WatershedEvents

Raleighwood Revisited (1/19/2012)

Looking north through the heart of where Marlene's house used to stand.

I went by Marlene Azar’s old place today to see how the last 24 hours of heavy precipitation was moving its way through the watershed. The area is flooded, as is usually the case, and the two homes nearest the creek are just inches above the crest. The owner of the home closest to the creek (on Raleighwood Lane) was working on his garage door so I stopped by for a brief chat. He’s lived in the home for 11 years, which means he moved in just about the same time as Marlene began to have water issues on her property. The water level around his home was pretty high but the inside was dry and that’s what really counts. He noted that the basin where his home is located is silting up at what seems to be an even more rapid pace than previously. Beavers and THPRD’s unwillingness to rid the area of them were at the root of the problem, he told me. Then he suggested I take a look at the two dams that lie less than .1 mile south of his back yard. “They span the entire bottom of the floodplain,” he said. That surprised me. Last time I looked (which has been a year or so) there were three dams in the park but only one of them of any size.

The upper dam is just visible on the right hand side of the photo. 

When I pulled into the parking space at the main entrance to the park I was astonished to see (1) just how high the flood waters were in this area; (2) the size of the dam just north of the entrance (above); (3) the rim of a second dam of similar size that crosses the basin just 100 yards further to the south. Both dams were overflowing but neither appeared to be breached. The water was too deep for a wade so I was confined to shooting from a single perspective. When the waters subside and the ground dries out a bit I will go back and take some measurements.

After I left the park I traveled upstream a quarter mile north to part of a residential development called Laurian Grove.

One hell of a handsome rock, about 7 or 8 feet tall. 

Development taking place across the street from the sign. 

The newest housing near here dates from around 2008 and consists of large homes a million or more in value. The area lies just off Scholls Ferry Road and looks to be about 3.3 acres in overall size. A workman told me that four homes were in the process of going up on the upper portion of the open property. One of Sylvan Creek's tributaries drains through the northern section of the property (wooded area left side of frame). It's ravine is very heavily wooded and there's also a stormwater treatment area (fenced in bio-swale) located near where the channel crosses under 64th Place (outof sight to the left).

The upper rim of the developing area lies at around 400' but where the creek crosses under the bridge the elevation is 320' - a net drop of eighty feet in less than 800 feet. Pretty steep. The stormwater from this area flows for around 1500 feet before the tributary meets up with the mainstem of Sylvan Creek. The photo below was taken at the intersection of Sylvan Creek and SW 66th Avenue, about 300 feet upstream from that confluence. I'll try to talk to the home owner here someday and maybe get alook at what kind of rip-rap they've put at that corner. The elevation is right at 280 feet. 

This is Sylvan Creek as it exits the culvert at the dead-end of Preslynn Drive, elevation 260 feet. 

 Barely visible through the small gap in the tree line on the left (photo below) is the roof of one of Marlene's neighbors. The flooded area in the foreground is an extension of the property on the north side of Raleighwood Lane that invariably floods during heavy rain events.

As far as I can tell Laurian Grove is not a LID project. If this is true, that's too bad for the creek. It will have lost another three acre chunk of its biological machinery. Interestingly enough the remaining trees and the stream figure prominantly in the development's brochure. It would be wrong to maintain that this development will add signifiacntly to the ongoing siltification of the bottom land at Raleighwood Park. But at the very least it will add more stormwater runoff to the equation and that won't help. At bottom it's a complex situation: You can't blame the beavers or the builders from doing what comes naturally; but if they keep it up and we don't find some solid fixes for both ends of the problem soon, the future of the properties adjacent to the bottom reaches of Sylvan Creek could be grim.

 

 

 

 

Up Fanno Creek - Progress Report

This afternoon I took a 232 page bundle to Kinkos for binding. There are ten copies of this draft - the last one, I hope, before I sit down and prepare an actual manuscript. Pretty excited. I am sending it out to a dozen reviewers and hope to get their feedback by 2/15/2012. Boy, just getting to this point has been a long time coming. Still a ways to go but more excited than ever. Old friend Juliet Shen has volunteered to design the final book, which means that it will be beautiful no matter what. Stay tuned.

Happy Birthday Buddy!

Buddy at about three months.

Buddy at four.

Season's Greetings Everyone!

Winter Equinox Mandala 2011

Peace and Joy on this day, the second most wonderful of the year!

TMDL / WQMP for The Tualatin Basin

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is accepting public comments on the draft of The Tualatin Basin TMDL and WQMP until 5:00PM 11/30/2011. Mine are detailed below in a copy of the memo I sent to DEQ earlier today. I’ll have more to say about TMDLs, WQMPs, and a variety of other acronyms at a later date. Meanwhile the December “Drop Dead” date for the final draft of my book looms so I need to attend to that before anything else.

__________________________

To: Avis Newell / Oregon Department of Environmental Quality

From: Eric L. Lindstrom, EdD

Date: 11/29/2011

Re: Comments on TMDLs / Clean Water Services

It’s too bad there’s not a TMDL for something like “Total Stream Degradation.” Focusing on a few key and easily quantified characteristics of stream behavior such as nutrient loads, water temperature and so on is certainly a positive and necessary step in monitoring stream health. But until the actual drivers of these kinds of indices are addressed in some concrete regulatory form or another we won’t be dealing with the disease so much as we are its symptoms. For example, please regard the following photographs of Ball Creek.

Figure 1

These first two shots were taken above the culvert that directs the creek under 74^th street in Tigard. These were taken on 5/2/2009, around 5:30 PM. A storm had passed over the Tualatin Hills area approximately an hour earlier. It was a good downpour but nothing for the record books by any means. The culvert lies less than 300 feet from the stream’s confluence with Fanno Creek. Figure 1 shows the receiving side of the flow while Figure 2 shows the outflow on the downstream side.

Figure 2

The next shot (Figure 3) was taken just below the south rim of PCCs southernmost parking lot (45N 26.169 W122 43.892 approx.) in an area that lies immediately below the a catchment that is designed to reduce, at least in part, the full force of the water flowing off the parking lot. (I believe that drainage from areas other than the parking lot comes through this place as well but have no precise data as to where from or how much. At this particular spot the channel is about four feet deep and six feet wide.

Figure 3

About 100 feet further down the slope the channel is roughly 12 feet wide and 7 feet deep. For scale the smaller rocks in the center of the photo range from baseball to basket ball size. The main channel has also been joined by three smaller but still impressive incisions entering from the west side. A fourth channel (Figure 4) is beginning to form on the east side as well.

Figure 4

I was so impressed by the dynamics of this site that I went to the trouble of working up a guess at the volume of silt that had to wash out of the first 100 feet of the single channel in order to leave this kind of scar tissue. Very approximately it came to 200 cubic yards. The college went operational in 1961 but I think this portion of the parking area wasn’t fully completed until the late 1990s. If that assumption and my rough numbers are even close, that means an average of better than 10 cubic yards of silt have been blown out of the first 100 feet of this channel every year. The quality and accuracy of my math notwithstanding, you don’t need a calculator to tell you that this open wound contributes a huge amount of silt and parking lot byproducts – oils, anti-freeze, brake dust etc. – to the main-stem flow of Fanno Creek every time it rains even moderately in the area. All you have to do is stand there once and see it in the flesh.

The conditions on Ball Creek aren’t unique. There are dozens of places such as this one in the Fanno Creek watershed alone and hundreds more throughout the Tualatin River Basin. The issues this kind of hydrology creates for the rest of the watershed are systemic and pernicious. The quantity of undesirable silt and other potentially damaging materials these open sores are sloughing off into the river must be absolutely stupendous. So too must be the damage that is being done to the biological communities downstream. None of the currently used indices directly measures the impacts of these festering sores on water quality. More importantly none of them provide a lever for getting at the specific stormwater runoff issues that literally and figuratively lie at the source of most of the river’s major biological health issues.

The ratio of pervious to impervious surface area is relatively easy to quantify, particularly in the urban areas where control of this relationship is most critical. The correlation between this ratio and the biological health of a stream and its watershed is both significant and well understood. Accordingly I am urging the adoption of a specific TMDL for Impervious Cover based on the Healthy Streams plan developed by Clean Water Services (pg. 59-60). At the minimum such a TMDL would provide leverage for the more direct control of stormwater runoff and all its associated issues. But it has the added advantage of providing a reliable surrogate for evaluating the biological health of the system as well.

