Thank you to Anne Pitt for spotting this entertaining reminder that big cats can act like playful kittens.
In fall, as the Earth's orbit takes us closer to the sun and the sun moves lower in our Northern Hemisphere sky, the brilliant afternoon rays make our dahlias look even more beautiful
Last Blooms Before the Frost
We live alongside a natural air conditioner. In summer, the breezes off Maine's Western Bay keep us cool even on days when inland temperatures hit the high 80s. Those same breezes now serve as coastal heaters, fending off the first, flower-wilting frost.
For a while.
By the time we return from our western bird adventure, the resplendent dahlias we first put in starter pots last April (http://naturalistsnote.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/planting-and-painting-dahlias-and-other-april-adventures/) will be gone. We'll have to dig up the tubers and store them in the basement for the winter. I've been reading a little about the genetic complexity of dahlias—they have eight sets of chromosomes instead of two, as most flowers do, which helps explain why there are so many varieties that look so different from each other.
Our garden has dahlias that look as alien to each other as a dachshund and a St. Bernard—which of course are also related (and in fact get along with each other better than many humans do). Dahlias were first cultivated by the Aztecs, then discovered by Spanish explorers, who brought them back home. At first the tubers were thought of primarily as food (they are edible), but the flowers turned out be considerably more enjoyable. Dahlias are still Mexico's national flower.
A beneficial quality of dahlias and other flowers that blossom well into fall is that they provide nectar for pollinators after other flowers have signed off for the year. If you live in frost country, enjoy the days that are left before we say goodbye for 2010 to the bees, the butterflies and the blossoms.
The maples on the Maine coast are turning, as they produce anthocyanin—the same powerful antioxidant that gives fruits such as blueberries and grapes their color and cancer-fighting potency.
The End of Our Regular Season
A cold wind—and lots of people—arrived for our final weekend of regular-season activity at the Notebook. New England Wild Flower Society botanist and primitive-skills expert Arthur Haines helped a shivering group transform milkweed stalks into hand-made cordage. He then had us try to kindle fires with the friction from rapidly spun sticks, more properly called hand drills and bow drills.
Arthur showed us how to strip the fiber from inside a stiff milkweed stalk and—through a series of twists and weaves—make it into a sturdy cord..
This is what the milkweed stalks looked like before we removed the inner fiber and turned it into the sort of twine you see wrapped around this bundle.
Vlad, an exchange student from Kazakhstan, was a roaring success at friction fire-making. Afterwards I had a great talk with him about his coin collection, his new love of American football, how difficult it is to take an English-language biology test while thinking in Russian, and how much he loves seeing the ocean after growing up in the world's largest landlocked country.
Arthur has just finished writing his latest book, about the plants of New England, which goes on sale in December and will help promote the important new plant organization called Anaskimin (http://www.anaskimin.org/). He is passionate about teaching the nutritional, medical and practical value of wild plants. He believes, as we do at the Notebook, that knowledge about the natural world—and its scientific underpinnings—sparks curiosity, insight, reflection, imagination, creativity and a better understanding of ourselves and the need to protect the planet's fragile life forms. I'll take that over ignorance any day.
Goodbye, Fantastic Mr. Fox: One of our favorite Notebook characters, a felted puppet with a heartfelt look, got a new adoptive family on Saturday, but said he might come back to visit.
So what happens at The Naturalist's Notebook now that our regular season is over? A few things. We prepare to re-open for a weekend or two between Thanksgiving and Christmas for all of you who said you wanted to do holiday shopping at the cozy little Notebook (we'll announce the days and hours soon). We keep shipping out books, artwork and whatever else people order via phone (207-801-2777) or e-mail (info@thenaturalistsnotebook.com). We start creating the look of the 2011 Notebook, which will have many new themes and surprises. Pamelia and I head off on a three-week, six-state adventure out west that you can follow here on the blog starting in late October; we'll be doing an article on the Pacific Flyway bird migration for a travel magazine. I'll keep blogging all fall, winter and spring, giving you a view from the Maine coast even if you don't live here, and (I hope) a bit of entertainment for the occasional dreary day.
Season two of the Notebook may be (more or less) over, but if you're interested in coming along with us, the fun is just beginning.
Before our May plant walk, Arthur demonstrated friction fire-making; he's trying to keep knowledge of that and other primitive skills alive.
