bi [sic] le

As found peeking up through some backyard blades of grass near the hammock stand (click for the bigger picture):

I knew upon leaving the house yesterday morning the high winds would undoubtedly bring down a substantial measure of the fronds from the smaller of our two backyard palms, which has been long overdue the attentions of a tree trimmer.

Sure enough when I got home last night I found that the blustery day-long blowings conspired with gravity to bring a decent load of the ungainly things to ground, and I spent a chunk of this morning corralling them off the walkway to the side of the yard, where they will then await me and my desire to break them down and dispose of them, probably this weekend.

In an epic duel with the last frond, stuck up in a neighboring tree, I first valiantly attempted to dislodge it with about 20 tosses of a broom. When that finally proved futile, instead of giving up, I tied a long length of old coaxial cable to a rock that I then launched in a trajectory that took it up and over the top of the trapped frond’s shaft and I was able to pull it down where it joined its brethren.

And yes, in triumph I did a fist-pump. I may have even made “crowd goes wild” noises.

But trust me, that won’t be the last time. There are literally scores upon scores more waiting the chance to fall:

That the Coca-Cola bottle I unearthed Sunday had been buried about a foot beneath the surface of the frontyard for a minimum of a decade was a given, since that’s when Susan bought the house and nothing’s been dug up or buried there since then.

But of course I wanted more specifics as to how old the registered trademark might be, so I consulted The Google and after a couple deadends found myself on the Bobby’s Coca-Cola® On The Web site where I posted a cry for help and provided all the details I could find on the bottle:

Hi Bobby,

I had the pleasant surprise of digging up an intact 8-ounce Coca-Cola bottle this afternoon while working in the front yard of my house. I can say for certain it’s been underground a minimum of 10 years, but there are a couple of factors that make me wonder how old it might be, and so I got on the internet and found your site in hopes you might have some insight.

The glass itself is greener than other bottles I’ve seen and what little was left of the logo’s script was white. Unfortunately it came off when I cleaned the bottle up.

The bottom of the bottle is embossed with “Fresno, Calif.,” and in the center of that it reads “® Bottle Trademark.” In the center of the bottle’s bottom is a logo that looks like and anchor centered over an “H”, and below it is the number 10.

Embossed on the lower bottom of one of its sides is “65-36.”

Any help in solving the mystery will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Will

This morning I found the following response from Bobby:

That’s awesome that you dug a Coke bottle!    The embossed numbers below the waist of the bottle “65-36″ indicates that it’s from 1965.   The Coca-Cola script on this bottle was painted, also known as applied color label (ACL) — from your photo, none of the painted label remained.  The base plate however is in very good shape!

Thanks for sharing!

Happy Collecting,
Bobby

Point of order: That the bottle is 44 years old isn’t to automatically say it’s been underground that long. Sure there’s a chance its burial occurred the year of its creation, but I’d wager the actual interring could have been a few years later.

In addition to the broken window, another project I’ve long been meaning to do is widen the narrow section of slopeing walkway at the top of the steps. Seriously there’s only been a couple feet of width between the planter box and the lantana hedge bordered by some river rocks where the concrete meets the dirt , so today I busted out the shovel and as is regularly the case in the course of my excavations, dug up an entirely intact 8-ounce Coca-Cola bottle that had been buried about a foot down.

What barely was left of the logo was white (and that came off in the cleaning). The bottle bottom is embossed with “Fresno, Calif” (indicative of Coke’s Fresno bottling facility) and some other insignia and numbers, but nothing that would clue me as to how old it might be (other than the 10-plus years its been underground.

Comparing it to another 8-ounce Coke bottle I have I noted how much greener this one’s glass is. Maybe that’s a clue. But for now, it’s just another acquisition for my Gallery of Backyarchaeology, though I guess I should call this Frontyarchaeology.

As to widening the walkway? Here’s how things ended up:

In the backyard on poop scooping duty yesterday morning I came upon the carnage. All that was left strewn along the dirt near the hammock were wings of a butterfly that had met its doom. It’s assailant unknown.

