Category Weekly Columns

If you’ve ever seen a photo of this week’s crawly it may have tempted you to ever so slightly believe the “birds aren’t real” conspiracy theory.

Feeding the birds in my yard has always been entertaining, but lately it’s proving to be educational as well.

In an attempt to keep the 40+ Band-tailed Pigeons who visit my yard from eating all the other seed from all the other feeders, I’ve taken a two-prong approach.

I am at last back on the west coast, the best coast, and best of all, my time zone. I did the best I could on a Connecticut couch for a week of chaos as kids came together in a way that only kids can.

Now that we’ve had some rain, and we’ve dropped to the Moderate Fire Danger level, and the Watch Duty Ap shows mostly “mostly contained” fires vs. “The entire state is on fire!” let’s look back on some historical Oregon wildfires, early detection and the challenges firefighters faced back then.

Paintbrushes (Castilleja). Fascinating name for these plants, the flower inflorescences look like fluffy paintbrushes that have been dipped in paint. We are going to look at two different groups of Castilleja.

In honor of Labor Day this week we’ll meet some social wasps – the ultimate example of working hard and working together!

There are at least 208 species of social wasps in North America. Nearly all those species have the same life cycle, type of nest, assignment of work duties, etc. However, we’ll focus on paper wasps to keep things relatively simple.

Welcome back to “Cri learns about the Universal Cat Distribution System Pt. II” If you need to catch up on Pt. I – click over now. We’ll be here when you get back.

Caught up? Great!

After a lengthy series of delays, (keep in mind I left Oregon on a Saturday afternoon and it is now Wednesday) my oldest daughter, youngest son and their spouses and daughters were all reunited in Connecticut. For those keeping score, it was two little girls, one from my oldest child and one from my youngest child.