Proud Momma.

This Argiope aurantia was on our back porch for several weeks back in 2009.

Glorious.

Grab a bucket.

For those of you in the Norman area, the blackberries are in, and right on schedule!  Apparently a good year for crane flies, butterflies, and moths means a good year for berries as well.  By my estimation, the season will be over by next Saturday or so, but the good news is that the weather is forecast to be mild for the coming week.  Last year the crop quickly dehydrated on the vine.

The four of us picked enough in a few hours for a decent cobbler.  I am hoping to pick enough in the evenings this coming week to make some jelly.

I am sure that I don't need to remind you that poison ivy enjoys the same habitat as the blackberries, but there it is. 

Oven is preheated.  Back to cobblerization.

My First Flint and Steel Fire.

It's all in the the char-cloth, folks.

I had many things fall into place today:  A pile of embers from a burning brush pile, a tin-box, an old tee-shirt, twine, and an old C clamp from my Pap Mays.  After making the cloth, I fashioned a "tinder-taco" out of birch-bark, twine fibers, and oak leaves.

My first attempt ended in failure for 2 reasons:  The tinder was not packed tight enough, and I skimped on the char-cloth.  After about 3 minutes of hyperventilating I had had enough.  The second try I packed the taco much tighter, and used 5 pieces of the cloth. 

After about 5 smacks on the flint, I saw small orange rings appear on the cloth.  Several lung-fulls later the whole mass of char-cloth was bright orange, and thick with smoke was billowing out.  Seconds later, a bright yellow flame popped out.  \

I did it a second time to make sure that it wasn't a fluke.

I can cross this one off my list.

Snake Brakes.

The kids and I were out enjoying the cooler weather this evening.  Fletch was riding his scooter down the hill when he suddenly ground to a halt and ran toward me screaming at the top of his lungs.  It turns out that he had not braked to a stop, but the western pygmy rattlesnake under his rear wheel had done the job.

He was wearing a helmet, if that makes you feel any better.


A close look at some other photos revealed 5 rattles.  We released it on some state land nearby.  Except for being extremely pissed, the snake seemed otherwise unharmed.

Baby Katy

Today's Turtle.

Chloe spotted this rather large fellow on this morning's blackberry quest. He was unimpressed with our attentions.

Protein Conversion - the final step.

Rabbit-Barley Stew with homemade bread and a few other accouterments

What made me post this process is that I have managed to reach 45 years of age without ever having dressed and prepared anything more ambitious than the occasional trout. 

I imagine that my friends reading the last few posts have reactions that fall within this range: 

Those that are repulsed at my barbarism.

-to-

Those that think that I must have some sort of learning disability not to have done this in my teens or earlier.

While I consider the butchering and preparing of this rabbit to be personal milestone for me, I did not take it's life.  It was a gift from my dog.  The hunt is for another day.

Further adventures of converting rabbit protein into human protein.

I wasn't kidding.

A Gift from my Basset.

Mike so loves me that he brought me a bunny.  So show my appreciation for his gift, I am going to eat it.

Osage orange feast.

Found this huge pile of scraps out at the lake. Porcupine?

More fish parts.

Fish parts.

Bird's Nest Fungus

The Girl found this group of Crucibulum Bird's Nest Fungus in our backyard. To give you some idea of the scale, the jagged green in the upper right of the first image is the edge of a strawberry leaf.

Each little cup is filled with minuscule "eggs" - each attached to the cup by a slender cord.

Last year I found a single cup attached to a twig at the local park and showed it to her. She knew exactly what she had found. Sometimes she does listen.

The Orange-Painted Box Turtle.

The other evening the Girl came across this Ornate Box Turtle crossing the road in our neighborhood.

This specimen was not ornate enough apparently, as someone felt that it needed a coat of orange paint. I could see that a Three-toed Turtle could use some sprucing up, but this guy? Shame! I suspect an OSU fan.

That would explain a lot.

It seemed pretty used to being handled. It chose to snap at us when our hands got in range rather than pull into its shell.

I wanted to help, so I chased it around with a belt-sander for a while. When it got beyond the extension cord I just let it go.

The Oklahoma Attic-dwelling Toad.

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were having coffee on what we begrudgingly call our back porch, when we heard the telltale flopping sound that we have come to recognize as one of our denizen toads. Our porch is a haven for perhaps half a dozen of these dour and by all appearances perpetually bored creatures. In the cooler evening hours they emerge within a few minutes of each other and go about their toady business.

That we heard one moving about in the the morning was odd enough, but it was the persistence of the flopping finally drove me to investigate. (Sometimes when they manage to corner themselves, they decide that a dogged application of a frontal assault on the obstruction will win out over just turning around.)

After a few minutes of poking around amongst garden tools, toys, and other detritus, I came up empty. Unlikely as it seemed, the sound was coming from overhead. I spied some movement in one our homes many screened soffit vents. Fetching a ladder and a prybar, I investigated.


















Sitting on the screen was a toad that was easily as large as my clenched fist. It glared at my balefully, then made a majestic leap towards the nearby porch roof. Preferring death over suffering the indignities of my touch, the leap was far short. It plummeted 8 feet to the concrete patio below where it landed with a pronounced "plok." Surprisingly, it suffered no ill effects from the fall and it soon ambled about seeking further shelter. ( I run into him most evenings now. He has a favorite perch on a piece of scrap wood that offers it a commanding view of the backyard.)

I have no idea how it came to be in our attic, or why it would motivated to do so. A survey of our homes exterior yielded no obvious path of entry. Even considering that our house is faced with brick, it would still be a pretty long trek for an animal not really known for it's climbing prowess.

The mystery deepens: The next day when I went to repair the soffit vent there was a different slightly smaller toad perched on the flap of screen. Was it waiting to be removed, or to be closed up?

Spring cleaning.

While Deb cleaned the back porch the spider hung motionless, watching her hair. Loving it. Wondering what it would be like to luxuriate in the silken tresses. To unburden herself of the massive clutch of eggs. Waiting.

















When I got home that afternoon, I saw the canopy of web. Thinking that it was another massive wolf spider that frequently set up shop, I took a closer look. (They are always fun to feed.) The architecture struck me as a bit different from the norm. Rather than a single sheet that the spider would run along on top of, it was a complex sparkling latticework that occupied a volume rather than a single plane. Also the "house" was underneath the web, instead of on top and tucked back in a crevice.


















A peek into the round opening revealed the truth. Deb was thrilled to realize that she spent most of that morning unknowingly face-to-face with this splendor of nature. After taking some images of the beastie and showing the kids what to look out for, the creature was removed.

The web is a curious material. Stronger than a steel wire of the same diameter, the web makes a distinctive crackling sound when torn. I harvested it by wrapping it around a pair of bamboo skewers. I'm not sure if this is the best way to go about it, but I am hoping to collect enough to make a wristband or some-such thing.

If you are interested in Oklahoman critters like Black Widows and Brown Recluses, I highly recommend the book "The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators" by Gordon Grice. Especially if you have been planning on never setting foot outside your house, or raising your children in some sort of air-tight box.

Frog Girl.

Painting the town red.

Great year for Indian Paintbrush. I'd usually see patches here and there along the roads, but never a field completely choaked with the stuff.

Gorgeous.

First green.

Not rolling stones.