The 303d list of biologically impaired streams in the Fanno Creek watershed does not include several tributaries whose impacts on the overall health of the creek are almost certainly significant. These include Sylvan Creek (all three of its upland stems), Columbia Creek, No Name Creek and the Bridlemile-Ivey creek complex in the northern headwaters of the system, and Bell and Derry Dell creeks in the southern reaches. Some of these creeks are very short in terms of total stream length, but all are heavily incised and becoming more so every day. Both Sylvan and Derry Dale creeks are of particular concern due to the landslides frequently associated with their behaviors. None are adequately monitored, if monitored at all. Until some semblance of measurement of their respective contributions to the overall health of the system is determined the full dimensions of Fanno Creek’s degradation will not be fully known. Accordingly I am requesting that these streams be covered under the pervious cover/biological health TMDL proposed above.

I have more photographs on hand that provide some evidence for the degree of degradation these streams endure and would be happy to make them available to DEQ if so desired. I would also be happy to provide further narrative and acquire additional photography on behalf of the DEQ should such action be deemed necessary for advancement of the Impervious Cover TMDL and the clean water cause. However photographs generally fail to adequately portray the full dimensions of the problem so I suggest a tour of some of these areas would prove to be even more useful in the decision making process. In such an event please let me know and I would be happy to provide some rough coordinates for some of the more typical and easily accessed places.

Respectfully submitted,

Eric L. Lindstrom, EdD – 11/28/2011

Three Fingers

The great nature photographer Eliot Porter rarely included the sky in his photographs. “The sky is too blue,” he is reported to have said on more than one occasion. I have reflected on Porter’s approach more than a little, particularly of late. It is very difficult to capture the moment in Owyhee Country when the clear sky is included in a shot. As Porter noted, the color is so strong and devoid of texture it overpowers the more subtle complexities of the landscape. But it is also very difficult to capture the broken tops of the giant rocks that crowd most canyons without showing a good deal of the sky in the process. The shot above is a perfect illustration of the quandary so often presented to shooters in these circumstances, as you can prove for yourself simply by using something opaque to crop out the sky.

There are a couple solutions for this problem, one that I am certain Porter utilized many times in his own work and another that he may have been too much of a purist to use. First, get on top of the image. In other words change your position in such a way that the sky helps guide the viewer's glance deeper into the center of the shot. I tried that approach in the photo below but unfortunately ran out of hilltop before I reached the vantage point I wanted. That particular spot was just fifty feet above my head, but what my GPS map had failed to mention was that this particular fifty feet was a vertical column – a basalt plug – that I was both too ill-equipped and too ill-disposed to climb. Still, I think the shot below gives a better sense of the enormity of the place, even if it cost a little in the way of detail to pull it off.

In addition to changing perspective you can try to milk the sky for any variation in tone and texture it might be able to give you. In this day and age of digital image manipulation the ease of making “corrections” is pronounced that most shooters simply can’t resist the temptation to take liberties with the documentation of the scene. In Porter’s day this kind of post-production “artistry” would have been both difficult and expensive, particularly where color imagery was concerned. In the image below I messed with the sky to the east (frame right), adding a little density and motion to the edges of an approaching thunderhead that was just a few miles out of frame. Nothing too heavy handed I hope, but maybe enough to make the sky even less obtrusive?

Finally, you can check off your initial approach completely and crop the damned thing down until the sky is a non-factor. But this shot is more about the contrasting colors and textures than it is about the rugged grandeur of the place.

At any rate, isn’t this place magnificent? I am sorry to say my pictures only hint at the overall power of the area, but I’m pretty used to that kind of shortfall where things Owyhee are concerned. 

On the way up to the vantage point I happened to spot a herd of Rocky Mountain sheep on a distant hillside. When I first saw them they were scattered all over the slope, but minutes later they had crowded together in the herd shown here. No doubt some kind of predator on the down slope, but exactly what I could never tell. They stayed like this for more than fifteen minutes before swiftly leaving the area. (Double click on the image and it should open to a larger size.)

Seems like where ever you hike in the canyons or along the rims there’s some wonderful rock or rocky feature that you  just have to shoot. I’m not sure what kind of bird is perched on the rock in this first one. It wasn’t there when I took the shot!

This outcropping has the look of turrets to it, a common characteristic of crumbling basalt formations.

Back down on the road to the parking area I was surrounded by these kinds of columns. Just wish I knew more about geology. I’m sure there are several interesting stories showing here, if only I could read them.

I'll return to this wonderful place as soon as possible. There's a trail here that leads all the way down to the lake and I am very interested in seeing what that stretch is like. And then there are always the rocks....

Owyhee - September Sojourn

Cow Pasture, Owyhee style. 

