Way Too Cold and Resolutions

In my opinion, it’s way too cold out there.  The thermometer says 25 degrees.  That’s just wrong.  But I’m not going to complain too much – at least we don’t have any snow on the ground. We don’t get the kind of snow I grew up with here.  A NJ winter back in the 50s and 60s (yeah, I’m that old) could be brutal.  Funny how attitudes change.  Back then when it snowed, my older brothers and I would take the Jeep out for a ride on all the unplowed back roads we could find.  I suppose age – and all those years in Florida – have changed the way I perceive snow.  I need to think seriously about that and my perception of it now.  OK, all done thinking.  I dislike snow and winter cold and that’s all there is to it.

We’re day three into the new year  (hope you all had a very pleasant holiday season) and I’ve been having those pesky New Year Resolution thoughts, just like everyone else has this time of year.  I’ve decided to ignore them.  Pretty much, anyway.

I do have a few… I want to get outside more with the camera – when it warms up.  Walk more – when it warms up.  I’m also going to explore the natural and historic areas in KY a lot more – yeah, when it warms up.   I’ve realized that living 30 miles from town takes a lot of adventurous exploration out of a person.  By the time we’ve gone to town for a few groceries and whatever else one does in a town, we’ve traveled 60+ miles and gone nowhere. It’s discouraging.

I haven’t visited the natural arch that’s only a few miles away.  Or Yahoo Falls, or the Big South Fork area, or Cumberland Falls…all relatively close (once you get to the main road anyway).  So we’ll see…when it warms up some, I’ll share a few adventures here.  In the meantime….hot chocolate, a good book, a cozy blanket, and a cat or two on my lap.

The Groundhog is Out of Work…

At least here in KY, because we haven’t really seen the dead of winter yet.  And I’m not complaining one bit.  In the 50s all this week.  I wonder what will happen in late March, when the daffodils are supposed to bloom?  Or is this just the longest spring ever?

Happy 2012!

2012 – that number always seemed so very far away, and now here it is.  Not that much has changed – I mean, we’re still tooling around on rubber tires (weren’t we supposed to have personal flying saucers by now?)  I’m not complaining; it just seems that when I was a kid I had this vision of what 2012 might be like, and now that we’re here, I’m just…well… OLDer.

It also seems that I just wrote last year’s ditty about starting to blog again, and here I am , having those same thoughts.  I’m not going to talk about it – we’ll just see how it goes.

I hope you all have a peaceful, prosperous, healthy and safe 2012.

Chem Trails in the Sky

I’m not usually one to believe in a lot of conspiracy theories and stuff like that, but this theory of chem trails rings a little more true for me since I actually observed the tic-tac-toe grid being formed last week and watched some interesting documentaries on the subject.

Basically, “they” are seeding our atmosphere with aluminum and barium particles, among other things.  It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to figure out that can not be a good thing.

Everyone knows that high-flying jets sometimes leave contrails – those billowy white cloud lines – but contrails disperse quickly and disappear.  Chemtrails are usually laid in a grid, and don’t disappear.  Instead they slowly spread and cover a blue sky with a cloudy haze.

Why would “they” do this?  Some theories say it’s to stop global warming.  Others say it’s to control weather patterns.  Others say “they” are trying to eventually kill us off and reduce the population.  I don’t know why, but I know I don’t like what I saw and what I’m hearing about this.  Don’t take my word for it, research it for yourself.  As with everything, there are some weird theories and sites on this, but here are a couple to get you started.  Of course if you just Google ‘chem trails’ that will work too.

Chemtrail Central

Aircrap.org

I’m still researching too, but I do think that something is definitely rotten in the sky.

Blogging, Excuses, Life, and Contractors

You know, sometimes you’re just going along having a good time blogging and writing and taking  pictures and networking and then something, or some things happen and Life just gets in the way.  And don’t you hate that excuse?  I sure do, but it’s all I have so I’m sticking to it.  And then one day you realize that folks out there are still finding your blog, still leaving comments, and gee, it was a lot of fun when you wrote every day or a couple of times a week at least…and you say to yourself,  Self, why don’t you take up blogging Natural Notes again?  And so you write a few posts and in spite of all good intentions, you are side-tracked again by numerous goings on until one day you just throw up your hands and say “That’s IT!  I’m blogging again and that’s that!”  And so it is.

So one of my better excuses for not blogging all summer is that we are remodeling our house and it has truly been an interesting experience, to say the least.

This is what is left of our backyard…where we fed the deer last winter is just to the left of the trailer, under that pile of rubble.  Our contractor is a bit messy.  The front yard doesn’t look much better.

We’re pleased with the work so far inside the house – we added 8 feet to the back for the full 50′ length and wrapped the whole thing in hemlock boards, which now need to be chinked before the cold weather sets in. I’ve relocated the bird feeders and we’re hoping the deer will return once all the banging sawing and hammering is over.  Should be done in the next two weeks or so.  They say.

In other news, although running a bit late as usual, the banding lanes were cut yesterday and the nets are going up.  Rained out this morning, but we’ll see what the weather has in mind for tomorrow.   I should finish getting set up and be banding by the weekend.

And of course, I will probably be refreshing this site a bit, and making time to visit the blogs I enjoy reading.  No, really.

Natural Notes Revisited

I really need a change. I started this blog on May 30, 2006 on Blogger, mostly as a way to post about bird banding and happenings at the bird observatory.  At that time, Blogger was still using the old format and it was a mild nightmare to properly load photos, along with some other issues that I can’t remember now.  I moved to WordPress shortly after and have been here ever since, even though I’ve found it to be more difficult and temperamental than Blogger.

