Tag: Briar

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01/28/2024 grasslands field trip

Mom stands on the edge of overgrazed grass at edge of bare winter woods
Mutual photography of bloggers.
Zoomed out view
Close up
More close up
I saw a tiny dew covered spiderweb in a hollow in the ground!
A cute little seedling at just the seed leaves stage, near the dew covered spiderweb.
Briar turns to face the photographer against a backdrop of winter oaks
Who me?
After turning around in the previous picture, briar majestically lifts her head in the bright winter sunlight
Briar can pretend to be majestic and noble!
Still closed mostly
Open!
We saw several Scleroderma earthballs.
A prairie verbena purpled leaves for winter but still alive.
Last year’s branches of queen’s delight (Stillingia), the limestone species.
Briar sat nearby as Mom tried to get a picture of the Stillingia stems too.
So tiny
Unfurling leaves
Mom has been seeing Cymopterus blooming in other nearby sites but in this site they were just emerging.
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02/03/2024 Lexington WMA walk

Briar the german shepherd dog solemnly waits in the car for her adventure to begin as I load the car.
Ready to go!
Briar the german shepherd dog smiles up at me, wearing her orange safety vest, from a wash filleed with brushy and little bluestem. the dam of Lake Dahlgren is in the distance.
We looked around behind Lake Dahlgren. Here is all I put on iNaturalist. I put a few of the prettiest ones here in the post directly too.
I'm holding the dried stem of the plant "seedbox". Its two visible seed pods are a distinctive cubic shape with a hint of roundness on each side, and a hole in the middle top.
I recognized Seedbox (Ludwigia alternifolia) from its fun pods! We have some in our garden.
Briar the german shepherd, wearing a blue harness and a bright hunter-orange safety vest smiles down from a ravine top at me.
liverwort leaves on damp brown sand
Liverworts!
I point at a tiny green patch of moss on sandstone while Briar sits baffled but smiling nearby.
Dog for scale next to moss.
Briar the german shepherd dog stands in her orange safety vest on a big exposed ridge of sandstone, with bluestem grass and cedars and oaks in the background. she is looking out of frame and smiling.
The clouds came and went. It was cool and breezy but I did okay with just one layer of long sleeves.
Splitbeard bluestem seed tufts lit up by sunshine against red sandstone
Splitbeard bluestem is so pretty with its tufts. I think this picture would be a fun puzzle.
eroded red sandstone leaving nodules. bluestem and goldenrod and other dead plants at the top of the eroding edge
Nodule habitat
round red and dark brown sandstone nodules in softer sand
Close up
I found some nodules in the sandstone!
a blackberry stem and leaf, the stem has whitish speckles
Blackberry stem
close-up of blackberry stem and a bud, showing the white patches with dark centers
Maybe not lichen
I thought this blackberry stem had lichens, which would have been unusual, but I think maybe it was a fungus.

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01/22/2024 world’s most long-suffering dog

The OU Campus was very wisely closed due to freeezing rain today. It only got above freezing in very late afternoon. You’d think having humans home would be glorious, but instead the whole world has become a very scary shiny floor. Even the patio isn’t safe! She’s gone out three times and has been eager to return to stable footing. (Briar was spooked by slipping on a shiny floor once in her youth, with no physical harm, and at age 6 isn’t really over it.). Hopefully now that it’s at 33 F we can have a little walk before any refreezing occurs in the evening.
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01/16/2024 walk to OU duck pond

It’s 22 degrees F and sunny and with very light north wind now, so we walked over to the OU duck pond to see what was happening. All the geese and ducks were at the north end at a patch of open, flowing water on the creek. We also saw two Belted Kingfishers tangling in the air – squabbling? Courting?

A woman in a long blue quilted coat looks into an iced over pond at some big slider turtles.
Paula spotted one big slider turtle under the very thick ice!
Three turtles (two close together near shore and one farther out) under cracked ice that’s at least half a foot deep b
Can you find all three? They were all moving under the ice, which looked at least 4-6” thick.
A big iron sewer or water cover with the tidy graffiti described in the caption as well as a small geometric pattern of partial squares at right angles. Briar the dog sniffs the concrete under the lid.
“think, look, listen”… smell?
Paula holds a purplish leaf of the spring beauty. It’s very narrow and long, with dry tan bits of bermudagrass around it.
Paula remembered where she saw Spring Beauties blooming last year and after a few minutes of searching we found several leaves! No buds yet.
Briar’s fluffy tail near a geodetic survey marker in low bermudagrass and small forbs.
We also noticed this geodetic reference survey marker for the first time. Dog for scale.
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01/05/2024 before dark

Before it got dark yesterday we did the winter (structural/shape) pruning on the fruit trees. The buds were fuzzy. (Summer pruning is supposed to be about reducing tree size for those of us who want the trees smaller.)
Everybody who’s a fruit tree in this picture got a haircut!
The dwarf peach tree mostly needed a few crossing branches in the middle removed. Otherwise it looked good.

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10/07/2023 weeding helper

Briar the German shepherd dog lays, looking completely and devastatingly bored, with her butt squishing the base of several stalks of Mexican sage, which are valiantly flowering purple and white above her butt.
After kindly avoiding sitting on the Mexican sage while I weeded, Briar finally decided to sit on them. 🙄
Briar the German shepherd dog stands with her head and back wedged under and draped by long arcs of Maximilian sunflower stalks and blooms.
Earlier, Briar helped us look over the now conveniently low Maximilian sunflowers. We can see all the insects easily!
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10/05/2023 red list day

Today I walked outside for a break and saw a very boldly striped bee on the Maximilian sunflowers and thought to myself, “Self, that bee is different.” Turns out I was right! This beautiful lady is a Southern Plains Bumblebee! If I have counted and remembered correctly, this is our fifth bumblebee species for the yard.
This species is an IUCN red list endangered species. It is not federally listed so it has no legal protection in the United States, but it is declining and of great conservation concern. Briar was observing our exciting new friend with great attention.
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09/16/2023 inspection of dust

An overhead view of a leashed gray and white cat avoiding a very happy German shepherd laying down nearby.
The formerly pristine gray and white cat laying on his side in dust on concrete near the edge of the lawn. He is covered in brown dust bits everywhere. His face is happy.
A close up view of the now very dusty gray and white cat as he presses his face and paws onto the dirty concrete. Heaven.
The dust covered gray and white cat pushes himself up to leave because of the extremely annoying presence of the smiling and proud German Shepherd Dog nearby in the lawn who is watching over him. Gross, a dog.
Shackleton, the slightly less dust covered now gray and white cat, attempts to enjoy eating grass but has to turn away because of the enthusiastic nose of the German shepherd dog that keeps going to snuffle him.
Briar was delighted, honored, and thrilled to be allowed to escort Shackleton on a leashed walkabout. Shackleton was less thrilled about Briar, but finally got some good dust rolls in and sampled various lush grasses. He also hissed at Briar every time she got too enthusiastic about her adoration.