I guess there may be people out there who go their entire lives not getting to hold much less look up-close at the magnificence of the insect’s flight system. Beyond the colors and patterns, it’s quite remarkable to hold something that on the butterfly’s level is so durable, yet in the palm of a hand is perhaps one of the most delicate things one can hold.

Nothing more than a exhale sends it sailing.

At arm’s length it appears to be a fragment of stained glass, but looking upon it up-close is a bit like peering through a window to an undiscovered  galaxy — wafer-thin yet densely packed — so be sure to click the image for the biggest picture:

In so complicated and busy a world, the butterfly’s wing reminds me it is possible to be paused and amazed by the slightest of things.

I haven’t done much in the way of sunflower patch updates or pix recently because, well… as we know all good things must come to an end, and the last week or so has seen our sunflower beauties fading as they come to the various ends of their days.

Right now there are several of the largest blooms drying on our kitchen windowsill wherein I’ll soon be harvesting the seeds from them for next year’s mega planting. The rest? Well, I left them to the squirrels who have made off with several of their own.

As timing would have it I checked out the PatioCam pointed at the mostly headless patch and, saw this image:

It took a second but I managed to find the rump and tail of the thief in their midst:

Either that or the Moth That Can Touch Its Tail To Its Head:

(yeah, you’ll wanna click for the bigger picture)

Looking at it from inside the kitchen this afternoon, at first glance I thought it was some shmutz on the window screen (for scale reference it takes about 18 of those screen squares to make an inch). But upon going outside and inspecting the shmutz more closely I saw indeed it was neither flotsam nor jetsam but instead some sort of winged thing demonstrating a unique ability to bet its own butt all up in its business.

I’ve already sent an ID request off to the Butterflies and Moths of North America website, but who knows how long an answer might take — if one comes at all. So in the meantime if anyone is cozy with any entomologists, feel free to point them to this picture.

UPDATE (08.10): I got a quick reply from the contact at the above-mentioned website, who thought it might be, Platyptilia carduidactylus, a member of the plume moth group. Bugguide.net then came in with Lineodes integra, commonly called the eggplant leafroller (also the nightshade leftier). From the looks of some of the other pix on the following page, Bugguide nailed it:

http://bugguide.net/node/view/36773

(click here to view the timelapse file)

Well I thought all was fine and dandy like cotton candy with the cam and computer, when I powered everything down at 7 a.m. this morning. But instead of some 20 hours of timelapse footage, unbeknownst to me the set-up crapped out after only 2.5 hours — which is probably for the better. One minute and 44 seconds of a bees busy on a bobbing flower is a better bite than 10 times that amount. Enjoy. And be sure to pay attention to the way the bees work around the flower.

PS. I’ll also be tossing it up on YouTube later.

UPDATE (8.4): After several failed attempts with YouTube’s balky rejecting upload function, success was finally achieved and the YouTube version is viewable here.

(click for the bigger picture)

Known as red skimmers, this dragonfly’s common name is never so inadequate as when one is found in the backyard glowing like an ember sunbathed by the mid-afternoon rays.

For the couple weeks that our sunflowers have been going bloomin’ crazy, I’ve kept saying I should set up the cam all up in one’s face and get me an elongated timelapse — and then promptly ignored myself.

Until today.

If I were really sharp I would’ve set it up first thing in the morning and tried for either a dawn-to-dusk or a full 24-hour cycle, but I didn’tget my ass in gear until about a half-hour ago. So you’ll have to settle for an 11:34 a.m. to dark (or to 7-ish tomorrow morning) capture. Of course, that’s presuming the cam/computer/software doesn’t crap out in the interim, so we’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, here’s perhaps my most grandiose timelapse (and one of my most popular vids), grabbed two years ago next month from atop the steep pitch of our roof, that I clambered up with the cam, tripod and laptop (and extension cords, and an umbrella to shade it all from the withering sun) and pointed the lens northward at storm clouds that built out over and beyond the San Gabriels: