My wife recently picked up car chargers for our iPhones so last weekend I used the MotionX-GPS app on the iPhone to record GPS data of my movements during a day at Ridgefield. This takes a hard toll on the battery, and since I was there for 13 hours I couldn’t have pulled it off without the charger.
What I want is to merge the data with my pictures so that I can get a visual map of where I took my pictures, an idea I first had many years ago during visits to both Ridgefield and Yellowstone. The pieces are all falling into place now although I haven’t yet learned how to tie it all together. Next I need to learn how to merge the GPS data with the pictures, then I can use Apple’s Aperture to display the locations for each picture on a map.
The picture above is the GPS data overlaid on a satellite image of Ridgefield and shows how I spent 13 hours on June 19, 2011. I’ve annotated it with the names of lakes and marshes at Ridgefield. I’m not exactly sure where Bower Slough starts and ends as there is a series of dikes and canals, but this is my best guess. Google Maps only labeled one lake and they got it wrong, they have Long Lake incorrectly named as Quigley Lake.
At first I was a little confused by the satellite photo as there didn’t appear to be much water visible, but this would make sense if the picture was snapped during the summer. Many of the lakes are seasonal and even during the spring the shallower lakes fill with vegetation.
The GPS trace shows two main loops with the green and red dots showing where I started and stopped the recording. The larger loop on the right is the auto tour where I spend so much of my free time, the smaller loop on the left is the Kiwa Trail, a short hiking trail that opens up during the summer. Traffic flows counter-clockwise around the auto tour, most of it is one-way but the first stretch does allow for two-way traffic.
Many of the lakes to my eye are really ponds, or even large puddles, but what does it matter? Some of my favorite places to sit and watch are some of the smallest lakes. Some like South Quigley Lake and Rest Lake were favorite spots from my very first visit, while others like Horse Lake and Long Lake took me a while to learn their rhythms and charms and only recently have become favorites.
Having filled up my old notebook it was time to find a new one, and this go around I wanted to upgrade the quality a bit. The internet hipsters seemed to be pretty fond of Moleskines and after looking at a few of my wife’s (and confirming that the pages are not in fact made from the skin of the molemen, who frankly have suffered enough), I ordered the Moleskine squared red large notebook. The bold red color nicely matches my in-your-face attitude and should be easier to find in an overstuffed camera bag or backpack.
It was also time to upgrade my pens. Over the years I’ve just used whatever cheapo pens I had laying around and noticed that some of the ink had faded on some pages of the old journal. And I wanted something that wrote with a fine point but also flowed smoothly. Once again the internet came to my rescue when one of my favorite podcasts discussed pens and based on their recommendations I ordered the uni-ball Signo RT Gel (0.38mm point) and uni-ball Signo 207 Gel (0.5mm point).
I was expecting sunny weather all weekend but when the clouds and scattered showers rolled in Sunday afternoon, I made a quick run to Ridgefield and had a chance to use the new journal and pens in anger for the first time. So far I am thrilled with both notebook and pens, so many thanks my internet heroes!
The new notebook and pens sitting on the old, both sitting in front of a sitting Sam
I taped the edges of the cardboard covers when they started shredding but otherwise the notebook has held up well to over seven years of hard use. One of my better $2 investments.
I used to keep notes about my hiking and photography outings on loose sheets of paper that were quickly lost. One day while in Office Depot I grabbed an inexpensive notebook to see if I’d prefer keeping my notes in more permanent form. I think it may have cost all of two dollars. It’s a simple notebook from Roaring Spring Compositions, designed for children I’d guess given that the cover asks for your school and grade. It was quad ruled which I liked as I tend to wander without the guiding hand of the grid. It measures 9 3/4″ by 7 1/2″ and was made in the USA, presumably in Roaring Spring, PA.
My first entry is from December 28, 2003 and starts with a visit to a National Wildlife Refuge — but not Ridgefield as you might expect. No, this was Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, part of the Sacramento NWR complex down in California. My wife and I spent Christmas with family in California and she flew back while I took the Subaru and planned to visit the redwoods and the refuges near the border.
