Why you like that?

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

Seriously, what is it with anoles and their sleeping positions?

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis asleep across top hanger of porch lamp
This is far from the first time finding one here, but the position was so perfect this particular evening.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis asleep across top hanger of porch lamp
Look at those toes. Though you’d think that getting, you know, on top would be more comfortable and less likely to fall off, but then you wouldn’t be thinking like an anole. At the very least, I can credit this one for picking a position that gets just about the earliest sunlight in the morning – it would probably be better up on top of the chimney that it’s right alongside, but perhaps harder to claim as its own.

And then there’s this one:

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis asleep across loop of decorative ironwork
This is within the shed, which the anoles strive to get into for whatever reason, though we’re not sure they know how to find their way out again so we’re constantly ushering them outside, and that can become quite a rodeo at times. Again, you’d think that even if it insisted on this iron rack as a bed, it could have found a more comfortable position, such as on the horizontal bar right behind it. Do anoles like sinus headaches? Is this how they show off for the anolettes? Maybe this is the safest position when you discover those late-night flies didn’t agree with your little tummy? And should I find some scrollwork with a tighter loop to see if I can coax one into a complete circle?

The next one isn’t quite as awkward, but infinitely more threatening.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis snoozing vertically on bamboo plant support
Not clutching a makeshift cannon, or at least I don’t think it was, but this was just sleeping vertically on a bamboo support pole for one of the young Japanese maples; had it not awoken as I leaned it to focus, it would have looked less threatening.

These were all from one warm night, and it’s turned quite chilly again, so maybe we won’t be seeing quite as many from here on out. Okay, listen, I promise, no more anoles for at least another week, okay? Sheesh…

One tree, two days

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The Girlfriend is fond of Japanese maples and we arrived here at the new place (it’s been over a year now, perhaps I should stop referring to it that way) with a few in tow, obtaining several more in the past year, but there were already two established on the property: one perpetually deep red variant up by the mailbox, which has made the occasional appearance here, and the other is a twisted and broad example in the back yard, normally deep green – that’s the one we’re going to talk about now. That’s made several appearances here too, but just recently it hit peak fall coloration and I made a study of it on two separate days. We’re gonna see a lot of red.

The first (which was the 20th,) it was overcast and showing no signs of breaking up, so I worked with the low-contrast grey sky conditions.

old Japanese maple tree in backyard showing autumn color in cloudy conditions
There’s nothing for scale here and so it’s a little deceptive, since the tree is nearly three meters tall, contrasted here against the bald cypress trees which have now dropped nearly all of their needles (or whatever you want to call them – they’re more like fern fronds.) While the Japanese maple is quite healthy, it has a couple of branches that are dead and so devoid of leaves even in high summer, which I chose to focus upon for a few frames.

bare branches of old Japanese maple tree in backyard against peak fall colors on same tree
It is, of course, the same tree in the background, so this is comparing it against itself. I have to note that I went to manual focus for this, since autofocus wanted to ignore the branches and focus upon the background leaves instead.

It also would have messed with this next one, so manual again for this:

Canada geese Branta canadensis framed within gap in leaves of old Japanese maple tree in backyard
The Canada geese are still regular visitors, often hanging out for hours, so it’s not too hard to incorporate them into images.

The branches of this tree are very evocative, twisting around almost randomly, but the thick canopy of foliage that the tree produces obscures this from many angles, yet I still had to snag some examples of this:

twisting branches of old Japanese maple tree in backyard set against its own fall foliage, with Stately Walkabout Manor in the background
That’s Stately Walkabout Manor in the background of course, with the bathroom window that I use for shooting the wood ducks obscured in the center. There were some other angles, but the brightly-colored kayaks would have been coming through in the background and I wasn’t motivated to drag them across the yard to get out of the pic.

Now we go two days later when the sun had come back out.

old Japanese maple tree in backyard in autumn colors against bare bald cypress trees
Now the tree was virtually glowing, so of course I was revisiting some of the compositions I’d done earlier, as well as chasing some new ones.

branch tips of old Japanese maple tree in backyard in fall colors against greenery in background
I’m obligated to point out that there isn’t a lot of green foliage around anymore, and I purposefully sought an angle to get one of the few patches aligned for the background. Meanwhile, the short depth-of-field keeps focus just on the few leaves right in front of us.

