Open Thread – Horse Tails
Summer is here in the Land of the Midnight Sun, and the palette of the world has changed from a hundred shades of white, to a hundred shades of brown, to this.
December 18, 2024
Thursday, August 3, 2023
The Quitter Returns! -Monday, March 21, 2022
Putting the goober in gubernatorial -Friday, January 28, 2022
Summer is here in the Land of the Midnight Sun, and the palette of the world has changed from a hundred shades of white, to a hundred shades of brown, to this.
I read an article about Palin’s movie on Rwal Clear Politics. In the last part of the movie,Mark Levin alludes to Ronnie Raygun as a Palin-like insurgent. I guess that ought to end the debate over whether she is Presidential material or not.
If you’re in the Mat Valley, this is a matter of concern. Please attend if you can:
Community Outreach Meeting on Coal Issues, June 8 in Sutton
You are invited to a community outreach meeting on the coal issues Wed, June 8, 7:30 to 8:30 pm in Sutton at mile 61 of the Glen Highway. We will meet in the Chickaloon Traditional Council building on the second floor. Look for the spirit houses on the West side of the road.
Link to Google Map Chickaloon Health Dept, 16166 N Glenn Hwy, Sutton, AK 99674
Please share this invite with your friends on Facebook – Link to Outreach Meeting Event
Colony Days Booth in Palmer, June 10-12 in Palmer
Visit the Mat Valley Coalition booth at Colony Days in Palmer, June 10-12.
Know Coal: Community Forum, June 22 in Wasilla
Everyone is invited to the Know Coal community forum Wednesday June 22, 6:30 to 8:00 pm at the Curtis Menard Sports Center in Wasilla. Dr. Michelle Prevost will present the Unhealthy Secrets of Coal (presentation is online at http://www.MatValley.org). The Mat Valley Coalition will present an overview of the coal issues facing our valley. Snacks provided!
If you are in Alaska and in the area of Talkeetna. Former Iditarod musher Melanie Gould appears to be missing and friends and neighbors are mounting a search for her. Troopers were contacted but did not open a missing persons report due to them saying they have knowledge of a location where she was in the last couple days, but do not know where she is now.
She left work at 5:20 on 31 May, then didn’t show up for either of her other jobs on Tuesday or Wednesday and most worrying, she left her dogs without any arrangements for their care.
That to me seems very worrying and out of character for a musher. In the article there is a phone number to contact troopers and a couple emails to use if you have any information.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/06/03/1692091/missing-mushers-friends-worry.html
I personally like the horsetails (we get them behind our house every spring). They are prehistoric (over 100 million years old) , the only surviving genus of equisetum that reproduces by spores rather than seeds and is often referred to as a living fossil. This year we had tons of rain and the horsetail back behind are lawn looks lush and green. I don’t mind it. It really is beautiful.
My neighbor hates them and sprays all kinds of nasty chemicals on his but they keep coming back. We just let ours thrive and enjoy the company of a living fossil (along with the mole that we allow to live and be). 😉
There are a number of ginkgo trees on my block (and elsewhere in the neighborhood). They’re another living fossil.
They smell like they have been dead for centuries. Actually,Horsetails are not a bad looking weed and would be a nice addition to my yard if I could get rid of the Shepherds Purse and Tickle Grass.
Damn horsetails…. they keep erupting in y potato patch.
Less’en three weeks until Keith O and his opinions are back on the air. Halla freakin Lujah.
The silica supplement I take is made from horsetail. Lovely photo.
Mag the Mick-i have 3 types of Orioles here. There is a Baltimore Oriole and a male and female Oriole,so that makes three types. Since they started to scarf down Strawberry jam,they won’t hardly look at the orange half I put out there. They sure like strawberry jam. Next comes Apricot jam and we will see if they can eat it.
Mike – Much as I am sure I’d enjoy spending time with you, let’s not go bird-watching together, okay? I’m afraid I’d be tempted to whack you upside the head with my Roger Tory Peterson. We have Bullock’s, Scott’s, and Hooded here, and while I can distinguish the males, the females all look alike to me. My feeder stores sugar water, but also has indentations for fruit jam. I’m afraid to use them, for fear of ants. Besides, I wouldn’t want to mess up the plumage of various hummingbirds.
We are into one of the worst droughts in recent years here. I’ve put out a big meal washtub of water and haveseen both javelinas and little white=tail deer coming in to drink out of it at night. We are all really watching and waiting for the start of the monsoon rains.
Maybe a friendly little tap to the noggin would help me remember where my copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds is.
Last week I spend about twenty minutes watching a black bear consume a bale of these. Apparently, with sweet fresh grass, they’re a pleasant form of roughage.
[I was safely parked in my car, sans dog, who would have barked and chased the bear].
