Musings

I learned that the world’s longest lived vertebrate is the Greenland shark, Somniosus microcephalus. They can reach at least 400 years, and perhaps 500—that’s half a millennium! The latest research (thank you NYTimes Tuesday Science stories), discussed by Jonathan Moens, has discovered that this species has huge genomes, with about 6.5 billion DNA base pairs (humans have less than half that). This makes these sharks more genetically resilient (read the story for the details), and thus likely contributes to their longevity.

Still reeling about the (possibly) 500 year lifespans.

Posted at 9:40 PM | Comments Off on Not my photo

I’m really noticing the daylength getting shorter.

Posted at 8:53 PM | Comments Off on Seasoned

We tried to see the eclipse…the partial eclipse of the moon…nope: too much cloud cover. It does seem a bit brighter where the moon is supposed to be, though?

Posted at 10:24 PM | Comments Off on Moon-watch

Here’s the color the sun left before the moon rose.

Posted at 10:56 PM | Comments Off on Pink-gold-orange

Striding along under this lovely, towering magnolia, a high branch dropped a leaf that landed on my hat. It was not a small leaf, and it landed with a small thud. My neck is fine; I just shook that floral debris off and continued my walk.

Posted at 7:10 PM | Comments Off on Floral irritant

I was rather struck by the delicate shade of these blooms. It took my mind off how hot and humid it was today. I’m going with climate change. Also (in a run-on style), we’ve heard reports of Michigan having a bumper crop of apples this year; not here, we have only a very few apples that set. In contrast, last year we had a bumper crop here.

Posted at 10:28 PM | Comments Off on Variations in conditions

I saw this grey above and thought “lowering sky.” Where did I get that?…as in, that’s an uncommon adjective, no?

Elsewhere…I came across this definition: Fishing—precision guesswork based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge.—observation by character Henry Standing Bear in “Land of Wolves” (2019) by Craig Johnson.

Posted at 8:46 PM | Comments Off on So right

I thought about nature’s dynamism today. It was breezy all day, cloudy-sunny, and waves rolled in early (unusually—it’s more common that the water’s quiet in the morning).

I also managed to capture some of the detail of the light–dark pattern of the surface (or so it appears) of the moon.

Posted at 8:05 PM | Comments Off on Seeing power

You are looking at the trunks of white birch trees, surrounded by the green of lilac bushes. It’s quite a large patch of lilacs, but the ones only a few meters north of these have dried leaves…so they leafed out this year, and then suffered trauma, probably lack of water. I’ve never seen the lilacs shrivel like that. Anyway, here are the pretty, surviving, flourishing lilacs.

Posted at 9:10 PM | Comments Off on Location location location

This view is north-northeast, but it sometimes evinces sunset color. Note the high, thin, cloud layer. So aesthetic.

Posted at 8:50 PM | Comments Off on Dusky landscape, sky