Crankyhike, whistle, and sing.

Somewhere between one every 5 times and one every 100 times I have a CRANKYHIKE.  I made up that term today and it fits just right.

Hiking is mostly very good, often great, and sometimes glorious, but looking back on the helpful record provided by this blog, I see I had a crankyhike on December 19th, and I had one again, today.

In the crankyhike, any one of the following, and probably more than one, will happen: 

I wake up late, can't decide where to go, get stuck on email or downloading music, finally get out the door when the day is half gone, get lost on the way there, don't bring the right clothes, something is wrong with my sandwich, I drink all my water too fast, I get lost on the trail, I fall, I don't see any cool animals.

Today it was the first 5 and the second to the last.  Fortunately the sandwich was fine and I saw a bunch of turkeys.  

But what defines crankyhike isn't anything that happens; actually those things often happen during lovely hikes, too.  It's my brain.  A typical crankyhike minute will pass something like this.  

Step.  I'm tired.  Step.  I'm so tired.  Step.  My back hurts.  Step.  My thighs are rubbing together.  Step.  I'm fat.  Step.  I'm really tired.  Step.  What's wrong with me?  I should be appreciating the day.  Step.  That's a pretty tree...  Step.  I'm hungry.  Step.  My back hurts, and onwards.

I just get stuck in this yukky loop of being unhappy, and then being unhappy about how unhappy I am.  The Buddhists say that pain is inevitable but suffering (pain about your pain) is optional.  Clearly, I just need to bring a Buddhist along when I'm having a crankyhike and then it'll all be cool. 

So today I had a crankyhike for sure, and then I got lost out there, and caught out after dark, which often happens, and then I got scared which does not usually happen.

I started hiking regularly maybe ten years ago?  I don't even remember how long, but Jen Johnson can confirm, because it was with her.  After several years of being hiking buddies, she got pregnant with my absolutely wonderful UGK (Unofficial Godkid) Benjamin, and I continued hiking alone.  Nowadays I can laugh when I look at the tree limb at Ed Levin just about a mile from the parking lot that I was convinced was a mountain lion, but the day I spent half an hour in front of it trying to force myself to keep walking, it was no joke.  Fear, once my constant companion on hikes, only visits me rarely these days.  I guess ten hikes happened without incident, and then a hundred, and somewhere my little mammal brain realized that Traumatic Things happen very rarely, if ever, on hikes.  But tonight, I got spooked.

Now, here is the nice part.  Generally, when I get spooked on a hike, it is about the idea of mountain lions.  So the solution is to whistle and sing.  I remember singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" while caught WAY the hell out at the Pinnacles; I must have gone through the song about 70 times before I finally got back to my car at 10 PM.

So tonight I started to sing.  I'm not some kind of opera singer, but I do love singing, and especially making up harmonies.  And while smoking, my singing would always collapse into coughing, or funny mid-word gasps for air.  But tonight a month after quitting, I was able - mildly - to let it rip, to let my little voice arc up and bounce around in the hills.

There's nothing like singing when you are scared, or for that matter, feeling like a crankypants.  I felt my mood start to raise from my feet, hover at my knees, and then slowly bubble upwards as I went through my repertoire.  After the first song, I wasn't even afraid, not really, but kept singing so as to stay that way.

Here are the songs I sing when I'm scared in the woods, in no particular order.  I'm linking them to the actual song, in case you are feeling crappy, they should help. 

Indigo Girls - Closer to Fine

John Prine - Angel from Montgomery

Celia Cruz - Yerberito Moderno

Louis Armstrong - Wonderful World

James Taylor - Close Your Eyes

Juan Luis Guerra - Los Pajaritos

and, of course, 

The Tokens - The Lion Sleeps Tonight

When I go through those songs, I try some other ones, or just start again at the beginning.

Then I came home and ate Sees Candy and took a nap, and now we are basically all good.

