene pool is about a quarter inch deep.

Here’s a Berner from the 1800s,

and here are three from the other day (a woman visiting a neighbor brought two, so we went up to a meadow to get some pictures). Jessie is the good-looking one lying down.

Mutts are one of a kind. If you get a great Heinz 47 dog, you’ll never see its like again. But a female Bernese is like the Dalai Lama, always the same good egg.

Here is the 13th Dalai Lama,

and here is the 14th:

Berners and the Dalai Lama: Cheerful, loyal and brave, every time.

A former beaver dam

Published on September 17, 2008 in beaver and water. 1 Comment

Here is a beaver dam that blew out in the high water of spring a few years back.

This is an auxiliary dam in the forest. This long structure is about two feet high, and it once made a pond that was the second of a series of three large, shallow impoundments. When the dam on the mainstem blew out, the water didn’t flow into the forest anymore. This series of ponds disappeared, leaving the dams high and dry.

I asked the dog to sit here so you could see how big these cottonwoods are: this old dam was the site of some serious beaver work.

She said, That tree is pretty big and this bole is really stupendous… but enough lollygagging around; it’s time to move along.

Goldfish out of the garden pond

Published on September 16, 2008 in water. 2 Comments

It is an unfortunate fact that once you have goldfish living in a garden pond, it is nearly impossible to get them out. And the reason they have to go is clear from this picture: you see native waterplants, and native snails. There are native invertebrates in here, and toads living under the rocks around the pond. But there aren’t any other amphibians. No frogs, no newts or salamanders, not a single one of those little thin-skinned beauties that make ponds really interesting. This is the second year this pond has been in place, and as expected it was filled with the eggs of visiting amphibians in the spring. But these goldfish devoured the eggs, and the few that hatched were eaten as tadpoles.

Garden ponds need to have fish that eat the mosquito larve. But they need to be native minnows, because frogs can’t live with goldfish. I learned this from my sister back in April, and when I researched how to make a healthy native garden pond, NO GOLDFISH was at the top of the list.

I tried to catch them with a net, and with a strainer. I said mean things to them. And I finally realized that they weren’t going to leave until I emptied the pond.

Bob said, it’ll take me ten minutes.

I kept putting it off, because I don’t know how I’m going to catch the native minnows to replace them. A pond without fish in warm weather is a no-no around here: there is West Nile Virus in the valley, so mosquitoes aren’t just a nuisance, they’re a menace. But today we finally got rid of the goldfish. Here is the sump pump, dumping the pond water onto the lawn.

When the pond was empty, I thought that the fish would be flipping around and easy to find. Instead, they stayed still, hoping not to be eaten. I had to sift through the bottom muck with my fingers to find them… and I thought there were five but only found four.

They’re big and very active, and they’re staying on the kitchen counter until tomorrow. They’re moving to Hesperus, where they’ll live in a big metal tank with a few other goldfish and some flashy, non-native waterlilies. I wish them a long and voracious life… far away from here.

And I’m wondering where to catch some minnows.

Processing lettuce

Published on September 14, 2008 in Colorado women and gardening. 3 Comments

It take piles of work to get produce ready for the Saturday Farmer’s Market. The lettuce is particularly labor-intensive.

The first step on Friday morning is to cut the lettuce. It’s been cold at night so the lettuce is growing more slowly, and a hard frost could come any time. Erin takes out everything she can.

The leaves are dumped into a big steel tank filled with water. I pick out the earwigs, slugs and weeds, and slosh the leaves around so they drop their dirt.

Next, we spin the leaves in an industrial-sized salad spinner. It sounds like a jet engine warming up when you really get it going.

The spun leaves are dumped into a basket,

and separated into bags that weigh 7 ounces each.

Finally (this is the best part) each bag gets a handful of pansies and nasturtium. You need to reach the end of the flowers and the end of the lettuce at the same time. And the lettuce is ready to sell now (after it’s loaded, driven, unloaded and arranged on a stand). Whenever Suzy asks what I think something should sell for, I say: More.

The dog has been very helpful–she’s a pro at this by now–and is always glad to visit the farm on Friday. There’s old magic in gathering food from the fields, and she wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Some flowers

Published on September 13, 2008 in photography. 1 Comment

Beaver and water rights

Published on September 11, 2008 in beaver and water. 6 Comments

The right to use water is private property in the West, and no one is allowed to use water without buying water rights first. This means that beaver are water thieves: all of the water they impound is actually owned by someone downstream, and by gum ranchers aren’t going to be thwarted by some damned rodent. In Colorado, beaver (like prairie dogs) are classified as pests.

I agree that it looks as though beaver are water hoarders, taking more than their fair share of a scarce resource. But with water, it’s often true that what’s going on underground trumps what we see on the surface.