After a quick visit to Colusa I drove the auto tour at Sacramento NWR, but only once as a sudden snowstorm was blowing in and I needed to hurry to get across the coast range to the redwoods. I didn’t make it too far before discretion proved the better part of valor and I retreated to spend a couple of days in a hotel in Redding. Once I-5 reopened and it was safe to drive back home, I canceled the trip and arrived at our house just hours before a nasty ice storm hit Portland.
For each visit I keep track of what animals I see and I try to make notes about how the day went, although some days I never get round to filling in the notes. Every once in a while I’ll make a little drawing in the notebook, but rarely so, for even a caveman of Lascaux once called them “rather crude”, and he was being charitable.
Look at this drawing and you can almost hear the red-winged blackbird singing in the cattails. It helps if you close your eyes while looking.
Flip over a few pages from the aborted California trip and there’s our first visit to Olympic and Mount Rainier National Parks in the summer of 2004. Then comes my first real visit to Yellowstone a few weeks later (we visited for a few hours when my wife moved to Oregon but that hardly counts).
There’s my first (and only) visit to Japan in 2005, then my first visit to Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina a few months later that at long last re-introduced me to alligators. And a few months later a return to Yellowstone and my first visit to the Tetons. In between the big trips most of the pages are scrawled full of visits to Ridgefield, long ago I taped a map of the refuge to the inside of the back cover to help me keep straight the small lakes along the auto tour.
Flip a bit more and there’s my trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons in 2006. Another visit to Huntington Beach in December of that year, my first time out after my stepfather passed away unexpectedly, when the quiet serenity of the off-season provided much needed comfort.
Another visit to Yellowstone and the Tetons in the fall of 2007 which was my last. Good grief has it really been that long since I’ve been there? In the fall of 2008 I went to Rainier and the Olympics instead and saw my first hoary and Olympic marmots, continuing an obsession ignited by Yellowstone’s yellow-bellied marmots.
This entry from Yellowstone starts out with "WHAT A DAY!", and what a day it was, for I saw my first (and only) wolf up close.
In 2009 instead of my usual fall hiking trip I took a spring trip to the redwoods in California, my first visit since the snowstorm aborted my attempt back in 2003. The big trip of 2010 was our visit to Maine to spread my mother-in-law’s ashes.
Where will 2011’s big trip be? Wherever it will be, it won’t be recorded in this notebook. My June 5th visit to Ridgefield filled the final page.
Fittingly the journal closes out with a visit to and map of one of my favorite places on the earth, the unassuming little auto tour at Ridgefield.
Thankfully I took a quick snapshot with my iPhone after planting our new larkspur as the slugs didn’t take long to strip it bare.
We have a little slice of the Columbia River Gorge taking root in our backyard in Portland. One of my wife’s colleagues does research on a larkspur species that grows on the western side of the gorge, Delphinium trolliifolium, and gave us one of his research subjects when he was done with it. I’m not sure of the exact nature of his research, but perhaps it’s to see if bigfoot would rather eat larkspurs or decorate its den with them.
Our particular plant was grown from seeds collected at the trailhead to Angel’s Rest, one of my favorite trails in the Gorge, so I was happy to give it a home in a shady section of our yard. The slugs were happy too as they quickly devoured it. It normally blooms in late March to early April so the hungry little gastropods ruined our chance for flowers this year, but there’s hope for the next. I put some slug bait around it and now there is a lot of new growth springing up. I don’t usually put out slug bait, even the new safer kind as I prefer the live-and-let-live approach, but it was the only way to try and save the plant.
The slugs may have done in the lobelia as well that we planted last fall as part of the new hummingbird garden in memory of my mother-in-law, as it hasn’t poked up out of the earth yet. One of the salvias has also shown no signs of life, perhaps the unusually wet winter and spring did it in, but there have been at least some signs of life from all of the other new arrivals. The new dogwood in particular did just fine during the winter and is now leafing out like crazy.
