Jomegat's Weblog

I have read about eating fiddleheads several times in the past couple of years. I had never eaten them though, because there are only a few species that are suited to fine dining, and I can’t tell them apart when they’re at the fiddlehead stage. One of the things I read is that there is really only one species to consider for eating, and that’s the Ostrich Fern. Some others are edible too, but require boiling in two changes of water.

Anyhow, I was in the grocery store yesterday trying to put together some salad ingredients as I strolled through the produce section. And there they were – fiddleheads. Joy! I snapped up a package and carefully read the label. Nowhere did it indicate what these were – ferns. Nowhere did it indicate the species. All it did indicate was the weight, price, and the fact that it was a PRODUCT OF CANADA in all caps.

I got back to the office and whipped out a large bowl in the kitchen. I dumped in some salad greens, scopped up half a cuke, a quarter green pepper, and three or four radishes. And then… a half cup of fiddleheads. I topped it off with a half cup of shelled sunflower seeds and some Russian dressing. Yum.

The fiddleheads were delicious. They were also… uncooked. My stomach started giving me little hints before I even finished the salad. By 1:00pm, I was pretty miserable, and the misery only increased as the day wore on. How foolish of me to think that just because I found these in a grocery store all prewrapped and ready to go, that they were really ready to go!

The misery hung with me until after I went to bed. When I woke up this morning I felt much better though. This is not a mistake I will repeat.

I still have 80% of those fiddleheads left. My heart and my head say “Yes! Cook them up proper and eat them!” But my stomach says “Are you insane? Run away! Run away!”

I think the memory will have to fade a little more before I get my courage up.

This little critter landed on my jeans tonight by the frog pond. I was trying to get its picture when it leapt off my knee and into the mud. It posed well enough after that and I got several nice shots. This is prolly not what most people picture when they think about “Bambi eyes.”

In other news…
Jonathan started work today. He is now employed as an intern at the company I work for. They put him to work right away, and he seemed to hit the ground running. Yay!

In more other news…
In an attempt to be more like Roald Amundsen rather than Robert Scott, I have spent the evening planning the campout we have coming up this weekend. There’s a lot of logistics to work through to make this successful.

One weakness I have noticed in myself is that I sometimes abandon plans when it comes time to execute. In the heat of the moment, I might think “Is this really necessary? It’s certainly easier to not do this.” Nine times out of ten, this is an error, as I sometimes forget the “why” or the cascade of problems that the easy-way-out sometimes causes. So I am resolved to stick with the plan that I am trying to carefully prepare now.

The other thing I’ve found that helps tremendously is to have a written copy of the plan, and have it WITH me, and easily accessible. Trying to do it by memory is a sure path to failure, at least for me. It also doesn’t hurt to share the plans with the other adults. Sometimes they find problems, and if they see it before we’re committed, we have time to adjust.

Last night I drove up to Maine and stayed in an Econolodge in Waterville. That was still about an hour away from Bangor, where a Disaster Response seminar was being held. I got up around 7:30, had some breakfast in the hotel (which had no wifi except in the lobby), and then pressed on to Bangor. I got there a little before 9:00am.

That’s when I learned that this seminar was one that I had already taken in Portland late last year. Groan. That was a four and a half hour (each way) trip pretty much wasted. And of course, I felt pretty stupid. The thing that fooled me was that this seminar was described as hands-on, and the one I attended was not hands-on at all. None the less, it was the same seminar. I figured this was “Part Two” but I was (very) sadly mistaken.

I stuck around anyhow to refresh my memory and eat lunch. It was supposed to end at 5:00pm, and for all I know, it did. But I left at 3:30 or so. I figured my memory was refreshed enough by then.

I did stop on the way home and pick up a geocache. This one was in the 43/70 sector of New Hampshire (that is to say, the latitude was 43 degrees and some change, and the longitude was 70 degrees and some change). There’s another cache in NH called the nine degrees of New Hampshire, and to claim that one, you have to find caches in all the nine degrees. I now have four of the nine.

Still, it was a long drive.