This illustration is by Steve Grannes, University of Minnesota MS Agricultural Engineering 1984. Here we have two streams coming straight out of the page, and let’s pretend for the sake of this discussion that they’re several miles apart.

When you add a beaver dam to one of the streams, it backs up water behind the dam and more water seeps down to the groundwater. This dam actually raises the level of the water table underground, which increases the flow of springs and streams in the surrounding area.

This means that beaver dams upstream should actually increase the flow of water downstream: add beavers, and you get more water in the watershed, not less. And a three year research project completed in 2006 shows that is exactly what happens. In the Rocky Mountain National Park, researchers found that ponds created by beaver dams in the Colorado River Valley raised the water table downstream, and increased the level of soil moisture far below the dams.

What is true in theory has been shown to be true in practice. In arid regions, beavers don’t steal the water in the river. Instead, their dams enhance downstream flows.

When ranchers insist that beaver populations or prairie dogs populations imperil their livelihood (as everyone knows) I can only say that when it comes to water, things are seldom what they seem,

or,

who you gonna believe: me Dr. Cherie Westbrook, or your lying eyes?

(Beaver Symbol, Pacific Northwest)

A wasp nest

Published on September 11, 2008 in insects. 4 Comments

I saw this wasp nest in the woods in mid-August, when it was still warm.

I got pretty close to it, but without a zoom lens you can’t see the wasps very well.

I returned three weeks later.

The weather is cooler and the wasps are staying inside more, but when they leave the hive they are moving really fast. It’s shady, and the low light combined with zippy movement makes it hard to get a good shot.

Here’s a paper wasp poised to take off,

and here’s another.

Here are two wasps scooting along in a blur, coming and going,

and here’s a photo of one wasp in superhero mode, and two that are getting ready to take off.

Their nest is made from chewed up rotted wood and spit. Some bird’s nests are made from twigs and spit. Some ants make nests of mud and spit. I don’t think of saliva as a construction material, but I’m clearly in the minority here.

The best laid plans

Published on September 9, 2008 in gardening. 4 Comments

I wasn’t planning on processing food today, but I got a call from a neighbor: Do you want peaches? Of course I said yes.

The peaches are ripe today… not tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow, but today. They have to be peeled, pitted and popped in the freezer.

She asked, do you want any more plums?

I surely do.

I brought back ten pounds of plums and twenty of peaches that have to be taken care of before dark. Which is to say,

… The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley, …

“To A Mouse” by Robert Burns, 1785.

often paraphrased as ‘The best-laid plans of mice and men / Go oft awry’

or, plans change.

An old story about planning ahead

Published on September 9, 2008 in time. 1 Comment

Here’s a story that ought to be true. It was written by Gregory Bateson in 1980 (The Beams of New College, Oxford), but his version was riddled with errors. In the following version, Stewart Brand (in <How Buildings Learn> 1995) has corrected the facts but Oxford claims that the story itself is probably apocryphal. It’s about this very dining hall in New College, Oxford:

New College, Oxford … was founded around the late 14th century. It has, like other colleges, a great dining hall with big oak beams across the top. These might be two feet square and forty-five feet long.

A century ago, so I am told, some busy entomologist went up into the roof of the dining hall with a penknife and poked at the beams and found that they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, who met in some dismay, because they had no idea where they would get beams of that calibre nowadays.

One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be some oak on College lands. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country. So they called in the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked about oaks. And he pulled his forelock and said, “Well sirs, we was wonderin’ when you’d be askin’.”

Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks has been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for five hundred years. “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.”

…

My father loved to quote an old Italian proverb:

Se non è vero, è ben trovato.

If it is not true, it is well found (or my Dad would say: If it’s not true, it might as well be.)

(These photographs are not mine.)

Time: Three Weeks

Published on September 8, 2008 in beaver, time and water. 1 Comment

The beavers have been busy.

Three weeks ago, there was one full dam and one half dam on the river.

Now the original dam is much more substantial, and the second dam downstream has been completed.

Three weeks ago, this dam spanned the river, but the water on the left side was just a few inches deep.

Three weeks later the dam is much higher. The log stuck in the pond in the first picture has now been incorporated into their structure, and the pond is turning into a nice swimming hole.

This second dam downstream was solid on the right side but faded out to nothing on the left side–it was a half span.

Three weeks later, the dam goes all the way across the river, and the water is backing up nicely.

That seemed like a lot of work to me, but it turned out that the serious construction is going on nearly a quarter mile to the right.

Three weeks ago, a sheet of water was spreading across a meadow.

This picture was taken from nearly the same location as the previous shot–it’s same tree on the left. As you can see, those beaver have built a completely new dam here. I’m impressed by their industry. But I suspect their response to my praise would be a beavery equivalent of: Honey, it’s not our first rodeo.

Beside the Stream