Some of the other new plants are showing signs of late night devourings as well, so perhaps I need to apply the slug bait a little more liberally until the plants are better established. I think most of our garden slugs aren’t native, so there’s that at least.
I was also pleased to see that the handful of ferns I transplanted from the side of the house are unrolling new fronds, I was most worried about the one with delicate lace-like fronds but it seems to be doing the best of all of them. Between the ferns, the trillium doing the best it ever has, the new hostas sprouting up, and the new larkspur hopefully making a comeback, Redwood Corner is starting to take shape.
An unopened bottle of mango lemonade has been sitting in the fridge for weeks, unopened because despite many attempts I couldn’t get the cap to let loose its grip. Last night I gave it one more go and with a great effort and a little grunting finally proved the master. I turned with liberated cap in hand and looked for others to share in my glorious victory. But Sam and Emma were chasing each other around the living room, Scout was asleep in her warm bed, and Ellie looked on only in the hope that this would somehow lead to hedgehogging.
Nevertheless I quietly poured my juice and lifted my glass to the heavens. Are you listening, universe? This is Boolie and he will not be denied!
The hummingbird garden in memory of my mother-in-law got off to a slow start. I first needed to clear out some of the raspberries, but when I dug down into the clay to remove raspberry and root, the next week another young plant sprouted up and it was once more down into the clay. This continued week after week until it was time for Ellie’s surgery, our trip to Maine, and suddenly we were well into the summer.
I didn’t want to risk planting new plants during the dry season, but since there was a Cape fuchsia out front (a sun-loving plant that a previous owner planted in total shade), I dug up some of its runners and transplanted them to the back. Unfortunately I didn’t have any potting soil to ease them into their new homes, so it was clay-to-clay for them. I hoped at least one would survive, and if not, it was no great loss.
To my surprise, all but one not only survived but even bloomed during the summer, and then grew quite a bit in the fall. An occasional hummer came by, a surprise given how low the plants were when they blossomed, but it was a promising start. Still, they stood alone until cooler weather returned.
When it did, I was ready list-in-hand and we were off to local nurseries recommended by a friend. We started off at Cornell Farms since my wife’s friends had kindly gotten us a gift certificate to start us on our way, and when we got there I realized it’s just minutes from where I work. It’s also close to Ellie’s surgeon, I had almost driven right past it on the way to one of Ellie’s appointments after a wrong turn sent me astray.
For the hummingbird garden we started with a showy ‘hot papaya’ coneflower balanced by a subdued green coneflower, as well as a distinctively pretty black-and-blue salvia. We also picked up a couple each of black-eyed Susans and hostas for other parts of the garden.
The first wave of new plants from the good folks at Cornell Farms, the first picture on my blog taken with my iPhoneGood pictures of the new plants will have to wait until spring, but even this snapshot shows the distinctive blossoms that give the black-and-blue salvia its nameThe all-green subtlety of this small coneflower will contrast nicely with the colorful blossoms all around itWill the hot papaya coneflower survive the winter and bloom again next year? Here’s hoping!
The black-eyed Susans were added to the wildflower garden in front to add color beneath the ever-encroaching mass of daisies. When we moved here all of the landscaping was completely overrun with weeds and this garden was the first to be rescued, but this is the first time I’ve added new plants to the survivors. When I first started pulling weeds back then, I found a golf ball buried below the plants and while not a golfer myself, decided to keep it in place in honor of my golf-loving stepfather. It now serves in his memory since he passed away a few years back, a pleasant reminder each time I work in this part of the garden and discover it anew.
The new black-eyed Susans joined the golf ball out front to add some color in front of the daisies
I’m not traditionally a fan of ferns but got religion while hiking in the redwoods surrounded by the ancient plants carpeting the forest floor. We had some ferns along a side of the house where they literally can’t be seen, so I moved them beside the trillium to create my own Redwood Corner, just like the redwood forests but for the minor point that I have no redwoods. The two new hostas sit nestled in among the ferns.