More importantly though is that over the last few years, my life situations have changed somewhat dramatically.  For family and job-related issues, I stopped banding at RRBO and moved back to Florida again.  After my Mom’s death in July, everything changed again.

Though I’ve attempted to continue Natural Notes as it stands here on WordPress, I am finding it doesn’t feel right anymore.  I guess I have it in my head that it has been so dedicated to birds and banding and my life in NJ and Florida, that I find it scattering to continue it here.  The enthusiasm has waned.

I’ve considered abandoning it altogether for something different, but that wasn’t right either.  I tried changing the look and tone, but in the process found WordPress to be even more stagnant, stubborn, and downright boring.  I need simplification and some fun, not more headaches.

So, since this is my blog and I can pretty much do what I want with it (such power!) I’ve opted to stop posting on this WordPress blog, and resume posting on the original Blogger site. I’ve deleted the older drivel there that had little value to me, and spent a day or two having some fun developing the new site.

I want a fresh look, I want a broader focus, and I’m very pleased with Blogger’s new and improved behavior.

For those that still stop by here, thanks for doing so and I will leave this blog here for the archives, but I’ll be posting on the Blogger site from now on.  Life should be fun, as well as good.

Thanks for your patience and support.

Moving Up in the World

I still don’t believe it, but on Tuesday, a very nice man came to our house in the woods and connected us to high-speed internet service – a first for this part of the forest!  I’ve been zooming around the net ever since, and it’s such a thrill to finally be able to function in cyperspace again. Pathetic, I know.  But until the comet hits, I’m going to enjoy the internet.

On that note, since it no longer takes three hours to upload a page of text or three weeks for a photo, I’m going to take some time to tweak and work on this blog, so if you notice funny things here and there, it’s just me experimenting with stuff.   I’m also going to catch up on visiting so many missed blogs.  Life is good.  And fast.

That’s Some Rock!

Saturday, Oct. 3 was one of those really perfect fall days – crisp, cool, sunshine and blue sky – so I decided to visit the natural arch that’s about 13 miles from our home.  I love rocks, and this one is impressive.

Wind, water and ice eroded the softer stone and left this hole in the hard cap rock, creating an arch that measures roughly  50 by 90 feet. The area around the arch is now a park within the Daniel Boone National Forest.  There are several hiking trails, including one that takes you down under the arch itself.  There’s another arch somewhere on one of the trails, but this is the major formation and I haven’t hiked all the trails yet, so I can’t comment on the other.

According to the Park brochures, the area under the arch was considered sacred ground by the Cherokee and the Native people that were here before them.  It isn’t difficult to imagine that it was, or that it still is.

This has quickly become one of my favorite places to visit, conveniently close to home, but so magnificent in what it has to offer that each trip is a new experience. I’ll no doubt be posting more about my explorations there.

It probably took me longer than most to hike to the bottom, only because I kept being side-tracked by other things to see, like this flowing rock with the straight line of pebbles caught in the motion. How did that happen?  A trip to the library for some books on Kentucky geology is in order…

I was also impressed by this forest of moss and lichen under the cedar trees on top of one of the rock ledges.  I’m not sure what the red hairy plant is – more books required!

The remaining photos are the area under the arch, and the last one is the view of the woods looking out from the rock shelter.  I have no doubt that this was, and still is, Sacred Ground.

The shelter area under the arch

Chocolate Swallowtail

This afternoon I discovered this lovely chocolate-colored caterpillar clinging to the edge of the dog door – not exactly the safest place for anything so small.  We have four dogs and they tend to come through the door two-at-a-time.  Or try to, anyway.  I used a whisk broom to scoop him off the door.  I figured in exchange for my saving him from being unceremoniously squashed, he could pose for a photo or two before I relocated him to a safer place to mutate.

The overall shape and eye markings suggested a swallowtail.  I’d never seen one this color, but after a little online research, I found that this is the caterpillar of a tiger swallowtail.  It starts out yellow-green and changes color when it stops feeding and prepares to pupate.

The caterpillar’s head is actually under that enlarged thorax, and those eye spots are supposed to make this guy look like a snake so predators won’t eat him. Maybe.  To me he looks more sorrowful than scary, but what do I know?

Just the fact that it is a tiger swallowtail was interesting enough for me.  We had one form a chrysalis over the porch door a last year, so apparently they think it’s an OK place for metamorphosis.  I decided to let this guy choose his own spot, and left him safely on the piece of driftwood on the porch railing. There were plenty of places close by where the risks of being squashed like a bug weren’t quite so high.  When I went out to check on him a few minutes later,  he was gone.  I haven’t found where he went, but just below the porch railing are plenty of bushes and shrubs much better suited for survival than our dog door.  I guess I’ll just have to watch for a butterfly now.

IRFD Blog Sites

The results are in, and here’s a list of participating blogs. Check them out for some really interesting finds and photos!

The Natural Capital
Fertanish Chatter
Roundrock Journal
Just Playin’ Around
What It’s like on the Inside
KrisAbel
BugSafari
Sofia_Alexandra
Growing with Science
ChickenSpaghetti
NaturalNotes
Yips and Howls
Rock, Paper, Lizard
Outside My Window
The dog geek
Dave Ingram’s Natural History Blog
Via Negativa
Unplug Your Kids
ORCA: Observar, Recordar, Crecer y Aprender
Will Rees Fine Woodworking …
The Marvelous in Nature
Pohangina Pete
Ontario Wanderer
Bare Baby Feet
The Homefront Lines
Crazy Maize World
Dr. Omed’s Tent Show Revival
Wanderin’ Weeta

And don’t forget to check the Flickr group, too.