Beautiful Belgians

 
My work took me through the no-longer-a-village of Hawkins, Michigan. It still has a small store and a bar. By far the most interesting place to me was a large farm with a population of Belgian horses.

Spent way too long on line trying to find which farm this was, with no luck. But the horses are wonderful. Belgians were bred for heavy draft work, and they are one of the strongest breeds in the world. On this chilly day, they were just relaxing.





Or taking in a snack.



This video is the finals from a local horse pull. (I didn't take it) As I said, I couldn't determine the name of this farm, but if horses from it are in the video, they are the team from Hesperia. All are local teams (you may recognize some town names if you are a regular reader). In any case, these are some fantastic horses at work, of the same breed. The winning pull was 8500 pounds.

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A Fleet Too Far

 
Out today doing cases, and I had to snowshoe in to one of them. Rather a surprise to find an entire fleet in the woods!

You can't see them all in the picture; there were at least 12. Nicely arranged in good formation. Difficult to float.

	See Inside Out
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After the Storm

 
It was so still and beautiful today, after the winds of yesterday, that I just had to go out. I confess that I only did about a half-hour snowshoe walk, but even so, it was awesome.

The report from the deck is that all the critters are fine. Riley was racing around early, and the birds followed. This little junco is not frozen in place, but seems solidly settled.



The Cemetery Creek is frozen. No surprise there, but the scattered fluffy snow on the surface is interesting.



Finally, just two interesting patterns of light and dark.





We had pancakes for lunch... a perfect meal on a cold day.

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Lichen Lesson #2 - More Basics

 

The county is closed. Literally. Pulled in the snowplows and everyone is told to "shelter in place." Record cold predicted for tonight. Many churches already cancelled for tomorrow. Thankfully, the wind has died down a bit. Some of the gusts today have been rather exciting.

My brain is in zombieland. It's been one of those Saturdays that I can't seem to ever wake up. Took no pictures. Hardly moved all day.

So let's forget about that and get some lichen basics started. Not that I know this stuff any better than you. I'm reading the book and sharing!

Three forms: Crustose, Foliose, Fruticose. Just like what the words mean- kinds that looks crusty, leafy, or with fruiting bodies.

The picture from a few days ago shows crustose growing on the bark in the background with the larger one foliose. In the middle is a crustose lichen on rusting metal. The pixie cups-third picture- are an example of fruticose.







Three substrates: Soil, Rock (or engineered rock, like gravestones or buildings or rusting metal), Trees (dead or alive). I don't think that needs much explanation. It basically grows on three things. Paying attention to where it was growing will help with the identification, because different rocks and trees will have different chemistry. Thus determining which species will grow.

Tree, metal and soil shown above. Here's another one on soil, the common reindeer moss (which is a lichen).



Two parts: The microbiont and the photobiont. These aren't as hard as they look. Bio= life. Lichens are by definition a fungus and an algae working together. Only the algae can photosynthsize (make something out of light), so the algae is the photobiont. The other part, the fungus, is the microbiont. Both are changed in appearance by the symbiosis, so that identification of the particular algae and fungus species is nearly impossible. Now that life forms have been recategorized, the photobiont may technically be either an alage or a cyanobacteria (which used to be considered an algae).

The relationship changes the character of the photobiont so much that fewer than 5% of lichen photobionts have been identified with certainly.

I'm stopping there!

But one nice thing is that lichens can be studied in winter, so there's a pretty cool (haha) reason to learn more.

Lichens love the north. Over 600 species can be found in northern Michigan and Minnesota. That grades downward to about 100 species in southeast Michigan. That should keep me busy.

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Forty-seven Years Ago

 
Forty-seven years ago on this night, not quite Valentine's Day, not quite a full moon... Omer and I decided to make a commitment to each other. (not quite so cold, either!)

Tonight it was still not quite Valentine's Day, and the moon (whatever it's doing) was totally obscured by a blizzard we're having. But we ate well! Thanks to Loretta, we had a gift card for Applebee's.



Back then, I could single-handedly eat an entire large pizza from Pizza King in Hartford City. Tonight, I chose to bring half my salad home so I'd be able to eat the entre.



But I did eat all of that. I had their new lemon chicken with quinoa and apple. It was really yummy.



Somehow, I don't think we'll still be here in another 47 years, but hey, I've been wrong before.

	See 44 Years, But Who's Counting...
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