What do you do when you are scared?  How does it help?

FINALLY THE BEES

Bees!  Geez!  I'm sorry it took so long!

I'm on an excellent listserve run by CNPS called Gardening With Natives.  At times, like when I was preparing for the Green Gardening classes, I pay close attention and ask lots of questions.  Other times I just like to skim through posts, see what plants people are talking about.

All photos in this post are copyright 2010 or 2011 Little M Photos

So the other day there was some discussion of bees, and this lady, Gretchen, posted this awesome kind of rant about bees.  So I asked her if I could re-post what she said, and then asked my cousin if she had bee photos, which of course, she does ("well this is a crapload o bees huh. let me know what you think mamasita, i love you.")

So now I'm going to put the two sources together and here we go.  Everything in quotes is by Gretchen:  Director Great Sunflower Project, and Associate Professor of Biology, San Francisco State University.  All the photos are by my cousin.


"...clarify a bit about our San Francisco bumble bees. Most of the species are ground nesters and use old rodent (or other pre-formed holes) in the ground. Some will also use what are called cavity nests or nests in wood. I've seen our dominant bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii nest in the wall of a building as well as a bluebird box that I put up. "

We looked up this kind of bee when I visited my cousin.
It's native to California, and it's called a Sweat Bee.

"The life cycle of a bumble bee goes like this: a mated queen emerges in the spring, she establishes a nest and gathers food for her first set of larvae, once those larvae become adults (workers), the queen just becomes an egg-layer and stops leaving the hive, much like a honey bee queen." 

You can buy some of LittleM's photos at her Store.
If you agree with me that she should add more items to it, say so in the comments.

"The number of workers in the colony increases all summer until the queen produces her last brood which will have males and new queens. Both the males and the new queens fly in and out of the nest on feeding and mating flights and the new queen mates during these fall flights." 

Mmmmm, pollen!

"The new queens will dig shallow nests for overwintering and go into hibernation. The old queen, all the workers and the males all die as winter gets cold and resources diminish. Then, the cycle begins again with the new queen emerging and looking for a place to start a nest. Old nest sites don't get re-used."

Leaf cutter bee - caught in the act!!!!

"Bumble bees are considered social though their social system is much less complicated than a honey bee. You do hear them referred to as solitary bees but that is technically incorrect."




So the point of this discussion, which I possibly should have mentioned first (This is Miriam again) is that people were talking about native California bees, and how many of them are ground dwellers.  Then there had to be a discussion on that; it's a listserve, everyone argues constantly, and then Gretchen jumped in as you see above.  


But so the consensus, and the truth of the matter, is that various native California bees DO occupy leaf-litter, above-ground, and below-ground areas.  This is an important consideration when gardening; aseptic-type gardens, where all the leaves are blown and all the ground is either turf, fertilized, asphalt, or otherwise controlled, is NOT good for our native bees!

Please leave me some neutral space in your gardens, ok people?  Thanks!

So please be sure to designate some neutral spaces in your garden; spaces where the ground is not worked in any way - this includes not covering it with mulch.    Just leave it open, empty, bare and natural for the bees!  You can also make or buy bee blocks! Other considerations include planting bee-friendly native California plants, minimizing or eliminating chemical pesticides, and planting to ensure nectar/food source all year long.

If you are interested in learning more about native bees, here is a great article: Alternative Pollinators: Native Bees.  Also, Urban Bee Gardens is a cool site out of Berkeley.  Or just Google "native California bees" or "Gardening native California pollinators" and see what you get. 

That's the buzz!

  

Going to the Gym

I love going to the gym.

First I feel like I should apologize for not having written, except that we don't have any sort of agreement that I will write, and it probably doesn't make a big difference in your life one way or the other.  The Professor, who's blog I admire terribly much, along with everything else about her, does not write on a regular schedule, so that for months I may be confronted with the same cow, or gate, or sunset when I go to click on her page.  Then one day she posts and it's like a surprise gift and I savor it.  But I think she's doing this because she's preparing another scholarly treatise on newts or mountain lions and must do research, not because she just "didn't feel like posting".

