A Retreat

Some friends and I had planned a retreat for a few days last week--a get-away to a house in the mountains with as many craft projects as we could fit in our cars. As it turns out it was also a retreat, albeit briefly, from the political scene. We watched, stunned, on Tuesday, but then were able to postpone thinking about it for the most part while we enjoyed friendship and fiber and walking in the woods. Some of us brought dogs.

Ginny will write her own post about the week.

I debated taking a dog. Rusty couldn't go because he would have had a difficult time with all the stairs in the house where we were staying. Maggie wouldn't be my first choice because she gets car sick. Ginny is the one that would be going stir-crazy left home while Dan was at work all day. So Ginny came with me and I'm glad I brought her. Having her there made me get out and walk at least twice every day. It would have been very easy to just stay inside and work on my projects, but I'm glad that I didn't miss the beautiful woods. The weather was fabulous, although a bit scary to have summer-like weather in November. Of course I had my camera with me on some of the walks.

The walks were refreshing (and necessary for Ginny), but most of my focus was spent on my projects. I didn't get to everything but made a valiant effort, staying up late every night. We shared the cooking so I only spent one evening in the kitchen and that was making an easy batch of mac and cheese.

It might be hard to tell what this is from the photo. When it is delivered to my granddaughter in December it will have a covered mat on the floor, a hula-hoop supporting the scalloped roof and be supported from the ceiling. It has windows (thanks for demonstrating, Mary), inside pockets, and a door with glittery decorations. If I have time I will weave a rag rug with the leftover material. This is soooo cute, but it took soooo long to sew...and I'm not quite finished.

This is a photo of all my projects for the 3-1/2 days. You can see on the pattern envelope how the canopy looks when it is set up. From bottom left and around: a batch of 41 dryer balls ready to be felted, a rag runner woven on the Cricket loom, a baggie of walnuts ready for the freezer (those weren't mine because I didn't get to cracking any that we didn't eat--I need to finish this at home), Ginny :-) , six chenille scarves fringed (half of the 12 that I brought), and a warp wound for two ponchos. Not shown is the painted warp that I did that was in a plastic bag ready to come home and be rinsed.

I drove home Friday, but not before stopping at the lake. It doesn't seem right to go to Lake Tahoe and not actually go to the lake.

Ginny learned quickly that she could retrieve her ball from the lake but she'll tell you about that in Rusty's blog.

A Walk in the Woods

This morning I drove to my son's house in El Dorado County to work on some computer issues. When there was a break in the rain we drove a short distance to Bridal Veil Picnic Area on the South Fork of the American River to take the dogs for a walk.

I just used my iPhone for photos because I didn't want to deal with the other camera in the rain  so it's hard to see Kirin in this shot. He's way out in the river swiming back with a tennis ball. That's Sam nearer the shore and Ginny trying to decide about the river. Ginny isn't use to going on walks without the focus of The Toy or The Ball.

This Ball was Kirin's and it wouldn't have been smart for Ginny to compete for it.

Eventually though I took one ball and when Kirin was distracted in one direction Ginny got to go for the ball in another. I didn't want to throw it too far out in the river because #1, I wasn't sure how far she would go out to get it and #2, we weren't sure if she could handle the current if she did go out farther.

She did get plenty of ball time on the trail.

The people were looking at things besides tennis balls.

We spent about an hour and needed to get back to the house.

What a beautiful interlude. The rain makes everything look and smell so clean and fresh.

Sunflowers - June Through August

I have too many sunflower photos for one post so I split them up into yesterday's post and this one.

Do you see the flowering sunflowers in the center of the photo? If you count 10 rows to each side you'll see (barely) that every 10th and 11th row there are flowers in bloom. The field was planted with two varieties of sunflowers, a smaller one that bloomed earlier and the larger variety. The following is from Wikipedia:

"Typically, sunflowers tend to be self sterile. But for a sunflower to produce seeds, it needs pollen from a different sunflower. This is also known as cross-breeding, or in this case, cross-pollination. Occasionally, a sunflower can self-pollinate. Self-pollination produces an inbred line which, when bred with a separate inbred line, will result in a hybrid flower."

