Item #1: Seen this week
Links: Chicory – – – Mule deer – – – Mantis
This Chicory flower is missing a petal, but the color is right. Another had white on the inner half of the petals but I think this one is a better indicator of what we see here.
The Mantis {~3.5 inches} is on a vertical piece of corner trim [SmartSide by Louisiana Pacific], not good hunting grounds for this predator. I coaxed her onto my hand and carried her to a nearby fir tree.
The color is pale and after viewing the photo I think there are parts of a recently shed skin. I’ve read that a new skin will darken as it hardens. Anyway, she won’t be green so she needs to find a tree to suit her camouflage.
I see the small buck deer about three times a week. Here he is laying in the shade of the Carpathian Walnut trees.
Item #2: Time?
Having had Brittanys with great sniffing abilities, I always follow headlines about such things. This interesting story left me with a question.
Dog sniffs cash – in what amount of time?
About the dog Aki
This has me baffled:
“The German shepherd, named Aki, found 12 people’s secret stashes between the end of June and start of July.”
June’s end is the 30th that is followed by July’s beginning, the 1st. Answer me this: What is “between”?
_ _ _ _
While pondering that, I also wondered about the word on the dog’s vest. Zoll comes from an ancient Proto-Germanic word [tullō] meaning what is counted or told. The vest on the dog indicates she/he is employed by the German agency collecting the duty or customs on goods. See: ZUZ
€247,280 {~$292,000}
In other animal news there was this headline: “Bald eagle shows air superiority, sends $950 drone into lake”
Two birdwatchers saw the Bald Eagle attack something but told officials they didn’t realize it was a drone. Assumption was that it looked like a sea gull.
A search of the shoreline failed to find the drone. Data later revealed that it landed in 4 feet of water about 150 feet offshore.
Item #3: Tracking the spot
In the room where Nancy sits with her laptop, the sky-lights now allow sunlight to enter and make a trek across the carpet. The sun has to be high in the sky for this to happen, so that means mid-day during the summer season. Roughly, the past couple of months. The bright space on the carpet starts on her left as a rectangle, moves to the right, and gets elongated with a point. It is sufficiently bright we have needed to shield it for her to see her screen well.
The vertical rays of the sun are now hitting Earth at about 14° North Latitude, near the central border of Honduras with Nicaragua, or 963 miles north of the Equator. It will reach the Equator in 38 days, so that point where the sun is directly overhead is moving south at 25 miles per day. {The speed changes, but close enough.}
As the Sun moves south the area of brightness has gotten smaller and lasts a shorter time. Soon it will disappear, to reappear next spring. Dates unknown.
Here is a plan. Document the day when if first and last appears. Also set a time lapse camera to film its traverse across the carpet and watch its shape change during the day of highest sun. Next year that will be during the weeks before and after Monday, June 21. The Sun’s height won’t change much during that 2 week period, but just in case you care the Solstice will be Monday, June 21, 2021 at 03:32 UTC, or 8:32 PM Sunday, the 20th, here on the Naneum Fan.
Item #4: Wind
High winds and torrential rain on the New South Wales south coast in Australia have resulted in waterfalls in the Royal National Park being blown in reverse.
Item #5: The color green
Image is of a dark green, chosen because it is a Pennsylvania reference.
Nancy sent one of the animated cards to a young friend on his “Golden Birthday.” What? So we learned from his mother that it is the day when you turn the same age as the day-of-month number. Miles had his 9th birthday last Sunday, the 9th of August. The history of this is opaque, but seems to have been popularized as a marketing concept.
The card was of an old style English train with a dog chasing a cat as the engine was being fired-up and pulling away. At the bottom right of the card is a link with the letters GWR – for Great Western Railway.
I searched that up and found the locomotives (but not the other cars) were painted Brunswick green. There is a link to the color green in the description, so I went there. (Wow! There are lots of named greens.)
I learned Brunswick green is a common name for green pigments made from copper compounds**, and is historically linked to Braunschweig, Germany (famous for smoked pork sausage), but called Brunswick by the English.
This site has a large color block, photos of trains and other train things, and some interesting history: Link
**One of my interests is the history of science, including discovery of the elements, by who, where, and when.
And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John