Happy West Virginia Day

Today we celebrate the day West Virginia became a state on June 20, 1863. As most of you know, I grew up in West Virginia--a fact that I'm very proud of. West Virginia is not large in either size or population, so not many people know much about it. Or they only "know" what they've seen on TV or in the movies. Let me see if I can give a brief summary of what West Virginia is like.

Like most other places, West Virginia has a many different kinds of people and ways of life-- especially since our two panhandles reach far into other areas. Go to the northern part of the state,and it is like the Northeast. Go to the far eastern part of the state and you'll identify with Washington, D. C. Take a trip to the southern reaches, and you are definitely in the South. And when you're in the far west, you are in the Midwest. If you grew up in the middle part of the state, like I did, you can chose whatever you want to identify with because there are bits of everything.

Also, like most other places, there are rich people and there are poor people. There are well educated people and there are poorly educated people. There are people who like grits and ramps, and others who don't like them at all (that would be me). But I'd say that almost everyone likes biscuits.

Besides biscuits, there are other things that bind the state together. People here have a connection to the land. This is where they hunt and fish and where they grow their vegetables and graze their cows or goats. They also appreciate the beauty around them. Everywhere you turn there is a feast for your eyes. Whether it is hilly terrain of hills and hollows (hollers), or long mountain ridges with long stream valleys, it's all very scenic. They are also a very resilient group of people. Life has not always been easy for many people here, but they find a way to keep going.

But the thing that strikes me the most about West Virginia is the friendliness of the people. I have found friendly people everywhere I lived, but not always the comfortable friendliness that I have experienced with the people of West Virginia. I hadn't realized this until a young Theo asked me a question one day as we were traveling back to visit his grandparents. He said, "What makes everyone so friendly where Grandad and Grandma live? It's different from where we live." I started to notice, that he was correct.

So there you have it. I have just summarized 24,230 square miles of land, 1.85 million people, and over 150 years of history of West Virginia. Maybe another time, I'll tell you more.

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But wait there's more:

Want to learn some interesting facts and trivia? Visit here.

http://www.wvcommerce.org/travel/requestinformation/funfactsandtrivia/default.aspx

More about Bees

I have explained before that I don't have much knowledge about bees or wasps, but I'm very slowly learning. This week, I was finally able to document one of the differences between carpenter bees and bumble bees. Before this year big, yellow and black striped bees were all bumble bees to me. As it turns out, I learned that carpenter bees look similar to bumble bees, however carpenter bees are larger and have smoother abdomens while bumble bees have furry abdomens. And from my experience, bumbles bees move a lot faster and more often from bloom to bloom. So for a few weeks now, I thought I have been seeing bumble bees instead of carpenter bees, but they wouldn't hold still long enough to know for sure. Yesterday, I finally got a picture that confirmed my suspicions.

Notice the fuzzy abdomen of the bumble bee on the left and the smooth abdomen of the carpenter bee on the right.

So my knowledge is slowly increasing. Who knows? Maybe soon I will be able to reliably tell a bee from a wasp on first sight. Or maybe not. :)

A Second Look--June 17, 2015

Here are some things I saw this week 

during a Second Look.

Day lily

Mushroom

Hydrangea

Lady's Mantle

Blanket flower

Yellow, white, and red clover

Redbud tree seed pods. I never realized until I saw them yesterday, that the little, tiny redbud flowers produced such big seed pods.

Hosta or the deer's breakfast yesterday.

The bluebirds are building another nest in this box for a second brood. The bluebirds sit on top of the box a lot to guard it. There has already been a wren that has tried to use this box.

Passages

The last two weekends, I have been traveling to mark two family passages--a wedding and a funeral.

One was a celebration with anticipation of a life to come.

The other was a celebration with sadness for a life that will be missed.

Both brought together families with flowers and tears.

A Second Look--June 10, 2015

More summer like weather this week. Hot humid days with evening thunderstorms. Fortunately the mornings have still been cool. This weather has brought out the summer bloomers--the flowers that bloom most of the summer, and the spring perennials are pretty much done except for a lingering flower here or there.

As predicted, the baby bluebirds had already fledged by the next time I looked in the nest. So, I decided it was time to clean out the nest boxes to prepare for more broods this summer. But an interesting thing happened on my way to clean out one of the boxes. I found more baby birds. We have three boxes. One had the bluebirds, one had a full wren's nest with no eggs and one had half a wren's nest with no eggs (or so I thought). Wrens are known for having decoy nests or extra nests to fill up nesting sites to keep other birds away so I didn't think that much about the extra wren nests without eggs. As it turns out, the nest that I thought was only half done had babies in it. It was built up high enough that I couldn't quite see into the bottom of it. I had it half way pulled out before I spotted the birds. I quickly put it back in place, so I didn't get a chance to see how many birds were in it. After I left the area, I saw the mother come and check on her brood. I think they're all okay.

Here are a few things this week I saw

 during a Second Look.

Day lily (Stella Dora)

Hottuynia

Spirea

Lamium (purple dead nettle)

Astilbe

Blanket flower (gaillardia)

The deer have been eating the coneflowers before they have a chance to bloom.

Coreopsis

Marigold

The baby wrens are in this box. I had a hard time closing it back up because the twigs that the nest was built from fell into the sides.