October 2014

My entomology class has been in full swing.  We've visited a number of different places and collected a diversity of species.  We did some blacklighting one night, and coupled our field trip to Lowell's with a bonfire, hotdogs and fishing.  We've also been to Lock and Dam 21, Quinsippi Island, and Fall Creek.  I usually take my macro lens.  At Fall Creek, we found ourselves in the midst of a big patch of Jewel weed.  I mentioned that they were also called Touch-Me-Nots because of their exploding seed pods.  As there were plenty of mature seed pods, we put it to the test.  This effort proved to be a major distraction for a long time.  Here's a video I took with my phone.

From September 2014

When we bought the property on Jamison last year, where Savannah now lives, we inherited a 55-gallon drum of "herbicide".  Going back three owners, that's all we could learn, and no one wanted to claim it.  Fortunately, our Missouri Department of Natural Resources had a pesticide collection last week.  I had a couple of friends (Thanks, Aaron and Barry!) help me load it in the back of my truck.  Stacey and I drove it all the way to Shelbina -- an hour one way.  It was a fun ride for the dogs anyway.  The DNR accepted the barrel.  Though I still don't know what was in it, I'm very glad to be shed of it.  It's like a weight off my shoulders.  It will be incinerated.

I returned to my office one day to have a student hand me a note.  He'd been working the front desk and took a call from a lady in distress who had exhausted all other possibilities to solving her problem, mostly pest control companies. She had suspicious holes in her yard, with little mounds of dirt. I wasn't really interested, as these things tend to be wild goose chases.  I delayed checking my voice mail, but eventually the phone rang.  I would have sworn this was a man on the phone from the voice. After a little Q&A, I determined she did not likely have wasps.  I had some ideas, and by now my curiosity was up, so I drove my motorcycle across Quincy to do an inspection of the premises.  She was, in fact, female, but with the lifelong smoker's voice.  Her back yard was riddled with burrows.  Each consisted of a little mound of earth, which, when upturned, revealed a burrow beneath of perhaps 5 mm in diameter.  I dug up about three of them, which revealed no occupants.  After noting that the dirt mounds consisted of hardened mud pellets, I could only conclude that her yard was full of earthworms.  She said they multiplied nightly.  I said, "Yes, because they're not pooping in the same place twice."  There was no need to spray her yard with insecticide.  Earthworms are actually a good thing to have.

Recently we learned that Canton is scheduled to host the final day of a bike ride across Missouri next summer, the Big BAM (www.bigbamride.com).  I was recently appointed to Canton's Tourism Commission and I'm apparently the most experienced cyclist, so I was chosen to lead the charge in making the arrangements to host something over 1000 people.  It's going to be a lot of work, but we are already getting a handle on it.

With repeated trips to Lowell's, I've done a bit of work on the proposed home site.  I sprayed and killed a lot of poison ivy.  Last time I cut down some trees so that the electrical line can be restored.  There is still much to do, but we are waiting on the surveyor to call so that we can make some real progress.  I thought I would reveal now that we are planning to build a nontraditional house.  We have experienced a tornado in the past.  We have both been firefighters and seen plenty of houses burn down.  As an entomologist, I've seen homes destroyed by termites.  Our house will be vulnerable to none of these.  It will be a monolithic dome, constructed primarily of steel-reinforced concrete.  Also, it will be very energy efficient.  We are not certain exactly what it will look like when finished, and we are still arguing about the floor plan, but we have plenty of time to make those decisions.  To learn more about monolithic domes, visit monolithicdome.com.

September 2014: new semester, new year

It's been awhile since my last blog. It's hard to remember the events of what is now last summer.  Savannah and I were going to kayak the Wyaconda River one day.  I had watched the forecast very closely, and it stated there would be no rain until late in the day.  We hadn't been on the river long before it began to sprinkle.  Right about when we got to the Highway 61 bridge, there was a spectacular lightning strike directly in front of us.  We pulled the kayaks out under the bridge and called for help.  Fortunately, our friend Rhonda was able to come and get us.  She even knew the landowner, and we were able to drive out easily.

One Sunday I took some boy scouts (and Joe, Rhonda's husband) out to Deer Ridge Conservation Area.  I taught them a little compass navigation while we rode mountain bikes around on the gravel roads.  It was a good ride.  The place was thick with butterflies, especially Red-spotted Purples.  We got into some mud while looking for an old graveyard, and enjoyed a low-water crossing.

I've gotten some decent insect photography lately, as the bloom of butterflies and other species has continued.  Great Golden Digger Wasps have been nectaring at a shrub at North Campus, which sas provided me with some opportunities to shoot this normally difficult species.  I still think it's one of the most beautiful wasps.  Entomology class has begun, which also provides lots of insect photo opps.

