A Little Winter Color

To the south side of the house we have a large evergreen tree. It sits just outside my home office windows, as well as just to the left of the large picture window in our dining room. This has been a delightful source of entertainment over the years that we have been there, because it is a year-round favorite of our feathered friends.

Usually, in the winter this is a contingent of LBBs, but this season I realized that we had an additional, somewhat less usual set of tenants occupying our natural avian apartment building.

A fine fellow…

It’s not unusual to see cardinals out here - they stay in Illinois year round, and I see them both in the yard from time to time, as well as when I am out cycling in the snow. So catching the flash of red the first time or two was not a surprise. But when it kept happening I suspected that this fine gentleman had taken up residence.

And when I saw the lady of the house I was more certain.

She was a little harder to catch under the tree than he was. I’d see her there from time to time, but she was usually in a position that made a pic difficult to take, and/or she would relocate before I could get into position to capture her image.

And then a couple of weeks ago she apparently warmed up to me enough to spend a little time outside the office window:

Lady of the House

And that pretty much cements it in my mind - they really do appear to have taken up residence. And so far they seem to be good tenants - they keep their area clean, don’t play loud music late at night...

But I am concerned that she might be hanging out with some rifraf...

What is he doing here??

When this picture was taken we were absolutely not seeing signs of spring. About a week before Punxsutawney Phil had run from his shadow, and of course we all know just how reliable the weather predictions of sizable rodents are.

...which is to say, probably about as good as those of any other weatherman...

But the point is that the robin just isn’t supposed to be here yet, right? He’s the metaphorical sign of spring - a season that was a month and a half away in a technical sense, and at least a few weeks away in a felt sense.

So I was concerned that this robin was a bad-boy, here to be a corrupting influence on our otherwise incorruptible lady. It might as well be wearing a leather jacket and engineer boots.

Apparently my perception of the behavior of robins is a bit off the mark. It turns out they do hang out in winter weather, and alter their diet to match what is available in winter weather. This article on the Cool Green Science website covers all of that and more about these red-breasted folk, and it’s a good read.

So - I guess it can stay, as long as it doesn’t cause any trouble...

Secrets Revealed in Snow

Rosie and Calamity are working dogs.

Killing vermin is work.

We don’t have sheep or cattle for them to herd, but instead they patrol the property for vermin and always make us aware when people come by - Calamity in particular. They say that dog owners learn to distinguish between the types of barks and calls that their dogs make, and this is absolutely true for Calamity. Her “someone is here” bark-howl crescendo is unmistakable and can be heard from pretty much anywhere in the house.

They also say that Australian Cattledogs are “silent workers”. They are full of crap on that one. There is virtually no activity for Calamity, with the possible exception of sleeping, that doesn’t require some type of canine vocal soundtrack.

Rosie, our Australian Shepherd/Border Collie mix, on the other hand, has taken the forefront on a different job. And it’s one that, until recently, I honestly did not fully understand.

The dogs have worn patrol pathways into the grass around the yard and, in the winter months they recapitulate these into the snowpack as well. Along these pathways, in particular spots, one could frequently see her standing at various spots near the property line barking at... something? in the distance.

And it’s a full-body bark, let me tell you. She has a deep bark that belies her slim frame, a real “woof”. And when she is employing it in these moments, each bark begins with a slight bounce up from the front legs - paws off the ground, mind you - with the “woof” being emitted as the paws hit the surface, and her shoulders hunch up.

She’ll do this repeatedly, sometimes for several minutes. It’s exhausting just watching it.

Most of the time I would just hear her barking and look out the window or walk around the house if I was outside, and I would see her there, fully engaged in that master-barking technique.

In more recent months, however, I’ve seen how it starts. At times, she will sit on our back steps, staring out intently across the landscape. This seems regal - a queen, surveying her realm - until she suddenly bolts off the steps, streaks across the yard, and gets to the end of the property, coming up to an immediate full-stop. And then the barking.

I have tried, many, many times, to see what she is barking at. Because there has to be something there, right? But I can never see a thing, no matter how intently I watch, nothing is there. And you might think, well, whatever it was she scared it off already. But I’ve seen her at the beginning of this now, and I’ve still seen nothing where she runs.

It’s honestly gotten to the point where I started to think she might be just a little... off.

But this winter, with the extended snow coverage, I had an opportunity to take a look at the area in the field just beyond one of her more common barking stations.

Tracks in snow

Mouse tracks and fox?

Canid tracks

She’s clearly not crazy. There’s a lot of activity there, as you can see. Based upon a couple of track identification websites, I can see that there’s fox and mouse tracks at minimum (one naturally attracted to the other, I’d imagine). Maybe coyote or stray dogs as well (we have both in the area, and I’ve seen the latter fairly recently). And there’s a bit that I am not sure how to account for as well.

What is this…?

