Good Planets Are Hard to Find - Critter Edition

We sent a note to PZMyers of the science blog Pharyngula telling him about our Good Planets Saturday posts, and asked if he would kindly let his readers know. PZ gets a lot of readers, and we thought it would be a good way to announce our little attempt at balancing the insanity in the world with photos of the earth's astonishing beauty. Well, to say that we were overwhelmed by the response would be an understatement. We received many photographs, so many that we can't really post them all in one day (or even in two or three, for that matter!) We've decided to take two days this weekend and post at least one or two shots from each contributor (some sent as many as 14 beauties). Saturday will be the critters--squirrels, raccoons, lizards, butterflies, birds, and bugs; and Sunday will feature the flowers, rivers, oceans, skies, and trees. We are grateful for the opportunity to show you what people have photographed around the world. It's a magnificent peek at the world outside of windows we don't get to see ourselves.

From Laura in New Jersey-She wrote: This monarch emerged in my garden last week.

Carl Buell sent this Flying Squirrel and Raccoon in tree-He wrote: Here's a Southern Flying Squirrel that my friend Hank Fox "shot" in the crotch of a Silver Maple in my front yard. Same tree different night, and this young Raccoon found the peanut butter and hulled sunflower seeds I put out for the Flying Squirrels. This tree alone has provided home and habitat for 31 species of birds and 9 species of mammals (I DO put out a bit of food) including a Grey Fox and, on one autumn evening last year, a Fisher trying unsuccessfully to catch a flying squirrel and settling for suet.


Marc in Tasmania sent us this Masked Lapwing chick photo-He wrote: Yesterday, during a walk around our property, we knew there must be Masked Lapwing chicks around because the adults would go into a fit whenever we were too near. At one point Edith saw one from afar so we headed over. However, the alert was sounded by the adults so the chick plopped down and... disappeared into the ground. Some 45 minutes later, I finally found it! I took a few pics and left the poor, trembling but beautiful chick alone.

Simon sent these photos of caterpillar and spider-He wrote: The image of the caterpillar was taken in Devon, England earlier this year. One of the joys of digital cameras is the macro modes for taking close up shots. It's amazing just what is there when you look.
I took the photo of the spider the other day in my house, here in Canada. It was about 2cm across, and without the magnification it would be hard to see all the amazing details. Unfortunately, he built his web in a door frame - so after the photo shoot he was reluctantly relocated.

Liz O from Connecticut sent this-She wrote: (The photo) is of some type of mystery juvenile true bug on a flower. I like it because the bug is so beautiful - the pattern on its back reminds me of a quilt or a woven blanket.

Susan F from Washington sent this photo of a heron rookery-

Kurt sent this photo of a cave cricket-He wrote: Here is a picture of a cave cricket I took while developing a monitoring method for their populations in Mammoth Cave National Park (I too consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world). These amazing animals spend most of their time in caves and occasionally venture outside to feed (as there is no primary productivity in caves and so no food). Inside caves they roost on the ceiling, digest, and defecate onto formations below. Their guano builds up into a veneer and there are numerous cave-dwelling arthropods that feed on their guano. There is a second, separate community of arthropods that are supported by the feces of a cave-dwelling beetle that feeds on the eggs cave crickets deposit in the cave substrate.

Chris sent links to photos he has taken around the world-A bird in the Imperial Garden in Tokyo.
A lizard close-up.
Bee and butterfly together, the pollen eaters.

Natasha sent us this dragonfly photo-She wrote: That's a migratory dragonfly called a wandering glider. They're well known for following troughs of low pressure and being harbingers of rain. Pics from india.

Laurel sent this photo of cattle and egret in Kentucky-

Greg sent several photos of the English countryside-This one is of a fine fanned out peacock.

Nio sent us the perfect close to the critters edition, ending where we began-A beautiful monarch butterfly, photographed on Old Hill in New Hampshire.

Isn't it amazing what we see outside our windows, on our walks, when we travel? We learned a lot putting out a call on such a popular blog. Next time, I think we'll ask for one or two of your favorite photos. I wish we could have posted all the photos that we received. Also, resizing to something under 1 mb would really help. But those are just the mechanics of presenting Good Planets Are Hard to Find. The joy outweighs the task every time. A big thanks to everyone for having the time and attention to take such a beautiful look around our good planet.

Don't forget to come back tomorrow for the ocean, river, sky, clouds, flowers, and trees.

Come for the Fish, Stay for the Lizard

We've been having a nice correspondence with Marc who sent us a photo for this weekend's Good Planets post. He writes to us all the way from Tasmania. I don't know why I am so knocked out by that, but I think it's because Tasmania seems to be end-of-the-earth far away from us. In one of his emails he asked how the shingling project was going. I thought I'd answer with a photo. I'm not the world's best photographer. I get to point and shoot at some fantastic stuff, but when it comes to light and shadow or manual focus, I am at a loss. I tell you this because I wanted to photograph Roger up on the scaffold in front of the house with the magnificent pacific northwest sky behind him. Only problem is that he is working on the north side of the house in shadow. For the camera to let in enough light to see him and the house, the sky washes out to total white. I'm sure a real photographer would know what to do. I have no idea, but I've got the Photoshop chops (as CCorax kindly said), so I took the photo of Roger in the light, and took a second photo of the sky, and put them together.

