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I haven't got the hang of those nifty cut tags that have text in and direct you to the right spot in a huge endless page of ramblings, but I'll have on you such limited mercy as is in my present power.



Whiny Remarks about Mild Ill Health

I have a cold. It's not a very bad one, but it's only the second really developed one I've had since I was forbidden to use decongestants, and the first since I was told that I really should severely limit my use of ibuprofen. So I've observed every symptom with wary alarm. We have had the Really Really Tired for No Reason phase, the Really Really Crabby for No Reason phase, the Sniffles and Dry Throat phase, the Drippy Sneezy Watery phase, the Feverish Drippy Sneezy Watery Phase, the Weird Chills, Achy Lymph Nodes, and Temperature Below Normal phase, and now we are entering the Coughing phase, with occasional nostalgic harkings-back to Drippy and Sneezy and Crabby. I looked up West Nile symptoms, but these aren't those.

David took me downtown to get my prescription and to Target for cat litter and cold remedies, and Raphael made me nachos several times, so I was well looked after.

Lame Remarks about the Democratic Convention

I watched a lot of the speeches at the Democratic Convention. On the whole I was tolerably happy. Nothing they could do would persuade me to vote for George Bush and his gang of fabulists, but it's nice that I will only have to hold my nose a little bit. I was quite taken with Teresa Heinz Kerry, especially her graceful bow to science, and predictably wowed by Barack Obama's Donneish remarks. What really struck me overall was that even the more awkward or stumbly bits were so very far above the standard utterances of Mr. Unelected and his Retarded Parrots. I had to overcome a lot of allergic reaction to the entire concept of political conventions, but that's for another time. Oh, and I was quite taken with Al Sharpton, too. He'd make a terrible President, but that was some speech. Apparently his going off-script was so completely discombobulating for the journalists that they could not actually take in what he was saying.


Whiny Remarks about the Bureaucracy of Mortgages

As far as our refinancing goes, at some point the mortgage counsellor and the actual mortgage company must have fallen out of communication. We were wondering if the scheduling of a closing date meant that the loan was, you know, actually approved. Some expert prodding by Lydy produced the information that it would be approved if we did a bunch of easy stuff like sign the documents sent us, and also if we produced a statement from a CPA that David has been self-employed for four years. Further inquiry revealed that it was possible to fulfill this requirement by presenting letters from clients, but by then it was 24 hours to the closing, so we had to reschedule. In the short run this was a relief to me, since I was quite miserable with my cold on the date scheduled, but in the long run it's fairly annoying.


Hiking -- Afton

On July 22, Raphael and I went to Afton. One does this by taking 94 West to 95 South to County Road 20, and we got out of the house so late that I was worried about traffic, but the only serious holdups we had seemed attributable to construction, especially on 280. It's not the most interesting drive in the world until one gets to the County Road, but we had Talking Heads to keep us alert. If you are going to the bit of Afton that we were, you stop at the park office, which is currently ensconced in a trailer while they renovate the actual building, and pay the day rate, and then drive a rolling and somewhat winding road through trees and meadows, with a gigantic electrical pylon looming ahead of you, the huge white bobbles on its lines looking like a couple of displaced full Moons. As we parked in the lot, a goldfinch flew out of a patch of seeding thistle.

Afton has a lot of campgrounds that seem to often be occupied by rather raucous people. We've never seen them, but we hear them as we hike the prairie path. Afton also has some steep woodsy paths that lead down to the river, but we were intent on staying in open country where there would be fewer insects. We stopped in the beauteous 24-hour, lighted, fully-plumbed bathrooms and then started through the Prairie Interpretative Path. I had been there last June with Eric, and the previous year in August with Raphael. In both cases we'd spent some time by the river and been in a bit of a hurry when we got to the prairie. This particular year the prairie is well worth lingering over. The grasses weren't so high as in August, and there were ten times the flowers there had been in June. Leadplant spread its strong gray-green tiny-leaved branches in tidy circles, with spikes of purple flowers like alien hands -- a tall spike in the middle and shorter ones on either side. Gray coneflower, purple coneflower, yellow coneflower, rudbeckia, the seedheads of grasses in white and yellow-white and red and purple-red; three different kinds of thistle, in all stages of bud, bloom, and seed; daisy fleabane, birdsfoot trefoil, wild bergamot, swamp milkweed, showy milkweed, butterfly weed, daisies, and about a dozen more that I haven't definitely identified even with the aid of a wildflower book.

And there were Eastern Kingbirds everywhere. Eric had seen them last year in May, when he took a visiting friend to Afton, and he was quite excited about them, describing in detail their white bellies and the white at the tips of their tail feathers, their sleek black backs and their amazing acrobatics. He'd later shown me some on the borders of the Eloise Butler Wildflower garden, and I got to see the acrobatics, but the birds were on the far side of a stretch of marsh, and not inclined to come any closer. The ones in Afton were often within six or eight feet of us, swaying on grass stems and leaping into the air in a shower of white flashes to pursue invisible insects, then settling again to the same dry grass stalk. There were a number of barn swallows, too, with their little ruddy chins, and a continual battle for territory going on between the two sets of birds. It looked as if the swallows usually started it and the kingbirds almost always chased them off in the end.

After we had been over the little interpretative trail, we struck out on the asphalt path, with meadow and then trees to our left and more meadow, rolling up and then down to the road, on our right. The oaks were crowded with little pale-green acorns. We saw a remarkable population of birds on a dead tree, including what was probably a juvenile woodpecker, a couple of kingbirds conversing, and swallows darting about. This was the first time that Raphael had had a chance to use the birdwatching binoculars that Mary gave me, and I was delighted that they were well approved.

A little further on, while sitting on a wooden bench in a thicket of sumac and eating our sandwiches, we also saw, on another dead tree, a mystery bird, the same size and with exactly the same head shape as an eastern kingbird, but warm brown above and pale yellow below. Even with extensive consultation of Sibley, we can't figure out if it was an unusually brown Western Kingbird, or some other kind of flycatcher or sapsucker

As we moved away from the restored areas, the native grasses dwindled, though there were areas further on that seemed to have been planted with them. The mix of flowers altered. There were huge patches of some kind of wild mustard, and another of a white airy plant I haven't identified. Bursting out of this less varied landscape, from time to time, were patches of purple coneflower and black-eyed Susan and Jerusalem artichoke. There were thickets of sumac and the occasional lone juniper. There were also small walnut and apple trees -- Afton is mostly reclaimed farmland, so perhaps this is the reason. Eventually, near the point at which we decided to turn back, I noticed buckthorn, which had been conspicuous by its absence before. I remembered Eric's remarking on the absence of eucalyptus in the Native Plants Botanical Garden in Tilden Park, and how odd that seemed to his eye though not to his intellect.

We turned back when the path dived under a bridge over a little creek. We could have crossed and continued on the other side, but we were tired and it was getting late. Raphael lingered to photograph various minute insects, and I trudged slowly back on my own in the beautiful mellow light. I saw two sparrows picking at the gravel ahead of me, and thought of Keats. They never did fly away from me, just skittered ahead of me down the path until they had re-established a distance they liked, so I had plenty of opportunity to look at them through the binoculars. They had nice little ruddy caps, and I think, after extensive consultation of Sibley, that they were probably Field Sparrows.

Raphael caught up with me and then lingered to try more photographs, several times, but we came down the last hill together, and saw several spectacular skyscapes as clouds moved by the setting sun. We talked of going down to the river just for a glimpse, but changed our minds. We got to see in miniature the scene at Carleton that Helen described to me in an earlier comments section: from a mown bit of grass by the restrooms, some objects that we had classified as dandelions flew away when we got too close. We saw one or two more, and heard a large number, as we put our stuff in the trunk and did a quick check for ticks; and a last eastern kingbird landed in a small tree and posed for us as we drove away.