Insightful Quote:
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige and even his life for the welfare of others.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Whuse the mystery face in the upper left hand part of the photo? I clearly see two eyes and dark colored nose and a pair of lips with no expression. There is also a chin. Could it be a troll?
Anchorage has a Zombie Walk coming up. Could be an early arrival.
Looks like a pixie-fox to me.
The Ancient Ones sneak into my pictures from time – to – time as well.
What a great choice, Crow Woman! Brings back memories. Have a good day at school!
OK,what am i looking at? Besides being green that stuff seems to have no redeeming social values and taken as a whole,wouldn’t pique any one’s prurient interests. I don’t know what the community standards are.
It is horsetail grass. More or less a weed that it almost universally loathed except by me. 🙂
Beautiful picture!
Maybe when you think of it as robbing all the precious needs from the veggies and goodies in the garden it will be more ‘loathed’ by you 🙂
Of course once your ground gets good and rich with its own compost and goodies it grows less, so THAT makes me happy!!
Spouse and I were just talking about this ‘stuff’ this morning and how best to keep it out of the strawberries and raspberries!!
It’s beautiful — when in its place!
Seems I read something somewhere that it has medicinal properties. Can’t remember what though.
I’ll bet anything the old-timers used it for mattress stuffing —
I love horsetail too- except in my garden!! Stay out of the garden!!!
As a kid I spent many long hours playing “camping” with my dolls amongst horsetail “forests”
That one never got me in trouble either, like the excavating and flooding for a lake- camping -doll -adventure , in the middle of the family garden -forest did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsetail
It’s redeeming social value is pot-scrubbing, besides the lovely picture.
Horsetail grass is a silica-based life form, rather than carbon-based such as we are.
That means it is not obscene according to your standards,if I understand the Supreme Court’s explanation of obscenity(and I don’t really). Too bad the picture was cut off on top because I can clearly see a woman’s face with one eye and parts of her nose and mouth visible.
When I was a kid, my Grandma told us to break horsetails stalks open and spread the milky stuff inside on beestings and nettle stings.
I don’t know if it was effective because it has magical medicinal powers, or if it worked because it got our minds off the stings. Either way, Grandma was a smart woman.
Euphorbia’s. How beautiful.
and who’d a thunk, but my forest is reverting to a hundred shades of brown.
Prayers and rain dances for my forest, prayers and rain dances…
…have you ever seen the rain?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS9_ipu9GKw&playnext=1&list=PL83FB5600B7E233FF
L’Shalom,
thatcrowwoman
I know to you it may sound strange
but I wish it would rain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-es4Q8AJaU
Love reign o’er me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDbAtWpoA6k
OK. I’ ready.
Off to the library now for the students’ last day of school.
radiothatcrowwoman over and out
*I’m ready.*
hahahahha caw Caw CAW CAW CAW!
Crow! happy summer to my favorite librarian. you got my sad and grieving heart to smile today. you are a lovely one. thanks babe. and may it rain down cool refreshing water all over your little piece of paradise.
Ah, bubbles. Wish you could come and sit on my deck and watch my wild menagerie. So far today, we’ve had a drop by from love-struck Orson, a lesson in fishing from a fishless fountain by our young hawk, two fox kits just passing through, and way too many squirrels and birds playing and arguing amongst themselves. What may or may not be a badger (and I am NOT going close enough to check. Porcupines and a skunk. Too far even with binoculars to be sure. There is a peace that just seeps into my soul there.
Hey, TCW! Happy last day of students, and I do hope you get your library to be designated a test-free zone!
(((Jimzmum)))♥
What wonderful neighbors you have! (Well, except for the skunk!)
I have to settle for the usual birds (including an occasional dive-by by a hungry hawk), rabbits who find my Nishiki willows particularly tasty, squirrels, chipmunks and the biggest toad I’ve ever seen outside of a zoo (obviously, the toad is doing quite a thorough job of keeping the bug population down in my yard!).
I’ve had visits from skunks and woodchucks in the past and one deer who hung out in the neighborhood for a few days before returning to it’s former home. It woke me up by munching a shrub just below my window at about 2 in the morning. It looked IN the window just as I looked OUT the window…we ended up almost nose to nose. We both jumped and I’m not sure which of us was more startled!
I did see a flash of large wings the other day and followed it to a tree 2 backyards away. It was hard to get a very clear view, but based on the size of the wingspan, the color and silhouette of the head, I think it might be a pileated woodpecker. Very cool!!! I’ll have to keep my eyes open this summer and see if I can spot it again.
Enjoy your little piece of paradise!
Send in a requisition form,in triplicate, to Guv Terry Braindead of Iowa and mayhaps he will send some of our rain to you. Which version of I wish it would rain did you want?