What time is it?

[ritaxis]

My computer clock refuses to update. It keeps telling me an error occurred but it won't tell me what the error is. No, it's not the firewall -- I've updated the clock before.

However, here's what time it is in the endless march of the seasons:

In the big box store, it's beach towel time!

At the farmer's market, it's time for green garlic! And also, the Bulb Baron of Carmel Valley is selling daffodils, narcissus, and jonquils -- the whole parking lot smells of them.

And for dogs, it's eat grass and puke time!



acorn woodpecker, Melanerpes formicivorus:

"Common and conspicuous in open oak woods or mixed woods with oaks. Noisy and gregarious, with complex social system, distinctive voice and striking plumage. Gathers acorns to store in holes drilled in certain trees or poles . . ."

The dying oak outside Gloria's window is its favorite victim locally, but it's shy: if it senses that you're looking at it, it walks around to the other side of the branch. This picture took some patience to get.

Comments

When we still lived on the farm

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

In another few weeks it would have been Tenant-Drop-Off-Cows on rented pasture with fresh green grass.

So it was always dog-roll-in-cow-poop season for me. (You've never lived until you have had a Really Excited green fawn (or steel-gray) great dane trying to share the luuuuv!)

We never had a problem with them eating grass, or we didn't notice them barfing because they did it outside...

And we just had a HUGE storm pass through, parts out east in MO are having tornados! Spring is really here, even though the calendar hasn't caught up.

Re: When we still lived on the farm

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

That's the thing, here: the fresh green grass is a "winter" phenonmenon, or, actually, as I like to think of it, "spring" begins in January.

I've done some thinking about the definition of seasons, and depending on what variable I use, I get different results. If I go by sunrise-sunset and the stars, that's cut and dried. Everybody has the same seasons at the same latitudes. If I go by temperature highs and lows, our seasons follow along with the rest of the northern temperate zone more or less with some exceptions (July is cooler than September, at least subjectively, and the variation from coldest to hottest is less than in continental places).

But. If you were to define the seasons by their names -- and look at the behavior of plants:

life begins to "spring" in December. Grasses ripen in May, so that's summer, right? Dormancy begins in June, so that's fall, and by July dormancy is complete, so that's winter, according to grass. You get a long winter if you ask the grass. It's better if you ask native grass, but they don't dominate the landscape and haven't since the forty?-year drought at the beginning of the 19th century.

Anyway, it's definitely spring by early February, I don't care what the equinox says.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

eat grass and puke

I really hope that's a verb...

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Usually, but not, unfortunately, always.

Dogs are, partly, neotynous wolves (there's of course more to it than that), and we all know what baby wolves are given to eat by their mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts.