{"id":477,"date":"2015-09-07T12:22:42","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T12:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/?p=477"},"modified":"2015-09-07T12:31:16","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T12:31:16","slug":"rocks-n-snakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/?p=477","title":{"rendered":"Rocks \u2018n Snakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sleeping snake behind that rock over there is forcing me to stay in the screened porch at the cottage. I can\u2019t even glance at the thing in case it slithers.<\/p>\n

Being inside is OK. I watch puffy clouds of swarming mosquitos on the outside of the screens and tell myself it\u2019s not an especially bad year for mosquitos, in spite of all the rain. But my mosquito bites do seem to be infected. And of course the remaining black flies are still feeding.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already given up swimming in the lake. Waiting for me under the dock is the-mother-of-all-snapping turtles. Years ago — (before refrigerators) — we left a string of fresh caught fish hanging over the dock into the water. By morning, only the chain remained. Turtles never forget. Did you know that? I live my cottage life as if all the turtles on our lake know our dock.<\/p>\n

Speaking of docks and therefore dock spiders\u2026when our lake first opened to cottagers, all old wet stumps were home to big black hairy spiders the size of your hand. Here we are \u2013 the innocents that we were \u2013 me beside my father who is holding my sister with his foot balanced on the spiders\u2019 log hideout. (See my blog posting for May 31, 2015 — What Got Left Behind for more information and the same photograph.)<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Once I was trapped in our wooden rowboat, out on the water, when one of nature\u2019s larger dock spiders appeared \u2013 one hairy black leg at a time — from under a seat. It was difficult to kill that dock spider with the only weapon I had — a long, long oar\u2026in a tippy boat.<\/p>\n

My father used to go for an early morning skinny dip in the lake and there he was, naked, with his boy bits hanging down under the water. Also under the water was a loon, fishing. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re ever in the same situation, you\u2019ll be amazed by the size of the loon when you\u2019re that close. It caught neither fish, nor man, and hey look at the size of those feet. (I did not take this picture as in photograph it with a camera. No, I took it from the NET. Thank you whomever.)<\/p>\n

\"Loon\"<\/p>\n

And speaking of fish, every year word goes \u2018round the lake: There\u2019s a fisher killing cats and small dogs. The fisher is a member of the weasel family and it looks like the product of interbreeding between a black cat and a dachshund dog. In the last fifty or so years, I\u2019ve seen two fishers near the cottage. They have shiny black fur with a long stretched out body and short legs close to the ground. Fishers are the only animals that can kill a porcupine \u2013 other than humans with guns. <\/p>\n

So here I sit inside the screened porch with my small dog \u2013 hors d\u2019oeuvre for a fisher \u2013 but that doesn\u2019t really matter because no longer can I go for a brisk walk on the cottage road up behind us. Not since this year\u2019s larger-than-life bear was seen crossing the road.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here are a couple of views from inside the porch. On the left is the guard dog. On the right is the outdoor wilderness. The plant with the red flowers on the other side of the porch screen is Monarda, or Bergamot, or Bee Balm, or Oswego tea. Bergamot is the basis of Earl Grey tea. Call it what you like. When I bought mine on sale in Bobcaygeon, it was the end of the season and the plant was mostly dead. I planted its few spindly spikes about four years ago. Now it\u2019s what gardeners call \u201crampant\u201d and is the Beaver Lake Hummingbird Caf\u00e9 all summer. There are too many hummingbirds to get an accurate count.<\/p>\n

I love researching the people who have plants named after them. Nicol\u00e1s Bautista Monardes (1493 \u20131588) was a Spanish physician and botanist. The genus Monarda was named for him. (Wikipedia encyclopedia) Monarda is a native North American wildflower species and Nicol\u00e1s Monardes wrote a famous book with a wonderful title in English, Joyfull Newes out of the New-Found Worlde, London, 1596. <\/p>\n

Joyfull indeede.<\/h4>\n

But. Beyond that magnificent clump of Bergamot a-flutter with hummingbirds, is this plant from outer space. Officially it\u2019s called white baneberry. Its common name is Doll\u2019s Eyes and it\u2019s a toxic killer. Eat a couple of those evil berries and your heart stops. And then you die.<\/p>\n

\"Dolls<\/p>\n

There\u2019s lots of nature at the cottage \u2013 if you like that sort of thing. Sometimes it does put on a calming, snake-free show.<\/p>\n

\"Double<\/p>\n

Yea, yea\u2026nice double rainbow. <\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\"The sleeping snake behind that rock over there is forcing me to stay in the screened porch at the cottage. I can\u2019t even glance at the thing in case it slithers.<\/p>\n

Being inside is OK. I watch puffy clouds of swarming mosquitos on the outside of the screens and tell myself it\u2019s not an especially bad year for mosquitos, in spite of all the rain. But my mosquito bites do seem to be infected. And of course the remaining black flies are still feeding.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already given up swimming in the lake. Waiting for me under the dock is the-mother-of-all-snapping turtles. Years ago — (before refrigerators) — we left a string of fresh caught fish hanging over the dock into the water. By morning, only the chain remained. Turtles never forget. Did you know that? I live my cottage life as if all the turtles on our lake know our dock.<\/p>\n Read More...<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}