That was sticking with the leaves that were catching the sun, which was still scattered from trees that weren’t entirely bare and just their trunks blocking the light. So when I reframed the geese, that little ‘keyhole’ that I was using wasn’t actually catching the light of the sun, and neither were they.

cluster of Canada geese Branta canadensis framed in gap of Japanese maple leaves
For some reason, this has more of a secretive, peeing-Tom feel than the previous, at least to me. Both times I waited until at least one goose was standing tall in my chosen opening, as unobscured as possible even by the weeds much closer to the geese. There remains a chance I’ll construct a blind under this very tree to watch the geese and wood ducks (speaking of Pepping Tom again,) because I think I can use the tree itself to hide my approach, slipping under that little gap you see in the wider pics.

And the Manor again:

twisted branches of old Japanese maple tree in backyard in fall colors, with Stately Walkabout Manor in the background
Slightly different angle this time – I couldn’t quite recall how I’d shot the previous version two days earlier. Different window in the gap now, and the branches are still a bit too shaded. Ignore the kayaks down there.

[Had you even seen them? I should have kept my mouth shut.]

About two hours further on, the sun angle was even better, and I tackled it again.

old Japanese maple tree in backyard in full sun and fall colors against bald cypress trees in background
This is about the most direct sunlight that the tree can receive, at this time of year anyway. The surrounding trees will get a little barer, but then again, so will this tree, so I’m going to consider this the best overall color display to be available all year – even when it leafs out in the spring, the leaves are fairly deep green, not as bright as some other varieties. And with the sunlight in the correct position now, it was time to revisit the keyhole yet again:

Canada goose Branta canadensis seen through gap in fall foliage of old Japanese maple tree in backyard
The problem at this time was, now the geese were nowhere to be found initially. And then one appeared, but remained in deep shadow for a while before finally coming out into enough light to stand out against the now-bright leaves of the tree. But scroll up and compare the brightness of the water in the previous two pics to this one, and you can see how sun angle can affect just how your subjects are rendered.

animated gif switching between direct sunlight and open shade on same branch of old Japanese maple tree in backyardIt may seem counterintuitive, but direct sunlight can often work against you for brighter colors, and at the very least can change the way your subject and background appear. Direct sunlight produces brighter highlights that the camera meter adjusts for, making the shadows seem much darker, but also changes color subtly. It can also cause the highlights to bleach out too much and actually weaken the color, whereas a hazy or light overcast day may display them much better. This gif (pronounced, “GEE-wiz-WIL-eh-kers“) only demonstrates this slightly, but I was right there as the sun went in and out of a cloud and so shot the frames in close succession. Look closely at the highlights on the leaves right in the center, but also note how the background colors change. Ignore, however, the blotchiness of said background, because this is an artifact of gif formatting and not present in the original images.

Now we go underneath the tree for some slightly different perspectives.

twisted branches of old Japanese maple tree in backyard in autumn colors, seen from underneath with backlit leaves
This was capturing a little of the backlighting of the leaves, and also shows that some of them under the main part of the canopy are still green. This branch is quite low and is actually one that appears in the previous two images that show the house, not the main subject, but down low to the right. Unfortunately the heavy moss that adorns it doesn’t show too well from this angle.

And finally,

twisted branches of old Japanese maple tree in backyard, seen from underneath and backlit with sun peeking through foliage
Aiming more south into the sun now, which is peeking in from the upper corner, but now we get more backlit leaves and the stark shape of the main trunk – I probably should have tackled this same approach some time in the summer, and will have to make a point of it next year. None of the branches are ‘high,’ but they’re higher here and this is where I’d make the blind because I could at least sit upright comfortably – just, not in an actual chair. Of course, with these leaves getting ready to drop off, I’d lose half of my blind cover for the season, so perhaps this isn’t the best choice after all. But for now, we have another burst of fall color and fartsiness before they all go away.

A few quick portraits

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Just a handful of wildlife portraits obtained within the past few days – they mostly speak for themselves.

