Blistering Hot & Spiders!

This was Sunday's view from the ridgetop. I usually can get a decent shot from different parts of the ridge, but this year, no one on this ridge is growing soy beans. My choices to see the sun rise this year are slim. I have to walk a mile to get an open view of the sky without corn blocking my views.

Our hollow doesn't see the sun for about an hour or so after sunrise. The sun has to come up over the trees on the ridge to shine down on us. In a way I miss places I used to live where I had a fairly clear sight of the horizon. But I'm used to it now after 29 years [this coming weekend].

The humidity and fog are intense in the valleys in the morning. The shot below is from when I drove down to the gas station in Readstown for some milk. It was taken in Infrared that was the camera I had with me. The valley fog from the river was dissipating but it still makes me stop and admire it after all of these years.

Infrared Shot

Before the sun gets into our hollow, I get the chores done and make sure the tanks for the ladies have fresh water. The mules are spending a lot of time down in the Buckthorn Forest where the sun doesn't shine and there always seems to be a bit of air movement.

Our mornings have been like this muggy, foggy, and a very high dew point ---> that leads to the discomfort of being outside. If one's sweat doesn't evaporate, one does not cool off.

I did the smart thing on the hottest of days. I organized and re-organized my files regarding our financial paperwork. I need to get together with my daughter in law and have her teach [or reteach me how to do a spreadsheet]. I could do this at one time, but can't remember how to do it now. I learned over 30 years ago.

I did stuff I normally don't do until the first day of fall. I organized my 'junk' room and cleaned it up again. So I can make another mess.

My early morning walk this morning to check fences revealed that one of the critters was in a spot she wasn't supposed to be in. Tsk, tsk. After some chasing, I got her settled back with the others and moved on to go into the neighbor's large and wild meadow.

This was the view.... 

A huge meadow filled with spider webs from Orb Weavers or Orb Spiders. 

I saw it the day before when I didn't have a camera with me. I couldn't resist climbing through the fence [I'm allowed to hike there whenever I please] and explore.

I found lots of empty webs, and quite a few occupied webs.

The spiders don't bother you if you bump into their web, they just scuttle off into the grasses or bush they built on.

Imagine that they remake or build a new web each day -- or night? How industrious is that?

I used to be so afraid of spiders until I met a 9 year old girl who wanted to become an entomologist. She and I would go around and look at spiders and any other insect we could find together. I started photographing them with her and of course, I found a new and exciting subject to 'shoot'.

This stunning beauty is in one of my wilder flower gardens. I won't go in and pull weeds or anything until she is done for the season. 

I'm going to go out early again tomorrow morning and each morning to try and get glimpses of these beautiful creatures. At least until they are done for the season. 

I find them to be so amazing and so oddly beautiful.

Decaf and Weather

 

I do love mornings. The view above is looking out the kitchen window at a pretty sunrise.

Mornings are when I get time to myself in the house. 
Since I love coffee in the morning, but coffee doesn't always love me. I switched over to decaf and it made a huge difference. I thought I'd go through caffeine withdrawal and have terrible headaches.

I didn't. But Folgers Decaf is some of the nastiest tasting stuff around. My son's girlfriend works for a coffee company and while talking with him last week I asked if she knew of any kind of decaf coffee that actually tasted good.

This week, I received a package in the mail.

Yum.

This is one of the flavors. Color me tickled to have a smooth and good tasting coffee in the morning. It helps me start the day out with a brighter mood.

Saturday was all about weather. Warming temperatures, ice, sleet, and then rain. As the temperatures warmed up to nearly 50 degrees, the melting snow and warmer air created instant ground fog.

Even though it was raining lightly, I decided to head out the door and explore the intense weather.

I knew that it would be just a short walk through muck, mud, and ice to get to the runoff area just west of our fenceline.

Aurora was absolutely correct in saying, don't follow the trails. Stay off the beaten path.  This deer trail was treacherous. 

The meltwater and ice follow this dip towards the bigger ditch. 

Certain spots have a little drop into a pool and that creates a mini waterfall.

The foam is due to organic matter in the stream like fall's dead leaves. Chunks of ice were slowly spinning around too.

This drops into another lower spot that is wider. I don't know how many years ago this vehicle was dropped in here, but it was probably used at the time to slow down erosion. Of course the water just goes around it.

Just past this car is another one that is nearly submerged in mud.

I kept walking down the hill to follow the water. I got almost to where the creek that flows into our land starts when I heard thunder and decided to hurry back to the house.

Here is a shot from about the same spot in 2018, after a huge rainfall February 21st.

Another storm came in and now the Kickapoo is flooding. I'm all up for going to the creek bottom and exploring today, even if it is dreary looking.

Who knows what I'll discover now that the temperatures have dropped to just below freezing again?

