Around the Venue

Another Lakeshore Arts Festival is in the books. I'm not sure I'll do it next year. It is expensive. It's two days. It's outside so you have to deal with the weather. The event runs for a full 8 hours each day. Last year I did not cover expenses. This year I just barely broke even.

Anyway, here was my canopy partner for this weekend. Lori Hudson, fellow author. We've known each other for a lot of years, but I'd never been right next to her before. We had a good time getting acquainted. We have a lot more in common than writing books.

I am beyond jaded with vendor events. I'm not much of a shopper anyway, and I see tons of beautiful artisan and fine art stuff all the time at these venues. I did see some pottery I liked- blue patterns.

This was creative. If you can't even keep succulents alive, you can have a garden of stained glass ones.

As usual, the fancy lawn sprinklers were right across from us. They are mesmerizing to watch. They always sell a lot of them despite being pricy.

It was hot. I am beat. Feeling slightly crabby. Sorry... I know that's not quality. I am NOT setting an alarm clock for tomorrow morning. That will help relieve the crabbiness!

See Jean's Hobbies

Jean's Hobbies

Day one of the Lakeshore Art Fair is complete. As I often do for this event, I'm spending the night with author friend Jean.

See link below if you don't remember Jean. She often takes a chicken to events. She mainly writes Sco-Fi, but she now has three children's books about chickens.

She has quite a menagerie at her house. This is Jack the India Runner Duck. If you are friends with Jean, you might remember when handsome Jack was just a fluffy duckling.

Jack is friends with Lucy Goose.

The big excitement of the day is that her chicken Laya, who often goes to shows, has been sitting on eggs. Two of them hatched this morning. This one may be an "ordinary" chicken.

This one will be a Silkie, with the naked neck and a sort of pom-pom hairdo.

Jean also has a flower bed she is trying to reclaim. These huge hostas got weeded, and they gained a woven fence since a tree came down earlier this year thanks to the wind.

And this border looks good. It's a huge job to reclaim a garden on a hill that hasn't been cleaned in a while. I know!

Tomorrow we go sell books again. I thought you'd rather see this than more pictures of vendor tents. I certainly don't find those very exciting any more.

See Bring Your Chicken to Work Day

Flowers and Weeds

I expected the gardens to be in much worse condition than they are, so that is good news. Also, I expected to miss the blooming of several flowers that I really enjoy. Turns out, I didn't miss much.

However, the weeding will need to begin in earnest after the weekend.

Here is a shot the length of the front garden bed.

The blue and white Globe Bellflower are in bloom. The white ones have too many weeds to show up nicely right now. But the blue ones are great.

The rock garden is colorful, but it's really overrun by weeds and overly aggressive plants. For sure, I'll start on that on Monday.

Right now the Sedum sexangulare is in full bloom and dominating the look (along with some other yellow-flowering sedums). There are other bloomers, but they need cleaning up to be very visible.

The biggest surprise was the Wood Sage and Viper's Bugloss in full bloom in the driveway bed. There's also a blue bellflower in there. I hadn't planned that would be a blue garden, but right now, it's making a fine impersonation of one!

You'll see more details as I get areas cleaned up.

The car is unpacked and repacked. Some stuff is put away. I didn't exert myself to strongly today. Just trying to guarantee that I'll be ready for two days of being upbeat to talk to people and sell books. Muskegon Lakeshore Art Festival this weekend. I have to leave at 6:30 am.

I used to give myself 2-3 days after a major hike to recouperate. Not happening this time! I don't think I'm getting tougher as I get older, so maybe I'll need to give myself a real break next week.

See Flower Bed Reports

A Very Special Snail

I'm home safe and sound. Haven't done much for the rest of today. Chilling. Getting energy stored up for tomorrow when I will need to get moving again. Meanwhile...

I got to see something at the Paleontological Research Institute that I thought I NEVER would have the chance to observe.

First of all you need to see Chittenango Falls. This is in Central New York.

