Sunset

Big, honkn' orange ball tonight.....
 

Leaf Out

Jill had commented just the other day that she is looking forward to the trees leafing-out  before too long.

From one of the maples in the yard there was this today.

The trees must have been eves-dropping.....

Life With Labs

It's bad enough that the dogs have to be rinsed following our daily walk.  Such are the tribulations that come with mud season.

Her Highness was on the receiving end of a complete shampoo following today's walk.

The poo rolling has got to stop.....

Life Under Quarantine

Another example of life under quarantine.

COVID has no boundaries.

And as a consequence is non-selective in its targets.

Mind your social distancing...

Storm Clouds on the Horizon

In further economic news today we learned that the economy shrank 4.8% in the first quarter. This is the steepest contraction since the last recession and is only a light appetizer for the gruesome feast to come.

Busy Trail Camera

Last week I remarked to Jill that while out turkey hunting I caught a glimpse of a very large bird as it came over my blind and perched somewhere in a tree near by.  I didn't get a clear view of it mostly because of the position of the blind relative to where I thought it might have perched.  Nevertheless, I shared with her that it was certainly large enough to be an eagle.

Why is this observation important?  Because it was a day later that I swapped the SD cards from three of the remaining trail cameras and uploaded their content on to the laptop back home.

It was a busy couple of weeks for two of these patient sentries.  Especially for birds.....


A ruffed grouse

A gobbler

A pheasant

And a bald eagle

Nesting Season

During our walk today we checked a few of the nest boxes to see what's happening.

The tree swallows have been back just about a week and have been performing their courtship ritual.

They're not wasting any time.... 

Brace for Impact

The US death toll from COVID-19 may likely top 60,000 today.

Less than two months ago we were all tweeted to the news that coronavirus wasn't serious enough to even rise to the level of seasonal influenza.  

Today tens of thousands of my countrymen are dead along with jobs and capital vaporized.  Lives and treasure lost.  Hopes dashed.  An economy in ruin.  And Donald Trump continues to whine and complain of his perceived grievances, reinvent history, preen over his imaginary heroism and attack anyone who calls him out for continuing to lie to us.  

During these times it would be more useful to have a leader who steps-up his game, builds consensus and behaves like a head of state.  Quaint notion, eh?  Perhaps that is simply naiveté on my part.  Sure, it get it that Trump got to where he is as a perceived disrupter of the status quo.  The truth of the matter is he now is the status quo.  He broke the former status quo.  And he now owns the current status quo. 

Donald Trump did not cause this pandemic.  Yet he amplified its lethality.  Donald Trump engaged in willful blindness, shrugged-off the alarms going-off in his President's Daily Brief, and wasted precious months that should have been used to prepare and brace for impact.  

As for that disruption business – smells more like incompetence to me.  

Twilight

 

Not a sunset. 

Rather a black and white panoramic composition of the ground fog forming at dusk. 

Our own zombie apocalypse setting - out the back door. 

Shriek!

Venus Rising

I snapped this photo the evening of March 22, 2015.  It is of the Moon and Venus.  The Moon is the larger of the two celestial bodies in the center of the photo.  

It is said that the third brightest object in the sky - other than the sun and moon - is the planet Venus.  Arguably, I happen to think that the third consistently brightest object in the sky is the International Space Station (ISS).  But that's just an opinion and probably not worth arguing. 

In any event, Venus is going to be at its brightest tonight.  This is referred to as its greatest illuminated extent.  Yup, for the entirety of 2020 tonight’s the night.  

Watch the western horizon immediately following sunset to observe Venus rising.  You can catch the show with the naked eye but a pair of binoculars might make it more fun.

Fingers-crossed for clear skies tonight. 

Sunset

 

At the close of today there was this. 

The tree swallows have returned this week, the peeper chorale is warming-up in the ponds and today the brown thrasher has returned to the pulpit atop the apple tree. 

Spring.

S’all good, man.......

Shaggy

From one of the trail cameras there was this long-haired, hippy freak and his dogs.