How long has it been since we’ve had an arthropod? Too long?

unidentified katydid Tettigoniidae covered in mist at night
I said it was misty last night, and you didn’t believe me. This katydid did, however.

closeup of Canada goose Branta canadensis in pond with duckweed on bill
This Canada goose was waiting for me to finish distributing corn so it could take a break from chowing on pond weeds. Now if we could only get the wood ducks this close…

green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus displaying pale coloration with speckling
This one has me quite curious, because while I’ve seen a lot of base color variation among the green treefrogs, I’ve never seen one with a speckled pattern. I’d guessed that it might have been in a transitional stage between shades, but this persisted into daylight, and had it not been for the prominent white stripe along the sides, I might have even believed this was another species. Checking just now, it seems that on occasion, green treefrogs can hybridize with another species, the barking treefrog, which has distinct spots across its back in much the same distribution as these speckles, but larger. Those can be found in this area, though I’ve never seen nor heard one. Hmmm…

But the coolest portrait belongs to this little gal:

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis with bent tail tip, perched on post alongside own reflection in lamp glass
After not having seen it for months, suddenly the anole with the bent tail tip showed up again in the exact same place, right on the lightpost alongside the front walk. And I realized with the first pic that her reflection could barely be seen in the glass from the lamp, and so re-positioned slightly to get this a lot more distinctly. Going the extra mile, that’s me…

Photobombed by leaves

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Out chasing a few subjects last night while it was warm and extremely misty, I got caught by the strongest defocus effect that I’ve ever encountered, and it’ll take a little explaining.

First off, there’s a term, ‘bokeh,’ that refers to the out-of-focus portions of a photo, the areas well outside of the focal point, which usually means well behind or in front of said focal point, and many photographers fret about how pleasing their bokeh is rendered for portraits and so on, occasionally spending a lot of money to chase this dream (this is what Leica lenses are known for, and if you’ve ever priced anything with the Leica branding, you know what I mean by ‘lots of money.’) Different lenses surely produce different bokeh effects, but so do minor adjustments in aperture, the difference in distances between subject and foreground/background, contrast and saturation settings of the camera (or the type of film used,) and of course the conditions.

More specific to this post, however, is the ability to blur out foreground elements so far that they almost disappear, producing a faint colored haze in the image, and this is because the lens is capturing more of the light that comes to it past the foreground element, around it, and the larger the front element of the lens, the more this can be exploited. I have a post illustrating how this works here.

I say this because last night I fell prey to the strongest example of this effect that I’ve yet encountered, while out trying to semi-duplicate a previous image of a treefrog. Behold.

green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus obscured by flash lit leaves in foreground bokeh
I know this looks like I wasn’t paying attention or holding still enough or something of that nature, but the gist of it is, I couldn’t see these intervening leaves at all through the viewfinder. This was with the Sigma 180mm macro, focusing at its maximum aperture of f3.5 but taken at f11, while I was focusing by the headlamp, which is more than adequately bright enough for the job. The wide aperture and focal length of the Sigma was enough to render the blocking leaves completely invisible through the viewfinder, only appearing under the flash and increased depth-of-field when the camera stopped down to f11.

You could say that I simply wasn’t paying close enough attention, and I’d agree with you – if I hadn’t done it twice, trying again after realizing that I’d just gotten caught. The flash was at an angle that illuminated the leaves, but the headlamp was aiming over them or perhaps even blocked by the lens and lenshood. Still, they were right there in my line of vision through the viewfinder and yet I had no inkling they were in the way.

This is an approximate reproduction of the position I was in, except that it was night and the lens was actually attached to the camera and not on a tripod, and the frog was present, and…

illustration of perspective that led to obscuring leaves
* Dramatic re-enactment
The culprit leaves would be those right in lower center, the sharp ones – this is as close as I can get to the angle and perspective that produced such shitty results. Maybe next time I’ll have an assistant documenting what I do…

[I did actually get the shot that I was after, on the third try, kinda – I was forced to change my angle and thus didn’t quite have the composition that I wanted. Life is hard.]

Let’s catch up with the wood ducks

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I know I tend to cycle around the same handful of photo and video subjects herein, but let’s face it: I have easy access to several different forms of wildlife without even leaving the property, so this is what I’m going to have the most photos of, as well as being able to observe behavior better than I ever have before. At least I haven’t fixated on just one subject…

So yes, it’s the wood ducks (Aix sponsa) again, with video of course, and it’s a little long because I haven’t done an update in more time than I thought.

