Marketing choices
I caught these participants of the Cusco, Peru, Saturday Market as our bus progressed toward Machu Picchu during our daytrip to that ruin. The shooting was through a clean bus window using a handheld Canon EF 70-300 f/4-5.6 L IS USM lens mounted on the Canon dslr 1DS Mark III.
Several days supply of bread for a family.
Watching the world go by.
Transacting business
Cusco Saturday Market
A group of Quechua vendors during the Saturday Market of Cusco. A seller of baked goods is taking a break while, in the foreground, a woman prepares an order of greens used to feed guinea pigs, a staple of native Peruvian cuisine.
We were headed out of Cusco on our daytrip to Machu Picchu.
Our February 2016 travel group poses at the overlook.
Machu Picchu was believed (by Richard L. Burger, professor of anthropology at Yale University) to have been built in the 1450s. However, a 2021 study led by Burger used radiocarbon dating to reveal that Machu Picchu may have been occupied from around 1420–1530 AD.[24][25] Construction appears to date from two great Inca rulers, Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui (1438–1471) and Túpac Inca Yupanqui (1472–1493). There is a consensus among archaeologists that Pachacutec ordered the construction of the royal estate for his use as a retreat, most likely after a successful military campaign. Although Machu Picchu is a “royal” estate, it would not have been passed down in the line of succession. Rather it was used for 80 years before being abandoned, seemingly because of the Spanish conquests in other parts of the Inca Empire. It is possible that most of its inhabitants died from smallpox introduced by travelers before the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the area.
crack of dawn
In this post we start the day of my posting “Family Trek“, July 19, 2008, when, well before the sun rose at 6:23 am Mountain Daylight Time (the Navajo Reservation observes daylight savings, the rest of Arizona does not), Pam and I were at the Spider Rock Overlook.
Most visitors to the canyon make use of a system of roads and parking lots next to strategic views. There is the White House Overlook we visited our first day, July 18, to hike from the trailhead into the canyon. There are also, on the south side of the canyon:
While getting ready I scoped out the location for interesting visual tropes. Utah Junipers are exceptionally hardy shrubs, stressed individual plants grow into compelling forms shaped by hardship. As the sun rose, this specimen emerged from the gloom and caught the first sun rays.
Enjoy!!
Where is the ironing board?
The setting sun’s glow on the end point of Upper Siphon Draw trail, The Flatiron.
The mountain was formed by a series of volcanic eruptions between 20.5 and 18 million years ago. The west face of the mountain is composed of dacite lava and rhyolitic tuff. The overlying tuff was deposited during an eruption which created a collapse caldera bounded by faults. Dome resurgence reactivated these faults, causing uplift of the caldera floor which juxtaposed the softer tuff and more resistant dacite. Differential weathering caused the outer tuff to erode faster, leaving the dacite cliffs exposed and creating the prominent mountain visible today.
The Flatiron, the mesa-like projection above us in this view, is long solidified dacite lava. The word dacite comes from Dacia, a province of the Roman Empire which lay between the Danube River and Carpathian Mountains (now modern Romania and Moldova) where the rock was first described. Lost Dutchman State Park, Apache Junction, Maricopa County, Arizona
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Visitors to Robert H. Treman park think nothing of crushing millipedes on the trail, it is concerning to encounter evidence of such disrespectful and boorish behavior. Here is an intact millipede I found last week. Millipedes are a group of arthropods that are characterized by having two pairs of jointed legs on most body segments; […]
Visitors to Robert H. Treman park think nothing of crushing millipedes on the trail, it is concerning to encounter evidence of such disrespectful and boorish behavior. Here is an intact millipede I found last week.
Millipedes are a group of arthropods that are characterized by having two pairs of jointed legs on most body segments; they are known scientifically as the class Diplopoda, the name derived from this feature. Each double-legged segment is a result of two single segments fused together. Most millipedes have very elongated cylindrical or flattened bodies with more than 20 segments, while pill millipedes are shorter and can roll into a tight ball. Although the name “millipede” derives from Latin for “thousand feet”, no species was known to have 1,000 or more until the discovery of Eumillipes persephone, which can have over 1,300 legs.
There are approximately 12,000 named species classified into 16 orders and around 140 families, making Diplopoda the largest class of myriapods, an arthropod group which also includes centipedes and other multi-legged creatures. Most millipedes are slow-moving detritivores, eating decaying leaves and other dead plant matter. Some eat fungi or drink plant fluids, and a small number are predatory.
Millipedes are generally harmless to humans, although some can become household or garden pests. Millipedes can be an unwanted nuisance particularly in greenhouses where they can potentially cause severe damage to emergent seedlings. Most millipedes defend themselves with a variety of chemicals secreted from pores along the body, although the tiny bristle millipedes are covered with tufts of detachable bristles. Its primary defense mechanism is to curl into a tight coil, thereby protecting its legs and other vital delicate areas on the body behind a hard exoskeleton. Reproduction in most species is carried out by modified male legs called gonopods, which transfer packets of sperm to females.
Millipedes are among the first animals to have colonized land during the Silurian period. Early forms probably ate mosses and primitive vascular plants. Millipedes also exhibit the earliest evidence of chemical defense, as some Devonian fossils have defensive gland openings called ozopores. Millipedes, centipedes, and other terrestrial arthropods attained very large sizes in comparison to modern species in the oxygen-rich environments of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, and some could grow larger than one meter. As oxygen levels lowered through time, arthropods became smaller.
Most millipedes are detritivores and feed on decomposing vegetation, feces, or organic matter mixed with soil. They often play important roles in the breakdown and decomposition of plant litter: estimates of consumption rates for individual species range from 1 to 11 percent of all leaf litter, depending on species and region, and collectively millipedes may consume nearly all the leaf litter in a region. The leaf litter is fragmented in the millipede gut and excreted as pellets of leaf fragments, algae, fungi, and bacteria, which facilitates decomposition by the microorganisms.