There are five Pink Lady’s Slippers growing within about a 5 foot radius in my woods behind the house. I took several shots of them today, and I think this one is fairly representative of the best:

For the geocache I’m planning to hide, I have decided that it would be insane to try to cut a hole into the endgrain of a log section with a hole saw. Since the grain runs along the length of the log, it would be nearly impossible to pop out the section. Rather, I’m going to try to rig it up on my lathe and see what I can do that way. I will use my brace and bit to bore a hole into the part of the log that is still rooted to the ground though. That will prolly have a one inch diameter. Then I’ll turn a peg to fit into that hole on one end, and fit into the larger, lathe-bored hole on the other. We’ll see how it goes.

Jonathan comes home from Belgium tomorrow. He has been having a great time, and my heart is simply overflowing with joy for him. I can hardly wait to see him again and listen as he regales us with tales of his adventures. He has been keeping us up-to-date via email. I guess with Facebook too, but I have never been comfortable with FB, and have categorically refused to create an account there. With all the privacy changes they’ve been making over their short time in operation, I stand by that decision.

Tonight I downloaded abut a week’s worth of photos from my camera. I guess I’ve been getting lazy. Here’s a shot of the woodpecker I saw Saturday when I took my walk in the rain.

I’m guessing this is a Common Flicker (Colaptes aurates), as that’s the closest match I can find in my Field Guide (Peterson again). Maybe Dad can confirm (or correct!)

I had also forgotten that I had taken a few (bad) photos of a pair of killdeers (Charadrius vociferous) at the church one morning this week after I dropped Beth off at school. None of these turned out very well, and part of that was because I took the shot through a dirty windshield. I figured that if I got out of the car or rolled down the window, the killdeer would have freaked out and started pretending to be injured (to draw me away from the nest). But since I have seen these two characters in the churchyard more than once now, I’m guessing they must have a nest there. That means I might have an opportunity to get some better shots (but we’ll see).

Hopefully it won’t turn out like the hobblebush photos. I stopped twice to try and get some good shots of those, and neither time did it work out very well. And now the blooms are gone and I’ll have to wait until next year.

For a school project, Beth had to write a paper and demonstrate how to do something (if I’m understanding the assignment correctly). Her teacher suggested that she might want to demonstrate how to walk her dog, if that was OK with me.

Well… no.

Penny doesn’t respect Beth enough to let her a) attach a leash, or b) lead her around on it. We haven’t taught her to heel either (it’s on my todo list). Further, Beth isn’t strong enough to restrain Penny. I’m pretty sure Penny could drag her around the yard without much effort.

So we tried to think of something else she could write about. I proposed the idea of “how to find a geocache” and Beth thought it was a good one. But for her to demonstrate, we would need to plant a cache on the church property. We did that yesterday morning when I dropped her off at school.

I started to make up the cache description page, but I will not activate it until it gets cleared by the Church Board – and they may very well decline. But it doesn’t have to be published for her to use it for school. We’ll just print out the info ahead of time.

I’ve also been thinking of some ambitious caches I’d like to hide. My idea was to take a small log about five feet long and four-six inches in diameter. Then cut off the top foot of that and hollow it out. The cache would go in the hollow section, but that space would be shared by a peg which would be embedded in the lower part from which it was cut. Then I’d drive the lower part into the ground, fit the top back on, and hope it looked like a broken-off tree.

So tonight I started looking around the property for a log that met my requirements. I found a standing dead oak right by the frog pond which is right by the road. It was 30 feet tall, but it was four inches in diameter. I cut it off about five feet from the ground, then cut off the top foot. Next I will hollow it out and make the peg.

I had already been thinking about planting a cache at the frog pond, and when I saw that tree, it was clinched.

Next step was to find my hole saw. I’ve looked everywhere for it, but no can find. 😦 I might have to borrow one from somebody. I thought about using my brace and bit to bore a hole, but my biggest bit is a 20 (that is, 20 sixteenths of an inch, or one and a quarter inches). I could use a hole that size, but it really limits the size of the cache. Plus this is seasoned oak, and I do not relish the thought of boring into the end grain. I’d like to get it about eight inches deep so there’s plenty of room in there for both the cache and the supporting peg. It will be hard enough as it is with the hole saw.