Just before classes began, my brother Mike and his son Racin drove out from California.  It wasn't just a visit, as Racin was enrolling as a freshman at QU.  His mother Cindy joined us by flying out.  We had some work to do getting Racin moved in and settled, but we had some time to goof off as well. They attended the Canton Camera Club meeting, where I gave a brief presentation on Shannon County.  We visited Hannibal, and had dinner at Angelini's in Keokuk.  Mike and I worked on my old Honda 70s.  We put a new carburetor on one, and I think it runs better now than it has in 30 years.  We got some assembly done on another, which was significant progress. Racin and I did some jamming on guitars, which is always fun.

Before you know it, their visit was over, and we had to drop Mike and Cindy at the airport.  Then it was back to business as usual, with my classes beginning that week.  It is kind of fun that, though I no longer have Savannah dropping by my office, Racin does nearly every day.

Savannah stops by the house more than she used to, sometimes to do laundry, but sometimes for fun. She helped me bottle beer last week. We have lunch fairly often and do yard work together.

I went out to Lowell's one day with great aspirations.  Our first major task was to take down a row of 18 dead pine trees.  In theory, it should have been easy: just fell all the trees, dropping them to the north.  The branches were so dense, and reaching to the ground, that the first two would hardly fall at all.  We had to pull them out of the row with the tractor and chains.  Once we had those out, I was able to fell them like dominoes.  Except, of course, that most of them were leaning the wrong way.  The small ones I pushed over by hand (big mistake, hurt my back), the bigger ones Lowell pushed over with the tractor.  It was hot, dirty work.  The undergrowth held lots of poison ivy.  By the end I was covered in burrs, and ultimately found 4 ticks on myself.  The purpose of our clearing these dead trees was, surprisingly, not for firewood.  Old, dead pine has almost no caloric value.  Instead, we were clearing the site for...

...wait for it...

...my dream house.  Stacey and I used to enjoy living the country life back in Illinois, and we've decided to do it again.  With nothing strongly tying us to Canton -- Savannah's out of school and we're off the fire department -- we started looking at rural homes.  When I mentioned this to Lowell, he graciously offered to sell us a few acres on the corner of his place.  Though the old homestead is still there, it is in poor condition, and we'll be building something new.  We've been planning and plotting. Cutting down these trees was the first real progress we've made. We will be getting the site surveyed soon.  Next, I'll be spraying all the poison ivy.  It will be a long and perhaps difficult journey, but will fulfill a desire I've had for quite a long time.  Stay tuned.

This is my first blog post since GoDaddy shut down all QuickBlog accounts.  I imported all of my old blogs into WordPress here: showmejoe.wordpress.com.  However, I have decided to use blogger for my new blogs, as it integrates with other Google products better, and seems to be very powerful.  


After Costa Rica, it was back to work.  Though I was running a couple of online classes, most of my daylight hours were spent working on houses.  My tenants of 5 years moved out of my rental house,  Savannah's place still needed some fixes, and our home always needs something.  Nonetheless, I did get out for some photography in my yard, as well as periodic trips to Lowell's and elsewhere.  

Remi, AKA Waddles, perched majestically on the neighbor's waterfall.  

One day I drove out to a friend's place in the country, and carried my camera and telephoto lens in my lap.  Near the Wyaconda River I saw a red fox on the roadside.  Taking advantage of my car's manual transmission, I coasted up to it and got a few shots off.  I would have gotten closer, but another car spooked it away.

It has something unidentifiable in its mouth.  

Stacey and I took a nice camping trip to Mark Twain Lake.  Aside from the lack of cell service, the campground was very nice, heavily wooded.  We were present during a tremendous bloom of butterflies.  I photographed 9 species of butterflies within one hour: 
Common Wood-Nymph
Little Wood-Satyr
Spring Azure
Hackberry Emperor
Eastern Comma
Red Admiral
Great Spangled Fritillary
Mourning Cloak
Hickory Hairstreak

Some years we have a dearth of butterflies, but this year is outstanding, especially for Great Spangled Fritillary.

GSF on milkweed at Lowell's catfish pond.

The rainfall has also been welcome for our wildflowers.  The little prairie in our backyard has bloomed beautifully, with many species flowering at different times through the summer.

Purple Coneflower

Click to examine all images from June.

The only science I attempted this summer was to spend a day with Mike Irwin recording locations of periodical cicadas.  This year was the re-emergence of the same brood we had mapped in 1997.  We were both amazed by how fast the time had gone. We spent a couple of hours playing guitars too.

