Beautiful (noxious invasive) weeds

When I post pictures of my yard and the empty lot next to us, they almost always show at least one species of invasive weed.  The former owners of our house kept that acre to build on later, and our weeds mostly occur adjacent to that lot, as it has just about every local problem weed species. 

When we were considering buying the house, the owners said they would be maintianing thier lot and that we could play on it whenever we wanted.  Unfortunately, it has only been maintained by other neighbors who were willing to help her out and/or thought they were helping us out (which they were, I just wasn't happy because it felt like they were being taken advantage of, given that they all had major health problems while the former owner made six figures on her un-kept promise to maintain the property). 

I don't mind the tall grass (except for all of the extra mice we get when it goes unmowed all summer) but the property is full of invasive weeds.  Pretty terrible ones that we would be actively abating if we found them on national forest lands (I even got grants in three areas to help get rid of some of these same species).  The hawkweed was beautiful the first year we lived here (orange-red flower in the photo above), but this is a LOT of hawkweed. 

Continue

Browns and yellows in my yard, October 2011

Continue

Pinks and Purples in Glacier, Sept 2011

Pebbles in McDonald Lake at Apgar, Glacier National Park

Kintla Lake, Glacier National Park

Katie, Avalache Creek above the falls, Glacier National Park

Continue

Underwater Oahu photos

These are what came of the underwater disposable camera my friend Jenni gave me in Oahu as part of my birthday gift.  I posted about the trip in my Turtle Medicine blog in this post, this post, this post, this post, *this post, this post, *this post, and this post.  This is Jenni snorkeling followed by fish we saw followed by the couple that helped me try to get my sunglasses back, followed by turtles.

Continue

Teakettle shrowded in clouds (view over 24 hours)

This was a week or two ago.  I looked out the window and saw this cloud cap, which Katie also saw from school.








Continue

Girl Scouts Glacier Campout

An amazing weekend of girlscouting!  Columbia Falls has a spectacular group of leaders.  They get the girls outside....really outside.  They take their own troops amazing places, and the take the time to share with each others troops as well.  They've been doing this together for years, and they operate like a well oiled machine, with the oldest girls fully aware of what's needed and what help their mom's need to get it going.

I can hardle type this without getting choked up.  Our girls (now 7th graders) stopped bing part of "the younger girls" by last year, and this year they are starting to be part of "the older girls".  I'm so proud of them. 

Continue

Bowman Lake, Glacier National Park (last campground night of the season)

We couldn't camp Friday night because I didn't make it back from Hawaii until the latest flight (see Turtle Medicine blog posts for pictures from that trip.....lots of sea turtles).  So we headed up after Christopher's football practice Saturday. 

We were using my backpacking gear for car camping for way too many years, so we used to be able to fit ourselves and our stuff in our car to camp.  But with four of us plus dog plus a reasonable amount of car camping gear (plus a moderate amount of my just-in-case stuff like photo gear and binoculars and such) we really can't fit all of what we need.  So this trip we were light on firewood.  And time.

The ranger came around to let us know there was a red fox without a lot of fear coming around to campsites.  She told us to haze it a little if we were comfortable (she didn't use those words, but that was the general point) and to watch out because it has been taking shoes.  It didn't come to our site until after everyone but me went to bed.  It came right up to me, but I tend to not use my headlamp, so I don't know that he was aware at first that I was so close.  I could hear him but not see him, so I spotlighted him with my headlamp.  He was startled but didn't really car until I chased him.  Even then I had to throw a couple of small rocks to really get him to want to leave.  Other campsites chased him off, too, which was good to see.

I love a lot of sites outside of Glacier on the Forest Service side (Flathead National Forest) but I like the feel of Bowman a lot.  Not a single group, even with a close to full campground, thought they should share their music with the other campers and not a single group buzzed around on anything motorized.  It was really, really great.

It was our only camping trip this summer, but at least we got one night in.  I like driving in on the little Bowman Lake road in summer, having so many winter time cross country skiing memories along that road (from an annual ski trip I used to with other moms from around the valley).

I haven't downloaded the good camera yet.  There are a couple of vidoes below, after the photos.

Our morning fire.

A peak at the lake....better pictures on my fancy camera but I haven't downladed them yet.

Packing up the car, shedding layers as the sun came up.

Polebridge Merc, Greg's first time.  I don't know how that's possible.

Polebridge Merc outhouse and view.

Behind the Merc

Apgar on the way home.

Continue

Middle Fork Boreal Toadlets Aug 2008 (lots of pictures)

A few summers ago I got a phone call from a land owner along the Middle Fork of the Flathead River.  She wanted to know for sure what species the tadpoles were in their pond.  Each day at 2pm they would emerge from the tall grasses and sedges where a small creek feeds the pond.  Thousands of tadpoles would appear and form a stripe of black, traveling adjacent to shore for quite some distance and around a big bend in the pond until they reached their sunning spot.

I've used these photos in a few educational activities and presentations and kids and teachers would LOVE to go there and see for themselves, which I would LOVE to orchestrate in the future.  Timing would be a bugger with a school group, but at the very least I would like to take my girl scout troop there some time.  The Flathead also does an annual Herp Day with the public...it would be nice to somehow incorporate the site.  Makes a great picture for training for something like that, as we usually verbally describe the way the toadlets bunch up and that they can raise the temperature of the water there are so many of them.

By 3 o'clock there wasn't a single toadlet left in the pond.  I will never get bored with the little stuff.  Toads are so much fun.

The toadlets closest to shore kicked up mud and darted away when startled.



The barbed wire above the log is where Forest Service land begins. 
Where some of the toadlets continued on and crossed onto FS land,
they made a visible u-turn rather quickly and headed back.
 There was a fat garter snake sitting near the log eating toadlets.



Near the fence in the photo is where a stream feeds the pond



Across the highway from the toads was a forest fire (Triangle Fire, I think?)



Continue