We shall see.

Jonathan is still alive and having a good time in Brussels. They went to a fancy French restaurant at Waterloo tonight. I’m sure the food was to die for too. The French take food very seriously, and it really shows in their cooking. They don’t mess around. I hadn’t ever connected Waterloo with Belgium, though I did know it was in the general neighborhood. I guess he’s not the only one getting a history lesson tonight.

Today after work I went to the church to set the garage canopy thing up again. The first time I did that I had help, and the next day (or was it two day?) we had 45MPH wind gusts which uprooted it and threw it into the trees, bending several of the steel joints beyond all hope of repair.

Luckily, I had a full second set of hardware, and asked the guy who hauled it away if I could rummage through them again for replacements. I found enough replacement parts, and today was the day I chose (based mostly on the weather forecast) to work on it again.

I replaced the parts, stretched the canvas over the frame, and anchored it with several 18″ steel stakes. That should hold it. Next step is to move some pallets into it and then move yard sale junk on top of the pallets.

While I was there I also set up a broken computer that I had taken home to fix. I ended up swapping out the power supply. Hopefully that will do the trick.

Some local geocachers found Beth’s cache today and left some very nice notes. I emailed them back thanking them for their kind words. It’s kinda neat that they were able to find it so quickly.

Jonathan got back to us sometime between when I left the office and when I got home. Sounds like he’s having a good-but-not-TOO-good time. Just what I wanted for him. 😉

I got a Skype from Jonathan today. He had gotten off at the wrong stop on the bus from the airport to the hotel. I told him to figure out where he was (find an intersection) and plug that in to Google Maps, which he did. The hotel was a 90 minute walk from where he was. With luggage.

I told him to wait for the next bus. He disconnected, and then I thought of a better plan. Take a taxi. But it was too late. He was incommunicado at that point. So I waited. And waited. For two hours. Meanwhile I’m thinking he could have easily caught a bus that took him even farther from his hotel. Mannn – a taxi would have been sooo much better!

He Skyped me again from the hotel. He had gone to the bus station and hailed a cab. Good for him. He finally got to the hotel at about 8:00pm Brussels time (after landing at 2:35pm). Four and a half hours from the airport to the hotel isn’t bad at all when you consider he had to claim his bags, clear customs and catch a bus.

I can well imagine that I would have caught the wrong bus myself. My company’s CFO once told me I was the worst traveller in the company, and as much as I hate to admit it… maybe he was right.

I countered that I was the one (back then) who did the most travelling sans budget authority, so that when I found myself in a jam, I had to get approval to spend my way out of it. Other company travellers were at the executive level and didn’t need any approval for that.

But more likely is that he was right – I suck at travel. And it looks like Jonathan has his dad’s travelling genes. Sorry Jonathan!

He said he had only gotten two hours of sleep and that the transatlantic flight was terrible. He also hadn’t eaten anything. So off he went again to get some food, and then to bed with him. He should be fresh and ready for the conference in the morning.

I took Jonathan to the airport tonight so he could fly to Brussels. He was very excited. The airlines say to check in two hours before departure for international flights, and I think we got him there three hours early instead. I stayed in the car while he unloaded his suitcase from the trunk. I took a crappy photo, he turned and went into the terminal, and I drove off. I’d post the photo (crappy as it is), but it’s still in the camera.

As I write, his flight is scheduled to leave in just under an hour. I hope he has fun (but not too much fun!) His plane is supposed to fly over Greenland to avoid the volcanic ash.

Earlier in the day, Beth and I planted our first geocache. We hid it near the wetland I found yesterday. I still need to make some tweaks to it, but it is live now. I’m going to add a waypoint to show where people can park.

Backing up some more, Beth and I went and found a geocache this morning. This was a ruse to get us out of the house so Beth could get Va something for Mother’s Day. We found the cache, and she got Va a present. High fives all around!

I talked to my Mom on the phone on the way to the airport. She’s still in the hospital, but they’re thinking she’ll go home tomorrow. She was in good spirits.

