Haunts At Home
With Halloween coming up and all, I think that I’ll have to admit that I think that the house seems to be haunted. Not just by the bats who make periodic appearances (Though not—can I hear some knocking on wood out there—just lately) thupp-thupping around inside the place, from living room to dining room to kitchen and...
The Unappreciated….Mosses and Lichens
I know several people who work tirelessly in the background doing all the hard and dirty work, making sure the day to day activities get done, and keeping things running; but NEVER GET THE CREDIT! Never get a ‘that a boy” or “great job”. This is the case with two members of the plant kingdom, mosses and lichens. This...
The Return of Champ
“Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill.” With apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson, I believe that we can remove the sea from consideration in this case (Camp Creek down behind the back yard hardly qualifies as anything like “the bounding main.” It doesn’t even come up to the level of Lake Erie.),...
Horticultural Report—Summer, 2017
Well, the ferns and the jack-in-the-pulpits were riotous this year and some even had to have some of their fronds evicted from the cozy jungle which they had created. There was green stuff everywhere! And moss!? The water feature/rock with a modest up-spout of gurgling liquid is burbling away but the water is encouraging a bumper growth of really...
“How do you treat a chigger bite? What causes it?”
It turns out that there is no one creature called a chigger – the word actually refers to the larval stage of a trombiculid mite. The mites are usually reddish in color and are also known as red bugs, harvest mites, and berry bugs. One of our patrons had heard that chiggers burrowed into the skin or laid eggs in...
Lights Out!
And speaking of eclipses…. Isn’t everyone? It’s all over the place, and with pretty good reason, since it’s been quite some time—38 years isn’t it—since the last total eclipse of the sun was visible over significant portions of the United States. It’s also the first since 1918 to be visible from coast to coast, AND the first since 1776 to...
Dragons
Who needs to watch Game of Thrones to see dragons, just go out to the nearest meadow, stream or pond and you will be amazed to see all sorts of dragons flying around…dragonflies that is. Worldwide there are more than 5,000 known species of dragonflies, all of which, along with damselflies, belong to the order Odonata, which means “toothed...
The Wheels On The Bus… Part III
And now, as the sun sets slowly in the West…. End of competition and return to God’s country (Garrettsville, in case you didn’t recognize the description). The contests, across so many topics and fields, illuminated our strong points and our areas ripe for improvement. All team members made some critical contributions—math, nineteenth century literature, scientific notation, historical events, whatever—at some...
The Wheels On The Bus…
The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. The wheels on the bus go…. Wait! We’re not moving. So that was one part of the saga. Wait until you hear the rest of it. Our intrepid band of Quiz Masters (James A. Garfield’s Academic Challenge team) was off to...
Flipped WHAT Bird?!?!
All of a sudden the avian population seems to be catching my attention. First it was the “sitting duck” mamma down at the Rite Aid in the landscape mulch, then it was the geese and goslings, duck and ducklings down on the creek behind the house, then it was the blue heron below the dam, which has been replaced...
That Red Buckeye Is A Show Off!
My Red Buckeye is showing off this year—full of blossoms and looking like it ought to be the guest star at the Home & Flower Show. Stop in some time and take a look. And if you’re walking around the estate, say “Hello” to the critter who seems to me to be the one munching up my...
Gone, But NOT Forgotten
Gone, but not forgotten…that’s my Bob, a classic over-achiever. How he became afflicted with liver disease--he wasn’t much of a drinker—is still a mystery to me, but he did use up what were left of his nine lives trying to fight it off. Not that he wasn’t apt to milk any situation for all it was worth to get what...
The machines are out to get me!
Does a computer count as a machine or a device? Matters not, they’re after me. So I’m sitting at the computer typing away at my much-anticipated column for this week, when, out of the blue—or whatever color cyberspace is nowadays—the screen went black (that color I know) and totally unresponsive. I wiggled and jiggled various plugs and...
How old do you think Nelson Ledges is?
Understanding the concept of time in seconds, minutes, days, years, and even centuries is easy for us to comprehend. However, the concept of geologic time is very hard for most of us to wrap our brain around. How can you put into perspective 4.6 billion years, the estimated age of the earth? Let’s try. It would take you...
A Rash of Trash
Spring having sprung and all that, could I comment upon the sad indication that numerous persons hereabouts in the area are taking the opportunity to come down with a bad case of illiteracy? I am referring to the piles of stuff—junk would be a more accurate description but I’m attempting to be kind—that are appearing outside the various...