In my last post I focused on Antelope Reservoir and wrote about re-covering some fairly familiar ground; but the main emphasis of the September trip was to look into three places new to me: Gin Basin, Painted Canyon and Three Fingers Gulch. By “look in” I mean to say that I was scouting them in preparation for more extensive exploration in the future. I was traveling alone, if you don’t count Buddy, who more often than not would not get out of the truck during midday. I wasn't prepared for anything like a long hike over unknown and possibly difficult ground. As I’ve mentioned several times in the past, I’m not so much afraid of being injured out there so much as I am of having to be rescued. What a humiliation that would be. At any rate my plan was to drive to a convenient look-in point, take a few shots and maybe a short hike to establish my grasp of the terrain, then move on.

The headwaters area of Painted Canyon lie in some wonderfully jumbled up terrain about 10 miles north/northeast of the Leslie Gulch campgrounds as the crow flies. I’m using Leslie Gulch as my reference point because (1) some folks who occasionally visit this site know of it, (2) the road to it from Highway 97 is a good one, passable for all but a few days out of the year and (3) there’s a cutoff on this main road that leads to both Painted Canyon and Three Fingers Gulch.

There's a sign at the cutoff, one that I've never seen out this way before. It gives information on collecting petrified wood. If there is any sign out here that isn't riddled with bullet holes I've never seen it.

The road isn’t too bad by Owyhee standards meaning you can get up and down it in dry weather without needing a Humvee. I’d have to think twice about trying it in wet weather using my Escape. Several areas I passed through had that strange viscose feeling that so much of the ground has out here even when it is dry. Put a little water with this stuff and you come up with something like a hybrid between mortar and quicksand.

Half the fun of getting anywhere around here is found in the drive itself. The landscape is so full of wonderful rock formations that you'd have to stop every five minutes if you wanted to collect them all photographically.

It's been a good water year so many of the stock ponds are full and still relatively algea free. There are many of them in this improbable landscape. 

A reverse angle highlights the contrast between water and rock. I can't blame the cattle for hanging around here on a hot late summer day.

In several areas along the route I came across these outcroppings, places where bubbles in the volcanic flows were frozen in time until weathering brought them to the surface millions of years later. In these areas the rock, if you could see it in cross section would look like Swiss cheese.

What with all the poking around it was midday before we made it to the rim of Painted Canyon. Buddy was hungry! (No, I don't give him sardines. He had a few chips with his water and dog cookie however. That's why he's smiling.)


It was at this site where I stumbled upon the idea of making some Sun Coffee. I'd left one of my water bottles lying in the sun on the dash and discovered that it was hot to the touch. I happened to have a box of VIa in the glove compartment and the next thing you know a reasonably OK cup of coffee was brewing away on the canyon rim.

The next image shows one of three main drainages to the lip of the headwaters area (upper center); the next several after that take you on a progression of stops around the southern rim and illustrate both the ruggedness and a little of the beauty of this canyon. There’s supposed to be a trailhead somewhere near the top of Painted Canyon but I am not sure I actually found it. There are “trails” along both rims in the area but I think these may have been game trails. I followed one for about half a mile along the rim of the canyon and found a place where it looked as if it would make for a fairly safe and rope-free entrance. But a real bushwhacker would probably sniff at that kind of sissy approach and have gone for the short rappel that would be needed in order to get down into the uppermost reach of the canyon.

To begin with, what might be the trail head if you are prepared to rope your pack down into the ditch and then follow it down with some nifty rock climbing or maybe a bit of rappeling. It would be simple enough to back the truck up to near this spot and use the trailer hitch as a tie-off point. Not in my future, since I think I found a less macho but far "easier" in-route further down the canyon.

Along the rim and looking back at the head area. Remember what I said about Swiss cheese? If you enlarge this image a little you will be able to see my coffee brewing! The bottle and the little bush next to it are perched on the top of the small rise (two little side-by-side specks upper right center).

A little further along the rim and a little deeper into the canyon. That notch in the distance is about two miles down canyon. From that spot the canyon (which overall is oriented northeast to southwest) makes a half mile long jog furtherto the south and then intersects Carlton Canyon. Carlton Canyon in its turn runs east to west and opens up on Lake Owyhee.

Looking back up canyon from roughly the same spot you can just see the truck on the rim.

