Green Things From The Trees, Bushes, And The Ground

Spring has come to South Central Alaska.  Enjoying the wonders in our front and back yards.







Bleeding Heart.

Cottonwood leaf.  The sticky outside - leaf bud scales - fall off and stick to everything.  A good reason to take your shoes off before going inside.  The saving grace for me has always been their wonderful sweet scent.  But it appears they are much more useful than that.  From the Statesman Journal:

"Honeybees collect the resin from the spring leaf bud scales and take it back to their hives as an antimicrobial and sealant, called propolis. It is powerfully anti-microbial, inhibiting fungal and bacterial growth.
Pacific Northwest tribes and early Euroamerican settlers collected and used the bud scale resin as well. Infused into oil, the resin is known to help soothe swollen arthritic joints and sore muscles. Resin was used to waterproof boxes and baskets. The bark was made into buckets for storing and carrying food. The leaves, buds and bark of cottonwood were used to lower fevers and reduce inflammation and pain. Plant chemists isolated this analgesic compound and call it salacin; it is found in all cottonwoods and willows."

The daffodils are popping up.  The last couple of years only a few of the bulbs I planted came up.  This year I planted some with my granddaughter on Bainbridge Island over Thanksgiving and they were blooming by the beginning of March.  All them.  And it looks like the vast majority made it through the winter here and are coming up.








I thought this was kind of funny when I saw it on Carr's online order app.  I've been benefiting from our abundant back (and front) yard supply the last few summers.  Ours too have no artificial fertilizer or pesticides.  And they are starting to come up already.




When you see them in your yard, instead of cursing them, think:  $3.49 a bunch.  And remember they are full of vitamins and other health promoting properties.

Governor, oil has tanked, but we've got an endless renewable resource in dandelions.  And at $3.49 a bunch, they're probably more valuable than oil was when it was $60 a barrel.  And health food stores have all sorts of pricy dandelion products.  Here's a dandelion extract at $14 an ounce!

There's economic value all around us if we just have the right eyes.  But lets not value our flora and fauna only for their economic value.  They play an important role in keeping the earth vibrant and healthy.  If you haven't seen my post on The Overstory, I do recommend it.

High bush cranberry leaves are budding.

 Lillies.

Tulip buds are growing.

Wild geraniums.  From Common Sense Home:

"Early Native Americans [Is that as opposed to late Native Americans?] recognized the value of Wild Geranium and used it as an ingredient in many medicinal treatments. Chippewa Indians used dried, powdered rhizomes mixed with grape juice as a mouthwash for children with thrush. A poultice from the base or pounded roots of the plant was used to treat burns and hemorrhoids. The leaves and roots were used to treat sore throats, hemorrhages, gonorrhea, and cholera. Like many other tannin-containing substances, Native Americans also used Wild Geranium as an anti-diarrhea treatment. A plant- infused tea was made to achieve this purpose, though some sources say the tea could have had the opposite effect, causing constipation."

And we have visitors out for the summer too.

This fly was cleaning my breakfast plate out on the deck.

And I'm guessing this dead tree was sculpted by a woodpecker.  Dead trees often have more life than living trees.

Birds and Cats: Hairy Woodpeckers Are Much Bigger Than Downey's - Someone's Missing Their Cat

Whenever we spot a woodpecker in the backyard, it looks a lot like this one.  The bird books identify this as either a Downey or a hairy woodpecker.  We've decided, in the past, it's been a Downey, because the beak was short.

Well, the other day this giant woodpecker was in the back.  After some uncertainty, we finally figured out it was a Hairy woodpecker.  There is just no mistaking one from the other because of the size.  Of course, you can't always be sure how big a bird is off in the distance.  But clearly this one was significantly larger than the other ones we've seen.  And if you look closely the beak is almost as long as the rest of his head.

The magpies that have been upturning leaves in the yard as the snow melts, and hop about the branches in the trees were there too.  And while they watched the woodpecker, they kept a safe social distance for the 15 minutes or so the woodpecker was there.

Here's a Downey that visited last September.  He's much closer to me than the Hairy, and significantly smaller.  (The book says Downey's are about 6 inches and Hairy's are about 9 inches)

I saw this ad the other day in the newspaper.  It's just another ad for a lost cat.  Until you see the date.  Five years is a long time.

I did try to call to find out the story but I got a recording saying the person wasn't accepting calls at this time.

Solstice Is Past And It's Fall In Anchorage

There's more termination dust.





Ravens Roost had an apple festival the other night.

There were clouds in   Goose Lake.

Trees are getting yellow and losing their leaves.

I got some radishes on the last day of the Muldoon Farmers Market for this year.

And this woodpecker visited our yard today.  