While I was back in the house on the computer, doing that little Photoshop trick, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye standing in the yard. I looked up and saw a large and beautiful Great Blue Heron standing by our very little pond. Oh yes, I thought, it's definitely fall. The only time the heron shows up. She knows all those little scrawny goldfish of spring have become fat little autumn meals, just perfect for harvest.

I watched her for a while. She was incredibly diligent and stealthy.

But I finally opened the door and gave her a chase. She flew as far as the wisteria arbor, which is to say, not far at all. She preened and stretched. Not caring a whit that we were watching from the window just fifteen or twenty feet away. We decided that we didn't want her to think she was actually welcome in the yard, so we gave her a chase again, and she flew away.

I went back outside to help with my part of the shingling project. At this point Roger is doing all the pneumatic stapling, so I remove the nails from the discarded siding, stack the siding by size, and then carry it off into the big shed. After I completed that task, I came back into the house and found our big friend back, stalking the side of the pond.I was surprised by her persistence. She must have been pretty hungry, because she was not going to leave without a meal. I went out front and got Roger to come in, and we watched as she lunged for something,which turned out to be a lizard. Again, we were faced with trying to decide how welcome we should let her feel, and decided there were many other places for her to be hunting. So we chased her off again.
She hasn't returned, yet, as far as we know.

fall

summer is over here in our part of washington state. the general temp has fallen by 10 degrees at least. rain has fallen for a day or so, enough to dampen everything. tuesday was sunny, but yesterday was drizzly. i decided that the outdoor tomato plants had gotten wet enough to start to rot, so i harvested a boxful of fruits in varying degrees of ripeness. we spread them out on paper towels on a shelf in the garage. they won't all ripen, but enough will to make this a worthwhile effort. that's garlic, harvested earlier, in the box at the left.

below is what we often do with tomatoes.

sliced. salt and peppered. topped with chopped fresh basil and a drizzle of olive oil. mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

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we continue the shingle-the-house project. the work is high enough off the ground that scaffolding is involved. pictures at eleven. or anon.
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thanks to our readers, and to a mention of our saturday photo thing by the irascible, a positive attribute at chez bums, and charming, also positive, pzmyers, we have been offered such a number of fine photos that we must this week add a sunday edition of postcards from the earth. we began this photo sharing saturday with lowered expectations (of participation, not quality. click on began and check it out), having received a great bird picture from an old friend in the land down under, and added another bird picture from family, and a few pictures from contributors who responded to an invitation on the day prior to send pics. e-mail is fun now. we get, and share with you, such interesting photos. good planets are hard to find. i know of only one, so far. how about you?

When Maxfield Parrish Paints Your Sky

The other evening the colors of the the sunset reminded me so much of a Maxfield Parrish painting. Maxfield Parrish-- now that's a name straight out of the past. There was a time in the late 60s and early 70s when posters of Parrish's most famous paintings were tacked up on everyone's walls. (Or did I just imagine that? It's quite possible that I did.)It had been a long time since I thought of those colors, that other-worldly palette. But when I looked out the window, the sky reminisced with me about an old painter's paintbrush and vision, and convinced me that there really were such shades of light and dark, that luminescence, to be found for a moment somewhere on earth.
For some reason, while I thought about Parrish, I was suddenly reminded of the music of Ravel, Debussy, and Satie. It actually took me a while to remember why I was making such a connection. In 1973 when I drove across country with my boyfriend (Michael D.), he had made several tapes of music for the trip. We listened to Pavanne for Dead Princess, Reverie, L'apres-midi d'un faune, and Gymnopedies through the country's great wide midwest. I can still picture the skies of Kansas and Missouri, and hear these beautiful orchestrations interspersed with Van Morrison singing Astral Weeks and Madame George. Michael had found a small print of Parrish's Daybreak and made it into a cover for our most beloved tape.
I love how memory can be stirred like this by sky and music. How the colors of a sunset, those clouds stained like a Parrish print conjures a 1960 white Chevy pick-up truck with a homemade wooden camper, barrelling down the interstate with improbable classical music crackling from ancient speakers.

My Search for the Perfect Rye Bread

I grew up on bread. Yes, the staff of life-- rye bread and bagels. Toast is the ultimate comfort food. I'm second generation American. My grandparents were eastern European, from Kiev and Galicia (which is sometimes in Austria, sometimes in Poland depending on the year). My mother was born in Newark, NJ, her older brother was born in Germany. My father's family was also from eastern Europe -- (but a generation earlier). Family gatherings were always about breaking bread. Loaves of rye and baskets of bagels adorned the tables. As young children we knew that the real pain of Passover was the week of breadless meals. Some of my happiest memories are of Sunday mornings when my father would awaken early and drive to Silvers Bakery and bring home rye bread and streisel. Oh that streisel, I can still remember it even though it's probably been over forty years since I've eaten it. But it was that reliably delicious rye bread of my youth that spoiled me for what was to come.

Over the years I've had other rye breads that recalled the bakeries of the past, perhaps even recalled the old country that I've never experienced, but that my genes immediately recognized. When I eat a slice it's familiar and rich, has a full flavor and a dense texture that I sense would be hardy enough to sustain a peasant in the fields all day. Those limp, insipid things that come wrapped in plastic and nearly faint away at the sight of a toaster, that's not real rye bread. Trader Joe's once had a corn rye that came close, was edible and almost delicious. We would buy two loaves, and put one in the freezer every week, just in case the worst happened, which of course it did. It was discontinued in favor some balloony thing they call rye bread, but that always collapsed under the weight of its own airiness.

When we first moved to the Olympic Peninsula there was a fine bagelry with good hard-crusted bagels, and an artisan bread maker who baked a delicious caraway rye on Wednesdays and Saturdays. It wasn't old country bread, but it was a fine rye that satisfied my taste buds and fulfilled my hankering. Not anymore. The bagelry closed its door a few months ago, and the bread baker sold his business, but not his recipes. It seems that the new baker can't make the caraway rye the way it's supposed to taste and has stopped trying. I've called him and we've talked, commiserated. No rye.

I've been baking my own whole wheat bread for years, but rye is an entirely different thing. It's an undertaking, a journey into sour starter philosophies and kitchen myths and secrets. I've searched the internet with various search strings to find a recipe that might yield the bread of my youth. I found a recipe that called for a starter of potato water, yeast, and rye flour. It has to sit for three days. I'm willing to give it a try. So I have a rye starter in our kitchen greenhouse window. If it looks anything like the rye in the above photo, I'm going to be living on bread again.

Is this just me, or do you miss a food or something like that from your youth? What do you miss, and how far have you gone to find it?

Good Planets Are Hard to Find #5

we are once again honored to offer photos from near and far. wondrous robin has uploaded all the pictures and organized them to be presented here in order received by us, and provided text for each, also in proper order, so that i am left to insert the text and provide a lead-in and a coda. people from all over have sent the actual content of our saturday post. picture postcards. thank you.

Dave sent us this and wrote:

Taken this year in the Ada Valley along the St James Walkway, Southern Alps, New Zealand. It's early morning and a specially golden light is low across the hummocks in the flats beside the river.

Yankee Transplant sent us this and wrote:

This is the outside of the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. It's not 100 percent nature, but a beautiful spot and to me, a reminder of better times.

Indigo (*) sent us this and wrote:

this is a HUGE puffball mushroom. you know, the kind that are usually the size of a golf ball. i couldn't believe my eyes. my friend said he's seen 'em this big before; i never have. i was so excited and ran to get my camera, even though it made me late for a wedding! i tried a few different items to relate the size of the thing. my head turned out to give the absoloute best sense of the enormity of the fungus.

Pam of Tucson sent us this and wrote:

Attached is a photo I took near Granville Island, in Vancouver, BC in June...I was trying to photograph an elusive Canada Goose. I rushed round the corner of a small building and came across this tranquil scene. I stood quietly and watched. The young lady turned slowly and smiled at me, but neither of us broke the silence. There was an amazing air of gentleness, trust and communion between this lovely person and the birds.

Evan sent us two photos and wrote:

The butterfly is from somewhere in the central American rain forest (jungle.)

again from evan:

The turtle is off the eastern coast of Belize on a little island of about five acres called tobacco caye.

Dawn sent us this photo and said that the American Bittern was photographed in Nisqually Valley where the Nisqually River meets Puget Sound.

Laurel sent us this photo from Kentucky and wrote:

I found this little guy or gal looking in at us from outside our living room window next to our front door. He or she looked so beautiful and had worked so hard on making this web that I didn't have the heart to remove him/her.

Seavu sent us this photo:

Attached is a view of Sand Beach, at Newport Cove, in Acadia National Park, Mt. Desert Island, Maine. Water temperatures at this cove don't usually exceed 55 degrees, which may explain why virtually no one is in the water.

Gary (**) sent three photos that he took while vacationing in New Zealand.

Tide patterns in the sand. Golden Bay New Zealand South Island

Inlet on Marlborough Sound

Mt. Cook National Park New Zealand

Sonia sent us this photo and wrote:

I've attached a photo taken by me, near my house, in Enseada Azul, Paranapanema, São Paulo's State, Brazil. The tree is "Tabebuia chrysotricha", know as Golden Trumpet Tree, in Portuguese, "Ipê Amarelo."

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got a picture to share? click on the e-mail address just below the picture of the planet, near the top right of this blog. or e-mail to newdharmbums at yahoo dot com.
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* nepotism alert. indigo is my daughter.
**double alert! gary is my brother.
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"good planets are hard to find."

Spine of Clouds, and Two Spiders

We mostly don't see shapes in clouds, but we both looked up and immediately thought "spine" when we saw this.

SPIDER ALERT

A pair of flirting spiders in silhouette against a blue sky.

Please send your photos that depict the beauty of the earth for Saturday's Good Planets are hard to find to newdharmabums at yahoo dot com. Thanks.