Coming Saturday: Arthur Haines
If you're on Mount Desert Island tomorrow (Saturday, Oct. 9), stop by The Naturalist's Notebook between 2 and 4 p.m. to learn more about wild plants, primitive skills and a new MDI-based plant organization called Anaskimin (a Native American word for acorn). New England Wild Flower Society botanist Arthur Haines, who has written a number of plant books, including Flora of Maine and Ancestral Plants, will be demonstrating friction fire-making, cordage making and other skills and answering all your questions about plants.
For a little more about Arthur, you might want to look back at my May post about a plant walk Pamelia, I and a group of other people took with him:
http://www.thenaturalistsnotebook.com/our-blog/tadpole-buddies-a-plant-genius-and-my-yellow-warbler
Though of late I've been absorbed with Sports Illustrated work, Pamelia went out and took advantage of yesterday's huge tidal shift. Western Bay was super high in the morning (with sizeable waves) and super low in late afternoon. Among other discoveries, Pamelia found a starfish (or sea star, for purists) of a different color. We've encountered deep red ones, but this one was more of a pinkish red.
I'm tempted to say that the sea star was waving hello, but you should have seen the range of contortions it went through over the span of a few minutes. One pose reminded me of a 1989 Sports Illustrated cover of Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham leaping through the air with his arm cocked back to throw a pass. Look for cool shots of this echinoderm at the Notebook next year.
This is what our bay looks like at super-low tide, an event that happens several times a year because of the gravitational pull of the moon. Six hours earlier the water level was almost 14 feet higher and the bay was chock-a-block full.
The bees are still busy up here in Maine; this one was enjoying a friend's garden two weeks ago.
India's Pollinator Problem (and Other News)
It's been said in recent years that when China sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. That inescapable influence extends to environmental matters—and China isn't the only country big enough to be a global sneezer. As mentioned in my recent post about the rapid growth of the world's population (it has increased by almost 60 million this year, to 6.875 billion), India will overtake China in the next few decades and become the most populous nation. This past week the BBC reported on a worrisome sign for a country with so many mouths to feed: a decline in bees and other pollinators. You can check out the story at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11418033
If you're wondering, India currently scores far better than the U.S. in measures of environmental impact—in part because so many of its people are poor. They can't afford to drive big cars (or in some cases any cars) or to otherwise consume as much energy and create as much trash as we do. The same has been true of the Chinese...but that's changing. Ah-chooo! Did somebody just sneeze?
A few more news items that caught my eye this week:
Will Mushrooms be the Next Packing Popcorn?
I know I keep coming back to the subject of mushrooms, but check out this interesting talk on Ted.com by Eben Bayer, who's developing a low-impact, fungus-based packaging material :
10-10-10, the Eco Day
This Sunday the calendar hits the date 10-10-10, and environmental groups are building events and a global documentary around the occasion: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/10/10-10-10-numerology-meets-environmentalism-.html
An Earth-like Planet?
This news came out a week ago but the discovery of a potentially inhabitable planet remains intriguing. If anyone's going to move there, of course, the place is going to need a catchier name than Gliese 581g. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/real-habitable-exoplanet/
Goodbye, Compostable Sun Chips Bags
Alas, the loud crinkling noise the bags made discouraged snackers from buying the chips. And so my summer-long composting experiment (see a pair of previous posts) is now moot. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/10/noise-really-why-sunchips-should-ditch-bioplastic-packaging.php
New Environmentally Friendly Hood Ornament?
You might not like a car that's a turkey, but this morning we found a wild turkey that likes our car. He pecked it a lot, apparently eager to see what it had under the hood. Like maybe a cache of bird seed put there by one of the chipmunks that likes to sneak up through the chassis.
Of the two dozen turkeys who've been hanging out at our place lately, this is the only one who seems eager to travel with us on our upcoming western road trip to see the birds on the Pacific Flyway migration.
The view south across the lake toward the mountains known as the Bubbles.
October at Eagle Lake
Here are a few shots from a hike we took last weekend at Eagle Lake, part of Acadia National Park. Perhaps I've been spending too much time walking past those hallucinogenic mushrooms (see previous post), but I kept seeing animal forms in the forest.
Is this a downed tree or steer lying in a clearing? Though Acadia isn't known for its cattle, we'll say both.
O.K., so use your imagination again. I see a woolly mammoth facing us, rearing its tusked head and trunk. Think I'm crazy? Compare it to the image that follows.
So what do you think? A mammoth exaggeration?