I don’t know if that odd pattern is from animal activity, or maybe something being blown across the surface (we are in a wind farm, after all).

So now I know that she’s been warding off actual critters this whole time. I’ve also long suspected that she and Calamity supplement their diet with caught critters, and the volume of mouse tracks I see in the snow would suggest there’s plenty to catch. Plus - LB and I watched her dive face-first into the snow a few days just like a coyote or fox. She’s got some skills.

And - of course - now that I know what she’s warding off, when I see her start to bolt across the yard I look at where she’s pointed and...

...still can’t see a damn thing.

Welcome to the Jungle

This has been an unusually good year for wildlife spotting on and around our little section of prairie. I shared pictures of my time with foxes and our new swallow neighbors earlier, but they certainly aren’t the only cohabitants in our area of late.

Yesterday’s dewy morning revealed the work of what may be a small army of funnel web spiders in the northwestern quarter.

Funnel Web Army

Don’t get any closer…

The webs are notable for their sudden appearance on a given morning - a dozen or more where there previously appeared to be none. The spiders themselves proved very shy and challenging to locate or capture.

And speaking of spiders, I had this fine, terrifying fellow for company whilst shucking corn by the grill:

Terrifying Spider

He puts on a fine show of being frightening, but only if you are very, very tiny...

Slightly less terrifying spider

And, as far as that goes, one of our screens appears to be a bit loose on one corner, provider a perfect, if unintentional habitat for this specimen:

It got this far - will it make it all the way in?

I asked LB to clean out between the window and the screen, but all I got was a "hell no" in response...

Earlier in the season, doing a bit of yard work (yes, with a machete - isn’t that how you do yard work?) I managed to pick up this little guy:

Inching along

I don’t know exactly how I picked it up - it must have been on something I was cutting down. It’s a pretty good trick to catch a machete blade while it’s swinging.

Just ahead of Independence Day this specimen decided to help us with hanging the laundry out to dry:

His name is Dennis…

He’s considerably smaller than his cousins who are plaguing me on the road.

One of the apparent benefits to not pursing a monoculture of Kentucky bluegrass is that the variation supports these tiny critters. Among them, we also get more than our fair share of butterflies and moths every year. We get everything from the little butter pats:

Butter Pat

...To the ubiquitous monarchs. And sometimes we get some additional splashes of color:

Black Swallowtail

Red-Spotted Purple Admiral

And sometimes we encounter butterflies and moths still in the process of becoming:

Spotted Apatelodes

My best guess on this one is that it’s the caterpillar form of the Spotted Apatelodes moth. If so, it definitely appears to live it up in its youth with that bright yellow.

The final entry in this little photo catalogue are the toads. We always have toads here, but the population seems to have exploded this year. It used to be kind of a pleasant surprise to encounter them. Now it seems to be unusual to walk in the yard and not see one. This is not a problem, mind you - I always enjoy the meeting.

Our current companions range from the camouflaged...

Darth Toader

...To the standouts:

Look at me!

The summer isn’t over yet, so I’m sure we’ll encounter more. When we first decided to move out to the Homestead I was looking forward to the solitude of separation from neighbors. I did not anticipate the additional benefit of being surrounded with such variety. I did not anticipate it, but I do appreciate it.

New Tenants

The view out the back stairwell window is almost always my first glance at the out of doors every morning. It changes with the weather and seasons, of course, but you’d expect that it would otherwise be a fairly static view. I would think that too, but it often surprises me.

At the corners of the house we have these little ledges. They are an architectural element that has been there since the very beginning:

And my Uncle, I believe, made efforts to preserve or reflect those elements despite the re-siding of the house over time - what was once wood is now reflected as metal, but still present.

These residential plots out here in the agricultural territory of the prairie are, as I’ve mentioned before, little islands of wooded area. As such, birds of the tree nesting variety (as opposed to the ground-nesting avians out on the prairie itself) tend to congregate heavily around the house. Spring mornings from mid-May until the earliest days of summer are a riot of jumbled birdsong. Even with the curtains pulled tight against the morning light there is no confusion as to whether the sun has risen.

I can readily verify that we have now reached the point of the year where that is happening before 5:30 AM... ugh...

At any rate, it’s clear that even though we have an abundance of trees, there simply isn’t enough room at the inn for all comers, and it’s inevitable each year that some poor robin or sparrow will try his hand at building a nest on one of those ledges. They are master builders, each and every one, but even mastery can’t defeat physics - the lightweight material atop a smooth surface inevitably succumbs to the spring winds.

Given this history, it wasn’t necessarily a surprise to see a nest under construction on the ledge just out that back stairwell window the other morning. And, when I saw it, it was with the thought that it would be only a short while before the avian architect saw the error of his ways. "Poor chap", I thought, "must be a young whipper-snapper on his first nest building foray, not yet experienced in the trials and travails of trying to nest on our old house".

