I am the Audience

Oak leaves

January 15, 2024

Southern culture
One of the pages I follow on FaceBook is Southern Piedmont Natural History. It is maintained byt USC-Spartanburg. Today, they posted this picture:
- A – Swamp White Oak (Quercus bicolor)
- B – Southern Red Oak or Spanish Oak (Quercus falcata)
- C – Chinquapin or Yellow Chestnut Oak (Quercus muehlenbergii)
- D – Sawtooth (Quercus acutissima) is a non-native oak introduced from Asia in 1862.
- E – Northern Red Oak (Quercus rubra)
- F – Swamp Chestnut or Basket Oak (Quercus michauxii)
- G – Cherrybark or Swamp Spanish Oak (Quercus pagoda)
- H – Post Oak (Quercus stellata)
- I – Water or Paddle Oak (Quercus nigra)
- J – Eastern White Oak (Quercus alba)
- K – Overcup Oak (Quercus lyrata)
- L – Willow Oak (Quercus phellos)
- M – Pin or Swamp Oak (Quercus palustris)
- N – Rock Chestnut Oak (Quercus montana)
This is very interesting to me. I have never been able to identify the different varieties and I love having this reference.

They pointed to this website as a place to learn what insects are supported by the oak trees in your area. https://nativeplantfinder.nwf.org/About

I have made a separate page with the article from FB because it’s long. But, also more informative.
Call me Al

January 9, 2024

Laughing, wine

Do you remember this?

My local wine bar has a club that you pay $40 a month to be a member. With the membership, you get a free tasting once a week (tastes of 4 wines usually goes for $5, enough in the tastes to be equivalent to a glass). And 2 bottles from the tasting the first week of the month priced $20 or less. If you go in every week, it saves you $40 a month. Except you end up spending more than that on the snacks you buy to go with the additional wine you drink while you’re there.

The glasses are Riedel and you can call yourself whatever you want. I saw one for She Who Must Be Obeyed. Helps the staff to learn the regulars and is a little something to make members feel special.

We went in a month ago and they had a bunch of them out on tables for sale for $10. Nice general purpose wine glasses with random names on them. People who had not been in the building for 2 years or longer. On sale to clear out the space.

Mine says “Al”.
Cute red head

January 8, 2024

a day in this life, birdwatching
Weather blanket

January 7, 2024

a day in this life

I didn’t mean to be neglectful. I got a muscle spasm (for NO reason) on Tuesday and I’ve been decrepit and whiney all week. Sleeping on the sofa seems to be helping. Also, my heating pad.

In the mean time, I’ve been working on this temperature blanket. Most frequently, people use the colors that TV news shows use and they start on January 1. Sometimes they choose the highest or the lowest temperature fo the day. Sometimes they do squares that use 2 colors to show both extremes.

Mine begins with Januay 21 and I’m using the colors of the desert near Taos, NM where my little friend was born last year. (I say “my little friend.” But I haven’t actually met him yet. NM is a pretty good distance from NC.)

I have greens for cactus and browns for desert rocks. I’ve used the WeatherUnderground.com archive to get the temperature at the time closest to his time of birth. (It’s off by 2 minutes, but close enough).

I got 3 months in and decide I needed to start over. So, I ripped it all out and began again with a less elaborate (aka shorter) stitch and a smaller hook. The original was going to be 9’/3m long.

Because of the way it’s wadded up, it looked like 3 different projects this morning and that gave me a chuckle.
Annual sun

December 28, 2023

a day in this life

I snatched this from the Astronomy Picture of the Day site hosted by NASA.