Some notes about the audio: the Azden shotgun mic, at one point, was producing a lot of hiss and crackle, likely from bad contacts within the XLR to 3.5 adapter cord, but I think that’s corrected now – I have no way of monitoring the audio that’s being recorded by the 7D, so this stuff sneaks in. For various clips, I switched back and forth between the Azden and the parabolic dish with the Sony lavalier mic, finally settling on the Azden based on some tests with thunder. Both, however, produce a certain level of background hiss in combination with the 7D. I won’t go into detail here, but I found a way to correct this to some extent, though it was imperfect for some of the clips in this video and will be refined further with subsequent work. It’s also time-consuming.

Meanwhile, we have some images of the players.

trio of male wood ducks Aix sponsa, one perched in tree, catching late afternoon light breaking through trees
Like I said, they usually avoid the light that makes their iridescence shine, so I’m always on the lookout for when they don’t, though conditions don’t always allow the best views.

male wood duck Aix sponsa perched in tree catching afternoon light
This is naturally cropped a bit, since I can’t get this close even with the 600mm – working on various ideas for that. I need something like this (shamelessly snagged from the webbernets):

small cubby disguised as bush, from unknown online source
… though I’d either have to get into it long before any ducks (geese/deer/nutria/etc) showed, or have a tunnel access – not happening anytime soon. I’m still considering a couple of viable options, but the biggest aspect right now is having an opening for the long lens that also allows a bit of tracking yet doesn’t attract the ducks’ attention; this might be nigh impossible.

Some better views of that buck, during a different visit:

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus buck sporting very fine single antlers
I think those delicate little antlers indicate that this is this season’s brood, less than a year old, and whether this was any of the fawns we saw visiting earlier I cannot say. It wasn’t inclined to pop into the brighter light, I can say that.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus buck sporting very fine single antlers
The folklore when I was growing up in central New York, where deer hunting is a religion, was that the number of points on the antlers denote the number of years old the deer was, which is total nonsense, one of the many reasons I pay little attention to what people tell me unless they’re an actual biologist.

Back to the ducks.

quarter of wood ducks Aix sponsa catching near-direct sunlight on pond and showing variety of colors in plumage
Can you see why I want to get closer? The colors that pop up from this species, especially the males, are stunning, post-modernist renditions that vary depending on how the feathers are sitting. Plus the iridescence on the head that changes with the light angle (which is hell to try and mimic if you’re painting it.)

Even though the geese have only been back for about two weeks, we can already get a lot closer to them than the ducks will allow, in part because geese don’t fear too many things, and they only slipped off to a safe distance when we approached the pond edge to put down more corn, so they could actually see us do it. This allowed them to associate us with corn and thus become slightly more habituated to us, though nowhere near as much as earlier in the year. The wood ducks, on the other hand, simply fly off when they see us virtually anywhere in the yard and so never even get the chance to habituate; it appears to be possible, but we’re not sure what it might take, nor are we sure that we really want to do this, given that they’re hunted routinely and so should be wary of people.

Anyway, still examining options to get closer for better pics and video – we’ll see what happens.

Estate Find XLVII

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This week, we have a couple of subjects that help lead into further posts, at least one of which may come later on today – I’m starting to get a small stockpile again. So let’s get into it.

great blue heron Ardea herodias wading at edge of Turtle Island
With the clearing of the duckweed, which may be due to the appetites of the ducks and geese, or the temperature dropping below their growing range, or both, the water is now clear enough that the wading birds can see prey within, and so at least one great blue heron (Ardea herodias) has been coming around – this image was from yesterday early morning, and the heron was already aware of my presence up on the deck better than 30 meters off. In a few moments, it stalked away from the tree out into the open, enough to take flight and head towards The Bayou.

great blue heron Ardea herodias wading further into open preparatory to taking flight
I have to admit, this is pretty spooky for herons because I was much too far away to pose any threat, and it’s not like herons have a lot to fear from just about anything in the area regardless. Yet it was too much for this one, and so it left quickly, but not before I snagged a few frames.