But then as I watched the master builder came in to do some work and I got lucky enough to capture his image:

Seeing the type of bird I looked closer at the nest. Swallows, in addition to being the aeronautical acrobats of the prairie, build their nests not to nestle in, but to stick. And that does appear to be what is going on here.

The swallows have always been here - or at least as long as I can remember. Our resident population appears to mostly nest in our Old Gray Mare of a decaying barn. I don’t believe that I’ve see any try to nest at the house in the time that we’ve been here. Perhaps the returning population has grown to the point where they need more room than the barn can offer, or perhaps the progressive decrepitude of that structure has caused some of them to look for a nicer neighborhood. Perhaps it’s a combination of both situations.

In any case, we appear to have new tenants for the season here in the homestead.

Roadside Vulpines

Sometimes you just get lucky.

I was on a variation of a very common countryside riding route, a few miles from home, and on the way out I caught a glimpse of a fox in the tall grass of the ditch. It was the briefest of sightings, both because I was moving and because it ducked for cover as I approached. I considered myself fortunate for having been granted the viewing at all, and continued pedaling.

I had more or less forgotten that sighting by the I’d hit the middle point of the ride and began to swing back for the return trip. But as I approached the same section of road from the other direction I was greeted by a much less shy furry friend:

At first he just peeked his head out of the tall grass, and I assumed it would be similar to the prior encounter. But he was still for long enough to suggest I could get a picture, so I checked my rear view mirrors to make sure I was safe from behind, and then pulled up the phone to take this picture.

I thought that would be it, but I waited, keeping a watch behind me, because he continued to stand there. And then he moved out into the road and towards me!

But that was apparently close enough, and he bolted away:

And again, I thought it was done, and prepared to move on. But I was wrong - not only did he not take off and hide, but there was another there as well.

Litter mates, I assume, and likely not far from the den. Mama must have been away hunting or they surely would have been scolded back in. I was both thankful that she did not do so, but also concerned about the frolicking close to - and in - the road. But it afforded a marvelous opportunity, for as long as I stayed still and quiet, they continued to largely disregard me.

They stayed, playing at the side of the road until I decided it was time to move on. It was the rare perfect confluence of events. I am no expert in vulpine age determination (nor do I play such an expert on TV), but I assume these were juveniles, which would account for the relative lack of concern at my presence. They must have been denned up in the ditch, likely near where they were playing. And the road was blissfully clear of any motor vehicle traffic for the entire time I was there. This last part was a special gift, because while this was a country road, and not even a major country thoroughfare, I honestly cannot remember a ride on it before where I did not encounter at least one car or truck.

It was a gift of life in the country.

Backroad Mystery

Things are different now in the world - behavior patterns are changing - businesses are closed down, there’s less traffic and activity on the roads, and people are sheltered at home.

It’s challenging for everyone, but with all of that, I did not expect to find this on our Illinois country roads...

I was heading out to check my PO Box late in the afternoon - late enough to ensure the post office would be closed and I’d be unlikely to encounter anyone. Often I will ride to do this task, but this day I took the car. I didn’t realize it at the time that it was likely the safer option, offering protection from marauders. I did not realize that our society had devolved to this level, that I should be on the watch for roving gangs searching out that one last tank of juice.

It’s clear to me now that I should have been more wary.

From a distance I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I know from experience that, traveling in mountain regions you do periodically see rocks in the road, but this is northern Illinois. If it were a fallen rock it would have fallen directly from the sky. But what else could it be? The size of it was... curious, to say the least.

When I stopped I took the first picture to document where I’d been and what had happened, such was my uncertainty about the situation. And then, after checking for traffic - just for safety, mind you - the fear of roving brigands had not yet entered my thoughts.

The road was clear, so I approached. As the item came into sharp focus my heart fell, for now I knew what it was. Now I realized just how far things had fallen.

It was a head, ladies and gentlemen. A head, unattached to anything else, laying there in the road. What have we become?

Catastrophe

Like most folks, we’ve been mostly home for weeks now. We do have cats and dogs out here at the homestead. The dogs are mostly outside, and in general seem pleased to have more humans home more of the time. The cats, who are always inside seem unphased.

Or so I thought.

As I have mentioned before, the house is big and designed to be subdivided, so the cats have a lot of space - they don’t have to be around people if they don’t want to be. What’s more, the nature of our family prior to the pandemic is such that someone was home the overwhelming majority of the time, so it’s not like they have ever been accustomed to just having the place to themselves. It really seemed like all of this was no big change.

And then, just a couple of days ago, I came around the corner and saw this:

I can only assume this is the result of one or both of our feline compatriots finally reaching the boiling point and popping his or her respective top. I imagine the shrieking meow version of "I am so sick of the people! Why must they be here all the time?!?"

This is both understandable, but also unacceptable. While one might well get upset, smashing and tossing about of things is simply not an appropriate way to manage one’s emotions.

