A week in reviewbefore three weekson the road

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The bees' needs

It's been two months since I first saw news of the so-called Colony Collapse Disorder on the front page of the Tribune. The story (and the problem) has spread since then, but there still seems to be no clear indication of what factor(s) brought this situation to bear.

I was just out back in the Concentric Garden, taking note of what's sprouted or established itself. While I admired some new sunflowers in the central bed, I noticed a small bee land on the mulch and begin to dig its way below the surface. I knelt closer and watched it turn this way and that, as if trying to wedge itself through a jammed door. Finally, it ambled into another gap between the cedar chips. It didn't reemerge.

This observation provided clear evidence that there are bees living under the garden. I'd never heard of such a thing, but a quick perusal via Google showed that this is nothing new:

"Many ground-nesting bees are known as digger bees, mining bees, or sand bees. They excavate nests in the ground, leaving small mounds of soil aboveground. They often hide their nest entrances beneath leaf litter or in the grass. All digger bees are solitary, but some nest in dense aggregations. These bees pollinate a variety of plants. They are drab, solitary, and rarely noticed, yet they may be the most abundant wild pollinators in the field.

"There are many species of digger bees found throughout North America. Most of these bees are known only by their Latin binomial names, although they are sometimes referred to as polyester bees. When the females build their nests, they line them with a polymeric secretion that looks shiny and synthetic. This material is waterproof, highly resistant to decay, and protects larvae while they are in the ground."

Those descriptions came from the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, "Alternative pollinators: native bees". The rest of the page details methods, plants and tools to be used by gardeners and naturalists who want to attract and support wild (or feral) bees and other pollinating insects. Pollen bees, like the one below, represent alternatives for plant pollination (though not for large-scale crop production).

This is vital information to have because before CCD manifested -- and this was news to me -- 90% of wild honeybees in the US were killed by mites in the mid-90s. My Lady Friend heard that on a recent edition of "The Conversation", but I couldn't believe it until I saw reports myself. The program was entitled "Rented Bees Vital Cog for NW Farms" and it aired on May 23.

Hold the oystersand bring onthe pheasants.

So about that oyster mushroom that I was told had grown out back...

It was actually a pheasant's back mushroom instead of an oysters; Polyporus squamosus and not Pleurotus pulmonarius. They're still edible, obviously, since I'm writing to you from the kitchen and not the intensive care unit.

Michael Kuo, the Mushroom Expert, gave me a second opinion after I checked P. pulmonarius and saw that it didn't match what I had. Even though Kuo and others don't care for the taste of Polyporus, it would seem that we found some young specimens, which aren't as chewy as what's commonly found (I certainly liked it).

If I have time, then I'll harvest a couple of these large specimens that I found the day after our supposed oyster dinner.


Polyporus is also called Dryad's saddle, which is a reference to the female tree spirits of yore.

Strip-mining the Moon?

"Data collected from the Apollo Moon landings have indicated that large deposits of an extremely rare gas called helium-3 are trapped in the lunar soil. Scientists believe that this helium-3 could be used to create a new source of almost inexhaustible, clean, pollution-free energy on Earth.

"One of them is Dr. Harrison Schmitt, a member of the 1972 Apollo 17 mission and the only trained geologist ever to walk on the Moon.

"'A metric ton of helium-3 would supply about one-sixth of the energy needs today of the British Isles,' he claims. Plans are already afoot in the US and Russia to strip-mine lunar helium-3 and transport it the 240,000 miles (385,000km) back to Earth.

"The Moon, claims Professor Jerry Kulcinski of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, could become the Persian Gulf of the 21st Century."

Yeesh... not the most encouraging analogy.

Hey, while you're here, check out "Dark Side of the Moon."

Columbine closeup

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These were captured in Jon Duerr Forest Preserve near Elgin, IL.

Fruits of laborand fruiting bodies

The concentric garden that I featured last week is finished.
[This is a record of how it grew.]