As unlikely as it may seem from this photo (below) the ravine that runs in from the left (just behind the rock) may offer the easiest access to the floor of canyon, from this rim at least. And it may be the only one as well, according to my maps and my eyeball. The walls look very steep from this point onward. This vantage point lies about half mile down from the headwaters area. Elevation is at about 4000 feet and the floor of the canyon is around 200 feet further down. The ravine runs for about 1500 feet (quarter of a mile) and looks to be reasonably passable. Maybe another day I will find out for sure. 

On the way back to the truck I stopped to admire a sun bleached bone that someone (or something) left perched upon a boulder. 

I was suddenly being scoped out by one of the area's more brazen beasts. He refused to move until I actually poked hime with my finger. Which then he attempted to bite! You don't suppose....?

Next post I'll cover the Three Fingers look-in. Stay tuned....












 

 

Back To Camp Rabbit

Buddy and I returned to Camp Rabbit earlier this month. I've lost track of how many times I've perched on the rocky ridgeline that provides this view of Antelope Reservoir. Six or seven at least. It's become sort of a last-day ritual. I'll fill a thermos with coffee, saddle up my camera bag, put the leash on Buddy and then head for the ridge. That small trailer in the upper left hand corner is Shorty, our new pop-up camper. It's parked in the space I tent camped in the first time I ever visited the place. That was a decade ago, back when I was still using film in my camera instead of micro chips. I didn't get really serious about the area until a trip in late August of 2007. By that time I had purchased a relatively decent digital camera (Nikon D-40) and was able to take shots of the reservoir at a time when it had been drawn down for irrigation purposes to almost the point of non-existence. The shot below, taken from almost the same vantage point as the one above but with a slightly wider lens, provides a glimpse into the situation.

The trailer in the shot above belonged to someone else. That trip (and most others after the first one) I pitched my tent on a point that lies just off camera to the right. The location offers a great deal more privacy. Not that privacy is usually much of an issue at this BLM campground. I've never seen all its four sites in use at the same time and on all but a couple of occassions I have been the only multi-day user. The site also priovided a view of a wonderfully tough little cottonwood that struggled for years to adjust to the height fluctuations of the water.

This scruffy little tree came to figure significantly in the visit-lore I brought back from these trips. Many times it would be the first thing I would see as I emerged from my tent in the morning.

On a trip my son and I made to the place end of summer 2010 the tree was a major focal point for us as well as for the resident blackbirds. One afternoon we saw more than two dozen males crowd into the tree all at one time. Interestingly there were as many or more females around but they stayed on the ground.

May of this year the situation for the tree had changed drastically. I came with my son-in-law Matt and we camped in the regular place. In the shot below you can see that the tree was barren. Given that it was late in May, that was not a good sign.

It's been a good water year for the state, Owyhee Country included, so when I returned myself for a second visit this month (September) I wasn't surprised to see that my favorite campsite has become totally overgrown. The landmark tree had been reduced to a dead snag.

In all its parts the Owyhee Country is a harsh and ever-changing place. In a strange way that's why I am so drawn to it. This last trip was very productive in the sense that I tool a lot of photos and looked in at some areas I've never visited before. I am way behind getting to the imagery and information, but I'll post more as soon as possible.

The Blue Basin (and more)

Back in August daughter Erica and I had a chance to explore a little of The John Day Basin and adjacent areas of the Ochoco National Forest. It was a short trip, just four days including travel time, but we had a wonderful time. Here are some of the photos from that excursion.

Our campsite at Walton Lake. This is a bit idealized so far as the sense of privacy is concerned. In reality the park is one of the most heavily used in Oregon and the pathways are usually busy. Still, it was a good spot and we had a very enjoyable stay, sometimes-loud-neighbors and a jill-billion yellowjackets not withstanding.

The lake is small, something around a mile in circumference, and makes for an enjoyable evening walk. It's well stocked with rainbow trout and the fishing activity only lets up after dark.

It's a heavily timbered area with Ponderosa being the dominant species.

Our trip coincided with the outbreak of fires throughout central Oregon including one that charred more than 50,000 acres near the Clarno Unit and Hancock Station. The resultant smoke made for some interesting sunsets.

Day 2 was spent mostly in the car as we drove from one area of interest to another. First we looked into the campgrounds at Wildcat and then the trail heads for Steins Pillar and Twin Pillars. Steins Pillar looks like a dandy and we will definitely come back and make the hike another day.

The Twin Pillars hike looks like a good one as well although much of the area is still recovering from the 2000 Hash Rock Fire.

Erica looks northeast across a recovering burn area and towards Twin Pillars (above). Later we stopped at a vantage point that gave us a clear albeit distant view of Hash Rock itself.

