This first image is from a walk a few days ago. A neighbor stopped for a little socially-distant conversation, and while we talked, the dogs wrestled. When it ended and I was ready to continue, Sam was on his back. He stood up right under Zoe. I’m not sure she noticed.
This gives you idea of her size. She’s a big dog, even bigger than her 80 pounds might indicate.
Sunday afternoon we drove to a store on the other side of town to try to find some cat food and dog treats that our nearer store hasn’t had. As usual, Zoe wanted to come with us, so we let her ride in the back of the car. We fold the seat down and put a pad on it. She rides back there pretty well. She never makes a fuss. She seems to really like riding. Every time we get ready to leave, she starts getting excited and goes to the door. If we let her out, she runs immediately to the car door.
It was a cool, cloudy day, and we lowered the back windows a little so she cold stick her nose out, so there was no problem with leaving her in the car while we went in. When we came back out of the store and I remotely opened the tailgate of the car, something had spooked her. Before we left the parking lot, she had climbed into the front and was in Leah’s lap.
Zoe’s nails are too long and sharp. Her elbows are pretty sharp, too, especially when she puts her weight into it. I won’t be surprised if Leah has some bruises from this. Zoe stayed in Leah’s lap the whole way home. She doesn’t really fit.
She panted and shivered the whole way home. Once out of the car, she returned to her normal self. It was not behavior I expected from this big old dog.
It will be interesting to see if she is as eager to ride in the car the next time.
Saturday morning was overcast after an early morning light rain. Off in the distance we could see where the large Georgia Power Plant Bowen stacks stand. Bowen is one of the largest coal-fired power plants in North America.
Coal-fired power plants are almost always located on rivers because they use the river water for cooling. The Etowah River flows past the plant and then on through Rome, where it meets the Oostanaula River to form the Coosa River. If you look carefully at this photo, you can see where the river flows.
The river has another river right above it, formed by advection fog. Advection fog is usually formed by warm, humid air flowing over something that is cooler, causing some of the water vapor to condense into fog. The fog is the faint, thin, lighter line slightly under the mid-point of the image. The river is 20 to 25 miles from our house.
Many years ago when my family moved into our new house, our living room looked over fields and low hills towards the same river as it neared town. The river was probably less than two miles from our house. We often saw fog over the river then. In the more than 40 years since, the short pines in the back yard grew up and now tower over the house, completely blocking the view.
I have been making leashes for the dogs out of a long piece of rope I got at one of our local building supply companies. The dogs started out with store-bought leashes, but Zoe bites at hers, and she chewed it so much that I finally threw it away. I can make a lot of leashes from a fairly cheap length of rope instead of having to buy a new leash every month or so.
I made a short leash for Sam and about a five-foot leash for Zoe. Then I made a longer addition for Zoe’s so I could let her run in the front yard with Sam. The total length for Zoe’s is about 12 to 14 feet, which is long enough that she can get up to a good speed by the time she stretches the leash to its full length. And she did that Monday afternoon. She was going so fast I had to release the leash or have my arm dislocated. She kept going full speed into the woods and disappeared with Sam following.
This was the fifth time they have run away. The first time they did it they came home after dark and sat around in the garage until I happened to look. The next time Sam was gone a full day and Zoe was gone four days. The third time a neighbor caught Zoe and called us. The fourth time, which was only about a week ago, a couple living at the bottom of the mountain caught them and called. This was the fifth time. This time I posted on Facebook. They disappeared at about 2:15 or so. Eventually they were spotted a couple of miles away, and then more than four miles away, but by the time I got to the places where they were sighted, they were gone.
They finally came home at about 10:30. Sam had rolled in something nasty and smelly, so I had to bathe him before I could let him in the house. Zoe was wet and a little smelly, but I didn’t want to undertake as big a job as washing her would be that late in the evening. She got her bath today, Tuesday.
The thing I found most interesting (not the thing I found most infuriating) in this case was the eyewitness accounts of the people who responded to my post on Facebook. One man who saw them in his yard said the big one was dragging an orange leash. A woman who saw them later in the day said the big one was trailing a bright red line. This is the rope I use for their leashes.
And this is the stub of Zoe’s leash, the only part she brought back home. It looks kind of like a fishing lure.
