My fifteen minutes of fame

Remember my pickerel frog sighting the other day? Turns out I was right: it is, indeed, a pickerel frog.  According to the folks who keep track of these things, they are pretty common throughout Vermont, but one hadn’t been reported in our town since at least 2004. The next time a map indicating confirmed sightings of pickerels will be published will be in 2015. And guess what?
My sighting will be recorded in it for all posterity!

I should mention that this won’t be my first brush with fame.
My other brush with fame was in 1990. I was a Park Ranger working in eastern Washington state, and my friend Carla from college was visiting. We went on a road trip to Seattle and stayed with my other friend Dean for a day or so, and we went to a Jonathan Richman concert that night. I’d been listening to a lot of Jonathan Richman that summer, so I was pretty primed.
He got around to playing a song that’s a duet with a woman, called “The Neighbors”. Only it was a pretty simple gig, just him and his cowboy boots and a guitar, no band, no backup singers. I was up toward the front of the crowd, singing along (along with everyone around me), to the other songs, and when he started “The Neighbors”, he invited me up on stage to sing it with him. Yep. Too bad this was before YouTube, where you can listen to the song here.
Can you tell I don’t have any new flower pictures for you? That I’m stalling? Yep. It’s thundering and lightning and I’m running on batteries in case we’re hit. The lights are flickering. Charlie’s on my lap.
We finally got out to my dad’s house yesterday via some navigable back roads. (Translation: no flower pictures.) And today it was sort of crappy light and then it rained. (Translation: no flower pictures.) I did sneak in a run – less than four miles. I have made a hard decision: I won’t be doing the next half-marathon, a month from now. My left ankle is all fracked up, I think from overcompensating from the orthotics. On the bright side, the original pain in my plantar fascia is totally gone. I have a new mission: to get in general shape – do exercise in addition to running. Maybe (ugh) lift weights.
Hey: I promise I’ll get some pictures up tomorrow. G’night!

insert creative post title here. or not.

Long time blog readers will know I went through a complete phase of infatuation with dandelions over the summer, documenting every micro-stage of their going to seed.

I got a whiff of that project this afternoon. This here beaut is that tall blue lettuce I just posted on the other day – the one that grows up to 15 feet tall, but is named for its teensy blue stamens.
The seeds of the lone fertilized jack-in-the-pulpit left to me – the others were destroyed by the Irene flooding – are ripening.

July 13

today, August 31

Here’s some trippy aster action for you. In this one, the outer flowers (remember, this is a composite flower – there are numerous flowers inside that circlet of white rays) are open, but the inner ones are still closed.


This one has been at the party a bit longer. All of ‘em are open.

I don’t know what kind specifically this is - – there are many to the nth kinds of asters. Some day!
No clue who this next one one is. Stay tuned. Behaves like an aster, but suspiciously yellow.


Here’s a common evening primrose – the petals are the ones who look at their watches and leave the party at 8:45 pm.  The stigma and stamens are going to be up all night:


I came across a Virginia creeper-type vine that I’ve heretofore ignored (so don’t quote me on that ID), much to my chagrin, because look what it’s been doing lately:

I’ve seen this strategy before, in the anemones. Little spiky clusters.
Some of them are dried up already. How did I miss this? I guess because it’s over by the pole barn – there’s a lot of stuff over there I’ve missed.
One last burst of purple – gentian – is going to be opening up soon:

What a treat.
A tiny mystery blob on a log, 1/32” across:

fungus?
I surprised what I think might be a pickerel frog in the grass

I didn’t want to disturb it by getting too close, because by now both the cats were following me around. Nothing like a little frog appetizer.
Here’s Maggie messing up my attempt at getting a shot of the underside of this mushroom.

This led to some hilarity.



Ah, there we go. Damn cat.