So, of course what I did was to leave the mess there as an object lesson to the furry friend who made it. When he or she is ready to acknowledge their error I expect they will pick it up.

I’m sure that will happen any day now...

Life at Home

We are, at the moment, in the middle of a world that seems to have gone crazy. As the Coronavirus spreads and cases of Covid-19 grow, social media is replete with jokes and struggles about toilet paper scarcity and social distancing.

It seems fair to say that, at this point, virtually everyone in the country is experiencing some impact from the effort to mediate the spread of infection. Schools are closing nationwide, including here in Illinois. Events are being cancelled, businesses are closing their doors to decrease engagement with larger groups of people, hopefully all just for a limited period of time.

It’s a huge change for a lot of people and, jokes aside, it’s clear there are folks who are uncertain how to weather the time disconnected.

All of it makes me think of the contrast of modern life against what our ancestors would have experienced only a few generations ago. When our old house was built in 1861 it’s certainly not the case that there were no cities, but life out here on the prairie would have included a level of social distancing by default that was far beyond what we are encountering now (and let’s not even get into the question of toilet paper). While there were towns, to be sure, and cities in the distance, I had to imagine that there were periods of time when the people at a given homestead went days or even weeks without seeing others. They muddled through with limited entertainment options - likely a book or three (one most certainly being the Bible), and the farm work and handicraft that they engaged in. And they only had each other for company (which likely explains, in part, why older homes were not built on an open concept floor plan).

None of which is to say that those prior generations were better than us - I’m not about to suggest that we all tear down our cities and towns and move out into the country. It’s really more a matter of what you live with and get used to. They didn’t have all of the entertainment options that even we in the rural world can access now. They weren’t better, but they were definitely more used to filling empty time. And, of course, they also had more that they needed to do - washing machines and dishwashers and Amazon, etc, free up a lot of time that our forebears would have used just for daily maintenance and care.

So now we have that time free, but it’s unoccupied. But if we look back we know that those who came before us were able to weather through it. And that means that we can, too.

Take care.

Return Visitor?

Last year, around this time, we had an unusual visitor. Back then I’d seen him at least once before, but had not been in a position to take pictures. Then MLW and I happened across him while we were in the car together, and she was able to snap some pictures of him.

Now, a year later, give or take a couple of weeks, he’s back!

Full disclosure - I have no idea whether this eagle is the same one as before, nor do I know it’s gender identity. But the pictures here are taken approximately a mile and a half from the location we saw the eagle last year. That’s a mile and a half as the crow - or eagle - flies.

Being able to catch him on camera this time was just sort of dumb luck. I was in the car coming back towards home, but the road was empty and I wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere. I first saw him standing in the field, and did get a couple of shots of that, but oddly enough, a brown and white bird doesn’t stand out well in contrast against a field full of dirt and snow...

As with last year, this was a brief encounter. As I mentioned, when I first saw him he was standing in the field. I was probably 50 yards away from him, but clearly that was too close - my presence agitated him and he decided to go.

Last year we didn’t see the eagle again much after the February sighting. It could be that it had moved on - that it was passing through our area on the way to somewhere else. Or it could be that I just didn’t get lucky again. Still, two years in a row, around the same time of the season, suggests that the first event wasn’t just a fluke. I’m hoping we start to see them more routinely.

These shots were all taken with an iPhone XS Max

Bam! It’s Winter.

Saturday morning I woke up and took my usual look out the stairwell window. I’d known the snow was coming, but it’s still a wonderful sight once it actually happens. This particular drawing of the white stuff is wet and heavy, which has its own particular effects on the scenery. When I get the opportunity, I try to capture this sort of thing:

These four trees are the remnants of a windbreak at the east end of the property.

These shots were taken in the gray about 45 minutes or so before actual sunrise. And speaking of sunrise:

These last two shots were taken this morning, Sunday, December 5th, 2020. I realize sunrise happens every day, and I am actually frequently up ahead of it this time of year, but it’s rare that I have the opportunity in terms of free time to capture it, and it seemed a special chance to do so with the snow cover.

That snow cover will be largely disappearing as the day goes on. Our projected high for today is in the 40’s, with highs above freezing projected for most of the rest of the week. I’m sure folk won’t be complaining about the short stay of the snow, as a general rule, but I’ll miss it when it’s gone.

Color Corner

Early December is a period of time here on the prairie where all of the colors seem to fade. Everything is pulling back to one shade of brown or the other, having briefly flourished in an array of oranges and yellows before it’s demise. And while we’ve had some snow, it isn’t yet reliably staying to cover the brown with the brilliant white carpet that we’ll enjoy in coming months.

When we hit this time of year, sometimes it’s nice to look back and remember what was offered up only a couple of months back. For me, today, that’s late August and the stand of false sunflowers and goldenrod we have at one corner of the property:

This riot of giant flowers is not something we planted, and I don’t believe they were placed here by my grandparents either. Rather, they’ve grown up here on their own, and we’ve elected to let they stay and, to some degree, expand.