Weather or Not…
Don’t look now, but it seems to me that as far as weather predictions go, The Old Farmer’s Almanac has crashed and burned in its outlook for February. And in the ruins might be found the remains of a groundhog or two—Punxsutawney Phil and Buckeye Chuck, perhaps—who had stepped out for a snowball fight during the six more...
“Honesty is the best policy.”
I had always thought this oft-repeated nugget of advice from my father was fairly obvious. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the truth, but of course the alternative is immoral, indefensible and unwise. Yet, in the current political climate where policy has promoted the dissemination of alternative facts, hyperbole and misrepresentation, the obvious reminder bears repeating. If we expect honesty from...
Cats Up To No Good
Well, it’s finally here! My sure-fire, brass-bound, copper-bottomed, iron-clad, nickel-plated, sterling silver, gold standard (Had enough of the metallics?) opportunity to live in the manner to which I’d like to become accustomed has arrived. Yes! Reading through one of my weekly newsmagazine—appropriately enough named The Week—I came across an item about an entrepreneur, Lainey Morse, in Oregon who...
Latest Unlikely News
Ya know, you can’t make this stuff up.... The news is rife with absolutely amazing little bits—factoids, we might call them—about what’s going on “out there”, and I don’t mean outer space. Doesn’t take much more than a skimming of the news to find a fine selection of nutballs running around in front of God and everybody and coming...
The Quill Pig
The porcupine, the second largest rodent in North America, is by far the prickliest. Its Latin name means “quill pig.” There are about two dozen porcupine species worldwide, and all boast a coat of needle-like quills to give predators a sharp reminder that this animal is no easy meal. Some quills, like those of Africa’s crested porcupine, are nearly...
The Big One
And speaking of what’s happenin’ in 2017.... Make your reservations NOW for Beatrice, Nebraska—it’s in Gage County, in case you were wondering—to get the best look at “the Big One” as the astronomer-types are calling it—a 2.35 minute totality of the complete solar eclipse, being brought to us here in the United States at 11:37 a.m. (CDT) on...
Another year, another centennial.
The Almanac pages that the papers often have are, at times, sort of desperate to come up with some event having happened on a particular date that is significant enough to mention at all. They have to resort to mentioning obscure baseball players hitting their first home run or the birthday of Foghorn J. Leghorn (from the...
The cat came back!
The cat came back! Isn’t that Dr. Seuss or something? Anyway, the cat did not come back—it never left. The cat/kitten is still here and in fine fettle, as they used to say in British horsey circles. This is the sole survivor of a litter that was left on my back doorstep and, in the manner of kittens in general,...
Cats and Bats
One more mystery solved...sort of. The questions here are :”Where have the bats come from?” and “Where do the bats go when they’re not swooping around inside the house?” I mean, they’re not hanging from the drapery rods waiting for the sun to go down or anything, at least I haven’t spotted them, though given the state of my expertise...
May You Live In Interesting Times
There is , allegedly, an ancient Chinese curse, which says, “May you live in ‘interesting’ times”. Last week was really interesting. First off.... I have been waiting for and keeping an eye on the paw paws on the finally-mature paw paw bush on the east side of the house. There are only two bushes and only one of them had fruit...
Just When All Hope Was Lost… Part II
Along with renewed health came new love for Brenda Reiner. The following July after the bone marrow transplant, she met Michael Formberg, a fellow divorcee searching for true love after a painful marriage. Following three years of dating, they got engaged while vacationing in Kauai, under a rainbow of promise. “Meanwhile, in July of 2013, my donor and I were...
Sounds of Summer
This edition of Nearby Nature marks the one hundredth article in our nature series. It is hard to believe that when Matt Sorrick and I started this endeavor it would have lasted this long. It was our intent to inform our readers about our natural world and hopefully motivate them to venture out and experience the wonder and majesty...
Just When All Hope Was Lost…
Imagine a dried-out sponge… no moisture, no spring or flexibility, just a hole-y husk capable of little else besides absorbing something new. That was the condition of Brenda Reiner’s bone marrow before she received a life-saving bone marrow infusion from an anonymous donor five years ago. Unfortunately, that was also the condition of her life: She had received two different...
Bats & The Queen
The season is on! Which season? Football, Volleyball, Cross Country, Golf, Soccer...you name it; the sticks and the balls and the nets, the helmets, the hitting, the sweat—all ramping up for participants and fans alike. And others.... Came home after the football game the other night—which, by the way, could have been played on top of the hinges of hell,...
Signs of the Zodiac…Part I
This is the last of our foray into astronomy, discussing the signs of the Zodiac. I will divide the 12 signs into two parts. What we, who live in the 21st century, must realize is that people from many different cultures have been looking at the heavens for thousands of year without the aid of telescopes, computer simulations, orbiting...
