What's Bugging You?

Found this while attacking the stump in my back yard.

It's a pupae of a moth, and it's 1-1/2" long by 1/2" in diameter. Way back when, we kids would find these and our parents solemnly explained that we had found a which-a-way bug. When held with the pointy end up and squeezed gently, the pointy end would wiggle in a circular fashion. If you asked the bug "Which a way did (insert someones name here) go?" the angle of the tail, when you backed off the squeezing, would reliably indicate the direction in which the person would be found.

It seldom took more than one try to disprove this, but if you put the thing in a jar with a thin layer of dirt and a mesh cover, you would eventually see the moth emerge. By now I've forgotten what kind of moth it was but I seem to remember that it was one of the larger ones.

This one was dead when I found it.

Plant Life

Can't all be sturm und drang now can it? I've got a couple of Juniper trees in the back yard and one of them is producing some interesting fruit. Normally all one sees on those trees is the little blue berries that are reputedly used for making Gin, but this spring one of them produced some large black  nodules with soft spikes on them. About 1/2" diameter, plus the spikes.

Today the nodules have "hatched" and the black spikes have turned into orange bananas, albeit, rather small ones. Here's the side of the tree:

That's a petal from the apple tree next to it

You can see a blue Juniper berry in the upper left. 

Here's a close-up of one of the fruits:

The center is about the same color the original spiky ball was

Here's a close-up of a large one, just about to pounce.

I've never seen my tree do this before, so any ideas? If you eat a bowl full for breakfast, do you gain super powers or just turn into Groot?

Update! Ask and ye shall find! This is Cedar (or Juniper)-Apple Rust Fungus which grows on the Cedar (and Juniper!) and spreads to the Apples within a few hundred feet. Harmless to the Juniper, it degrades the quality of the fruit from the apple although the apples are still OK to eat.

If You Don't Like The Weather...

Just hang in there a bit. Even better here in Colorado we can supply everything on the same day. Possibly at the same time. Remember the lyrics from Sweet Betsy From Pike, presumably Pike county Iowa and not Pikes Peak, Colorado.

Check the weather this morning before letting the dog abuse me through the 'hood. Note not only the "36 but feels like 58, and note also the freeze warning in the yellow band. At least it didn't include a hurricane, flood, and drought warning.

Tomatillos

"Little tomatoes" as they are called go well in salsa and the like. While walking the dog I happened on a small patch of them next to the park lake.

Click to enlarge and note the seed pods, about an inch in diameter
Inside is a single pea-sized fruit.

Sorry for the fuzzy pic. Should have used a tripod. Diced up, these things are an essential ingredient in salsas. In a sloppily assembled burrito out on a fishing trip, dribble the filling out onto the ground and they sprout enthusiastically and seem to require little more than sunlight to thrive.

Biological Warfare

Here's something usually thought of in rather apocalyptic terms such as the inadvertent or intentional release of an unstoppable plague with near 100% fatality, or worse yet, an organism with 100% fatality and an appetite for anything organic which results in the entire planetary biosphere being reduced to "gray goo". Here's an example which while not as broad spread, is about as disgusting; body lice.

The obvious solution would be to pick this fellow up, de-louse him, find out where he's been living and disinfect that, then turn him loose with the requirement that he wear a Hartz Flea and Tick collar for the next 6 months.

This being Berkley, there's always the chance that he's a student or perhaps one of the faculty, but that's a chance the public health people will have to take. Killing that many lice might bring accusations of genocide.

Living With The Wild Life

I was out picking dessert from the raspberry patch when my neighbors son called to my attention this piece of high density housing that had sprung up in the lilac bush:

Click to embiggen. You can see one of the residents on the twig next to the entry hole and several more just inside. The entry hole is about 1-1/2" in diameter. I found one of these a few years ago in the early fall and brought it home as all the wasps had died. Cut it open to see how it was built and found that it consists of several stories of honeycomb layers, small ones on the upper and lower ends and big ones in the middle. No honey, just cells. The wasps seem to die off in the fall and leave the nest empty. Not sure if the nest typically survives over the winter but I don't think so.

UPDATE: These are Bald Faced Hornets, an invasive species but considered beneficial as long as you don't get into territorial disputes with them. They eat other insects, specializing in yellowjackets, but will switch to pollen if that food supply dries up. Most of the nest dies over winter but a few eggs survive to start the hive the next year.