Today after lunch I decided to talk Penny out for a walk. It was raining, but I have rain pants, a rain coat, and a nice Tilly hat (which goes everywhere I do, rain, snow, or shine anyhow). My thought was to go out to Sandogardy Pond and see if the Clintonia borealis was in bloom yet. I can never remember the common names for that, but I think blue-bead lily and corn lily are both used.

Just before I crossed Sandogardy Pond Road, I spotted a bunch of these:

I have one of these on my property growing up under the guy wire that supports the utility pole in the corner of the yard. I couldn’t figure out what it was, so I sent a decent photo off to Mr Smarty Plants, and he/she/they identified it for me. The one at my house has flowers on it, but there are still tightly closed. To my joy, I found two more of these bushes near it yesterday. There are thousands of these up on Mount Major in Alton, but I don’t get up that way very often. I didn’t know about these by Sandogardy Pond Road until today.

In spite of the common name, these are not really cherries at all. Cherries belong to the genus Prunus, as do plums and peaches. So plums and peaches are closer to cherries than black choke cherries are. Botanists must be having a really tough time trying to figure this one out actually, as it has half a dozen synonyms:

• Aronia arbutifolia
• Aronia melanocarpa
• Aronia nigra
• Pyrus arbutifolia
• Pyrus melanocarpa
• Sorbus melanocarpa

As you can see, it has been placed in no fewer than four genera. Anyhow, I pressed on.

On the way to the pond I decided to take a detour. There are snowmobile trails through the town forest, which the road to Sandogardy borders. One of them leads to the town’s sand pit. I turned onto that path. A few hundred yards up that trail, I heard a woodpecker. It was hammering away on the tree I was standing next to. I took a picture, but I guess my camera’s just not up to zooms. (Or it could be a problem with the photographer).

Then I came across this tastefully adorned stick:

I got to the sandpit and walked around its rim. Near the back is a huge pile of trash where people have been partying. It’s right next to the stream that drains Sandogardy, and it’s not a pretty sight. I went to the stream’s edge and looked about, hoping to see some ducks, herons, or turtles, but no such luck. I turned around.

Just as the path reaches the sandpit, it is crossed by another. I turned east, because that would lead deeper into the woods, towards the railroad tracks. I figured the trail would either stop at the stream’s edge, or lead over a bridge, but having never been down that path before, wasn’t sure which. Turns out the trail ends at the stream’s edge, and there’s another party site. This one was not nearly as trashy, though there were two abandoned and broken-down tents there, as well as two campfire sites, and several beer bottles. Dunno why people can’t clean up after themselves. I could see the stream just t othe east of the trail, so I did a little bushwhacking and was rewarded with this:

When I see something like this, it makes me want to go out and buy a pair of waders. Penny and I turned back to the trail and headed for the pond. It was so beautiful, I snapped another shot:

The leaves have opened this week, and between that and the rain, everything looked so clean and fresh. I was soaking it in (figuratively only though – my rain ear prevented it in a literal sense).

We got to the pond and I looked for the Clintonia. It was there, and it was in bloom, just as I had hoped it would be:

I continued down the path to the beach, and then walked the shore back towards the stream that empties the pond (which turns into the wetland above). I saw some pickerelweed coming up through the water, but that won’t bloom until this summer. From what I’ve seen, none of the aquatic plants around Sandogardy bloom until summer, except perhaps the water lilies, but it’s too soon even for those.

I returned to the beach, and walked along the boundary between it and the forest looking for bunchberries. Found some!

Contrary to appearances, these have not technically bloomed yet. Those “petals” are really sepals. They will turn white later. The “real” petals are still tightly closed and bunched up in the center. After they bloom, the plant will turn them into some really bright red berries. Peterson says they are edible and describes the berries as insipid-tasting. I’ve never tried them, but maybe I will this year.

I turned my attention back to the pond and saw several Great Blue Heron tracks under the water. These were on the smallish side, but I still enjoyed seeing them. Penny and I then turned back towards the house. I unleashed her though, so I could rinse the sand out of her tether and then keep it clean. I usually let her drag it along as we walk (until we get to the road). That way she can run ahead, find sticks, beg me to throw them, chase them down, bring them back, and beg to do it again. She lives for that.