This is two of the shorter rows in full bloom. The taller sunflowers are also blooming. I assume that these are two varieties that (with probably a male-sterile flower on the larger plants) produce a hybrid seed. At harvest time I talked to a representative of the buyer who was out in the field and she said that this was a seed crop that was going to Europe to be planted for oil production.

Sunflowers typically follow the sun, but when they get large the heads don't move anymore. This was the view from my house --all the flowers facing east. If I wanted to see the pretty faces I had to walk around the field. Do you want to know more about this? Here is an article from the New York Times that explains why and how the sunflowers move to face the sun. This is an excerpt from it:

"The answer was in their stems. Like those of other plants, the stems of young sunflowers grow more at night — but only on their west side, which is what allows their heads to bend eastward. During the day, the stems’ east side grows, and they bend west with the sun. Dr. Atamian collected samples of the opposite sides of stems from sunflowers periodically, and found that different genes, related to light detection and growth, appeared active on opposite sides of the stems."

Isn't that amazing? And isn't it cool that there is so much to be learned about the seemingly most mundane things in our world? I'm all for promoting science to explore ideas and not just to solve a problem. But I digress...

You saw bees on the sunflowers in the previous post.

Here they are at their hives. Hives were placed all around the field.

Here is another interesting article--this one about the bees that pollinate sunflowers. "In sunflower hybrid seed production, pollen from a male row of sunflowers must be moved by bees to a female (male-sterile) row. Growers typically use honey bees to accomplish this task. However, most honey bee workers specialize as either nectar or pollen foragers. Nectar foragers tend primarily to visit female rows, while pollen foragers visit male rows. If few bees cross between rows, growers can experience poor seed-set." The article goes on to say that native bees  collect both pollen and nectar and by chasing the honeybees from row to row they make the whole process more efficient in terms of getting the 100% pollination. Therefore growers should encourage native bee populations.

The photos above were all taken in June.

By mid-July the heads were drooping and the two rows of smaller plants were cut. The sole purpose of those sunflowers was to provide half of the genetics of the hybrid seed to be harvested from the larger plants.

The seed was ready to harvest in mid-August.

The harvester drove through the field, cutting the plants,...

...sorting out the waste,...

...and periodically dumping the seed into a waiting truck.

But the job isn't over. While plants were being harvested in one part of the field the other part was being disked.

A month later the field is still being prepped to get ready for next year's crop--tomatoes.

Sunflowers-April through June

We have only 10 acres here, but having the field Across the Road makes it seem as though we have much more. We are careful to be good neighbors and we are grateful that we have permission to spend time exploring that property. So I feel kind of like the crops grown there are mine although I have none of the work involved.  This summer's crop was sunflowers--one of my favorites. I have way too many photos so I'll break this into two posts.

April 12. You can just see the tiny plants.

April 27

May 2. Cultivating.

June 11. They're growing up. I sound like a proud parent.

The rest of the photos in this post were taken throughout June.

Life and Death on a Milkweed Plant

While mowing the pasture the other day I saw a fluttering monarch butterfly.

I thought, "Cool, I'm watching this butterfly emerge from the chrysalis." However, as I watched I realized that for some reason the butterfly had been stuck in this position and now was hopelessly damaged. I helped it out of the chrysalis but its wings were damaged and all it could do was flutter, but not fly.

I continued mowing.

There were plenty more milkweed plants that were teeming with life. That's the Common Buckeye Butterfly and the Alfalfa Butterfly (see my last post).

Here is what the seed pods have inside when they are ripe. (Spinning, anyone?)

I identified this one in Bug Guide.net  as the Small Milkweed Bug (also the Common Milkweed Bug, Lygaeus kalmii). It's surprising how many similar looking bugs you find when you google "red and black bug in CA".

I had to look closely to see the identifying markings. The Guide says: "Adults suck nectar from flowers of various herbaceous plants, and also feed on milkweed seeds(?). Also reported to be scavengers and predators, especially in spring when milkweed seeds are scarce. They have been reported feeding on honey bees, monarch caterpillars and pupae, and dogbane beetles, among others."

Here is more life, but I'm not going to try and specifically ID this one.

And the circle continues...

The other photos were from a couple of weeks ago and I just saw this monarch caterpillar a few days ago on another milkweed.