Chicago Bog, part of Lime Hollow Nature Center
The grandchildren and I hiked the 0.6 mile trail through old growth forest to visit a bog. In the 1830’s there was a village named Chicago along Gracie Road, which gives it the name we have today. The Chicago Bog is home to many carnivorous plants, including sundew, the pitcher plant, and more. The deepest depth of the bog is about 7.2 ft. The bog is along the Phillips Memorial Trail, which can be found on Gracie Road. Lime Hollow Nature Center, Cortland, New York.
Listen to the Wood Thrush and other bird song in this short video.
A dragonfly landed on the log, in the above images, lying at my feet. This male Chalk-fronted Corporal (Ladona julia) is a skimmer dragonfly found in the northern United States and southern Canada.
Juveniles of both sexes are light reddish brown, with white shoulder stripes and a black stripe down the middle of the abdomen. As they mature, males develop a white pruinescence on the top of the thorax and at the base of the abdomen, while the rest of the abdomen turns black. Females become almost uniformly dark brown, with a dusting of gray pruinescence near the base of the abdomen; a few develop the same color pattern as the males.
Chalk-fronted corporals often perch horizontally on the ground or on floating objects in the water as you can see it doing here. They are gregarious for dragonflies and are commonly seen perching in groups. They readily approach humans to feed on the mosquitoes and biting flies that humans attract.
We noticed a large patch of buttercups growing in a sunny patch along the trail. Petals of these buttercups are highly lustrous owing to a special coloration mechanism: the petal’s upper surface is very smooth causing a mirror-like reflection. The flash aids in attracting pollinating insects and temperature regulation of the flower’s reproductive organs.
Click me for “Celestial Geese with two haiku by Issa”.
Old Leaves
This Hepatica acutiloba, the sharp-lobed hepatica, I found in Fillmore Glen last April, capturing them with the Apple Iphone 14 proMax.
Hepatica acutiloba is also known as sharp-lobed hepatica, liverwort, kidneywort, pennywort, liverleaf. The perennial nature of this plant is seen here in the purplish leaves hanging below, from a previous year’s growth.
The word hepatica derives from the Greek ἡπατικός hēpatikós, from ἧπαρ hêpar ‘liver’, because its three-lobed leaf blotched leaves resemble a diseased human liver.
Plants of genus Hepatica are native to Europe, Asia, and North America.
Europe: Albania, Austria, the Baltic states, Belarus, Bulgaria, Corsica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Yugoslavia
Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Western Siberia
Eastern Asia: North China, South Central China, East China, Japan, Korea, Manchuria, Primorsky Krai
South Asia: Pakistan, Western Himalaya
Canada: Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Québec
United States: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin
Plants of the genus have been introduced to Belgium.
These tufted perennials grow to 10 centimeters in height with wiry roots. Leaves usually three-lobed and untoothed. Flowers can be blue, pinkish, or white. Three sepals, small and green. Petals usually 5, can be more, without a nectary. Stamens numerous. Ovary superior; styles short with capitate stigmas. Pollination is by insects. Fruits many, one-seeded. Seeds are green when ripe. dispersed by ants.
In Springtime
A few days past May Day 2023 I traversed our home gardens with the Apple Phone 14 ProMax to see what I could see…..
AKA liverleaf
This Hepatica acutiloba, the sharp-lobed hepatica, I found in Fillmore Glen last April, capturing them with the Apple Iphone 14 proMax.
“’The liverleaf puts forth her sister blooms of faintest blue soon after the late snows have melted. Indeed, these fragile-seeming, enable-like flowers are sometimes found actually beneath the snow, and form one of the many instances which we encounter among flowers, as among their human contemporaries, where the frail and delicate-looking withstand storm and stress far better than their more robust-appearing brethren.”
Each clump-forming plant grows 5 to 19 cm (2.0 to 7.5 in) tall, flowering in the early to mid-spring. The flowers are greenish-white, white, purple, or pinkish in color, with a rounded shape. After flowering the fruits are produced in small, rounded columned heads, on pedicels 1 to 4 mm long seen here in these gone to seed flowers. When the fruits, called achenes, are ripe they are ovoid in shape, 3.5–4.7 mm long and 1.3–1.9 mm wide, slightly winged and tend to lack a beak.
“The rusty leaves of last summer are obliged to suffice for the plant’s foliage until some little time after the blossoms have appeared, when the young fresh leaves begin to uncurl themselves. Someone has suggested that the fuzzy little buds look as though they were still wearing their furs as protection against the wintry weather which so often stretches late into our spring.”
Hepatica cultivation has been popular in Japan since the 18th century (mid-Edo period), where flowers with doubled petals and a range of color patterns have been developed.
Noted for its tolerance of alkaline limestone-derived soils, Hepatica may grow in a wide range of conditions; it can be found either in deeply shaded deciduous (especially beech) woodland and scrub or grassland in full sun. Hepatica will also grow in both sandy and clay-rich substrates, being associated with limestone. Moist soil and winter snowfall are required; Hepatica is tolerant of winter snow cover, but less so of dry frost.
Propagation is done by seeds or by dividing vigorous clumps in spring. However, seedlings take several years to reach bloom size, and divided plants are slow to thicken.
Hepatica was once used as a medicinal herb. Owing to the doctrine of signatures, the plant was once thought to be an effective treatment for liver disorders. Although poisonous in large doses, the leaves and flowers may be used as an astringent, as a demulcent for slow-healing injuries, and as a diuretic.
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 