While it’s a large batch of flowers, it doesn’t take up an unreasonable amount of space, and it isn’t the case that we need that space for any other particular purpose. And they do host other bits of wildlife - birds, butterflies, and other insects as well.

So there you have it - just something to brighten up a gray December day.

Tiny Mushrooms

I am periodically surprised that, despite rolling towards the end of my fourth decade, I still encounter things I’ve never see before.

Beside our garage is a very large old maple tree, trunk covered with moss by virtue of its own shade.

As I was passing by and looking at it I noticed a cicada (I think) carapace.

This is not something new to me, but still interesting to find - a small echo of prior activity left static. But as I was looking at it I noticed something else, just below, that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before:

Seeing them there on the tree adjusted my focus to their smaller scale, and I started to look across more of the trunk - those two by the cicada shell were not alone:

And as I was scanning I came across this little batch of ladybugs, which help to give a bit of scale to these tiny fungi:

This is a little thing, of course, both figuratively and literally. But it illustrates the value in taking a moment to just slow down and look around from time to time. This is something I sometimes struggle with myself, and it’s helpful to be reminded.

Flash of Red

Most mornings as I wake up and walk down the back stairs I take a glance out the window at the top of the stairwell to get my first impression of the day.

This morning, as I looked out towards the old gray mare I saw a flash of red in the decrepit honeysuckle bush at the end of the sidewalk.

Can’t see it? I’m not surprised. It’s here:

Cardinals are not especially rare out here. They overwinter with us, and when we’ve put out bird feeders we’ve routinely seen them happily eating with all of the LBB’s in the snow. I also see them fairly regularly when I’m out riding, flitting about between the trees.

I tried, with limited success, to get a closer look with the camera:

Some things become mundane, boring, and begin to fade into the background with repeated exposure. Somehow, cardinals escape this for me. While they are semi-ubiquitous on our landscape, I experience a little bit of joy each and every time I see one. Each and every time I feel like I’ve discovered something wonderful - albeit again - and like nature has given me a special little gift.

I feel the same about blue jays (which are otherwise kind of hateful) and goldfinches (which are decidedly not hateful). Perhaps it’s the unusual flash of bold color against the greens, browns and, increasingly with the season, grays of our landscapes that allow them to give that dopamine rush upon discovery.

Perhaps. But this is the rare type of event I don’t really want to examine in detail. For this I’ll just enjoy.

Lovely but Fickle…

Autumn at the Homestead is typically beautiful but brief and fickle with her gifts. While the maple trees turn red and golden each year, the prairie wind conspires always to take this visual feast and end it all too soon.

October is often very damp, as if Mother Nature is in denial that the growing season has passed. This leaves the person weathering the damp asking why as they pull closed their coat against the encroaching precipitation.

But when the timing is right, the rain falls just after the leaves have hit the ground, and the damp keeps them there for a few brief, precious days:

And it’s a gift that everyone seems to enjoy...

Spiders Am Our Friends

As the saying goes, you are never more than... some number of feet from a spider. I’ve heard multiple versions of this saying, and the distance ranges from three feet to a few yards. Out here at the Homestead this is certainly true, regardless of which version you want to pick.

This has occasionally led to some tension between LB and myself, since my child, in their youth, announced in no uncertain terms their hatred of our constant eight-legged companions. This has, in the past, resulted in multiple situations in which a child who would, at different points in their life, fly through the air on uneven bars or stand toe to toe with opponents throwing punches and kicks or engage in public speaking (which many people would determine the most frightening on the list), had to nonetheless be rescued from an eight-legged interloper that was smaller than a dime.

In these occasions I would always come in with a tissue or paper towel and gently relocate said arachnid to a more palatable location. When I would do this, I would always say "spiders am our friends".

In a broad sense they are. Aside from the rare octolegged critter that can provide actual harm to humans, their cohabitation with us is largely beneficial. Their food source largely consists of the very insects we don’t want around us, and any dude that wants to collaborate with me on the removal of houseflies and earwigs (ugh!) is decidedly on my team.

To be fair, in their later years LB has indicated they are no longer afraid of spiders. They didn’t say they like them, but that’s improvement regardless.

150-ish year-old structures seem to offer more than their fair share of places for these insect carnivores to ply their trade. We have more than our fair share of the traditional daddy long legs hanging around in the basement (the actual spider, not the harvestman, tho we have those too). We have others around and about tho, and very occasionally I find one or two that is in a position to catch a good shot of them.

Out in the old barn last fall I was able to catch this fine specimen. I’m not a spider expert by any means, but a little time on the Insect Identification website suggests that this is an Orb Weaver.