One sad note is that to make way for Redwood Corner I dug up Sam’s Grove, a patch of daisies that I moved to the backyard a few years ago. They just weren’t getting enough sun and needed to be tied up to avoid falling over. Little Sam loved playing in the daisies so I was sorry to do it, but I think he will enjoy the ferns even more than his old grove.
The next week we were off to Portland Nursery in SE Portland, starting off with a white dogwood for the back to complement the pink dogwood out front. The new one is a Korean dogwood (Cornus kousa) that is more disease-resistant than our native dogwood (native to the US, not Oregon), although our biggest consideration was finding one that would fit into the space available in the backyard — that is, it couldn’t impinge upon the hedgehog field of play. Some things are sacred.
The leaves of the Korean dogwood just starting to turn red with the fall
The hummingbird garden swelled with two new salvias, hot lips and Mexican sage, plus bee balm. A hummingbird hovered above me as I held the hot lips salvia before I even had it planted, then returned the following morning to work over all of the blossoms. I haven’t seen hummers much since, although I also haven’t spent much time out there between travel and the weather and the early approach of darkness.
The bee balm was past its prime but still gave some nice color until it finally yielded to the fall
We also picked up a stunning Lobelia hybrid, Queen Victoria, which unfortunately the slugs love as much as I do. It will be difficult to photograph, as even viewing with the naked eye it’s blooms seem impossibly red. Its dark maroon stem and leaves contrast nicely both with the red flowers as well as the green leaves of the surrounding plants. It was flopped over when we bought up but straightened right up until the wind and rain finally humbled it. It was still actively blooming last I checked so it should give us a nice explosion of color late in the season.
The lobelia (the maroon plant on the left) straightened up and prepared to bloom, setting a good example for the others. It has since bloomed the most violent red flowers I’ve ever seen.
So far everything has survived despite by lack of experience, we’ll see what survives the winter. The hot papaya coneflower is the biggest risk as it doesn’t like the cold, so hopefully it will at least survive one winter so I can see it bloom. Just once is all I ask.
And I have to say, I did enjoy myself putting in the new plants even if it did keep me from hiking in the Gorge, gardening is a lot more fun when you love the plants you’re working with. You’re on notice plants-of-the-garden-I-don’t-like, sleep tight this winter but don’t say I didn’t warn you if the shovel comes digging your way come spring.
The humble start of our hummingbird garden, with the ever menacing raspberries in backAll of the plants in the lower two-thirds of the picture are new, the cape fuchsia in the lower left was transplanted from the front while the rest were purchased at nurseries.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
English proverb
A bird book in the hand is worth two in the house.
Boolish proverb
I’m a nerd.
When I’m about to make a big purchase, I make an equally big spreadsheet comparing the pluses and minuses of each option. Computers, cameras, lenses, cars, houses, doesn’t matter, there’s always a spreadsheet. Until now. Until the iPhone.
Even without firing up Excel (or lately, Numbers) to map out the alternatives, I knew the iPhone 4 was the one to finally replace my ancient and little-loved Sony. I’ve been playing with it for a few weeks now and I have to say the little thing really tickles my fancy.
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the first three apps I’ve purchased are all related to birds.
When I ordered the phone, I knew there were birding apps for it but I didn’t know which ones. So I did a little happy dance when my wife informed me that the Sibley guide was available for the iPhone. The Sibley guide is my favorite of my four printed field guides because of the breadth and depth of the illustrations, but it’s also the largest and heaviest so not the one I carry into the field.
Sibley has the answer
On our recent trip to Maine, I brought my second favorite guide, Kenn Kaufman’s excellent guide. But it was left behind in the hotel room when we went out to visit a relative, who it turns out had hairy woodpeckers coming to her feeders. There was a male and female and another similar bird, but with an orange patch on top instead of a red cap in back. Was this a juvenile hairy or another species altogether?
We consulted a bird guide at the house but it didn’t provide any clues. Even my book back at the hotel didn’t provide the answer. It wasn’t until I got back home that the Sibley guide showed not only the location of the juvenile’s patch but also the clue about the color.
With the iPhone app we would have known the answer straight away. And to top it off, the guide includes a lot of audio files so I can better learn to bird by ear. I was convinced of the need to improve in this area while taking a guided tour offered by the Audubon Society in Maine, I was stunned at how readily the leader could pick out birds by song.
When I’m at home, I’ll still prefer the printed guide, but I’m terribly excited now that I can carry hundreds of birds in my pocket.
Next up was Angry Birds, a game where you use a slingshot to toss birds at the creatures that stole their eggs. It’s a delightful little game but would be even more fun if you used a black lab to toss hedgehogs at the creatures who stole her food. Just a suggestion.
The next app not only has birds like eagles and falcons and cardinals, but other wildlife like bears and panthers and rams. I still have a big learning curve but I’m looking forward to playing Madden NFL 2011 as I start riding the train again.
I woke up at 4 a.m. on Friday to the sounds of Emma having a hairball at the foot of the bed. I was pleased she chose to join the rest of us but after getting up to clean it up and trying to get back to sleep, the Snuggle Twins (a.k.a. Sam and Scout) kept waking me up so I eventually just got up.
I got to work at 6 a.m. only to discover I left my badge at home. Since the receptionist wouldn’t be there for another two hours, I had no choice but to head back home to get it. I still got in before 7 a.m., a couple of hours earlier than normal, but it wasn’t as early a start as I hoped for.
Ellie is doing well, she feels great but still has a few weeks left before she goes back for x-rays and hopefully gets the go-ahead to start ramping up her activity level. Hold on Ellie, hold on!
My laptop is in for servicing at a Mac reseller near work and won’t be back until next week. They were having trouble reproducing a couple of the problems so I may take it to Apple after that. It turns three years old next month, which not so coincidentally is also when its warranty runs out.
I can’t do any photo editing from the old computers so posts will continue to be slow until I’m back up and running. Lots of pictures to come.
With NaNoWriMo 2009 wrapping up, I’m going to call it a night. My final tally is 56,307 words, just barely eclipsing my total of four years ago.
In your face, 2005!
I hadn’t planned on writing that much after crossing the 50,000 threshold two days ago, and only a modest effort yesterday, but I had a lot of seat time on the MAX today and Ellie wasn’t hedgehogging me too much tonight, so that left more time for writing than usual. And then I thought it would be nice to get at least 55,000 words, and by then I was within shouting distance of my previous total, so …
I’ve got a backlog building of pictures to edit, as well as edited pictures to put online, so stay tuned. In addition to the recent pictures of Scout, there are pictures coming of Sam, Emma, and Ellie as I’ve tried to get at least one decent picture of the pets with the new camera.
There are also wildlife pictures to come, as I went to Ridgefield 3 out of the 4 days of the Thanksgiving break, and remembered to bring a battery for the new camera 2 out of 3 times! Did I see bald eagles? Great blue herons? Great white sharks?
After reaching the 50,000 word goal for National Novel Writing Month in 2005, I did it again this year, hitting 50,737 words according to the NaNoWriMo validator.
And with two days left to spare!
Not quite the tour de force of 2005, where I crossed the 50,000 word mark a week early and ended up with 56,251 words by the end of the month.
The “novel”, such as it is, was a lot of fun to write but is still a complete mess. Sometimes a character will morph into another mid-chapter when I realize it’s really better suited for a different part of the book. There are huge gaps in the timeline, missing sections of the story, and all of that, so after the end of the month I’ll need to fire up my outliner and start making some structure out of the madness.
Not a bad show, though, especially given that I got behind in the early going until I mounted a steady comeback that took me over the top.
Three cheers for Boolie! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip … shhhhh, quiet now, let’s keep it down. Sammy’s sleeping on my lap and Ellie is snoring behind me.
Boolie 