At this time of morning, I find myself standing outside in pale light. Strange light.
Above me, I
can see the half-moon, Venus, and a dozen stars. I don’t need thousands of stars. A dozen will do.
The birds remain night-quiet in their bird places and only a single mouse is afoot at this time. A single mouse will do.
—Mitchell Hegman
Yesterday morning, I discovered something ate a good portion of one of the super-spiny native cactus plants in my yard.
Upon finding the partially
consumed cactus, I stood there, staring down at it, dumbfounded. I can’t touch one of the damned things
without crying out in pain. Eating one
is out of the question. Thing is, a
bunch of the cactus was consumed.
Something truly worked at eating it for breakfast.
Who or what can eat a cactus?
I have posted a couple
images of the cactus as I found it. We
commonly call this type of cactus a pincushion or ball cactus. The Montana Field Guide marks them as
a spinystar cactus.
Again, who can eat a cactus?
I hopped onboard my computing
machine and googled this: “What animal
eats cactus?”
Surprisingly, three animals
that possibly scurry about my landscape landed on the list: woodrats (known as
pack rats in my hometown of East Helena, Montana), jack rabbits, and ground
squirrels (referred to as gophers in any bar in Montana).
Not sure which of the three
might be responsible, but I am slightly impressed. That is some delicate work right there.
—Mitchell Hegman
Early in the spring, I and an adjacent landowner patrolled our cabin properties to check the areas where a contractor sprayed to control knapweed and Canada thistle encroachments. We wanted to make sure the weeds had toppled, but our wildflowers survived.
Our assessment proved hopeful. The early wildflowers appeared as normal.
Over the weekend, I spent
several hours traversing my property one more time to assess the weeds and the
array of early summer wildflowers.
I am happy. The invasive weeds have been devastated. At the same time, the wildflowers are marching
along nicely. The entire point of
spraying was to save the flowers.
Posted are a few images of the
pretty survivors.
Sticky Geranium
Wood’s Rose
Arnica
Lady Slipper
—Mitchell Hegman
I strapped a game camera to a tree about twenty yards behind my cabin. I must admit, I am slightly apprehensive about this. Do I really want to know what’s running around out there?
It is probable I will catch the
image of a grizzly bear. Even more
likely is the prospect of capturing the photo of a mountain lion. But what if I snare the image of something
weird, say, bigfoot, or Elvis dressed head to toe in camo and bowhunting in my
woods?
And I also needed to consider placement.
I opted to direct the camera
toward a somewhat open area where I commonly see deer and occasionally find
moose. Of course, I am equally interested
in smaller stuff, too. Rabbits. Weasels.
Wolverines. Bobcats (Go MSU!).
I initially placed the camera
about three feet off the ground, thinking I might be more apt to catch even the
smallest blibot bouncing about. Then, an
hour or so after initially strapping the camera to the tree, I started
imagining mostly shooting the knees of deer and elk and moose.
Jeez.
I snuck back to the camera and
hiked it a bit higher up the tree.
I will be checking for results in
a week or two.
Game Camera (On the Tree
Centered in the Photograph)
—Mitchell Hegman
The title of this blog is somewhat misleading. Based on the title, you might be under the impression we moved a pile of dirt. We actually moved what is pretty much a pile of rocks.
I live on a pile of rocks—an
ancient flood plain to be precise.
The pile we moved is what
remained after completing the concrete foundation and slab for my sunroom. To be sure, some of the rocks are
pretty. I fished a half-dozen keepers from
the pile as we whittled it down. And, given
the rocky consistency of the pile, we spread it on the road instead of using it
for landscaping.
Randy Arriving in the Bobcat
Spreading a Bucket Load
Pile Cleared
—Mitchell Hegman
Following is a conversation I had when I sent a package off to Manila with an international shipper.
Agent: “What
are you shipping?”
Me: “Mostly
dry goods. Some nuts. Also, some homemade huckleberry jam.”
Agent: “Are
you sure you are allowed to ship that?”
Me: “Your
website indicated it was okay. I have
shipped the same stuff twice before.”
Agent (seemingly perturbed): “You
can’t trust our website.”
Me (biting my lip): “Wait?
What?”
Agent (pivots to a computer and
scours the untrustworthy website): “Mmmm…. Okay….”
Me: “Okay?”
Agent stares at me for a few
seconds and then begins inputting my information into her system.
Me: “Ooooookay.”
—Mitchell Hegman
Yesterday, we experienced a spectacular sunrise. The color show lasted for several minutes and provided some stunning color transitions. I have posted three images captured with my smarter-than-me-phone over the course of about ten minutes.