The beds contain a variety of wildflowers, herbs and vegetables [see photo]. The only thing left to do is devise a way to get the hose around the beds without dragging it through the mulch and damaging the plants.

Meanwhile...


I found out what that mushroom was: an oyster a pheasant's back. My Lady Friend's grandfather was an avid mushroom hunter, and when I showed him this cut specimen, the first question he asked was "Was it growing on a tree?" He recognized it very quickly, but he was surprised at how large it was (about five inches).


It was quite tasty, and I'll be looking for more of these gifts.

As advertised:Venus and the Moon

On Friday I posted the photos of Mercury and the Moon in conjunction, mentioning that Venus and Luna would be even closer tonight. To the photos:




Skymap made with Hallo Northern Sky

Here in Northern Illinois, the two bodies were closest around 10 p.m. Clouds were obscuring the Moon at that time, but Venus was still pin sharp and brilliant.

So much for that frost warning.

I was told that there was going to be frost Thursday night or Friday morning, but it didn't seem to manifest in these parts.

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LA Botanical...

"...is an ongoing project, massive and perhaps unachievable in its full potential scope, to document each plant that grows in Los Angeles for which there is a documented use -- be it food, medicine, weapon, abortive, analgesic, fuel, stimulant, building material, deadly toxin or mind-altering entheogen. The plants are documented as wet-plate ambrotypes, an anachronistic photographic form ubiquitous during the 1850s to 1890s, the period during which Los Angeles grew from a dusty town of 1400 inhabitants to a major metropolitan center.

"The project is an attempt to reconcile Joyce Campbell's own rural background with her life here in Los Angeles, one of the most sprawling and unsustainable metropolises on Earth.

The exhibition will be featured from May 19 until June 23, 2007, at Gallery 727, 727 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles.

Mercury and the Moon

I finished the second-to-last bed in the garden at sunset. As I put the empty soil bags and shovels in the wheelbarrow, I scanned past the treetops to see if I could spot the Moon. It was only when I walked the 'barrow back to the house that I saw the crescent. I put everything in the garage and came back out with the digicam to capture these:




And now, an important note from SpaceWeather.com:

"On Saturday night, May 19th, the crescent Moon will pass even closer to Venus, and it is a sight you must not miss. Venus and the crescent Moon will lie barely one degree apart, forming a brilliant and unforgettable pair. When the Sun goes down on Saturday, be outside looking west."

The Moon in May seems to be a recurring source of inspiration.
Here's a link to photos from May 19, 2006.

Busy bees

All the previously mentioned, high falutin', high-energy physics and cosmology aside, I've been quite taken by the high magnification provided by the little PowerShot that I bought last month. The evidence:

The particulars of a particle accelerator

I've mentioned the Large Hadron Collider in the past. Here's the latest bit (which didn't seem to mention the high-energy incident from a few weeks ago.


"The day [the LHC] turns on will be a moment of truth for CERN, which has spent 13 years building the collider, and for the world's physicists, who have staked their credibility and their careers, not to mention all those billions of dollars, on the conviction that they are within touching distance of fundamental discoveries about the universe. If they fail to see something new, experts agree, it could be a long time, if ever, before giant particle accelerators are built on Earth again, ringing down the curtain on at least one aspect of the age-old quest to understand what the world is made of and how it works.

"'If you see nothing,' said a CERN physicist, John Ellis, 'in some sense, then, we theorists have been talking rubbish for the last 35 years.'

"Fabiola Gianotti, a CERN physicist and the deputy spokeswoman for the team that built the Atlas, said, Something must happen.'

"The accelerator, Gianotti explained, would take physics into a realm of energy and time where the reigning theories simply do not apply, corresponding to an era when cosmologists think that the universe was still differentiating itself, like a dividing embryo, evolving from a primordial blandness and endless potential into the forces and particles that constitute modern reality.

"She listed possible discoveries like a mysterious particle called the Higgs boson that is thought to endow other particles with mass, new forms of matter that explain the mysterious dark matter waddling the cosmos and even new dimensions of spacetime.