Aaannndd it’s getting to be ‘that season,’ which is when the camellia (Family Theaceae) bushes start to bloom.

camellia Theaceae blossom
I have to admit, having winter-blooming flowers is a good idea, and I was surprised this past winter at how quickly the honeybees would find them as soon as it got anywhere near warm enough. This particular bush is the only one blooming so far, and it was the same last year; we have several others on the property and all are in bud right now, preparing to bloom on their own schedule. Does this mean they’re different cultivars/subspecies, or the conditions for this one are better, or what?

camellia (Family Theaceae) blossom with two neighboring buds
These are not the only thing blooming right now either, but what I will feature later on are things that are still blooming, one a little surprisingly. Getting back to the camellias, however, these are the kind of evergreens we can deal with, unlike the pines that have made their own little mark in this image, the needles draped across the branches (and across damn near everything else in the yard, despite the fact that we only have three pines at the edge of the property.) No sure why so many people in this state find the pines so appealing, but at least in this neighborhood, a lot of cypress and camellias were established to offset them a little…

Let’s see, I think… frogs

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Working my way through the folder of images that I need to do something with, and figured that it’s now time for a few more frogs, si? I mean, oui?

The first three to be featured all came on November 9th, when the weather became unseasonably warm and the frogs were out thinking, Damn, that was a short winter! This one, at least, should have known better given its perch.

green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus perched on laceleaf Japanese maple in peak autumn colors
A green treefrog of course (Dryophytes cinereus,) contemplating life on the branches of a laceleaf Japanese maple that was hitting peak autumn colors and not budding out with new leaves for the spring. It was still a good day for it, true enough. And yes, I purposefully chose this angle between the leaves – did you really think otherwise?

unidentified small frog, likely cricket frog Acris crepitans or Acris gryllus, spooked from grass to pond's edge
Scaring up one of these was also a purposeful act: I was wandering along the pond edge knowing that the weather would likely bring some amphibians onto shore, and it was simply a matter of spotting them when they leapt away and creeping up once they’d paused again. This is quite small, as the cypress needles and duckweed might indicate, roughly 15mm in body length. I’m still not sure what this is, but I’m leaning towards cricket frog from the warty skin and size – it just lacks any of the markings that tend to distinguish them. That would make it either a southern cricket frog (Acris gryllus) or northern (Acris crepitans.) There are potentially some much less common species around here that look a lot cooler, and I’m keeping my eyes out for them, but so far nada.

southern leopard frog Lithobates sphenocephalus hiding out in debris at edge of pond
This one went unidentified until just now, since its hiding place in the debris at the edge of the pond obscured all identifying markings – but then I went back through the various frames that I’d gotten and found, in one too far out-of-focus to keep (I’m due for a sorting session again,) the white spot on the tympanum (eardum) that pegs this as a southern leopard frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus.) Far larger than the previous maybe-cricket frog, as evinced by the cypress needles again, this one was a lot less cooperative in letting me get better pics, leaping away as I gently tried removing some of the stuff that it was hiding beneath. It’s a shame, because we deserve a better look at their markings.

And now going back, wow, to September 16th for this one:

minuscule juvenile green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus perched on rosemary plant
I think I was posting too many green treefrogs at the time, which is easy enough – they’re perhaps even more numerous than the Carolina anoles. But the size of this one becomes apparent once you realize that it’s perched on a rosemary plant, provided you’re familiar enough with rosemary anyway. Or the proportions of the eyes, head, and legs probably says enough, too, but suffice to say it’s not any bigger than the maybe-cricket.

Oh, what the hell – let’s go even further back, because I keep seeing these images in the folder and not dumping them out.

pair of Copes grey treefrogs Dryophytes chrysoscelis in amplexus on lemon tree
This, and the following, date back to May 8th – 2023. Just never got around to posting them. But I remember hearing a Copes grey treefrog (Dryophytes chrysoscelis) calling in the backyard, and tracked the calls down to find these two already in amplexus, the position they adopt preparatory to mating. To my mind, the calls should have then ceased, so either I was wrong, or they settled their courtship right before I discovered them, or there was another in the immediate area. Which is possible, because they’re on one of the potted lemon trees right near an open water barrel. Leaving them be for just a few minutes and returning, I found they were finalizing their plans.

pair of Copes grey treefrogs Dryophytes chrysoscelis in amplexus examining a water barrel as a spot for eggs
This is now right on the edge of the barrel and peering inside. Once the female (the larger one on the bottom) has chosen a suitable tadpole nursery, she’ll pause in the water and release her eggs, which the male will then fertilize externally by releasing his sperm; his position increases the probability of this happening, though at times you may find multiple males clinging to the same female, stacked up as it were. Had it not been a black barrel, I might have stuck around to record this for posterity (‘posterity’ being the screen name of this weird guy that keeps asking me for creepy amphibian pics,) but nothing would be able to be seen in such conditions regardless of lighting. Some pics here will give you the idea though, despite being a different species.