Hiking -- Carver Park Reserve, July 27

Carver was not as bloomy as Afton, but it was about as bloomy as I've seen it. Wild bergamot, rudbeckia, yellow coneflower, vast patches of seeding thistle, each with a couple of attendant goldfinches that flew off as we approached; red and white clover, some thistle still blooming, gooseneck loosestrife, birdsfoot trefoil, swamp milkweed, purple loosestrife, and an airy white plant that we also saw in enormous patches at Afton but that I cannot identify yet.

The gnats that kept flying up our noses the last time we were there did not appear. And we were wearing the permethrin-permeated clothing from Afton -- the effect lasts through one washing -- so though there were certainly mosquitoes, and we were also attended each by a cloud of about a dozen biting flies, the flies didn't bite at all and the mosquitoes didn't really get serious with us until twilight.

We checked the hill where Raphael has seen many Halloween pennants in the past, but there weren't any. We saw twelve-spotted skimmers and widow skimmers and some big darners and a great many meadowhawks as we took our usual route first to the lake and then to the boardwalk over the marsh. There was a warning sign at the entrance to the marsh saying that the area had been treated with Rodeo and that pets and children should be kept off it until the sprays were dry. Since we were not pets or children and were pretty sure (Raphael having made the original suggestion) that Rodeo is a form of Roundup (I Googled for it later and indeed it is a glyphosate herbicide), we did venture onto the boardwalk. There we saw some stocky dragonflies that puzzled us until Raphael decided that they were four-spotted skimmers that had almost lost their markings, as dragonflies tend to do as they age. We also saw several swallows swooping about. We heard a lot of redwings, but didn't see any. We saw some blue dashers and some odd water-walking beetle-like bugs.

Then we went to the butterfly garden, which was packed full of flowers. Elsewhere in the park the Joe Pye weed was just coming into flower, but it was fully open in the garden, along with just about everything else: daylilies, garden phlox, purple and yellow coneflower, foxgloves. There were several hummingbirds and some Monarch butterflies and a great many bees. No brown creeper yelled at us, though the nest box was still there.

We went back to check the hill again, and this time there were literally dozens of Halloween pennants perched on the grass blades. Across the road from them was a part of the prairie restoration, thick with flowers. Then we took another favorite path of ours, which goes through a sumac thicket, with the sumac now in full fuzzy red fruit, to a westward-facin slope with a marshy pond at the bottom. This slope, usually home to gray coneflower and thistle and not much else, was crowded with purple coneflower and bergamot and several unknown plants.

We finally took a path we haven't been on since we started hiking again, a high -- well, high for the kind of country it is in, anyway -- ridge path through mostly unrestored meadow that leads to the second boardwalk over a different kind of marsh. All the borders of
the mown path were glittering with meadowhawks. I had been calling to dragonflies one and off to come and eat my flies, dammit, and here, three times, they did -- one meadowhawk and one faded four-spotted skimmer, plus somebody who buzzed under my hat brim so fast I didn't know what it was. Raphael also told me that a Halloween pennant had been flying behind me and scooping up the stragglers, but I didn'tsee that myself. We fondly recalled looking for Eastern Amberwings all along this path a few years ago, but it was a bit early for them.

We thought we saw a kingbird in this high prairie, but it didn't linger.

The second boardwalk had also been treated with Rodeo and the trail was much more firmly marked CLOSED, so we didn't venture onto it.

It wasn't quite as magical as Afton, but Carver has so many more memories or us that we were quite pleased.


Pamela

Date: 2004-08-01 12:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yhlee.livejournal.com
I love your nature/hiking/bird/bloomy descriptions. :-)

Date: 2004-08-01 02:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] timprov.livejournal.com
Me too, although now Pamela's voice is warring with James Doohan's.

Date: 2004-08-01 10:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] timprov.livejournal.com
There's a v. silly meme in [livejournal.com profile] yhlee's journal....