"'For me,' Gianotti said, 'it would be a dream if, finally, in a couple of years in a laboratory we are going to produce the particle responsible for 25 percent of the universe.'"

An interactionof dark matterand light

"Images taken by NASA's orbiting Hubble Space Telescope allowed astronomers to detect this ring of dark matter created by the collision of two galaxy clusters 5 billion light-years from Earth.

"Astronomers believe dark matter -- as opposed to ordinary matter making up the stars, planets and the like -- comprises about 85 percent of the universe's material, but evidence of it has been difficult to come by.

"Dark matter cannot be directly seen. It does not shine or reflect light, but astronomers infer its existence in galaxy clusters by observing how its gravity bends the light given off by even more faraway galaxies. They do not know what it is made of, but think it could be a kind of particle.

"Astronomer Richard Massey of the California Institute of Technology, not involved in the research, said the findings are facing skepticism within the astronomical community.

"'It's really exciting if it's right. But to be sort of convinced of the ring, astronomers would really want to see some independent observations verifying it,' Massey said."

Planetary gearshifting, part eight:Mercury on the move in a month

This is a slightly adapted version of a post from February.
Unfortunately, I still don't recall the source for the following text.

"Despite the dread that often surrounds Mercury retrograde periods, it's possible for us to work with the energy by taking the time to tie up loose ends.

"To get the most out of Mercury retrogrades, concentrate on activities beginning with the prefix 're-': redo, rewrite, repair, recall, reexamine, renew, redecorate, reschedule and so on.

"This is a time to review the past and assimilate those things that have happened to you since the last retrograde period back in Oct/Nov of 2006. Journaling will be especially productive during this time."

Here are the retrograde periods for 2007:

February 14 to March 8
June 15 to July 10
October 12th to November 2

Note that these dates don't include the two-week "retrograde shadow" that precedes and follows Mercury's apparent backpedal . More on that here: "Mercury Retrograde: The Shadow and The Storm"...

...and here, in the sixth gearshifting post.

This link will take you to part seven.

A plot in progress

Since the middle of April (when the last snow fell in northern Illinois), my Lady Friend and I have been digging out a circular garden in her parents' yard. The family visited Vancouver BC in 2004, and her mother was taken by the Physic Garden at the University of British Columbia's Botanical Garden [see feature G on the garden map]. She's wanted a similarly styled plot ever since.

We've had few obligations and many days to fill since returning from Korea. Thus, this:


The boundary area that surrounds the beds comes to 1,024 square feet. The total area of the beds themselves is 227 square feet. Not intentional (but certainly amusing).

Speaking of amusement...



Oh, by the way... while I was clearing out oh-so-much garlic mustard from the treeline, I discovered the mushroom below. Can anyone identify it? One book I checked pointed toward a Boletus species, but the low growth and the wide, compacted crown make me think it might be a chanterelle.

Fauna in the flora

a little more bee business can be seen here

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Sunset effects

Skylife II

This being the first set.




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Skylife

Venus in repose

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I repeat: Dandelions are not weeds!

They're gifts from the Earth to help us cleanse and heal.
And they're fascinating when magnified, as you'll see.





As I quoted from the Joongang Daily last May: "Practioners of herbal medicine say the dandelion doesn't have a thing to waste. Its flowers can be made into an alcohol with a unique aroma, while its leaves are considered a health food with abundant vitamins and minerals. The beta-carotene in the leaves is an antioxidant, which removes oxygen free radicals from the body, slows the aging process and prevents cancer and certain illnesses more frequent in the elderly."

Hubei rays

From Yahoo News: "A boy touches part of a 148-foot-long wall, lighted by color rays, at an exhibition hall in China's Hubei province on Tuesday, May 1."

The Sun shinesand strengthensThe Spirit

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Meanwhile, near Jupiter...

...the New Horizons spacecraft spent some time
photographing the Jovian system.

May Day dénouement

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