That’s a few more down, but not enough. We’ll be right back after these commercial messages…

Nominal nominal nominal

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So, [you ask because you’re following everything I post with due excitement] how did Monday morning’s pursuit of the Leonids and aurora borealis go? And I, being the suspicious type that tries to detect subtle impish questions that you already know the answer to, pause just long enough to convey this suspicion before plowing ahead anyway.

In short, no better than any other time I’ve tried this, which is to say, I accomplished nothing that I’d be distraught about if I accidentally deleted the images from the folders. There were just two visible instances that we even had a ‘shower,’ which isn’t impressive at all since I’ve seen more during non-showers when I used to walk the roads at night in central New York. One was literally as far from the camera’s view as possible and still actually be visible, exactly opposite the direction the camera was aimed and right on the horizon. The other, less than 2 minutes later, was only 120° off-axis. Both were so brief and short that I would have recorded only a short streak in the 18mm focal length I was using, had they actually occurred where I was aiming. I gave it up after roughly an hour.

As for the aurora? Perhaps ever so slightly better than that, but in concept only. This was the view to the north:

view of northern sky from North caroina showing perhaps very faint pink banding from aurora borealis
First off, there’s a town up there about 25 km away, so I expected a certain amount of glow from the horizon, but if you look close, there’s some faint pinkish banding within that glow, plus the glow is a little more green than I’d expect from either current LED streetlamps or the old sodium ones that tended to be amber-ish. That part may be only imaginary, really. But I boosted saturation in this image just to see what happened:

view of noght sky to north with perhaps faint auroral banding, with saturation doubled digitally
There certainly seems to be a little banding in there, and it’d be easy to put this down to faint clouds if a) they were the color of reflected city lights, b) it wasn’t past midnight and thus far from sunset or sunrise colors, and c) this wasn’t due north (go ahead, find Ursa Major slightly right of center.) So to the question of whether I had any luck, I’d say, Yessssss, with this tone that indicated more No but not a complete No. In other words, Big deal who cares?

Along those same lines, I will throw in here that, as of the previous post, we’re now running second in the number of images uploaded within a year, and with six weeks to go, first is within the realm of possibility. As for the actual number of posts within a year, that’s well out of reach – I’d have to do almost two posts every day from here on to beat 2021, so no, not aiming for that. But to add to the image count (and because I never posted this back when it was semi-topical,) I throw down this 61-second exposure of a die-hard Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) the one that can always be found on the dead Japanese maple unless it’s bitterly cold in the evening – this was taken strictly by moonlight, and in fact, super moonlight. You can tell, can’t you? Just like that ‘aurora’ up there…

61 second exposure of juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sleeping in branch of dead Japanese maple, taken by moonlight

Tastebuds are anxious

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I don’t have to tell you that today is Harvest The First Of The Citrus From The Greenhouse Day, because I’m sure you’re already deeply involved in this yourself. We’ve been watching the lemons and the Key limes developing, wondering how many would be ready for the holiday – it wasn’t a huge haul, certainly not the bulk of what’s out there, but it’s a nice start.

The two Key lime (Citrus × aurantiifolia) trees are slowly turning, most of them not quite there yet:

Key limes Citrus × aurantiifolia developing on tree in greenhouse
I have to say, these trees have been trying to outdo themselves, and you can see here the new flower buds right alongside fruits that aren’t quite ripe yet – Key limes turn a bit yellowish when they’re ready, and pop free easily from the branch. We have dozens that are on their way.

The two lemon trees, however, are rather disparate, and don’t ask me for a species because they were unidentified when we got them and I haven’t been able to pin it down yet. [EDIT: They are likely Meyer lemons, Citrus × meyeri – seems to be a good match.] One spent the summer too close to the outside of the greenhouse when we had the heat wave, we think, and lost many of its leaves right when it should have been developing the fruit, so only one branch has lemons and they’re developing slowly.