What color would you call this? I call it blue because to my eye it’s mostly blue. The red/orange is eye-catching, maybe even more so in bright sunlight, but I was surprised when they talked about a red or orange leash.
The top photo shows the knot I use to make the hand loop. It’s called a bowline loop. Boy Scouts and sailors probably know this one, but it was new to me. I found it when searching for knot-tying instructions. Since this is a nautical knot, you might expect “bow” to be pronounced like the bow of a ship, but in the case of this knot, it’s actually pronounced like bow in “bow and arrow.” It has the advantage of not slipping, so the loop doesn’t close up on your hand when the dog pulls on it. The knot I used to attach the clip is called a clip knot, which seems appropriate.
I could probably tie another bowline loop without looking at the instructions, which means it’s a pretty simple knot. I would have to look up the clip knot, although it’s also a simple knot.
We have been losing dogwoods for several years. I remember seeing the side of a nearby hill on my way home from Huntsville in early spring a few years ago. It seemed like hundreds of dogwoods were blooming on the bare slopes. Around here, just a few miles away, I have been cutting and burning dead dogwoods for some time. I keep an eye on the remaining trees as I walk the dogs and note which seem be dead. This spring we have been pleasantly surprised to see quite a few dogwoods blooming.
When I look out the window where I’m sitting right now, I can see four, or possibly five trees in bloom. I may be misremembering, but it seems that in past years dogwoods bloomed before most of the surrounding trees began to leaf out. This year it seems to be happening simultaneously, which makes it harder to see the flowering trees.
I’m not positive of the cause of the dogwood deaths. We have had a couple of recent summers that were very hot and very dry. There is also a dogwood blight, dogwood anthracnose, that has wrought havoc on dogwoods from the northeast to the southeast, and on the west coast as well. Some forests in the northeast have had essentially all dogwoods infected, and infection of forest dogwoods almost always results in the death of the tree. There are some effects on the trees that are diagnostic. In reading about the blight I have found that some things I have noticed on trees that seem to be having problems are actually characteristic of infected trees. So it seems that the dogwood blight is infecting trees here on our mountain.
In the south, the trees that are most at risk are those at high elevations, those in moist conditions, and those that are in shaded forest areas. Our elevation is not as high as the sources I read worry about. Moisture has not been much of a problem here, either. Of course, most of the trees, except those that have been planted, are in the forest. Another condition that makes dogwoods more susceptible is drought and the resulting stress. I hope we don’t see that this summer.
Several sources indicated that climate change might be partially responsible for the increase in damage caused by dogwood anthracnose, and those sources were from more than 20 years ago.
We are also apparently in another kind of blight, one caused by pine beetles. I have written before about how many dead trees we have on our little five-acre tract. It’s getting worse here, and very noticeable along our dog walks.
Some of these trees that look alive are not. The three pines in the center of the image have lighter trucks because the bark has fallen off. What you can’t see in this image is the large number of trees that have fallen around these still-standing trees.
Pine beetle infestations apparently come in waves several years apart. There are several species of beetle that kill pines, and they can infect healthy trees, but trees that have been subjected to drought or other stresses are more susceptible. So, score another for our recent droughts.
I haven’t looked carefully at our dead pines to see whether there are signs of beetle infestations. However, I have noticed that it’s not just pines that are dying. I see a fair number of hardwoods that have died, as well. Probably not as many as the pines, but still, more than I would expect to result from simply aging. So I wonder whether we are seeing some effects on our forests from climate change.
And now from the large to the small. Here are some thyme-leaved bluets (Houstonia serpyllifolia).
I spied these beside the road on one of my dog walks.
My brother Henry died two years ago today, April 6. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just before Thanksgiving. He died seven months and four days after his 70th birthday.
His death still doesn’t seem quite real.
Two years should be long enough to internalize something like the death of a brother, but I don’t seem to be any closer to that than immediately after he died. It’s as if there are two realities, one where he is dead, and another where he is still alive.
The strangest thing for me to contemplate is that in a little over a month I’ll be the same age he was. If I survive until Christmas of this year, I will overtake him and he will no longer be older than me.
Copyright 2013 Mark V. Paris
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