Also, I owe everyone a post about bees.  But for now I'd like to talk about the gym.

I love the gym!  It's true, and it's SOOO strange, because I'm not a gym kind of person.  Gyms don't make sense, in a way that I am particularly sensible.  Having machines in a building that you drive to so you can go lift things for the sake of lifting (not working) and step for the sake of stepping (not getting somewhere) is its own special brand of silly.  But I joined the gym as part of the quit-smoking effort and here's how it is.

Tonight I went and played racquetball by myself, huffed and puffed around after the ball like a cat with a fake mouse, laughed when I lost it, smacked it good a couple times so it makes that "pong" sound that is so fun and left a bit of mud on the floor because my shoes have only been used for hiking so far (oops).  Most nights I do 100 strokes on the rower machine making sure to keep my back straight and to breathe through my mouth.  Then I go stretch in the stretching cage for a bit, then I do crunches on the short and fast machine and weights for my front and back on the long and smooth machines.  At first I was intimidated by the room with the nice machines but now I go in there like it's nobody's business.  I put the seat on shortest and the weights on lightest, turn my habitual scowl on the bodybuilding buff boys and get to it.  Sometimes I lift a lot of other weights, or go cycle on a bicycle for a little while.  Or I take a class.  At first I was scared of the gym, but now I'm not, not really.

So after all that I go put on my swimsuit.  I start in the jacuzzi, which has really strong jets which I can almost get on my worst sore spots by hooking my feet through the handlebars over the steps.  I do my booty, my back, my wrists, and the back of my right leg where there is sciatica.  Then I go to the pool.  It's so freezing at first on my ankles, but I say to myself "Just jump in" and jump.  I paddle a bit around in the pool, but mainly what I do is stretch.  Something about being lifted by water opens up all the possibilities and I go nuts.  I'm worried somebody will someday think I'm drowning because I arch my shoulders, make wings, flap my feet, do sideways splits, buck, flop, twist, and crawl around.  I have a lot of habitual hunching, clenching, teeth grinding, scowling, slumping, and stressing that I have to try and work out of in that pool.

Then I go back in the jacuzzi and get warm and then I go do either the sauna or the steam room or both.  I put my towel flat and lie on the top bench with my feet on the wall.  I rise up on my back vertebrae to see if I can get them to click into place and I breathe deeeeeeeeeeeep with my former smoker's lungs.

Then I take a shower.  Tonight I was only there for an hour, but I leave feeling literally like the terms of my contract with my body have been changed.  Somehow I am longer, stronger, softer, sleeker.  Yes, I'm still a short woman fighting pudgy with a habitual frown and bad posture.  But going to the gym, it seems, is one way to work on changing that, one way to open the door to a body that's more comfortable to be living in.

Galactic Bats

Hello everyone,

I've been, not just gone, but GONE.  I sent my Mom an email saying "The Real Miriam isn't home right now, but when she gets in, I'll have her call you."  Smoking cessation has slipped blankets between my synapses, wrapped my words in grey felt and seared a dull bitter anger into my brain.  Or, in the vernacular, WTF?  I'm angry and unhappy and tired, I'm dropping things and confusing words, I'm a terrible driver and not a very good lover.  These things are not like me.

Soon, we'll have a phenomenal post about bees, and my cousin's images will rock your socks off, but for now I just wanted to say Hi, and tell you that I saw a gazillion battlestar galactica bats today at Last Trampas.  I have no idea what kind they were, but they rocketed and zoomed around at a million miles an hour.  I also heard the roar / growl again.  Not sure whether you should be horrified or proud, but I pulled out my new phone, went on the Android Market, downloaded a sound recorder, and was standing there, waiting to hear the sound again, when my phone went dead.  Today, and yesterday, too, I felt like myself for a couple of hours, which is an incredible relief.