Stacey and I did another weekend camping trip to Wakonda State Park.  We have now identified the ideal site in the Boulder Lake campground - #1.  It is isolated from all other sites by woods, and out of site of the playground.  The dogs bark a lot less.  I took my new mountain bike (a 29er) for it's first real off-road ride.  I video recorded the ride, and came across a feeding deer that didn't notice me for a few minutes.  I also tried having both dogs tow me on the skateboard.  Surprisingly, I wasn't injured or killed.  I only had to jump off once when Gretchen crossed too close in front.  Her contribution to towing is significant!  

I always take my camera when fishing at Lowell's, as there is almost always something interesting to see.  On the first of July, it was this large bird.

Great Horned Owl

More recently, Stacey and I took a longer trip to Shannon County, MO, well known as one of the most beautiful regions in the state.  In the heart of the Ozarks, home of the Current (very popular for float trips) and the Jacks Fork Rivers, it holds many interesting sites.  We camped at the Jacks Fork Canoe Rental and Campground, which had excellent location, but run-down facilities.  You can't be choosy on 4th of July weekend on short notice.  It was well positioned, such that I was able to take to kayak trips on the Jack's Fork without much difficulty.  It is a lovely stream with gin clear water.  You can see the fish on the bottom.  I didn't catch any fish, in spite of my best efforts, but I did get to round up about 19 Coors Light cans that came bobbing down the stream.  I took a bike ride that turned out to be quite eventful, but, sadly, not recorded.  The first 3 miles had brutal uphills, and scary downhills on gravel.  I was holding onto my phone while trying to make sure I was on the right road and took a spill at the bottom of one.  It had just rained, creating lots of low water crossings, which I find fun.  The route took me along the Jacks Fork for a bit, along bluffs with little caves where I came across a flock of turkeys in the road.  After Alley Spring, I took the paved road back, but the hills were still killers.  I've been chased by a lot of dogs in my biking career, but never by a pack of six.  I don't know that I've ever been more certain that I was going to be bitten.  I thought I could outrun them, but there wasn't enough left in my legs for that.  I yelled at them and lifted my legs away from their snarling mouths.  Fortunately, they gave up before long.  We enjoyed a massive emergence of alate ants in the campground.  These are new queens and males with wings.  I got some good video and stills, as well as collecting voucher specimens.  I'm sure the other campers were not as amused as I was.  We had a storm one night. We were glad to be snug in our RV, as I'm sure the tent campers were suffering.  We woke up with an Easy-up in our yard.  We took a number of short drives to see the sites, such as Round Spring, Alley Spring and, my favorite, Blue Spring.

It's really that blue.

Alley Spring Mill

Alley Spring, HDR

Diving from the bridge is illegal...

Pipevine swallowtail at Blue Spring.

Upon our return, I was displeased to find that a tree had fallen on my fence.  Again.  For those keeping score, that was the third time.  It was the exact same place as the last one. In addition, one of our Black locust trees had fallen in the yard.  I spent a day chainsawing and clearing brush instead of what I had planned to do.  Shortly thereafter, we had a new roof put on the house.  Though the previous layer of shingles was only 10 years old, they were badly worn and we were getting leaks in the house.  We got red steel this time.  I think the house looks like a barn.  We had it installed by an Amish guy named Harley.  
One day I was mowing down at Chateau Jamison (Savannah's house) and moved a piece of black plastic and saw something move.  At first I thought it was a toad going down its burrow, but a closer look showed that it was a salamander.  I haven't seen one in Lewis County for years.  Incredibly, we found two more under a board.  She has an infestation.  They are tiger salamanders, which are common, but still quite interesting.

Ambystoma tigrinum

For my birthday we went to the Lewis County Fair.  I got a sweet Lemon shake-up and a jalapeno corn dog from Jamie's stand.  We stopped at the petting zoo, run by our veterinarians.  Savannah and Hannah showed up,  They even sat through the demolition derby with us.  The second heat was pretty good.  We stayed for a little of the live band (Mad Hoss Jackson) before heading home.  Savannah stayed later, and got her car stuck in the mud.  Fortunately, a guy with a skid-steer pushed her out the next day.

Click to see July photos.

One day I got a call from a friend who had an overproducing apricot tree. I was free and Savannah wanted to come along so we went over and picked several gallons.  We dehydrated some and made the rest into wine.  Well, it will be wine in a few months anyway.  

If I'm home in the morning and reading or something upstairs, Big Guy likes to go outside about every 10 minutes.  This is how he lets me know.

From July 2014