Big boys, about 3/4 to 1 in long.

Pest Control

I bet you thought this was going to be something about shooting marauding flying monkeys or some such. Bummer dudes, it's about Japanese Beetles.

The pests are attracted by anything with a fragrance, plus anything they land on and eat as their droppings have an odor that attracts more of them. First part of summer, the raspberries were protected by the Linden tree whose flowers attracted the beetles. It also appeared that eating linden flowers was bad for the bugs.

One of the neighborhood gardeners on the next block has chickens who think Japanese Beetles are a form of candy. He put the bait portion of a beetle trap into the top of a piece of PVC pipe, and hung it so the bottom ended at a partially covered tin pan. The beetles fly to the bait, fall down the pipe and  hit the tin pan with a "plink" . The pan is located in the chicken coop. It never requires any cleaning.

Springtime

The birds are singing and all that. This fellow

And a friend were busily excavating a limb on my Linden tree this morning, tag teaming the tree, flitting up, excavating the limb, flitting back and spitting out the sawdust, back and forth for quite some time. Terrible picture, but it's what I got. The other bird was slightly smaller and lacked the black band. I thought they were English sparrows, but I'd never seen sparrows do this before.








That limb is easily 2 inches in diameter and the hole extends an inch up the limb in both directions. Impressive job for only one morning.

If I'm lucky, they'll develop a voracious appetite for Japanese beetles

Deer Problem

Michigan, specifically Ann Arbor, has a problem with the local whitetail deer population, it having no natural predators except the automobile, and notwithstanding the legendary prowess of Michigan deer hunters.

Government officials, who unfortunately seem to run the town have hit upon hiring professional sharpshooters to attempt to thin the urban herd. The theory goes one shot to the head and hide the body before the local PETA chapter gets wind of the deed.

This may have worked for Jimmy Hoffa, but the deer probably won't let someone in a dark suit saunter up behind them and put a round from a suppressed .22 pistol into their heads. Deer have much better situational awareness than that.

This is a job for a new old classic, the DeLile silent carbine.
Sneak up on the deer, and pfffft! the animal falls to the ground and the PETA people are convinced it had a heart attack or something. Queue the bambilance to pick up the body, and Voila!, one less pesky deer.

Japaese Beetles

The latest plague to befall Colorado is the Japanese Beetle. Last year I saw a few on my raspberries. This year they're all over. Dealing with them has become the stuff of folklore with everyone having their favorite method.

 Use Organic Neem oil; some are pretty sure this works. Use inorganic Neem oil; there seems to be more certainty about that especially when mixed with Dawn detergent. Possible drawback is that it affects the bees as well.

Malthion 50 works for certain if you don't mind that is works equally well on anything with too many legs.

Traps are popular with some but the caveat is that since they are based on an attractant, the ones that don't make it all the way to the trap wind up on your plants. To the observation of myself and my neighbor, the traps work over a wide area and will eventually deplete the population. The joke goes that we should each buy a six-pack of traps and give one to each of our neighbors thus creating a safe zone in the middle.

I got several hundred right away and am now getting much fewer so good. The gardeners say to empty the traps into a bucket of soapy water to kill the little bastards off. What they forgot to mention is that 5-700 Japanese beetles, even in soapy water quickly begin to stink. Note to self: Empty the trap into the bucket, then soon empty the bucket into the toilet.

Milky Spore is a longer term defense as the bacteria attack grubs in the ground. It takes 2 years to become established, and is not available here as the Colo Dept of Agriculture does not yet recognize the JB as a notable pest.

If I had a lower growing crop than the raspberries, I'd fence them off and borrow some chickens from the urban farmer up the street. The chickens think the JB's taste like candy.

More Global Warming

I swear we haven't had a rain free day here since it quit snowing. Most of today was clear if not very warm but not to worry, it cooled right off this evening:

At least the hail wasn't very big. Sure was cold though. My expectation is that at some point in the near future, this will stop and we won't see another drop before next year. OTOH it could be that all the rain that normally falls in California has, like all too many of the residents, moved here.

Feeding the Scavengers

Drop 1 bird per minute onto the ground would make quite a buffet for scavengers although the methodology would also drop day-flying scavengers like the California Condor. I imagine that if no one cleans the place up, the night-flying birds must make out very well indeed.