Signs Of Spring (And Fixing Card Reader)

It's the last day of March 2019, and it's been one of the warmest on record.  Our front yard is clear of snow and the back yard only has snow in the shade of the house.  And I'm avoiding talking about anything depressing by showing you a couple of pictures instead.

A small gift pile from a visiting moose to help fertilize the soil.

The first tulip to poke out of the soil and leaf mulch.

I was finishing breakfast, reading the newspaper on the deck when I heard the tapping behind me.  It was on a neighbor's old cottonwood tree.  But I can't tell if it's a Downy or Hairy Woodpecker.  It seemed pretty big, which would lean toward a Hairy.  If we could see the beak, we could tell.  And a better birder would know.

And finally, inside, the hoya is blooming.

This is not as sharp as I would like because I took it with my phone.  My MacBook Pro card reader stopped working the other day.  But I had to use my good camera with the telephoto lens to get the woodpecker, so I googled and found some video tricks to fix the card reader.  The first one - blow air into the opening - didn't work.  The second one - put alcohol on a piece of paper towel and wrap it around the sound card and put it in the card reader - didn't work either.  The third one - said to go to launchpad and click on 'image control'.  I had to find it in launchpad's search.  But it didn't fix the problem.  Finally, another video said to 1) turn off the computer 2) clean the brass colored part of the sound card with alcohol 3) insert it and remove it from the card reader ten times, and 4) turn the computer back on.  And then it worked again. (I had turned off the computer after #1, and it didn't work.)

Tomorrow, the first quarter of the year will be over.  So remember, don't sit here wasting time on the computer (do things that are important only) and go out and enjoy the world.

Too Much Media Is Addicted To Trump Tweets

Trump's tweets are just irresistible to way too many political reporters.  They just can't stay away, they just can't resist commenting.

There is a certain obligation to challenge his falsehoods and to give context to what he writes.  He is the president after all.  But I had a student once in a 6th grade class who really had no friends.  He wanted attention.  He didn't know how to get good attention;  bad attention was better than being ignored.  So he hit people, and worse.  I had a year to show him that he could get good attention.  It worked.

I challenge all political writers to ignore Trump's tweets for a week.  At least don't write about them, at all.  Turn off Twitter and only check your phone if it's a call from someone on a real, serious story.

Spend more time listening to the birds tweeting.    Make your own music.  Play with your kids.  The world won't collapse if you goof off a bit for a week.  Even if all of you do.  Enjoy visitors to your home, like I did with this hairy woodpecker the other day.  Look at how exquisite he is.  Even if he was tapping on my house.

Let your mind think about how the world works.  Like why don't woodpeckers get brain damage?  One of my favorite old posts.

Morning Anchorage Woodpecker, Evening LA Sunset

So much to write about, but things that need some thought and time to get closer to right.  A quick trip to LA to do more work on my mom's house, then to San Francisco for some grandchild time.  The new baby over two months old now, so time to see her and her older brother for a few days.

So, you just get a couple of pictures.




I heard a woodpecker as I was putting stuff into the compost heap yesterday morning before we left.  And then I saw it.  The angle from the deck wasn't as good, but I took it before it flew away.  I think it's a downy woodpecker, but hard for me to tell for sure with these shots.







The flight was uneventful.  I'm trying to read The Camp of the Saints, supposedly one of Bannon's favorite books.  It's hard to get through, but it does help me understand how people could have voted for Trump.  I'm trying to figure out how to convey the sense I get from the book to do a post on it.  Race is a big factor - the need to protect the white race, but it's more than that.  Stay tuned.

We got into LA about 7:30 as the sun was setting.  I was thinking about the 10pm sunset in Anchorage, that gets later each day.

Hairy Woodpecker and Friends At Still Icy Potter Marsh

One more post from last Sunday's outing.  [The other two were Always Looks Different:  Turnagain Arm and McHugh Creek]  We stopped at Potter Marsh on the way home [as we did two weeks before.] 

The only birds we saw this time - and this is not a complaint - were a pair of hairy woodpeckers and a flock of bohemian waxwings. 

The woodpeckers were fun.  Maybe it's my early introduction to Woody as a kid.  Surely the red patch helps, and the tapping noise.  And one of my favorite posts, which still gets hits from weird folks like me, is Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Brain Damage? 









The waxwings too, but they're more common, and we'd recently had a very close view as they came to feast on the Mt. Ash berries in the tree in front of our house.  Here their spectacular colors aren't visible.

This time without such an obvious single food outlet as the Mt. Ash, they were scattered in pairs and small groups around the marsh. 

Here's a typical view of the marsh, though the summer tourists don't get to see it with the ice.

The boardwalk has signs prohibiting, among other things, dogs.  And as we got back to our car, we saw this one waiting patiently in the car for it's servants.