The Backyard Science group regularly features the Daily Bucket. Part of the Bucket's purposes is to chronicle the daily happenings in our own backyards, as well as your favorite place. Unusual Insect? Lots of birds at the feeder? Found a spider inside? A favored plant dying on you? Please provide a comment about your own natural area, whether your backyard or your favorite spot. Include, as close as you are comfortable, your general location.
After reading Matching Mole's excellent diary a couple of days ago on implementing scientific deductive methods into our thinking, I resolved to invoke some of those disciplines the next time a backyard discovery sent my unbound mind spinning.
The opportunity arose immediately. I had a 10 gallon bin full of fine sand. It was topped off with 2 inches of rain water and handfuls of tree leaves, smelled sulfury and was colored tannin. I began scraping off the leaves and water, and what did I find?
Peanuts. Again and again.
Wait. Stop. Invoke the scientific method.
Step One: Is there a question that can be answered? If you want to know how many darned peanuts a squirrel can bury in a sand bin, that's answerable. I found at least 40.
Step Two: Is the answer interesting?
Here I bump into the similar question from my former life as boy newspaper reporter--WGAF, roughly translated as Who Gives A Darn?
And that's my "scientific" quandary. All too often, the answers to my questions are only interesting to me.
And as I stumble along blindly, maybe more interesting questions arise. Is it worth setting out a $4 bag full of peanuts under the bird feeders, if the squirrels will just bury those in a place that will get covered with two inches of fetid water and the peanuts then rot?.
Should I engineer a "special" sand pit with drainage where the squirrels can bury recoverable peanuts?
I'll leave you to ponder those earth-shaking questions, and ask that you now comment on the goings-on in your own favorite places.
"Green Diary Rescue" is Back!
After a hiatus of over 1 1/2 years, Meteor Blades has revived his excellent series. As MB explained, this weekly diary is a "round-up with excerpts and links... of the hard work so many Kossacks put into bringing matters of environmental concern to the community... I'll be starting out with some commentary of my own on an issue related to the environment, a word I take in its broadest meaning."
"Green Diary Rescue" will be posted every Saturday at 1:00 pm Pacific Time on the Daily Kos front page. Be sure to recommend and comment in the diary.