Bagpipe Police

Yeah, I know what you're thinking, but it's not an organization to suppress weapons of mass destruction. It's an organization to hurry the extinction of elephants.

You clicked the link but didn't see that part? Here it is. When you confiscate an old piece of ivory and destroy it, you reduce the worlds supply of ivory, thus driving up the price. This makes the ivory poachers job more lucrative and increases poaching which adversely affects the population of elephants.

This bit of tomfoolery by the government extends to anything containing ivory including piano keys and guitar fingerboards. My brother is a musician up near the Canadian border and tells me that when he plays a gig in Canada his band has to be very careful which instruments they use if they don't want to see that old Fender Stratocaster tossed into the Fed.gov's wood chipper.

More Farming

The raspberries which usually begin producing about now and continue until the first frost have now stopped producing having produced since early July. Very odd. This may be due to the modrate temps and lots more rain than average as well. The mushrooms in the back yard seldom get this big:

I can hear the strains of "Trepek" playing in my head. Picture taken with my new pocket camera an is about 40X as large as ones taken with the old one so you can probably zoom in on the individual spores in this picture. There should be a button to cut the pixel count down to something reasonable, but I haven't read the owners horse blanket manual completely yet.

FWIW: It's a Nikon Coolpix L30.
1. Cameras like this which once came with a minimal memory card are now shipped without one at all. Batteries were included.
2. The cable to connect the camera to your computer is unique to this series of cameras and is shipped with selected models. This model isn't selected.
3. A USB memory card reader that supports this cameras card and several others costs less than the very special cable.

Squirrels

The critters seem to be largely under control around here as I've only gotten 8 in the last 3 weeks so the apple and plum futures continue to plummet in the face of decreasing scarcity.

OTOH, plans for the Billll's pipe and bucket squirrel trap have seen a setback as I just learned that in Conneticut at least,that

No person shall take or attempt to take any gray squirrel, rabbit or other fur-bearing animal protected by law by the use of … dynamite or other explosive compound, or by fire, smoke, brimstone, sulphur, gas or chemical ….

Which undermines my planned improvement to the trap that would include disposing of the dead squirrel to some location, TBD but certainly far, far away. I guess if you live in Connecticut, you have to dispose of them yourself.

Meantime, down in Georgia a raptor center there has 4 baby owls they need to feed and are soliciting local hunters for spare squirrels.

Signs Of Spring

The plants are budding, the woodpeckers are working on demolishing every house in the hood, and I dragged the bicycle out for a test ride. A modest 9 miles. Could have done more, but why push my luck this early in the season?

Maybe this year the annual heavy, wet, limb-breaking snowstorm, followed by clearing skies overnight with lows in the low 20's, won't coincide with the flowering of all the fruit trees.

Hope springs eternal.

Global Wartming

Myself I'm a big fan of global warming, and I don't particularly care what or who is causing it. I got to ride the motorcycle to work today and that's good. Our Governor, however, blames fugitive methane, coming from gas wells that escapes past valve joints and other such places. This is accounted to be as much as 1-2% of the gas extracted from the wells. If you think a typically greedy capitalist oil and gas company wouldn't care about a 2% drop in revenues, you must live here and have a valid prescription.

Meantime, no less a source than the IPCC says that 70% of the fugitive methane out there comes from naturally organic sources. To make a real impact, the governor needs to be looking into controling these organic sources. I suggest installing afterburners on cattle:

Plus I kind of like this graphic.

Update: Oh yes, and Al Gore has become a vegan. Don't stand behind him.

The Lonely Lives Of Mathematicians

When all other mathematica have been solved:

I'll take their word for it.And I don't want to know about the research that went into this either.

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Timing Is Everything

D'Wife decided to get the house fixed up, calling for new gutters, fascia, and soffits. Yesterday the old stuff was torn down. Today when some of the underlying wood is to be replaced, it is, of course belting down rain. Supposed to be raining off and on all day.

Nice to see a break in the drought I guess.

Today is our lawn watering day as well. Figures.

Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw

Nothing like a good video of the fanged predator running down the fleet, but doomed cute furry prey right?

O.K. it's not a cheetah pulling down a Gazelle, but you've seen that one a million times already.