gainful employment – and it’s in the woods

Here’s something I’ve never seen before, though it must have been all around me on any number of occasions:

It stands to reason that if deciduous trees produce buds for next year’s leaves and flowers, coniferous trees must as well. This is a cluster of this year’s new needles, so fresh that the bud coating (no doubt there are more technically correct terms for all this) hasn’t even fallen off yet. Awesome!

Other back yard beauties include some buttercups...

The lawn is littered with fuzzy-leaved asters. Here’s hoping the landlord is negligent in his lawn-mowing duties. He can’t possibly be as negligent as we are – I believe we mowed our lawn in Vermont last year 2.5 times.

In other news, I have a summer job at an aerial forest park. So far, we’ve only been open on weekends, but as soon as school lets out, we’ll be open seven days a week. So what’s an aerial park, you ask?

Sort of like a ropes course, without the ropes. A lot of cables and bridges or other obstacles, strung between trees.

There are five courses, each of which starts from a central platform. Some are easier than others – lower to the ground, and not quite as technical – while others demand that you climb a ladder before you can even get started.

...like so.

Kevin and I first heard about this park because it turns out our next door neighbors down here own the land the park is on. So we headed over there a few weeks ago while it was still being built...

I immediately thought, “I gotta get me some of this.”

And lo, I am now a “course monitor”. I am charged with fitting customers into full-body harnesses, showing them how to use their carabiners (think, “safety clips” – you’re always clipped into something in case you get into an argument with gravity), and wandering around on paths under the courses, providing moral support. And if necessary, actual rescue.

I’m easily twice the age of most of my coworkers.

 

Don’t ask what that is in my hair. It involves a mutilated balloon animal. It’s a fun crew to work with, I’ll leave it at that for now. And, I DO have boobs. I swear. I prefer running bras, what can I say.

So yeah, rescuing people. I’ve gotten some training in how to safely lower folks off of platforms both low and high (low = you can get a ladder to them and high = you cannot), as well as off the middle of an element (an element is anything strung between two trees, typically a bridge of some sort.)

Here are two of my coworkers, preparing to practicing a bridge rescue. After I took this shot with my cell phone, I worked my way out to where they are and practiced rescuing and being rescued myself. I was nervous, but I got over it.

Here’s a view from where I was stranded for several minutes while my neighbor’s son, who helped build the place, came to my rescue (a piece of equipment needed to be installed before I could proceed – I was the first person, aside from the guys who built it, who ran this particular course and they’d just overlooked something.)

I believe this is the element I was waiting to do.

I love this stuff. I’m not especially afraid of heights, but I do get an adrenaline rush the first few times I encounter a particular element. And, I still haven’t done all five courses yet: I’ve been waiting for the construction of the fourth to be completed before trying both it, and the hardest one. That last one gives me the willies. It’s going to take more upper body strength than I have, but I’ve looked at it from the ground for a while and I have A Plan to Deal with That.

What I’m loving about all this? The in-the-trenches experience of fear, and overcoming fear through action. Really, there’s no point in standing around on a platform going “oh.shit.” You just have to move, and keep moving. Somewhere there’s a life lesson in this.

Me being me, I’m always on the lookout for our wee little woodland friends. The wildflower diversity is not great on this site.

Canada mayflowers abound. I’m going to work on a series of macros that feature blurry park elements/platforms in the distance. The one above was my first try. What do you think?

A fair number of them are flowering, bonus.

There are some starflowers.

And, last but not least, I’ve seen a few of what I believe might be sessile-leaved bellwort.

 

 

Alas, I’ve noticed some poison ivy.

Speaking of which, I have NEVER seen so much poison ivy, generally speaking, as I have down here in Connecticut. Damn!

In other news, Kevin-my-Kevin (which is Kevin’s new nickname now that my new boss turns out to be named Kevin as well) is returning home this evening from a bizness trip to Spain and Italy. Boy, am I looking forward to seeing him!

don’t mind me, says the spider.

We’ll begin with a warm-up: it’s going to get very yellow-and-orange here, so let’s ease our way in with a buttercup.

Black-eyed susans frequently have little white spiders living on them. Not til yesterday did I finally see one on our big girl.

hello!
This afternoon, the spider had a visitor.

At first I thought this Other Thing was caught in a tiny web, but I could see its tiny proboscis extended, testing out the flowers.

I wonder if the spider is holding out its legs to mimic its visitor’s body language. “Don’t mind me” it hums, under its breath, waiting for the perfect moment to take a bite. The nice folks at bugguide.net will probably sort me out in no time.

This bug-free susan offers excellent squinty-eyed close-ups. 

ahhhhh…clearly I’m obsessed.
Nearby, on a common evening primrose, I noticed these pink moths.

What the…? No idea what they’re doing. I think they’re napping.

One of them was still buried in there today. The other one was on leaf nearby.

Some ant on milkweed action.

Forget-me-nots going to seed.

The obligatory hawkweed!

butterflies planning an insurrection in the driveway.

OK, so last week, remember I had a cold? I’m still leaking brain fluid, but I’m doing much better. I’ve gotten back into the swing of things. The flower reports have been delayed due to rain, but this afternoon, we had a classic Vermont spring situation: blue sky, puffy clouds, full sun, and rain, all simultaneously. Heaven.

honeysuckle before…

 

and after:

 

 

white baneberry, the day before yesterday, had exploded into bloom…

(remember it from two weeks before that?)

today, the petals are gone. a few stamens are hanging around gamely. the stigma are sullied with glorious pollen.

