Alabama

We have been visiting my grandfathers ranch for the past week in the exciting local of New Market Alabama. It's on the outskirts of Huntsville, which is rapidly trying to turn New Market into its own little suburb.  New Market itself is less of a town and more of a "Census Designated Place."  Within this "CDP," there is of course a town called New Market.  It's where you will find the New Market Cafe. Right next to one burnt out building and another that's just falling over.  This is next to the empty shop, where you used to be able to watch feral cats running around inside through the dust covered windows.  A true center for culture and the arts.

The ranch itself is about ten minutes to the south, and has just recently passed from my grandfather to my dad.  It's a bit out of shape at the moment, but there is a new management plan type thing taking over at the end of the year which should clean it up.

Cladonia Cristatella or Didyma.  A Cladonia species at least.   The orange/red tops of this lichen are the fruiting structure.  Like almost all lichen, this one is a "mutualistic association" between an algae and a fungus.    

I went through a couple of old cabinets this time.  There was some booze and a large number of slides.  I also found a sweet Kodak Carousel 760H slide projector.  It worked for a couple of slides, then the bulb went.  Fortunately you can still buy bulbs that will fit the projector. I'll have to find one of those for next time.

Found some old and not so old shooters in a cabinet.  Neat little bottles.

A White-Lined Sphinx Moth.  Moths in this family ( Sphinginae ) are usually large.  They generally feed by hovering in front of flowers like hummingbirds.

Passiflora Incarnata, or the purple passion flower.  Supposed to help with nervous anxiety and insomnia,  a tea made from the plant has actually been shown to help improve peoples sleep.  You can also eat the fruit off the vine.

The American Green Tree-Frog ( Hyla Cinerea ) I think.  One study showed that nearly 90% of their prey were "actively pursued."  I always assumed they sort of waited for it to walk by.

Yellow spots help distinguish the Green Tree Frog from the 'Squirrel Tree Frog', which is what I thought this was at first.

Me and Athena took a day to go to a local climbing gym.  Really it is the only local climbing gym, and it's more a small area in an athletic center than a dedicated climbing gym.  The person running the counter just asked us if we climbed and when we answered told us we would not have to take a belay test.  He then walked us to the climbing area and informed the staff member running it that we did not have to take a belay test.  This has never happened to me before.  That's probably because letting random people skip their belay test is so exceedingly dangerous that no half respectable climbing gym in the country would be so cavalier about it.  The gym itself was... sort of better than not climbing.  It's really a top rope gym, although there did seem to be a couple draws up for leading.  The ropes feel old and many of them have a number of hard spots.  The are anchored to the ceiling by 2-3 quick draws set so that the rope drops toward your belayer 4-5 feet away from the wall.  This means that  to climb the opposite wall of the gym in some areas you simply switch sides of the rope.  It's skinny like that.

What a sketchy place.

So the gym was a janky place overall, and probably not worth the $15 per person charge.

In preparation for the Fourth of July, Athena baked a cake.  It was america themed of course.  I mowed the lawn with a sweet tractor and we all bought a large number of fireworks.

AMERICA.

Sweet ride.

Lots of fireworks.

For some reason we build dams in the creek when we are down here.  Partly because we used to do it and partly because it's one of the only things to do.  Usually we are unsuccessful.  This time I started by building two parallel rock walls, then filled the center with sand and gravel.  It took a lot of gravel moving, but the end result was a huge success.  It only took five of us and a large part of the day.

A breakthrough in dam building technology.  Father is trying to catch fish that Ben is scaring towards the opening.

Dam.  Almost a nice swimming hole on the upstream side.

There are still a couple cows on the ranch.  They are owned by a guy in Texas that needed a place to run his cattle.  By the coming year they will be gone, but for now it's nice to have some around.  As I couldn't decide on one good picture here are half a dozen mediocre ones of a baby cow.

Would be a nice picture, but if you look closely they calf is about to poo.

We are flying back to California in the morning to continue our climbing trip.  Due to some troubles with airline we are staying one last unexpected night.

I've started a new fantasy series so the flights will be a nice time to read.  Turns out that "The Malazan Book of the Fallen" is a good set of books.