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jstemwedel | May 23, 2009The Free-Ride family enjoyed a late breakfast (although you better believe that if either of the Free-Ride offspring claims to be hungry in the next two hours, I'm calling it an early lunch) at a local diner.
While there, the elder Free-Ride offspring struggled to eat an omelette off an unstable plate. Any attempt at cutting, spearing, or spooning sent the plate a-spinning.
Luckily, having some experience with diners (as a former Jersey girl), I was able to solve the problem quickly. All it took was placing two sugar packets under the plate (spaced about 180 degrees apart).
Then, it…
jstemwedel | May 23, 2009This morning I slept in. But once I woke up, I had to patrol for gastropods.
It was chilly, dry, and overcast. By now, you know what that means: hardly any snails or slugs in evidence. While I was hunting for them, I did some weeding. (After all, the weeds give them shelter without actually being their preferred food source.) Thus, I'm counting the snailing time as productively spent.
Since we need to hit the hardware store today for tomato cages, bamboo U-hoops, and pegboard, I'm adding unglazed tiles and bricks to the list so I can build the gastropod "shelters" Art describes. It…
jstemwedel | May 22, 2009You're coming to the close of your sabbatical year. Probably you didn't make quite as much progress on your research or writing project as you had hoped to, but you have enjoyed a much-needed break from the demands of teaching (and especially grading) and committee work. Whenever they see you, your colleagues comment on how well-rested you look.
And now, it's time to reestablish contact with reality.
You're on the phone with your department chair about your duties for the fall semester. Do you choose:
Option 1:
A full teaching load that includes a lower division course that you have never…
jstemwedel | May 22, 2009This morning was relatively warm and fairly dry.
If you've been following the details of my campaign to control the back yard gastropod population, you know what that means:
Hardly any gastropods were out to be picked.
On the plus side, this means I was able to get another day out of the SBMD I prepared three mornings ago. But it also means that the slimy hoards are hunkered down somewhere, out of my clutches, waiting until the conditions are right for them to slither out of hiding and munch on my plants.
I'll grant, though, that the slithering will probably be relatively slow. Perhaps I'll…
clock | May 21, 2009Earlier today I went up the street to Town Hall Grill and saw their white-board where they write the descriptions of Dinner Specials....and there is a new one today with the name "Special for Bora"! Wow! The perks of being a regular customer!
Well, of course I got one, brought it home, re-arranged it on one of my plates and took a picture:
Deliciously tender fried chicken, corn on the cob and fresh (probably locally grown) vegetables: carrots, squash. onions and broccoli. A very summery, light and delicious meal! Yum!
jdupuis | May 21, 2009Apparently, there are thousands of librarians that read ScienceBlogs. No surprisingly, the ScienceBlogs brain trust wants to know why.
In particular, they are looking to gather some information about what librarians hope to get out of reading the site. The question is: how does the content on ScienceBlogs help you in your role as a librarian?
You can send your thoughts to editorial at scienceblogs dot com or just leave it as a comment here.
I'll start.
I'm a science librarian so I have a couple of information needs in my work. First of all, I need to understand science and where it's…
drorzel | May 21, 2009Kate here, reporting that SteelyKid says,
"Being sick is fun! I get to take baths at 10 o'clock at night, and play on nice soft towels, and have Mommy's undivided attention all day long . . . "
(She's fine, was sick last night but is rapidly improving over the day—her appetite is almost completely back to normal and she's in a good mood, as you can see (she looks a little bleary because she just woke up). Nevertheless, we both look forward to Chad coming home . . . )
jstemwedel | May 21, 2009Another cool, dewy morning today as I went out to pick gastropods. The wet grass brushing against my bare legs got at least some of that moisture from the slugs stretched along the blades.
Tomorrow morning I'm going to remember to put on jeans before I go out snailing.
There was still room in the Soapy Bucket of Merciful Deliverance that I used yesterday and the day before. As a method of gastropod dispatch, the SBMD seems to be a lot less resource-intensive than the bucket o' salt, not to mention less slimy. Plus, since I'm pouring out the water and drowned gastropods onto the compost…
jstemwedel | May 20, 2009It didn't end up raining yesterday (so I didn't get a chance to test my dedication to snailing by snailing in the rain). Today dawned cold and dewy.
Which meant I knew I was going to get some gastropod action.
And indeed, I did. There were slugs aplenty on the moist leaves and blades of grass. Owing to the cold (which my fingers don't especially care for), I lost a few of them that leapt back to the earthy depths, but a good many found their way to the Soapy Bucket of Merciful Deliverance (the same one I prepared yesterday, when the pickings were slim).
Today, there were a bunch of mid-…
jstemwedel | May 19, 2009This morning was cool, overcast, and very dry. There was no discernible dew on the grass.
In other words, not conditions in which the gastropods come out to play.
Having some experience of this kind of weather earlier in the snail eradication campaign, I went right for the well-insulated hiding places: the bases of plants that provide a lot of shade, the sides of the raised beds, the sides of the compost bin.
Nothing.