Need a haircut .......

Sunset

View from the west porch. 

Sun is now setting at 290 degrees West Northwest. 

Days continue to lengthen. 

Local farmers are planting.











Edit to add - And it all of a sudden got way better,,,, 

Working Class Insect

Ants are the ultimate metaphor for the working class.  Just like honey bees - ants function as parts of a whole. They cannot and do not survive as individuals - they survive as members of a group.  Ant society is a fascinating example of a superorganism.   

Ants enjoy a complicated social system complete with its own division of labor.  Workers gather food, maintain and defend the nest and tend eggs, larvae and pupae.  Members of the colony are generally all female. For a very short period prior to mating season they produce males.  The males perform no labor and following mating any that remain are banished from the colony or killed by the sisterhood.  

Nature is a cruel mother.  But I digress.      

A single anthill can range from less than an inch high to over ten feet in height.  This might possibly be the largest of anthills here at The Platz.  Weighing-in at a couple feet in height and more than five feet across - it is a whopper.        

Anthills are the by-product of thousands of busy ants excavating a tunnel network below the surface of the ground.  That mound is the result – as the excavation progresses the dirt is disposed above ground.  Judging from the size of this mound there has to be a vast tunnel complex beneath.          

The mound itself also contains a network of tunnels and chambers – locations for food storage, nurseries and dormitories for the workers.       

This mound was particularly bustling place as it was a warming spring day.  The colony had awakened from its overwinter slumber.  With the arrival of cold weather last year the colony closes the entrances to their tunnel network and goes deep underground and huddles protectively around the queen.  Like other critters the ants prepare for their hibernation by bulking-up in the fall with extra calories before they confine themselves in their bunker.  With the arrival of spring they’re back to work.        

I made an inquiry of the Insect Diagnostic Lab at the UW-Madison Department of Entomology for assistance in identifying these hard-working ants and to address the social structure of an ant colony.  Here is what I heard back:   

Given the size of the mound, it must be one of our species of field ants (Formica species).  This is a diverse genus with a bunch of species in the Great Lakes region.  Each species can vary in terms of the habitat it prefers, the size and structure of the nest/colony, and other factors.  Some species create "small" nests that might be the size of a dinner plate or larger.  Other species can create massive mounds many feet across.          

Ants are definitely fascinating though.  Some "primitive" types of ants have small colonies with little specialization within the nest.  Other ants species can have lots of specialization, including workers of different sizes for different tasks (soldiers for fighting and defending the colony, smaller workers for gathering resources, etc.).  In many ants, the queen (or queens) coordinate the function of the colony and lay eggs.  Workers (all females) do all the dangerous work of leaving the colony to gather resources.  Males typically don't do much, other than play a role in mating.                       

In the grand scheme of things, being "social" and having a colony is rare among insects.  Some types of bees and wasps display eusocial behaviour (most bees and wasps aren't social), ants also display social behaviour, and a few other isolated examples exist amongst the insects as well.

Ants are cool.  Who knew there was so much to know about this busy insect.  So do The Buddha proud.  Next time you're walking down the sidewalk - don't step on the ants.

 

The Garden Chronicles

I admit to pushing the edge of the planting envelope but life under quarantine has really got me raring to get out in the garden and get my hands dirty.

Planted English peas and two kinds of radishes.  These are most definitely cool weather crops and they'll do fine unless they're drowned repeatedly by rain.

I also planted four kinds of hipster lettuces.  They're not specifically cool weather varieties but they were seed tapes left over from last year.  

So what the heck. 

Got my hands dirty and first day going barefoot.

Vive le Jardin Magnifique!

Medical Advice of the Day

 Meanwhile in a stream of consciousness there is this...

And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute - one minute - and is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So you’re going to have to use medical doctors with — but it sounds interesting to me.      

Reckitt Benckiser -the British company responsible for making Lysol, warned today against the internal administration of their products after Donald Trump suggested injecting disinfectants into the human body as a potential cure for the coronavirus.    

Seriously.  You can’t make this shit up.....