I saw miner's lettuce coming up, and I think the first fuzzy leaves of fiddleneck.  My botany is of an intimate sort; I want to know plants from seed leaf through senescence, I want to know taste and feel and smell.  There are no secrets in my botany, every season is in season, every trait is mine to find and remember and find again.

How is your art, your science, your passion?

Herbal Remedies

WHY has nobody made a comprehensive herbal remedy for smoking cessation support?  WTF herbal people, you are sleeping on the job.  Seriously, Whole Paycheck or somebody, get with it.

There are some herbal remedies, but most of them have some sort of tranquilizer like passionflower or skullcap so that you can't use them during the day.  Many of them also have tobacco.  I don't want that, even if it's in homeopathic quantities (parts per billion).

So here is what I would do - and feel free to steal this idea and sell this product.  Actually, if you could do that tomorrow, then I could take it, and it'd be awesome.

Either as a tincture or in single-serving cans of some fizzy and slightly tart drink, for taking one in the morning and once in the afternoon, the following:

• Avena sativa - milky oats - nervine
• Ocimum sanctum - holy basil - nervine
• Catnip and chamomile - non sedating relaxant
• Slippery elm and licorice root - for the poor tummy
• Peppermint and ginger - same
• Option for willow (salix) for headache but option without because of allergies
• Feverfew for headache but very little because it will hurt the tum
• Ecchinacea because we don't want to get sick
• Probiotics
• B-vitamins
• Chlorella/green superfood

Then a spray to carry around with you and squirt in your mouth during cravings:

• Gotu Kola to wake up the brain
• Ginseng for men or Dong quai (how do you spell that?) for women
• Mullien extract to help clean the lungs
• Horehound to get the goop out of your throat
• Licorice root for tummy and taste
• A hint of Astralagus for Chi.
• Spray comes in different flavors:  Orange, mint, cinnamon, and sasparilla.

Lastly, a tincture or even a tea for night-time:

• Arnica, to reduce body aches
• Passionflower for sleep
• Kava for sleep but with an option for no Kava for people with liver problem
• Lavender for relaxing and because it tastes like something you should drink before sleep
• Hops for sleep (also nervine)
• Lobelia for sleep and relaxation
• Lemon balm for calming.

There you have it - my quit smoking herbal support wishlist.  Anyone want to go make it?

Ascension

Most people think Spring is nowhere nears, but to me Spring starts on January 1.  Somehow, any flowers that I see after that date count as Spring blooms for the New Year, while December flowers count as "it's unseasonably warm and things are blooming early."  I realize this is ridiculous, but tell that to the Bay trees.  Manzanita is also blooming and it's a good thing someone else is in charge, because I had no idea that was supposed to be happening around now.

I also saw the first tick of the season, hanging out on some Elymus glaucus seeds.  I have a habit of collecting native grass seeds as I walk and redistributing them in some fantasy of micro-restoration.  This practice has taught me to check seed-stalks for spiders and other inhabitants in fall, and for ticks in spring.  I neither want to be a home-wrecker nor to end up with a handful of unpleasantness.  Anyways, this tick was just chilling with his arms raised up.  If we could hear him, it seems he would be saying: "Haaaaay!  Haaay, wassUP?  WASSUP?  I haven't seen you since LAST YEAR!  Let's CHAT!  HAY!"  Either that or he might just be saying "meep."  Who knows.

Today I was at Mount Umunhum.  Usually nobody knows what to make of that word, which means hummingbird in one of the Ohlone languages.  So sometimes people make fun of it.  Today it occurred to me that I'd love to hear a native speaker say it.  If it were said a specific way, I bet it would sound like a hummingbird's wings.

As I hiked I comforted myself for some time with the thought that when I'm an old lady and have lived an excellent life and have nobody around to care how I smell, I shall smoke as much as I please.