Solar PV System
At the Edge of the Deck
Dame’s Rockets
—Mitchell Hegman
Name for a rock band: Gnashville
Name for a goldfish: Hank
the Butcher
Name for a rodeo bucking bull: Bunny
Name for a girl: Glade
Name for a boy: Talus
(In geology, a
term for an outward sloping accumulation of rock fragments of any size or
shape)
Name for a placebo: Notatall
Name for a bird identification
app: SeeGull
—Mitchell Hegman
Imagine you have cancer and are given a 2% chance for survival.
How would you feel?
How would you behave?
Would you rage?
Or would you find grace?
Today, I am sharing the story
of Nightbirde. Take 7 minutes out of
your day and watch the video.
—Mitchell Hegman
In June of 1991, I (along with a bunch of great friends) framed the walls of my house. At the time of construction, my wife and I had plans for a sunroom but the additional cost was beyond our means.
“Tell you what,” I said to my
wife, “I’ll frame in a door for future use.
Someday, we will build the sunroom.”
That someday is now. Yesterday,
almost exactly thirty years to the date from when I framed the rough opening
for the door to the sunroom, I opened the wall to expose the framing to the
first light it has seen in thirty years.
My emotions, as I tore away the
drywall, were surprisingly mixed. As
excited as I felt to finally expose the doorway opening, I also found myself saddened
that my wife, Uyen, did not witness the daylighting of the phantom door. She has been gone for ten of the thirty years
since we constructed the house.
Sometime in the weeks to come,
I will cut all the way through the foam and exterior sheathing and the light
from inside my house will directly meet the light from outside. I will walk through the opening. And there will be a sunroom.
June 1991 (Framing)
First Light
Fully Revealed
Living Room Now
—Mitchell Hegman
My “bionic” bluebird box has been further fortified. A longtime friend and reader of this blog gifted me with a box of four portal guards for protecting the box and nesting bluebirds inside.
Guards are metal plates you affix around the entry portal with screws. The guards make a lot of sense. Long before a magpie murdered the female of the nesting pair in my bluebird box, a northern flicked attacked the box. A portal guard would have provided a great deal of protection from the flicker’s assault.
Damage Caused by a Northern
Flicker
Portal Guard in Place
—Mitchell Hegman
NOTE: The bluebirds and I thank you, Diane!
Two weeks ago, I posted about placing three antique bottles in an ultraviolet light chamber I fashioned from an extra garbage bin in my garage. The idea is to push the process of turning the glass purple. A few online sources I found suggested constantly bathing the bottles in ultraviolet light for four weeks would produce a lot of color.
Today, I have posted a photograph
of the bottles before I placed them in the chamber and another photograph, for
comparison, of the bottles following two weeks in the light.
The difference is, at best,
faint.
No worries. The way I have this figured; I can tolerate bottles
and light in my garbage bin for weeks.
Months, if need be. I am in it
for the purple.
Bottles on Day One
Bottles After Two Weeks
—Mitchell Hegman
Tucked into the southeast corner of Ecuador is a low, but steep and heavily forested range of mountains called the Cordillera del Condor. The area has managed to remain largely untamed and uncharted. Recently, researchers began exploring the great biodiversity there. Two scientists studying the area, David Brito-Zapata and Carolina Reyes-Puig, found, among other things, a new species of frog.
The frog is a somewhat sporty
little number with coppery-red eyes and a mottled, yellow, brown, black and
orange skin.
The cool thing about
discovering a new species is that you get to give it a name.
Just so you know, should I ever
unearth a new kind of anything, it will carry a scientific name with either “MitchHegmanus
or “yabbadabbado” somewhere in the mix.
In the event of naming the new
frog, our two scientists came to consensus on a more unusual designation. The bright-eyed little frog the pair found now
carries the name Pristimantis ledzeppelin,
known in English as Led Zeppelin’s Rain Frog.
Long live rock!
Led Zeppelin’s Rain Frog
—Mitchell Hegman
List of odd contingency plans:
—Mitchell Hegman
The concrete slab for my sunroom has been poured in place. The best part of that was watching the gravel slinger truck shoot a four-inch layer of gravel into the pour area.
The truck arrived early in the
morning, rattling my house wholesale as it drew near. I approached the driver as soon as he dropped
down from the cab to assess the job.
“Hope you don’t mind if I
watch,” I said after an introduction.
He nodded. “Not much of a show.”
“Are you kidding. You have every little boy’s dream job. You operate a machine that throws rocks. You’ve gotta love your job.”
