Stamp of the day: Foxes and coyotes

This morning I saw a young red fox that had been run over by a car. It was laying dead on the road.  Such a waste of a good life.

A few days ago LA and I saw an equally disturbing sight - along a rural road on a snow covered field an animal much larger than a fox was running.  It was a coyote, with big ears.  But it was so emancipated and its fur so thin that it looked more like a greyhound, and its tail was thin, thin, thin.  Mange, scabies, rabies, who knows, but something was afflicting it severely and you wondered how long it would survive.

We have had living visitors here too in the last week. A fat, ugly and white-faced oppossum occupied our porch for an hour one night and refused to leave.  They really do play dead if threathened.  It finally went away after LA stood on the outside of the porch railining poking it with a stick, hard and repeatedly. 

Racoons you mostly see dead too here in New Jersey, run over at night.  Grey squirrels do their thievery at the bird feeders or look for their hidden nuts that they can't find in the forests.  I saw another interesting thing today, an emu!    It is at a farm just a few kilometers from here. 

Deers are the absolutely most common wildlife mammal here, both dead and alive.

During 1 March to 15 May I am part of a personal bioblitz effort and challenge, where we will try to see as many species as possible of any living thing on Earth.  It started this morning and my first species was of course, Homo sapiens.  Second - blue jay, out the window :)

This dragonfly wasn't heading the warning...

headless dragonfly found on the road, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

.. and lost his head on the mountain one morning. Actually, I found him on the road, without head, but he was still alive for hours... Creepy, indeed.

In memoriam

hollyhocks, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

For Joan, who died yesterday. I know you loved plants, so here is one in honor of you.

No more "Just one more thing"

Today, one of our most favorite actors died, Peter Falk, 83. He is most famous as the police detective Columbo in the TV series with the same name, but I think I first saw him in the movie the Princess Bride where he plays the old grandfather reading the story to the sick kid in bed.  That is a lovely movie.

And as Columbo, he became Columbo, famous for his smart intellect he hid behind his everyday rumpled looks inside an old gray beaten up French car and his trenchcoat that looked like he had slept in it.  His most characteristic line was probably, while walking out after an interview with a suspect, turning around and saying: 'oh, just one more thing', and then the question came that skewered the unsuspecting person, or providing some important clue to the solution. He was very popular as Columbo in Sweden when I grew up too.

He was also in Wings of Desire and in the very funny movie Murder by Death.  If you haven't seen him acting you have missed something, but these days that is easy to fix.  Just rent the movies!

Here is a slideshow of photos from his movies. Enjoy!

Spring Sky in New Jersey

flowering pink dogwood with turkey vulture in sky, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Can you see the turkey vulture in the sky? It is there! Actually it is two.

This photo is from Locktown, a tiny village with a very old (with American standards) church and cemetery with grave stones leaning in all directions, and some so old that they are just made from plain flat stones from the nearby Wickecheoke Creek (yep, that is an old Indian name). More photos of this nice place on Flickr.

fixing up the vegetable garden, a report

The first thing to do after a sever winter and a long early spring that felt like it would never end... assess the damage. This year we also had last years horrific thirsty summer to deal with. The vegetable garden beds look fine (but only one of the two little dogwoods in the front made it). The concord grape vine (blue small tart grapes) is bursting out with buds, but the Niagara green grape vine has only two shoots this year. We will see if it recovers.

The young asparagus plants survived the winter and last summer, despite fierce competition with some mint that is encrouching on their space.  The mint got dug up, a bed frame was added, and then they got soil, sand, and compost.  I think the asparagus will be much happier this year. Purple asparagus is much thicker than the green one, and turns (unfortunately) green when cooked. But it tastes heavenly, green or purple doesn't matter.

We installed 5 new raised bed frames made from locally grown and sawn Eastern White Pine and Swedish pallet hinges. In the bottom of the deep one we put cardboard to smother all the weeds and grass, and then added loads of dirt (thanks kids and PP).  On the lower ones, where the plants will grow into the ground itself and not just in the raised bed (for better moisture during our hot summers), I just added newspaper in the bottom so it can rot faster and kill weeds at the same time. We will see if it works for the peppers.

My garden decorations survived the winter fine, but some of our trees died after last summer's extreme drought and this winter's harsh weather with ice storms and cold.  Around here in NJ you see many big pines and spruces stand as dead brown skeletons after last summer, and I have seen such dramatic loss of trees before.  This is in addition to all the trees that fell down last year in freak storms.  The weather is really changing, and it is getting worse. (click on the photos to see larger versions on Flickr)

   

  our dead zelkova tree, sniff.....

Setting a curved record straight

If you have heard, like me, that there now are more people alive than ever have been alive before on Earth, you have heard a myth that seems very resistant and impossible to kill off.  Apparently somebody in the 1970s uttered this false fact, and it has made the rounds many times now in articles and books.

The truth, as calculated by the Population Reference Bureau, is that "about 5.8 percent of all people ever born are alive today."  (That is today = year 2002). Read their article, it is very interesting how they calculated it, taking birthrates and death rates, world population sizes, average age of death, etc. In total, they estimate that 106 billion people have lived on Earth until now.

Imagine all those millions and billions of people!  I think it is strange we don't run into old archeological bones more often than we do.