Anything you miss lately?  Anything new?

Are you ready for some black widows?

Staying quit is still very difficult. My hope is that I will, indeed, stay quit and that easiness will sneak up on me, that I'll wake up some morning and think "wow, this used to be MUCH harder, I'm so glad it's not anymore."

In the meantime, let's look at some black widow photos.

My cousin, as you must know by now, is the fabulously talented photographer who graces us with these images.

So here is her note: "The blond ones with the large circles in the front, I believe are males. I believe that those round things have something to do with reproduction. They may be sacs for fertilization, but I will leave all that to YOUR expertise. Have fun, now that I got the heebie jeebies from the photos I am going to bed."

You may also feel that pics of black widows give you the heebie jeebies, but please do check out her store at: http://www.viewbug.com/estore/littlemphoto. There you will see some terrifically lovely photos of only nice things which you may want to hav

e grace your living room.

Now, I'm still not quite feeling myself (and I cannot figure out what those circle things are, do you know?) so instead of actually writing something, I'm going to pull in quotes from various interesting websites. Hope that is ok.

Latrodectus hesperus, the Western black widow spider or Western widow, is a venomous spider species found in western regions of the United States of America. The population was previously described as a subspecies of Latrodectus mactans and it is closely related to the northern species Latrodectus variolus. The species, as with others of the genus, build irregular webs. Taxonomy from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latrodectus_hesperus

Color - Females

Females of the Western, Southern, and Northern widows look like the classic black widow spider. The body is shiny black and the underside of the abdomen has orange-red marking(s) on it. Many female widows will also have an orange-red spot immediately above the spinnerets on the top of the abdomen. The Brown widow female varies in color from light brown to dark grey and the hourglass on the underside of the abdomen typically is more orange than red. Lighter colored females may have whitish spots along the upper sides of the abdomen, similar to the marking of immature widow spiders.

Adult Males

Male widows may be either completely black or maintain some of the immature coloration. They do not possess the hourglass type marking of the larger females. However, males usually have some red marking located on the top or underside of the abdomen.

Juvenile Widows

The coloration of the juvenile widow spider typically is quite different from the adult. The abdomen is grayish to black with white stripes running across it and spotted with yellow and orange.

Coloration info from: http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/444/444-422/444-422.html

Breeding

Adult male Black Widows wander in search of females but do not feed or bite. Females may occasionally kill and eat a male after mating but this is more the exception than the rule.

The female then lays several batches, containing up to 750 eggs each, in one summer. The egg case, about 1/2 inch in diameter, is suspended in the web. It is white to tan in color and has a paper-like texture. There may be 4 to 9 egg sacs produced during a summer. Normally, only 1 to 12 young survive after the egg incubation period of 14 to 30 days due to cannibalism.

breeding info from: http://www.desertusa.com/july97/du_bwindow.html

(Gosh, these are some nice fluffy kindly animals, aren't they...cannibalism...sheesh.)

Food Habits

Latrodectus mactans is exclusively carnivorous and antagonistic. Ordinarily it feeds on insects; however, it also consumes wood lice, diplopods, chilopods and other arachnids. Usually, the black widow spider enswathes prey caught in its snare, bites it, and later drags it to its hub, or retreat, to be eaten. Latrodectus mactans inflicts a small wound on its prey, uses its cheliceral teeth to mash it up, pours digestive enzymes on the prey; and sucks up the resulting food. The whole digestion process takes place outside the spider’s body. (Kaston, 1953; Snow, 1970; Preston-Mafham, 1996; Foelix, 1996; Levine and Miller, 1991; Gertsch, 1979).

Food habits info from: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Latrodectus_mactans.html

Some people are afraid of spiders. I've had to do a lot of field work around black widows in a check dam for a riparian area, and I'm not any more afraid of them than I am any other dangerous thing. I'm more afraid of cockroaches than black widows.

What are you afraid of?