It was a very nice walk.

In other news, Jonathan’s flight to Heathrow was cancelled due to volcanism. He has booked another tomorrow night. Methinks the chances of that one getting cancelled are also pretty high. We’ll have to see.

I finished reading The Last Place on Earth the night before last. It’s an account of Amundson and Scott’s race to the South Pole. I had read another blogger’s take on it just after reading True North (which chronicles Peary and Cook’s race to the North Pole). Both were good books. I came away incredibly impressed with Roald Amundson, as he was the type of leader I want to be. He planned everything and left very little to chance. Contrasted with Scott, who planned almost nothing and left everything to chance. They both made the pole (Amundson first), but Scott’s party did not survive the ordeal. Amundson’s party didn’t have an ordeal, even though they faced nearly identical conditions. Roald rocked.

Today I found myself incredibly hungry at only 10:30 am. I was able to hold off until 11:40, and that’s when I grabbed the half-sub I had left in the fridge yesterday. I wolfed it down and I was still hungry. Then I started thinking about the black raspberry ice cream I had a Friendly’s on Sunday. There’s a Friendly’s about three quarters of a mile from my office, and it was a beautiful day, so maybe you can guess what happened.

I grabbed my camera and hat, and off I went. Along the way, I saw some sandspurry (Spergularia spp). I stopped and took several shots, but this is the only one I kept:

These flowers were maybe 3/16 of an inch across, so they’re not exactly big. They are also very easy to not see unless you’re looking for them (and I was). If you look closely, you can see some pollen on the right-most petal. Cool. I might upload this shot to the Commons later, but only if I don’t think they don’t have one that is better.

I secured my ice cream and headed back to the office.

On the way home I noticed that the King Devil (Hieracium pratense) and Red Clover (Trifolium pratense) were both in bloom. I was stopped at a light in Concord, so I whipped out the camera to take a photo (just to remind myself to log them), but as I did, the light turned green. I took the picture anyhow as I pulled away. Couldn’t see anything but a blurry bank of grass, but I knew that meant King Devil and Red Clover, so it did serve its purpose. I logged them a short while ago.

We were expecting a house guest tonight, so there was a bit of house cleaning involved. For the record, I don’t clean the house for the guests, I clean the house for Va. The guests don’t care if the house is messy. Va does though.

Our guest is a guy who used to be in our Pathfinder Club. He wanted to be able to make it to church tomorrow, but his parents would not be able to get him there for some reason or another. I don’t recall the details. He asked if he could spend the night with us, and we enthusiastically agreed. His mom will pick him up after church tomorrow.

I was expecting him to show up at around 6:00pm, but instead he (and his mom) were here at 4:45. I got home at 4:30, and immediately began some furious house cleaning. In 15 minutes, Penny started barking her head off as if someone had pulled into the driveway. As usual, she was right. Adam had arrived.

That was a mixed blessing. The good part was that it put a premature end to the cleaning frenzy. The bad part is that the house was not as clean as Va wanted it. Oh well.

Jonathan and I went to Tilton and got some pizza and a new pair of headphone for his trip. We ate the pizza for supper. He packed the headphones.

Then I went into the woods and took more flower pictures. I finally got a few of the gaywings that I really like (I gave them three stars out of five):

Again, I may upload to the Commons. The wind was finally calm enough today and the sky was just about perfect for diffused-but-not-too-dim light. Finally, I can zoom in on the propeller structure and see some decent detail. Yessss.

Beth stayed home from school today. Actually, she came home early yesterday. Va took her temp then and it was 103. Ibuprofin brought it back down, and she seems to feel a lot better. Hopefully she’ll feel good enogh to go to church in the morning.

Mom’s still in the hospital, and they plan to keep her there over the weekend to continue the antibiotics. They want to knock down the pneumonia before sending her home. This will be at least the second Mother’s Day in the hospital for her (the first was when my oldest sister was born). Other than the pneumonia thing, she seems to be feeling pretty good, and will be glad to get home where she can get some rest.

Happy Mother’s Day Mom.