Date: 2004-08-01 01:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sadstrangevoice.livejournal.com
Oh! Wonderful stuff, so glad you posted. I need to get somewhere that has dragonflies. At least I have vicarious dragonflies now, and vicarious enjoyment of places I can't get to. Thank you.

FTR your brown-and-yellow kingbird-like thing was probably a Great Crested Flycatcher; they like to perch on snags, are quite Kingbird-sized and -shaped, and this time of year the yellow on their underparts can be quite faded (it's not always that blazing-yellow that the field guides tend to show).

Great Crested Flycatcher: no crest

Date: 2004-08-01 10:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sadstrangevoice.livejournal.com
Heh, that's one of those manymanymany stupid and inappropriate bird names. This is as much of a crest as it has. (http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/Infocenter/i4520id.html) Bravo English bird names, don't you think? *snort* I wonder how they get away with it.

Date: 2004-08-01 03:02 pm (UTC)
lcohen: (Default)
From: [personal profile] lcohen
sorry about the cold--feel better soon!

i hope the new close date goes smoothly.

the hiking sounds just lovely except for the mosquitos and the gnats and the biting flies *grin*.

Date: 2004-08-01 07:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jackiejj.livejournal.com
Such good reading--thanks.

Hope you are feeling better soon!

Date: 2004-08-01 09:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] homemakerj.livejournal.com
Oh, sorry you haven't been feeling well. I've found, since I'm restricted from ibuprofen, that aspirin or tylenol really does work also. But, more importantly, I'm recalling simple home remedies for various ails that do the trick quite nicely sans medication.

I thought we'd learned on a.s.m. not to do scary things to ourselves like look up West Nile disease while we were sick. From now on, should the need arise, just send off an e-mail and I'll look things up for you when you don't feel well. I'll soften the scary bits and likely report to you that your symptoms don't match at all.

So glad the refinancing is coming through at last!

As to the hiking, birds and flowers...sigh. Bliss.

Date: 2004-08-02 03:15 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Does buffered aspirin work for you at all? I am the same way with Tylenol (it is just NOT a painkiller as far as I am concerned), though oddly enough it *does* work as a fever-reducer for me. I've always wanted to know the physiological reasons for these different drug reactions.

I am quite chuffed to hear of you having a dandelion-bird experience too.

Helen

The fast road to oblivion

Date: 2004-08-05 05:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] homemakerj.livejournal.com
>Aspirin really upsets my stomach, so I try to restrict it to really desperate cases. If you have tips about reducing its tendency to cause intense heartburn, I'd love to hear them. Tylenol has never worked on me. It might as well be candy.

Well, I don't really have any tips about reducing the tendency toward heartburn, other than eating a cracker or something before taking it, and making sure you drink a full glass of water.

You might look here, although they are talking about children:

http://www.teetercreekherbs.com/ask433.html

Hope you are feeling better by now.

Date: 2004-08-08 03:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mgs.livejournal.com
I've had very good luck with Pepcid AC, which is used as a prophylactic against acid, rather than as a treatment for the symptom of acid. If I realize that I've eaten something that is going to give me trouble, like I've eaten something fatty just before going to bed, taking Pepcid AC usually prevents, or at least greatly lessens the problem.

If it's not contraindicated for some other reason I'd try taking one when you take your buffered aspirin, and see if that helps.

Politics

Date: 2004-08-01 10:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dsgood.livejournal.com
Lee Hayes on a former Republican Administration: "This too shall pass. I've had kidney stones, and I know."

There's some evidence that the Bush campaign is being run more stupidly than I would've considered possible:
President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney./The Star refused to provide the information...Organizer Christine Walton asked for [Mamta] Popat's race in telephone conversations with two other Star editors before she spoke to Hayt. They also refused to provide the information. Walton told Hayt that Popat's race was necessary to allow the Secret Service to distinguish her from someone else who might have the same name....
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/vote/32301.php

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