Sonoran Winter

Not much available for the hungry in the Sonoran Desert in December: but a bunch of likely Soldier butterflies, Danaus eresimus, a Monarch cousin lookalike, feed on what looks to be Mistflower in Tucson’s Tohono Chul garden. 

A sweat bee on, possibly, Tetraneuris scaposa, Four nerve daisy. 

 

Amazing how many milkweeds are adapted to different biomes. Here we have Pineleaf Milkweed, Asclepias linaria.  

 

An unknown (to me) caterpillar, possibly a Tussock Moth caterpillar, -one of many on a roadside wall at 5000 ft. 

 

At a higher elevation, maybe 6000 feet -cactus, moss, and snow.  

You can identify this Monarch lookalike by its white spots on the tops of wings.

 

Don't Go Into The Light

It's been a very busy year, and the last three or four months didn't disappoint. After wrapping up a fairly busy nursery season at Shelterwood, managing or teaching 35 photography classes at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, teaching landscape painting for three weeks at Chautauqua Institute, photographing at several sites in far northern and southwestern Minnesota, yesterday I opened my exhibit, "Don't go Into the Light," at my Minneapolis gallery Rosalux. 

Reflection of artwork in the plate glass window.

The gallery is open 12-4pm Saturdays and Sundays through November and I will be on site for Sunday hours. We are also hosting a couple of special events on climate change and native plants:

Radical Resilience: Climate Change, Habitat & You

Saturday, November 19^th, 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM

&

Native Plant Clinic

Sunday, November 20^th, 12:30 PM – 4:30 PM

Has news of a changing climate left you feeling anxious? Has the current drought changed the way you feel about your home landscape? If you want to irrigate less, help pollinators, feed birds, and see thriving life, this free program was designed for you.

Rosalux Gallery and the artist and owner of Shelterwood Gardens, Frank Meuschke is hosting an event on Minnesota-specific climate changes and what you can do to build resilience into your home environment.

Radical Resilience: Event Schedule

Seats are limited. To help with a headcount, please register using this link.

 

1:00pm: Frank James Meuschke introduces the event, gallery, and artwork

1:15pm: Past, Present, & Future Climate in Minnesota -climate scientist Sam Potter, PHD

2:00pm: Q&A with Sam

15 minute break

2:30pm: Bird & Bat Habitat (in Your Yard) -Hennepin County wildlife biologist Nicole Witzel

3:15pm: Q&A with Nicole

3:30pm: Planting for a Changing Climate -Shelterwood Gardens’ Frank Meuschke

End of Program: Free Bird & Bat House Raffle!

To limit spread of the Omicron Covid in our community, we encourage masking at this group event and please stay home if you do not feel your best. Thank you.

 

EBlast From The Past

A post by Marie on her blog sent me to Google street view and I was close, so I went to look at what had changed in my old neighborhood. The school, a block away is open, big, and then closed for Covid, but open again. It was still under construction when we left. J&L nursery is still there -almost surprising! The corner has a bump out, a traffic control measure that may have been finished before the school -I do not remember, it has been 7 years (what?!).

The first thing I noticed is how the Russian (why is that loaded now?) Zelkova trees have come to completely change the street feel. The former gardens would have been completely shaded and changed to shade loving plants, had those plants remained. They do not. All is gone, bare soil probably steeped in feline urine and poo, among other nasties.

 

A closer look indicates that my slate "patio" still stands. I mean they have not been moved at all -even the individual slates nearer the sidewalk. If it weren't for someone's outdoor accessories resting against the wall I'd say few, if any, have stepped over that ramshackle iron fence. That fence supported a never flowering, but lovely climbing hydrangea; it held my camera that walked away one morning as I clipped. I wonder if the Mayapples, removed from the trash heap of trail clearing, up in Van Cortlandt Park, still thrive under the last corner Yew. Likely not, but fun to think so.

It is nice to see the block hasn't changed all that much despite the restaurants and bars popping up. Neighborhoods have a way of holding when owners are your neighbors. Thank you Google Tours, Google Memories, Google Nostalgia for a touch of the old world witnessed from the farthest reaches of the eastern deciduous forest.

 

Perpetuity

 

I received a pandemic-related artist grant from the state early this year. One of the components of the grant proposal was to update my website (not this blog) to contain all aspects of my creativity in one place. This is proving to be more difficult than I imagined. My website is "owned" by the company Squarespace. Squarespace allows blog import, a feature they tout, but you cannot import individual posts. Pictures are not sized, formatted or placed properly. Captions will be gone. One must go into each post (I have over 2000) to correct every format problem. Images do not populate as thumbnails, so that only new posts written and populated with images on Squarespace show as thumbnails on the third challenge -the index. 

Blogger allows for simple indexing on the left column -you can see it here by scrolling down. By date, by tag, whatever. Squarespace only allows an index-type page called a summary block (on a separate page) that can be populated with only 30 posts. It is on that page that the nifty thumbnails of each post do not show unless I repopulate each post with an image from my computer. Because the summary block only allows 30 posts, I have to create a batch tag for each group of 30 posts, input the tag into each post, and do this roughly 60 times to create the index for the blog imported to Squarespace.

So then I think -what happens when Squarespace goes bankrupt, sells, or otherwise says they're not offering this service any longer? Well- I have to start from scratch. You cannot export the content: all images, text, captions, titles, blog posts or anything from Squarespace. 

It seems to me that what I have created in my time on this planet will only live on in this virtual space -at least as long as there is electricity and money to keep the website live. But how do we keep our existence in virtual space around far into the future? Is it worth it? Are there better ways to be spending one's time? 

Probably.