The other, though…

cluster of lemons on single branch on tree in greenhouse
The other produced so many lemons that it cannot actually bear the weight of them and is drooping like a weeping willow – nonetheless, they’re all healthy-looking and just before peak ripeness. I was tugging, and most of them aren’t letting go easily, so we’ll let them develop a little longer yet.

large clusters of lemons on tree in greenhouse, with branches propped up on crates for support
Seriously, a few of the branches had to be supported on a plastic crate because we’re afraid they’ll simply rip off on their own. This one always seems to do this, and right after the harvest I intend to trim the branches shorter and hopefully get it to grow a bit thicker and heftier.

So right now, the lemon harvest was sparse, though we have no recipes yet picked out for them so no rush, really.

bowl of freshly picked lemons
The Key limes have a couple of different recipes waiting though, and probably more with a little poking around on the webbernets, so I set about prepping today’s harvest to have ready – they’re not enough for more than one recipe, if that, but we can freeze the juice and zest in preparation rather than having them dry out while we wait for enough to ripen.

collection of Key limes Citrus × aurantiifolia being zested
Key limes aren’t big at all, and I suspect the heatwave kept these a little smaller, but they’re otherwise fine, so I started off getting the zest from them all and producing hand cramps – have to suffer for your art, after all.

collection of zested Key limes Citrus × aurantiifolia now being juiced
Then the juicing, a bit easier. I’ve tried those specialty juice presses you find in housewares stores and I’m unimpressed – the old-fashioned juicers work best, and make it easier to snag out the seeds as you go (of which all of these trees produce in abundance, the lemons especially.)

harvest of Key lime Citrus × aurantiifolia zest and juice in ice cube tray for freezing
And then ready for the freezer. This little silicone tray has ‘cubes’ in roughly one teaspoon sizes, so easy enough to measure for a recipe. The zest is frozen with water so it won’t dry out in the freezer, though we’ll probably bag these one they’re solid anyway.

Now, what to do first: the standard Key lime pie, or a Key lime pound cake? Decisions, decisions…

Another night, another… what?

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

view of northern sky at night with no trace of auroral activity
This is just to let you know that not only is the Leonids meteor shower expected to peak tonight after midnight, but there’s a chance that the aurora borealis will make another appearance, and with a dark moon (actually, it doesn’t matter how bright it is, because it’s riding too close to the sun right now and thus wont be seen most of the night,) the conditions are halfway decent astronomically – all that remains is what local conditions are like.

The pic above is from two nights ago, the night after getting the barest hint of the aurora, and it shows not even that – just some very thin clouds right down near the horizon. I was out for about an hour and did several different exposures in several different directions, and got nothing very exciting at all. I did make another attempt at star trails, though:

15-minute time exposure of night sky looking north proscribing arcs around Polaris
The exposure was set a bit better this time, but there’s still a lot of residual light in the sky, probably courtesy of the high humidity that we virtually always have here. Fifteen minute exposure, and not one Leonid elected to cross the frame. I mean, c’mon…

I tweaked the image afterward in GIMP for slightly better color and much better contrast, but yeah, it’s ‘shopped:

15-minute time exposure of night sky looking north proscribing arcs around Polaris, with contrast and color adjustments done digitally
Now, the very faint shadow at lower left is more visible, and this is likely my head. The deal was, I was on the side of a lonely road, but my framing was fairly low and so oncoming car headlights could actually illuminate the lens even when the road wasn’t in the frame. To fix this, I positioned myself between the camera and the single oncoming car so the camera remained in my shadow, but I think I got just a little too close.

[To do this, by the way, you have to face the camera and watch the shadow carefully, because as the car tracks past your shadow will pivot around and may expose the camera again, unless you compensate by shifting with it.]

Now, also while out there, some nearby canids decided to have an argument, and I quickly started recording video just to capture the audio, though this is only with the on-camera mic:

Serenade at night

You’ll notice that everything is in the same general pitch, so unless there’s a puppy mill someplace out there (which I certainly won’t rule out in rural North Carolina,) I’d say I caught a dispute among a pack or two of coyotes (Canis latrans.) You can go here and listen to the second track around the 30 second mark to compare, but it’s damn close at least.

Anyway, feel free to try your luck with both the aurora and the Leonids – I’ll likely be out there for at least a little while. One of these days…

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