Finding Mother Nature's Secrets

The Ponds in Infrared

Friday was my planned hike or bike day with my neighbor, but I didn't hear back from him so I put my bike in the Subaru and off I went to Kickapoo Valley Reserve. Walking the trail along the Kickapoo River bottoms is not something a person would want to do after heavy rains.

The bugs are vicious and unrelenting this time of year through the bottoms. A bicycle solves that. 

I really like this bicycle!

It is so much more photogenic than I am.

My purpose was to get out and do some experimental photography with the infrared camera. I'm starting to get an idea of what elements work best with a photo.

Sky, water, clouds, and foliage.

But sometimes it just doesn't work out that way.

I was cycling north when I came into an area of rock bluffs on one side of me and the Kickapoo River on the other side. The blacktop route had been covered in water and mud. As I negotiated my way through it, I realize that I hit a spot of extremely cold air. Being as that it was hot and humid, I was surprised.

However I recalled the discussion in the Master Naturalist Class that I started that the Kickapoo Valley Reserve and the surrounding area had some rare ecosystems in it.

One of them being called Algific Talus Slopes. 

Basically it is a rare area where cold air comes out of rock bluffs and supports a very rare plant and snail species. The Monkshood and a rare snail called the Iowa Pleistocene Snail are the inhabitants of these areas.

This is exactly why the LaFarge Dam Project was halted and how the Kickapoo Valley Reserve came to be what it is today.

On my way back through, I stopped and parked my bike. I could feel the cold air despite the hot and humid surroundings.

It was like entering a refrigerated room after being outside in the heat.

I noted the location and decided this would be a great winter hike too. I'm sure that these rocks are covered in ice formations in the winter.

These slopes and Algific areas are kept secret so people don't trample them and destroy or pick the Northern Monkshood plant which is on the Federal Threatened plant list.

I'd love to find and photograph this plant, but do not wish to trample it.

I'll be back in this area with a long lens perhaps to scout around. Carefully.

All I know, is this was the most exciting thing that happened to me this week.

Oh it sounds pretty boring to most people. But to me, it feels like I found a huge secret of Mother Nature's!

Here is a bit more about Algific Talus Slopes from the WI DNR site:

This rare community is known only from the southwestern corner of Wisconsin's Driftless Area. Algific talus slopes are small and isolated and tend to occur on steep north- or east-facing slopes with a substrate of fractured limestone (dolomite) bedrock that retains ice and emits cold air throughout the growing season.

I Touched a Trout

Oh the photo stinks but ever try shooting into the surface of the water and under a rock?

But I went to the creek to sit for a while. I decided to let all those crappy things stay up at the house on my to do list.
I needed the sound of water and some fresh air.

One of the very first things I noticed when I got down by the creek was a water ripple that splashed around and stopped. I stood stock still. Trout fish are so shy and quick to hide. I saw what I thought was the body pattern of a trout, it had to be a very small one to get up into this shallow place.

Slowly I squatted down and stayed there for a while, just watching and waiting. I took a few shots with my tiny camera. The trout didn't move though I could see him/her. It was a fingerling. As long as my pointing finger. I set the camera on the rock above it and slowly reached in with my finger.

I touched a trout.
Hmm.
That was amazing.
So I backed up and moved the large rock that it was under.
Quicker than the eye could follow... the trout flitted and went downstream.

I decided to find another spot to just squat and peer down into the creek bottom. It took a while but I started to see movement below me in and about the rocks and tiny granules of sand.

I found a pouch snail. Note the tiny Caddisfly stone houses around it. I dipped the camera into the water for this shot. [I like that it is water proof!]

Below is one of the more curious finds in a while. I found the Scud Bugs, they were scuttling about and Caddisfly larvae were not far off.
But this creature was really bizarre looking.

....
and it was pretty darned ugly in a way.

I got out my handouts from the Master Naturalist course. The chart from the book Wonderful,Wacky, Water Critters helped me figure out the creature. Six legs, 3 tails....

The tails got me closer to it. I 'googled' 3 tail Mayfly larvae and found much better photos of it.

I studied this Mayfly larvae to see where in the stream it was staying and decided to come back and see how many more times I could see them until they morphed into something else.

I walked up stream and stopped in another place where the water was not rushing.

Another new creature!

Well, obviously not 'new'. But new in the sense that I'd never examined the creek's bottom before like this.

A beetle of some sort. A Riffle Beetle? A Whirligig Beetle?
Nope.

I kept up my search of images and settled on a Crawling Water Beetle. The images matched as did the description of where it liked to live.
They don't swim, they crawl.

It's name or bug family is Haliplidae. I like the Crawling Water Beetle better as it describes how it moves.

I finally decided to head home excited about my finds.

And

I
touched
a
Trout!

Amazing.