He smiled wryly. “I loved it for the first fifteen minutes.”
We talked as he fired up the
conveyer and began slinging gravel into place.
I was instantly impressed with the accuracy of the driver/operator as
gravel seemed to magically fill itself into an even layer. He told me he has been operating slinger rigs
for eighteen years. “Once I was able to
operate the controls without looking at them, I was able to place rocks pretty
efficiently,” he said.
Posted today are two photographs
from the concrete pour and two short videos of the slinger truck.
Ready for the Pour
Concrete in Place
Slinger at Work
Slinger at Work
—Mitchell Hegman
Let’s not mince words here: I am an idiot.
Not so long ago, I bragged
about applying a little tar to the foundation for my sunroom without getting any
on me or my clothing.
Yesterday, I paid the price for
that. I needed to open up the bucket of
tar one more time to slap some of the stuff on the elbow of an underground
metal propane pipe I exposed along the back of my house.
How messy can one small elbow
be?
I can answer that.
Shockingly messy.
Apparently, the tar jumped
right onto me when I was not looking. I
didn’t even notice. Thinking I had won
another victory in the tar wars, I went about my day after finishing my little
project. And then I notice a smear of
tar on my computer.
And the door.
And the counter.
Hmmm. Where did that come from?
A quick investigation revealed
the source.
Tar on my Laptop (Bottom Right)
The Source
—Mitchell Hegman
Less than a week ago, a magpie
murdered the female from a nesting pair in my front yard. The magpie ambushed her from atop the bird
box. The male vanished following the
murder.
Yesterday, another male
appeared at the bluebird box. I watched
him hover in front for a few seconds, inspecting. He then perched on top for a bit, checking
out the neighborhood.
The last thing I want is
another murder on my hands.
About a month ago, I purchased
a new bluebird box after a northern flicker hammered holes it the existing one. I intended to replace the box then, thinking
the nesting pair had abandoned the nest inside, but I soon saw the birds resuming
preparations to raise a brood.
Yesterday, after seeing another
bluebird showing interest, I decided to replace the nesting box. But I added some protective features using
metal from the soffit I tore apart for the sunroom addition and wood from my
window replacement project.
I produced a kind of “bionic” bluebird
box.
I extended the roof to prevent
ambush attacks from above. I added metal
foils to the face of the box to prevent big birds from grasping the box.
Here’s to hoping it works.
Building the Box
The Final Product
—Mitchell Hegman
Stopped at the cabin to watch a bulldozer cut a road across my neighbor’s property.
Note to self: Nothing
stops a bulldozer (See video below).
Drove deeper into the mountains
and picked up five littered aluminum cans from the edge of the road. Near the top of a mountain pass, I hopped
from my truck to poke around in the understory.
About sixty feet in, I found a wood tick crawling on my pants.
Note to Self: Yikes!
End of off-trail hiking for the
day.
Because I was without proper
adult supervision (I was alone), I photographed another Indian paintbrush. Also captured another image of my favorite
mountain vista.
End of report.
Mountain Vista
Paintbrush
Bulldozer at Work
—Mitchell Hegman
I am often slow to recognize brilliance. Someone had to (more or less) beat me over the head with Shakespeare’s writing before I saw the value. I did not really appreciate my ultimate hero, Nikola Tesla, until I was knocking on the door of middle age.
Chris Cornell is my latest late
discovery. If you are unfamiliar, Chris
was the singer and often songwriter for Soundgarden, Audioslave, and Temple of
the Dog.
For some of you none of this may
still not mean much.
Chris Cornell’s voice rings
with authenticity. More importantly, he
displayed a direct connection with his deepest emotions and his songs. According to Wikipedia:
He was voted "Rock's
Greatest Singer" by readers of Guitar World, and ranked No. 4 on the list
of "Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 Vocalists" by Hit Parader, No. 9
on the list of "Best Lead Singers of All Time" by Rolling Stone, and
No. 12 on MTV's "22 Greatest Voices in Music".
Chris suffered from depression
for his entire life. On May 18, 2017,
Chris committed suicide at the age of 52.
Posted today is one of many songs that clearly displays the depression
underlying his brilliance.
Chris Cornell
—Mitchell Hegman
The female bluebird was murdered.
For the better part of a week,
a magpie has been stalking around the bluebird nesting box in front of my
house. I shooed the magpie away several
times. Early in the evening on the night
before last, I looked out and spotted the magpie clinging to the front of the
birdbox and poking around the entry hole.
I rushed out the front door,
yelling, and chased the magpie off.
Upon reaching the box, I found
the female bluebird nearly decapitated.