 

false solomon’s seal on april 28.

 

by may 7, teensy flowers were on the way.

 

on may 21, the seemingly embryonic flowers were out and about. they really are green.

 

today, some of those are barely waking up.

 

while others have unfurled more happy bits.

 

milkweed makes its first appearance.

 

onwards to buttercups.

I believe this one’s been fertilized.

 

again, with the lingering stamens.

 

the final product. so elegant.

 

female eastern tiger swallowtails congregating in the private drive on the way to the mailbox.

seven.

I snuck up on one. she was vibrating and moving slowly in a circle.

she turned completely around.

occasionally they’d lift off, flutter around, and gradually re-assemble.

this one was exploring the soil with her probiscis (thank you, internet, for supplying the word.)

On the stud report, I started a CrossFit-type regimen at the gym this morning. It took just twelve minutes to reduce me from “woo hoo, let’s get started!” to “is there a bucket I can puke in?” Apparently I did great! I’ll try to last longer, next time.

On the chorus report, we had our spring performance over the weekend. I’ll link other groups’ performances of two of the pieces we did (we don’t film our performances).

This is a kick-ass, fast moving gospel piece. I was one of the smaller group in the front. I wore my sexy new LBD. It was awesome. (Again, please note, this video is Not Us.)

Here’s another piece we did – again, as performed by other people - http://ericwhitacre.com/music-catalog/satb-choral/three-songs-of-faith – the “i thank You God for most this amazing day” piece. Lovely stuff.

heat exhaustion…hypothermia…pick one.

Is it possible to experience heat exhaustion and hypothermia inside the same 48 hour period? Probably. This is something I contemplated late this morning as I huddled, shivering, in the basement’s tunnel entrance to my dad’s house, contemplating the light rain that was falling, and the pressing need to get the lawn mowed. Just yesterday morning, I somehow powered through a 13.5 mile run in 80+ degree humidity. My running guru, Jeff Galloway, advises that in 80+ temperatures, you can expect your per-mile pace to drop by two minutes. Mine sure did! In fact, yesterday’s run was intended to be 17 miles, which is part of my whole campaign to knock ten or fifteen minutes off my half-marathon time.
I’ve given up on that goal – at least for this particular event. The first several weeks of the training program, which involved complicated speed drills on alternate long-run weekends, went fabulously. I had no trouble keeping the target pace of 9:20. And then summer hit. Lordy. Plus, as I’ve already whined several times to my loved ones, this particular race starts at 9:00 am. Utter foolishness! By 9:00, we could easily already be over 80 degrees. By 9:00, we should be standing around feeling smug, eating bagels. Grumble grumble grumble! 
But you know what? I have zero regrets. This training has been terrific. I love training for half marathons! The nuisance of having told the world I’m signed up for an event has a bracing effect on my resolve on those mornings when I tempt myself to put off a long run. And knowing that however slow I may be, I can run 13+ miles, makes up for some of the minor indignities of being 43.
So the rain cleared up, and we got busy with the lawn. As usual, Kevin played on the tractor mower, and I hauled the push mower around. Want to see my blisters? You can admire my wedding ring while you’re at it.

At one point, I’d mowed everything that made sense for me to do with the push mower. Out came the camera! First up:
Our Friend, The Inch Worm. I discovered Inch Worm on my leg, which he’d gotten onto from a nearby grass stem. After a moment of flailing panic – even Nature Girl has instincts that dictate the inadvisability of personal contact with anything the least bit Buggy or Wormy – I remembered I’d brought the camera with me. I couldn’t get good shots until I encouraged him to come onto my finger.

I could feel his little feet as pin pricks. I coaxed him off when I noticed he was looking like he wanted to have a sample taste of me. Sorry, dude.


This oxeye daisy has dropped all of its petals.


The tiny white flowers might be wild madder. To be honest, I didn’t look closely enough. The green thing just white of center is a buttercup flower having gone completely to seed.


Timothy grass in full, epic flowering! What a mess! Yippee!


Cow vetch. This is a vine. Let’s look at its sneaky little tendrils.

I see stuff like this, and I have to laugh at the hubris of thinking we humans are the only clever ones.


Jewel weed! Jewel weed! Jewel weed! Let’s get the head-on view:


With respect to stamens/anthers (male parts) and pistils/stigma (female) parts, I’m not familiar enough with these to know why these two specimens are different – what’s what, what the process looks like, is one of these already fertilized, etc.. We have some somewhere around own house – I’ll have to study up.

Here’s a hosta flower…I must say, these are structured very similarly to day lilies…

Here’s a bee in transit from one hosta flower to another. This is called, “hold the camera upside down and hope you get a reasonable shot.”
And now for the day’s jaw droppers…black-eyed susans, either weirdo mutants, or this is what their petals look like when they’re brand-new.



It’s this shot in particular that makes me think that these petals are as the Universe intended – tubular. Too bad I won’t see this particular flower for another week or so!



And now for a different, slightly younger/less opened-up example:


Or how about this next one? “Noooo…that can’t be the alarm clock…I don’t want to get up yet…”


Today’s mystery flower – I can’t find it in Newcomb’s, or online – I suspect it’s some kind of mallow, but don’t quote me.


Yep, little larva flower bits. Fascinating…