The other shot I got a little earlier this fall. I pulled a dog crate out of the basement to relocate it, and this lovely lady had made her home there:

She appears to be an American House Spider. We see these pretty regularly, particularly in the basement. Usually they are not interested in posing for pictures (and being in the floor joists is not a great location for photography). I didn’t object to her presence there, but the crate was needed in another location. Probably the most challenging part was removing her and the web (with her eggs) without (hopefully) damaging any of it too much.

I have not shared these pictures with my child, nor mentioned the location of these fine multi-gammed fellows. Their announcement of diminished fear aside, I doubt they’d find any of this as interesting or as pleasant as I do...

Little Quonset Huts on the Prairie

A couple of months ago Omnibus! with Ken Jennings and John Roderick did an episode on Quonset Huts.

You’ve probably heard this term before - it shows up in movies and books, particularly if they are about or adjacent to the military - e.g. you might read a line like "the base included row after row of Quonset Huts..." But while I know I’d heard the term over and over again growing up, and I did periodically make the connection between it and what it was referring to, I most often did not. Reading that name in a book did not typically evoke an image of what it was specifically referring to.

This is a somewhat odd disconnect, given that they are literally all over the place out here on the prairie. If you have spent any time on country roads or rural highways I can just about guarantee that you’ve seen them too. But I think for me the term “Quonset Hut" throws me - both because the first part is somewhat exotic sounding, and because the second part evokes an image that is significantly different than what the actual thing is. When I think of a hut, I think of something like this:

Very different from the reality of the actual thing:

There. Now that you’ve seen that picture you probably realize that you’ve seen these before and, if you didn’t know what they were called, simply thought of them as sheds or workshops; and aside from the half-cylinder shape, likely otherwise found them to be nondescript and perhaps rather uninteresting. They certainly are not a hut, and they don’t deserve an exotic name like "Quonset". And what is a Quonset anyway?

As John explains in detail in the Omnibus! episode, it’s not really an exotic thing. They were designed and developed in the US and produced by the military during World War II at the Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center, which is on Quonset Point in Rhode Island. Wikipedia (which is never wrong) says that Quonset is an Algonquin word meaning "small, long place".

The Wikipedia article also says that the place name is now widely known because of its association with the Quonset Hut. It’s an odd route to minor fame (or at least recognition), but there it is.

So now we’ve cleared that up - it’s an oddly shaped, exotically/non-exotically named military building. There are good reasons behind the design, and it has a history going back to Britain in World War I, all of which John Roderick goes through in detail in his inimitable and delightful way - I highly recommend you listen to the episode for all of that (and frankly, just go ahead and subscribe to Omnibus! - it comes out twice a week and it’s never not good)

But if it’s a military building, what the heck is it doing all over the Midwest? Because it _is_ all over the place. I see variants of these when I’m riding around the countryside, from classic versions like the one above, to modified versions put to different purposes:

They are very common on farmsteads, and they often seem to be put to similar purposes as what I think of as a machine shed - large buildings with corrugated steel siding - and naturally so. But the thing is, they also show up in town. The first picture above is within the city limits of my hometown, as are both of these:

The second of the two pictures was the home for Schimmer’s car dealership for a sizable portion of my childhood, and apparently for some time prior to that:

(That pic posted on Facebook by Edie Frizol on September 4, 2019)

They cleverly hide the shape of the building with a facade and a careful selection of the angle with the newspaper picture. But coming from either side, and certainly when you were inside, you always knew the building was a half-tube.

If these are military buildings, what are they doing all over the place here in the heartland? Well, I suspect that it’s because they were sold as military surplus after the war. I’d imagine that if you were a farmer looking for an easily erected, relatively inexpensive shed, or even a car dealer who needed space to house cars, a repair shop, and even (why not) dealer offices, this might have been an attractive option.

And clearly it was. And they turned out to be durable options as well, given the number of them that are still standing, mostly in relatively good condition - or at least so it appears from the outside. It’s not at all uncommon to see sheds with rusty metal roofs out here, but I cannot recall seeing a rusty Quonset Hut.

With any luck, and with the instruction of the guys at Omnibus!, maybe now I won’t have to do an extensive mental search to make the connection between the name and the picture.

Little Green Bugs

Here on the midwestern prairie we have an abundance of many things, insects among them. Some, like bees, are beneficial, some are bothersome (who has any real use for biting flies?) or worse (West Nile anyone? - thanks, mosquitos). And some are just... there.

At least from a human perspective, some bugs are ubiquitous but harmless in a way that just allows them to disappear into the scenery. Or they do until they don’t any more.

This time of year out here we start to get a showing of these little green bugs that I’m sure I must have seen before and just not noticed. But when I started riding my recumbent trike around the countryside I became much more aware of them because they like to mooch rides:

I’ve been riding around the countryside for over a decade, but I only noticed these guys the past couple of years. The noticing seems to accompany the transition to the recumbent trike, and I suspect it’s lower profile riding position is simply bringing me down to a level that makes me a more likely landing spot. In the late summer, depending upon the ride, I can pick up anywhere from one to a half-dozen of these guys across the course of the trip and, once they’ve hopped on they seem content to stay for the entire ride. Or so it appears - I don’t want to seem bug-normative - maybe it’s multiple different little green bugs switching on and off during the ride.