Finally, I ended up scraping the bottom of the barrel (actually, the bottom of a watering can) and found a few wee slugs. I managed to find some more slugs and a couple of…
pharyngula | May 18, 2009People asked for this, so here it is. Eric Schulze caught my little performance at USC on video — you can watch it on youtube, or you can catch it in the embedded video below.
Oh, and here's me and Eric. I'm not short, he's very, very tall.
jstemwedel | May 18, 2009This was another cool, dewy morning following on the heels of a blazing hot day.
In other words, good snailing weather.
I got started a little earlier than usual, because I had to empty yesterday's Soapy Bucket of Merciful Deliverance onto the compost pile and prepare a fresh Soapy Bucket of Merciful Deliverance. I was a little disconcerted at the bodily integrity of the slugs in the bucket -- perhaps it's a side effect of watching too many horror movies, but I have this tiny irrational fear that, since they're not melted, they might come back.
Reason enough to turn the compost pile and make…
jdupuis | May 18, 2009Here I am on ScienceBlogs, moved from the comfortable confines of my old blog, where I've been active since October 2002.
The opportunity to come here was never anything I really expected or pursued, but now that I'm here I'm really excited to start this new chapter in my blogging existence.
How did it happen, you ask? Well, it all started last week with a post I did about the "Are You a Librarian" survey that Seed was running on the site at the time. Basically, the survey was a marketing tool trying to encourage librarians to subscribe to Seed Magazine for their institutions. I was…
jstemwedel | May 17, 2009About half of the Free-Ride silkworms (who you know from pictures and videos) have decided that it's time to pupate.
Of course, we immediately broke out the video camera. But, then the truth started to dawn on us.
It takes a good while for a silkworm to make a cocoon. The ones that seem ready started almost 24 hours ago, and we're only now starting to see convincing signs that there will be cocoons soon.
Because, having never made cocoons before, the silkworms kind of flail around for awhile, spinning silk and trying to stick it to surfaces it won't stick to, then tumbling down, then trying…
jstemwedel | May 17, 2009Yesterday was a super-hot day, and this morning was cool and dewy. Later, though, we're expecting temperatures higher than yesterday's.
So the gastropods were out enjoying the break in the heat while it lasted.
On the plus side, many of them will not have to suffer through today's heat. I brought them to my Soapy Bucket of Merciful Deliverance. (Thanks to Heddi for the tip!)
The gastropods in evidence were skewed heavily toward slugs today. My shocking discovery was a climbing rose against the back fence whose blooms closest to the ground were festooned with slugs. At a certain point, I…
jstemwedel | May 16, 2009Dear Natural Selection,
Can we have a chat about weeds?
Don't get me wrong, I am duly impressed with the variety of plants that have evolved under your pressure. I'm all about the plants, and I try to be respectful of the growing conditions you impose in our zone.
But would it kill you to make more of the plants that grow like gangbusters without us tasty? Why can't they all be like mint and lemon balm?
Sure, yeah, if the weeds were tasty, it would be hard for them to defend themselves against being eaten. But I promise we're not drinking mojitos every night at Casa Free-Ride. And if the…
jstemwedel | May 16, 2009Well, I think it's safe to say that the slim pickings on days six and seven were related to the low level of dewiness.
This morning: much dewier.
The gastropod population in evidence in the back yard: back in the triple digits.
Still, things seem not as infested as a week ago, when we launched the eradication effort. Most of the snails and slugs I found were a good distance from the vegetable garden, and the strawberries seem largely slug-free. However, I did have to pick a handful of snails out of the apple tree.
Speaking of handfuls, my current record is 46 snails in one hand at a time.…
jstemwedel | May 15, 2009This morning I overslept, so I didn't get out into the yard until 6:15 AM to commence the gastropod picking.
Either someone got to them before me, or there just aren't many left in the parts of the yard I am actively patrolling.
Seriously, there weren't even any slugs on the side of the watering can (which is usually good for at least five slugs and snails on any given morning).
By rummaging around at the bases of some of the bushier plants, I was able to scare up a few slugs -- fairly little ones, too, probably not mature enough to be reproducing.
Like yesterday, this was not a very dewy…
drorzel | May 14, 2009This is Week 40 of Thursday Baby Blogging, meaning that SteelyKid has nominally reached the point where she has been out in the world as long as she was gestating. Let's see what she thinks:
SteelyKid says "Huh? I thought that wasn't for another couple of weeks..."
And it's true, she was late in arriving. So, the official celebration of gestational breakeven will be a couple of weeks from now. In the meantime, let's just leave her to wrestle her bison...
jstemwedel | May 14, 2009This morning's garden foray was weird.
Where were all the gastropods?
In 30 minutes of serious hunting, in past hiding places and what looked like reasonable candidates as auxiliary hiding places, I mostly came up empty. Some possible explanations for this:
I've put a serious dent in the snail and slug population, and they need to do some serious reproducing to replenish their ranks. (I doubt I'm this successful so early in the campaign.)
The snails and slugs that remain are hiding in the far recesses of the yard (like way the heck under the wisteria in the corner). From there, they may…