Her head was hanging by a strand outside the box. Her lifeless body remained inside the box
atop the nest.
The bluebird had been dead for
no more than a minute. From what I could
tell, the magpie ambushed her from atop the box when she poked her head out.
I removed the bird from the
box, wrapped her up in plastic, and unceremoniously placed her at the bottom of
my trash bin in my garage.
The male bluebird orbited
around the birdbox for about fifteen minutes and then vanished.
Yesterday morning, I removed
five eggs from the nest inside the box. I
stood there staring at the eggs for some time.
What to do with those? They were
cold as a stone now.
Fucking magpie.
I walked the eggs a distance
down what we call Big Tire Gulch and placed them in a conspicuous place. Their mother went unceremoniously. The eggs go out shouting.
Five Eggs
—Mitchell Hegman
On an early morning walk down to the lake, I chanced upon an evening primrose. We call them a gumbo lily in these parts. As the proper name implies, the evening primrose blooms in the evening, stays open for but one night, and then wilts in the heat of the next day. They rely on night-flying moths for pollination.
I consider finding a primrose
in the morning the very best of luck.
They are big but quite fragile.
When I knelt down to capture an
image, I discovered my phone was on selfie mode. Normally this annoys me. But this time I felt somewhat amused. Just for fun, I thought I might try a photograph
of me looking down at the flower and another of the flower looking up at me.
Evening Primrose
Me
—Mitchell Hegman
Some twenty or so years ago, as I picked up my camera and headed for the door at the sight of a five-alarm sunset, my wife asked: “Don’t you have enough sunset pictures?”
I stopped for a moment, considered. “Nope,” I answered. “That does not compute.” I rushed out the front door and lifted my
camera to the sky.
In the time since, I have taken
hundreds more sunset photographs. I
never tire of dashing out to capture the next image. Honestly, I can’t get enough.
The sky is my garden.
I have a similar obsession with
wildflower photographs. Every year, at the
proper time of the season, I stumble out across various landscapes, bracketing
images of this flower or that.
At present, I am circling around
flourishes of bitterroot, our Montana state flower. No two are alike. Bitterroots offer shades of color ranging
from nearly white to the deepest lavender.
They are always striking.
Posted are images of two pairs
of bitterroots I found yesterday.
—Mitchell Hegman
I pulled a hose and sprinkler a short distance down the hill at the back of my house to water a few of the native pine trees. As I stretched the hose to the farthest point, a conspiracy of ravens erupted in the trees not far below me. Several birds began squawking from points unseen. Two took flight and, while also squawking, swung back and forth the in the air above me.
“What’s up, boys?” I called out
to them.
I stood there for a while,
watching. I expected the birds to drift
away but they refused to relent.
“What are you hiding down there?”
I asked.
Something in a cluster of older
pines below me was of great interest to the ravens. Curious, I dropped the hose and sprinkler and
slowly descended the hill. I suspected
the ravens were onto a feast. Maybe a
freshly dead animal. The closer I drew
near the trees, the more agitated the ravens became. And then I spotted the reason the ravens were
acting so strangely. Halfway up one of
the trees a solitary and quiet raven perched near the trunk of the tree.
While ravens will generally not
allow close approach, I was able to walk up immediately below the raven in the
tree.
It occurred to me something was
wrong with the raven. The bird lacked
the energy or the wherewithal to fly away.
The bird peered down at me. I
looked up at the bird. I stood there for
long while.
As a boy, I would have picked
up a stick or stone to throw at the bird.
But this is a different day. I
waved at the bird and slowly climbed back up the hill. The ravens in the air and ravens squawking
from nearby trees—the protectors—quickly settled into silence as I ascended
toward my house.
—Mitchell Hegman
There is a hanging tree not far down the road from my house. I am not talking about the kind of hanging tree where Bad Bart the outlaw is strung-up. This hanging tree is the kind used for hanging my hat and, sometimes, a shirt.
I am going to say the tree (a
long dead juniper) is three-tenths of a mile from my house. The tree is just far enough that when I reach
it on walks from my house, I will be sufficiently warm enough on a cool day,
that I can peel off one layer of clothing, hang the articles of dress on the
tree, and continue on.
Yesterday, not long after
sunrise, I opted for a brisk walk. The
morning proved cool enough for me to toss on a t-shirt and long sleeve
button-up before leaving the house. By
the time I reached the hanging tree, I was warm enough that I needed to remove
both my hat and the t-shirt.
I did so.
The hanging tree is strange convenience,
but it is a convenience.
The Hanging Tree
—Mitchell Hegman