It’s a small event, but like so many things, once you become aware of something you start to see them everywhere. Start considering buying a particular type of car you’ve never really thought about before? Bam - they are now on every highway and in every parking lot you frequent.

And so it is with these little green guys, in particular in the patch of false sunflowers and goldenrod out by our barn.

I love this area of the yard in late summer. The false sunflowers are an amazing plant in and of themselves - you see them in ditches and off the side of the highway, but you can’t fully appreciate how unbelievably tall they are until you stand right beside them. It’s then that I realize just how initially intimidating the prairie must have been to early settlers - thick swaths of grasses and flowers standing taller than a man.

I’ll wander out there at different times of day to watch the bees moving back and forth between flowers, hoping to perhaps catch a glimpse of a Preying Mantis. But as I’ve been picking up my cycling companions the past couple of years I came to realize that they are here in abundance as well:

Using the tool at insectidentification.org suggests that these little guys are Pale Green Weevils.

I say "suggests", because much of the online information on the Pale Green Weevil is limited. I suspect that this is because they are small, and fall into that category I described before: just... there.

They feed on the leaves of some species of trees, but apparently don’t do any real damage - they don’t lace the leaves the way a Japanese Beetle will, for example - and, thus, aren’t of any great concern.

I am also using the word "suggests", because the information I’m finding indicates that they are actively feeding in early summer, and I’m seeing them in late August and early September, rolling towards the end of the season. And I’m finding them on false sunflowers and myself, neither of which are mentioned in the habitat and feeding choices of these little dudes. It’s entirely possible that they are something else.

In any case, they are here, keeping me company on the country roadsides as I trundle around. They don’t add much to the conversation, but they aren’t heavy either, so I’m fine to have them along for the ride.

Tar and Chip

I was about four years old when we first moved out “into the country”¹. When we moved out to the house across the field, the road we lived on was gravel, as were most of the roads connecting to it. And the road in front of the house we live in now was gravel up until I was a young adult. Many of the roadways in the region have since been paved, but certainly not all.

When the roadways in the area get upgraded from gravel they most typically are converted to tar and chip. If you’ve driven on country roads this is a surface that you are probably familiar with - it’s very common. According to Wikipedia (which is never wrong), tar and chip is cheaper than asphalt or concrete pavement, so it makes sense that it would be applied on more lightly traveled roads like ours.

The past winter was pretty hard on the roads in our area, and as a result the township road crews have been dutifully working on them. The first phase of that often involves simply patching holes, but as the summer goes on they have reapplied the road surfaces in several areas.

This leads to an... interesting period of time with respect to those surfaces.

You can tell when a road has been recently resurfaced. The visual effect is exactly the opposite of what you see on a new asphalt roadway - with new asphalt the surface is a very dark back. With tar and chip, it’s much lighter - often almost white.

Tar and Chip

Tar and Chip

I’m no transportation engineer², but broadly speaking, as I understand it, tar and chip essentially involves putting gravel (“aggregate” - the “chip”) into a layer of tar, then rolling over it to smooth it down. I’m quite sure it’s more complicated than that, but that’s my layman’s understanding.

The reason any of this is important is that, when one starts to encounter those newly whitened roadways, one also needs to be prepared for a change in the quality of the road surface. Often, for the first few weeks following resurfacing, there can be a considerable amount of loose material on the roadway - chip that did not choose to join with the tar.

For this period of time then, roads that were once apparently solid and unyielding suddenly become slippery, sometimes in an unexpected way. For all intents and purposes, for this period of time, those roadways behave in many ways as if they are gravel roads. This means that not only can you expect material to be moving from under your wheels, but you will also have the joy of passing vehicles throwing gravel up at you as they pass (and, to be fair, you at them as well).

This is especially delightful if you are operating an open vehicle like a bike or trike when people drive by. And because people are used to driving on these roads like they would on any other paved surface, they often operate at speeds commensurate for those surfaces, rather than what you typically see on gravel.

None of this is to complain - not really. As a person who has routinely operated a variety of vehicles on both gravel and tar and chip, I can confirm that the latter is a far friendlier surface. When I was a kid I can remember having a friend who lived only about 2 1/2 miles away - a paltry distance for our bikes to manage, even at a young age, back then. But the fact that the last mile of that ride was on gravel made riding to see him seem challenging at best, insurmountable at worse.

As an adult I no longer see it as insurmountable, but as a general rule, I avoid gravel where possible, regardless of the vehicle I’m in or on³. What this means is that, if the direct route involves gravel, but there’s a way to either avoid it entirely, or at least minimize it, I’ll be going out of my way (sometimes by a couple of miles).