The North Country Trail doesn't go as close to it as I would like. It used to be on the road just above the falls. Now it's in the woods east of the falls. You would need to take a spur trail for about 1/2 mile to see the waterfall. Of course New York is stuffed with falls, but it's a really pretty one.

There is an interpretive sign at the falls about a unique creature. If I have a picture of that sign (which I thought I did), I can't find it. The critter is a snail. The Chittenango Ovate Amber Snail, Novisuccinea chittenangoensis. It's only found one place in the world, and it's in the spray on one side of this waterfall. There are 50-75 snails in the wild. It's hard to get an accurate population count.

There are also several captive populations at research facilities. People are trying to learn about what makes these snails happy without reducing the wild population.

So, on Tuesday, I saw a terrarium stuffed with dead leaves. I wondered if it housed a snake of some kind or a small mammal. I asked. Warren started talking about the Chittenango Snail and was shocked that I actually knew about it! I was equally shocked that they had some.

This one wanted his-her picture taken. It's sitting on a romaine lettuce leaf. Apparently individuals can be recognized by the pattern on their shells!

For one thing, I thought they were tiny, tiny snails. Not so. They are about 3/4 of an inch long!

An article in the Journal of Molluscan Studies says they only like romaine lettuce when they are getting ready to mate, even though it's a standard diet for most captive snails. The article does give some leaves that have been found to be preferred by Chitt (the nickname for this snail). They like some hickory and walnut. Cherry and oak in certain stages of decomposition are highly preferred. Seems this is a gourmand snail. Very fussy eater. There is a long list of leaves they won't even nibble.

Now for reproduction. Snails and slugs are hermaphrodites. Each individual is both sexes. Remember hearing about the snails' "love dart?" One snail shoots a projectile into another snail which stimulates the desire to reproduce. They bond for 10-15 hours and exchange packets of sperm. Then each snail lays eggs.

I am beyond pleased that I got to see these little critters!

Tomorrow I have to get my tush in gear.

See Paleontological Research Institute

Paleontological Research Institute

First of all, we are safely at Bill's house. Long day in the car. I'll use the blog time tonight to tell you more about the big event of yesterday with Elaine.

We had a private tour of the Paleontological Research Institute in Ithaca.

Here's the deal- one of Elaine's first jobs was as an assistant to the director of the institute. That woman was apparently their most influential director ever, and when the current director (Warren Allman) learned that Elaine knew Dr. Palmer well, he really wanted to talk with her.

This is in the research library- getting acquainted.

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Dr. Allman was a wonderfully gracious host. He gave us a tour of all the behind the scenes parts. This is the type specimen collection. The PRI has the largest collection of fossils in the world, and they have over 16,000 type specimens (keyed out without ambiguities, as perfect as possible, organized and labeled, etc)

They have millions of fossils in their complete collections. They aren't even all in their database yet.

These are micro-specimens. They have been mounted for viewing under a microscope.

And we got a private tour of the public part of the musuem. I'm only going to show you a few things that were unusual to me. Remember, I grew up in this part of New York where we would fill our pockets with fossils every time we went outside.

These are crinoids with the heads attached. Very ususual to find the heads. The "stems" break up into little segmented tubes and they are some of the easiest fossils to find. But they are animals in the same family as starfish. The heads are rarely preserved as fossils.

These are impressions of sea urchins.

And this is a book printed in 1684. It is the oldest book in the PRI collections, and is devoted completely to mollusks and shells.

We spent two hours there, so obviously saw lots more than this. The private tour was great. They were really interested in hearing personal memories of Dr. Palmer, and we got to ask questions like you never would on a self-tour. Not to mention seeing the labs and collections.

There is one more thing from the PRI that I want to share, but it needs to have its own post. I'll catch that one another day.

IF you are ever in Ithaca, and this sort of thing interests you, it's definitely worth a stop.

Tomorrow, final stop for this trip... home.

See A Day with Elaine