Oak Galls

Cynipines, very small wasps (an eighth of an inch) are responsible for the oak apple gall which are the ones I most commonly take off branches. They're interesting to cut apart. A hard outer skin, warty, shades of yellow and brown, then an inner skin which is somehow composed of almost pure tannin, then a moist core that is quite sweet. The adult wasps build a gall, lay some eggs, goes off and dies; the larva eat the sweet stuff, dine on smaller bugs, and repeat the cycle. In the spring, around here, you get these fat, slow houseflies. Pregnant? Queen Flies? Clearly I don't know enough about flies, but they can be annoying and I've found the 100% successful fly-trap. I eat tinned Mandarin orange segments often, and I'd left a tin out, with a bit of the 'light' syrup left in the bottom. The next morning all six of the flies were drown in it. Excellent. I knew there were six because I'd caught them all and marked them with carpenter's chalk. This is easier than it sounds, I've marked honey-bees for years, to find wild hives, it's a simple procedure. When bees are feeding they're preoccupied, and fat spring flies are just stupid, the only difficulty is handling them without killing them. I wear cotton gloves, but I still lose a few. It's very easy to kill a fly, especially, it seems, when you've gone to great lengths to color code his identity. I just killed purple. It was an accident. I'm sorry. The play of shadow and light is a lovely thing, I sit outside and get completely lost. I'd been reading about the basal flair of oak trees. The author said it was largest of any tree, though I question that the cypress might be more. There was mention of the Eiffel Tower. So I read about the Eiffel Tower, about which I knew nothing. Opened 1889, two years to build, 18,038 parts, 2.5 million rivets, weighs 7,000 tons, 300 meters tall. One resident at the time called it "a truly tragic street lamp", and I'm inclined to agree. I would like to see the plan for the foundation. And we can only imagine the scaffolding that was necessary. I'd opened a can of baked beans, because I wanted baked beans and smoked meat on toast, with mushroom gravy, and I thought about a local phrase "I wouldn't care to" meaning that they wouldn't mind doing whatever it was. "I wouldn't care to bring the baked beans" means that they'll bring the baked beans. It'll be no problem, they don't mind, we all know they make great baked beans. I have trouble understanding English, I can't imagine translating into it; whenever I'm out, I hear things I don't understand. Nothing unusual, I usually listen to birds, and this is supposed to be the big year for cicadas. This area overlaps several different groups, and what I hear and read has said this should be a very loud summer. Bugs and political rhetoric. Be lucky to get through this with half a brain. Moonlight. Went out to pee and it was beautiful, so I got a drink and rolled a smoke, sat on the back porch in my Selma rocker, with the stadium blanket over my shoulders, and stared into the middle distance. I suppose cicadas are edible, I'll have to check. This whole group, crickets, grasshoppers, locust are about 45% protein. Not that I want to try, but I could live fairly well off bugs, acorns, and wild greens. Being civilized, I'll go into town tomorrow for the first farmer's market. Too early to expect much, some salad greens, so I'll get a small piece of salmon or tuna, maybe a loaf of Ronnie's bread. A browned butter to wilt the greens, and some mushrooms; and I do deserve a decent wine, because I've almost saved enough cash to cover the bi-annual bills, and I have a month to go, a month in which I spend almost nothing, little electricity, rotating the stock in my pantry. Red beans and rice, with cheap whiskey, Greg Brown on the radio, I can't imagine it gets any better than this.