Monthly Archives: July 2019

Sufficient unto the day

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I have been doing a lot of work in our yard, a task so monumental that I it seems like it could never all be done. I worked on the small, bare area right next to our house, and now I have started work on a walk from our front porch steps to the driveway. I have asked myself who I think will ever use it, and then I remember: the cats! Of course.

Anyway, here is what it looks like now.

The walk will be about 70 feet long and four feet wide. We have decided on brick-sized pavers. The process starts with digging out several inches of dirt and leveling the resulting surface. Then I will put sand down over the dirt to provide a surface that can be truly leveled. Then I lay pavers in the selected pattern, which is to be a running bond with a course of soldier pavers on both edges.

You can’t really see the area about 10 feet long directly in front of the steps that I have excavated almost enough. It’s also hard to see how sloped from side to side most of the length of the path is. The depth of the excavation should be between three and four inches, at least, but in our case, there is so much variation in the level of this area from side to side that it will require a lot more digging. The ten-foot section resulted in four wheelbarrow loads of dirt. Once I get to part of the path next to the maiden grass (the wispy grass that looks dead but isn’t, quite), I will have to put in a low retaining wall, which will require more digging.

This first part, the digging, is going to be a challenge. The path base really needs to be close to level from side to side. It’s going to be a lot of digging through dirt that was only recently sandstone, and still remembers its past quite well. Once it has been dug up, it will have to be hauled somewhere else in the yard.

And then, leveling with sand, and then, laying pavers.

I have never laid pavers, and I’m not sure how well that’s going to go. Right now I have to dig. I will worry about pavers when the time comes.

The East at Sunset

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Leah and I were driving back home from town Friday night close to dusk. The sky was full of clouds lit by the setting sun. A view of the sunset itself would have been nice, but we had to settle for this.

This is the view from our front porch looking east over town.

The sky had been full of puffy cumulus clouds all day. There were some thundershowers 20 or 30 miles south of us. They didn’t come to visit here, unfortunately. We are quite dry here, although there has been a lot of rain all around us. We have watched significant storms brew and creep around us, parting as they crossed over us so we remained dry, or simply disappearing before they reached us. This is a typical summertime pattern.

Our Atlanta TV meteorologists have attributed some of our current weather to Tropical Storm Barry, which is really too far away to have much effect here. We are hoping some of the moisture channeled up from the Gulf will make its way here and maybe cause enough rain to encourage our new plantings to live another day.

Armadillo encounter

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I posted about seeing a young armadillo when walking the dogs last week. I mentioned that the armadillo showed no fear whatsoever, and I also mentioned that I doubted that Zeke would have much trouble piercing its armor. Well, we saw what I think is the same armadillo a couple of days ago. It was scrabbling around in the same place. I thought it was a good opportunity to get a photo where you could actually see the armadillo, so I pulled out my phone and tried to take a shot. I had to hold two leashes in one hand while I took the shot with the other hand. This is what I got.

The armadillo is just above and slightly to the right of Sam’s head. Immediately after I took this shot, Zeke lunged and clamped the armadillo in his jaws. With one hand holding my phone, I wasn’t able to restrain Zeke. He shook the armadillo violently, and I could hear some crunching. I shouted “NO!” as loud as I could. I figured dogs all over Texas Valley stopped whatever they were doing and looked around. Zeke is hard of hearing, but he heard me this time. He dropped the armadillo and it ran away down the slope as fast as I have seen one move.

I have no idea whether Zeke injured the armadillo. It might have suffered serious, even mortal wounds. I have not seen or heard it since this unfortunate (for the armadillo) event.

Here’s what one Web site says about armadillos:

About two million years age, a relative of the armadillo as large as a rhinoceros lived in South America. Smaller cousins lived as far north as Canada. All of these forms disappeared in the ice ages long before humans inhabited North America. At the start of the 20th century, the nine-banded armadillo was present in Texas. By the 1930s, they were in Louisiana and by 1954 they had crossed the Mississippi River heading east. In the 1950s, they were introduced into Florida and began heading north. Today, some maps (Georgia Wildlife Web: http://museum.nhm.uga.edu/gawildlife/ gaww.html) show them to be restricted to South Georgia but, in fact, they are present as far north as Athens and Rome, Georgia. They occur throughout the South from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas through Missouri, eastern Tennessee and into South Carolina. They are currently absent from North Carolina but are likely to continue to move northward along the coast and into the Piedmont. Because they do not tolerate cold temperatures (below about 36 degrees F), several studies suggest that farther northward migration into the Appalachian Mountains will be limited.

Armadillos are not my favorite animals. I don’t like to see them killed by our dogs, but I would just as soon they would go back home to Texas.

Turtle crossing

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Leah and i were on our way into town for dinner on Thursday when we saw a turtle crossing Technology Parkway, a four-lane, divided road. As we approached we realized it was huge. I thought it was a snapping turtle. We turned around and went back to make sure it crossed safely. When we got out of the car and approached it, we realized it was not a snapping turtle. But it was still huge, the largest turtle I have seen that was not a snapper.

Here it is with Leah’s foot for scale.

It was northbound in the east-bound lanes, so it had the rest of those lanes, the grassy median, and the west-bound lanes to cross. Traffic was very light, but we were afraid it might be hit, so I picked it up and carried it to the far side of the road. I found a wet place near a boggy creek to put it down, and after posing with Leah’s foot, it scooted off.

The turtle was close to a foot across and weighed at least 10 pounds. I held it just aft of the center of its shell, just within reach of the claws on its hind legs. When I picked it up it immediately started making swimming motions. The back claws just barely scratched my hands. I held it out away from my body because I expected what came next — urine. As a non-physician, I would say that it was a healthy, clear stream that missed my clothes but might have dripped on my shoe.

Just before we picked it up a pickup truck came from the west and stopped. The couple inside said the turtle looked like the one they had moved a few days ago, on that day traveling in the opposite direction.

I did some online research and decided it was a river cooter (Pseudemys concinna), which I had never heard of. A distinguishing feature is a C shape on the second scute. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that when I had it in my hands, and it can’t be seen in the photo. The shell was wet and a little muddy.

Based on the Web site information, the other turtle that can be confused with the river cooter is the Florida cooter, but the Florida cooter’s range covers south Georgia, not north Georgia. So river cooter seems to be a good guess.

From the Wikipedia page on river cooter: “The name “cooter” may have come from an African word “kuta” which means “turtle” in the Bambara and Malinké languages, brought to America by African slaves.”

The hummingbird poses

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Happy 4th of July. Today is the day we in the United States commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It’s also the day we celebrated Leah’s father’s birthday. He would be 96 today.

We won’t be watching the Washington DC events. We aren’t interested in seeing a campaign rally right at the moment.

Since there seems to us to be so little to actually celebrate in this country these days, I’ll just post a picture of a hummingbird posing on our feeder. Birds don’t care about the kinds of things we do. Give them some sugar water and they’re happy to zoom around and chase each other away.

Leah pointed out the bird sitting on the feeder hook. Once I noticed I saw that they often perch there.

Added on the Fourth: Leah and I were sitting at the table after breakfast considering whether to go see the local fireworks display this evening. I looked up the location and found that here in Rome, they decided to hold the Fourth of July fireworks on the third.