We spent much of the day simply running the rough roads along the ridge that separates the John Day Basin from the Ochoco forest. We looked for Black Butte, one of the most distinctive features of the southern approach to the Basin and almost couldn't see it due to the heavy haze - just visible dead center in the picture below.

It was pretty late in the year for wildflowers but we did encounter what I think must be wild currants in considerable numbers.

Fields of false hellebore were plentiful as well, both on the ridge top and along the shore of Lake Walton.

For some reason or other ants seem to be particularly attracted to the dying leaves of the hellebore.

We finished the day by taking in the Painted Hills Unit. Even in the smoke filled air the place is something to see. I've photographed the section along the east side of the park a half dozen times but could not help adding another image or two of the area to my files.

I wonder how many visitors get so wrapped up in the power of the hills near the entrance and forget how much more the site has to offer? I know that happened to me the first several times I visited. Even on a day when the quality of the light is relatively poor the textures and colors can be captivating.

But the Unit has a lot more to offer than these fabulous mounds of ash and clay, particularly since in the last several years the site has seen some major renovations to the grounds.

When I first visited the interpretive area west of the main painted hills area (over a decade ago) that portion of the site featured a rickety boardwalk and some very primitive signage. I'm not sure when it was all upgraded, but for the last few years visitors have been able to tour this portion of the unit on a state of the art walkway. The signage is much better as well.

This trip I paid my first visit to an area of the park known as the Leaf Hill Trail. The trail is very short and skirts a solitary red mound of ample proportions and nearly perfect symetry. 

The trail around Red Hill is short but along the way if you look carefully you may be able to find a fossil or two. Here's one that I found that may be a foot print of one of the earliest inhabitants. Size .09 D I think.

The trail is very new and the nearby area was seriously disturbed during development of the site. A great deal of grading had taken place in a nearby drainage area, presumably to combat flash flooding issues. Monkey flowers were growing everywhere in that area, a flower so delicate and so somehow out of place that I presumed it was an invasive non-native. But like fireweed it is both native and lovely. 

One of the reasons I picked the John Day Basin for our trip was to look into a number of campgrounds that are located near the three units of the fossil beds. We also wanted to visit the Thomas Condon Palentology Center located in the Sheeps Rock Unit. The center is several years old but until this trip I had never set foot in the place. Wow! What a great place. I could spend several days there. I'll be returning as soon as time and circiumstances permit. All of this we accomplushed between 9 AM and 4 PM that day. The heat of the day (and it was a hot one) had come and would soon be fading with the lowering sun. Just the right time to set out on the 3+mile hike that follows the permimeter of the Blue Basin.

The Blue Basin is one of the most remarkable places I've visited in Oregon, or anywhere else for that matter. We entered in the north end of the loop trail which turned out to be the recommended proceedure.

It's not a particularly difficult trail but as we worked ourway up through the deep and shady ravine on the north side the lack of a breeze made the lingering heat from the ground oppressive. 

There are a couple resting areas along the trail including one on the upper crest of the basin. In the view below the the trail down runs along the face of the opposite hill (the faint line just above Erica's hat).

As we made our way downhill the sun began to sink behind a cloud bank on the horizon. Meanwhile to the east a thunderstorm had formed and as best we could tell was fast approaching our area.

We picked up the pace a little but even so stopped for awhile at what is probably the best overlook on the whole trail. I want to come back to this exact same spot some evening when the sunlight is a little more full range. The colors are even more incredible than what you can see here.

As I've said on a previous post or two, for years the John Day Basin was, for me, THE outdoor destination. Then I visited Owyhee Country and fell deeply in love with all those wonderful piles of scrambled rock. Now I feel very conflicted about which I love the most. Guess I'll have to keep them both!

 

 

Murder in the Garden

Yesterday evening, just as we were sitting down to dinner on the back deck I noticed a dead bee hanging from one of the florettes of a nearby elephant garlic plant (Allium ampeloprasum). At first glance it appeared that the unfortunate lass had somehow managed to catch her stinger in the florette itself.

Cause of death based on this assumption would have to be chalked up to starvation or exposure. That seemed highly unlikely to me, however, and a closer inspection revealed that the corpse was actually lashed in place with a number of extremely fine threads.

The prime suspect, a well known serial killer, was ultimately discovered, lurking in her hiding place deep among the florettes on the the far side of the bloom.

A white crab spider (family Thomisidae). Case closed.