So the tar and chip is an overall good, relatively speaking. But you’ll want to keep your eyes open for that characteristic white roadway, and adjust accordingly.

---

1. I put that in quotes because urban readers will consider the small town we moved out of to also be “in the country”, but there are absolutely differences. The primary difference is proximity. In a town, your neighbors are typically within a couple dozen feet of you in every direction. They are always in earshot, and often in view and, consequently, so are you to them. As my brother-in-law once said: “If you can’t pee off your back porch without being seen, you aren’t in the country”.  ↩

2. I’m not a transportation engineer, but the guy who wrote the Wikipedia entry might very well be. Including the part where it’s written as if everyone reading it will also be an engineer...  ↩

3. Perhaps somewhat ironically, gravel roads are at their best for cycling when they are in poor repair. Give me a gravel road with well worn tire tracks in it and I’m happy, but a newly surfaced gravel road is an instrument of torture.  ↩

The Living Fence is Back

Several years ago I wrote about the living fence that would surround our yard every summer. Of course, nearly as soon as I wrote that, the situation changed, and my cousin planted alfalfa, which has provided the scenery around our perimeter for the past several years.

There’s nothing wrong with alfalfa, and I enjoy the changing nature of the scenery over time. And besides - it’s his field, so he can plant what he wants.

But I do especially enjoy what happens as the corn grows. I sit and write this now, in a glider rocker in my dining room, looking out a window facing east.

Through that window I can see the old pine trees at the eastern end of the yard, remnants of a previous generation’s tree line. For the past several years, and up until a couple of weeks ago, we could readily see beyond those trees out into the field, a verdant expanse to the horizon. Now the yard clearly ends just beyond that point in a wall of green.

This has the effect of making the back yard a secret garden, a space alone and away from others.

I like to walk the yard on weekend mornings, and occasionally in the evening. The dogs will join me intermittently as I sojourn along through the different parts of the property, checking in and moving on and checking in again. As the corn grows it makes that walk an ever-changing experience, alters and changes the view, the airflow, and the overall experience. It will change again in the fall, when the corn comes down, and opens that expanse again to the horizon.

This is a small thing in the realm of experiences, I suppose. But where others travel and seek experiences in that way, we have the opportunity to enjoy the shifting tableau just by looking out the window or walking out the door.

Playing Possum

Some times, when I get up in the wee hours of the morning I find that the dogs have secured some form of treasure. Often these are small treasures in the form of mice and voles. In the springtime the dogs take their toll on the fledglings as well.

And once a year or so this scenario occurs:

Of course, I went for the artistic soft focus there (yeah - that’s the ticket...), so if it’s unclear, that large white furry blob is a possum. I also really enjoy the long, furtive look the dogs seem to be sharing.

Possums are the type of critter that, until one has the experience, may seem far less prevalent than they really are. I mean sure, you see them as victims of the road from time to time, but they are still pretty rare, right?

And with that, what about that whole "playing possum" thing? That’s probably a myth, don’t you think? No animal would really just lay there to get knocked about, would it? Wouldn't that just get them killed more quickly?

But the thing is, it’s all true. We see them regularly out here, plying their trade in the dark of night. And we see them often enough that I’ve developed a system for helping them out when they venture into the wrong territory.

That system involves a shovel and some leg work.

Fear not - I’m neither hitting them nor burying them with the shovel. Rather, a shovel is a handy way to pick them up but keep them at a safe distance (safe for both of us, I think). And this fella was big enough that I got out the snow shovel:

I used a second shovel - a spade - to gently slide it into the snow shovel, and then carried it out beyond the dog fence, into a somewhat secluded part of the ditch.

The end result is the same - go back and look at that same spot just a little while later and...

...The Opossum is now No-possum.

(I’ll pause here for laughter and applause...)

Either they are really good actors, or perhaps my dogs are just naive, but it seems to work for them every time. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a time when I’ve used this system and not come back to find the possum has scoffered off.

Now, all that said, their commitment to the role is not always as solid as one might hope. This particular adventurer reflexively curled up a bit as I slid him on the the shovel. It was subtle, and the dogs didn’t seem to notice, but it definitely happened. And I had one candidate a couple of years ago who we found laying on the front steps. He tolerated all of the investigation and attention of the dogs, but being lifted into the air on the shovel was clearly a bridge too far, and he suddenly got up and tried to run away. I’d been uncertain about its status - living or no - right up until that point.

As I understand it, these rather fearsome looking creatures are harmless at worst, and can be considered beneficial in that they will eat insects and rodents (and to that I say "more power to the possum"). So unlike some of the other critters in our midst, their presence is welcome. At least to me.

The dogs seem to feel otherwise, but until they choose to express their opinion at a more reasonable time of day (I mean, this was really early) I just don’t want to hear it.