Author: pat frederick

Mono Lake, California

The reserve was established to preserve the spectacular “tufa towers,” calcium-carbonate spires and knobs formed by interaction of freshwater springs and alkaline lake water. It also protects the lake surface itself as well as the wetlands and other sensitive habitat for the 1 – 2 million birds that feed and rest at Mono Lake each year.

Mono Lake is a majestic body of water covering about 65 square miles. It is an ancient lake, over 1 million years old — one of the oldest lakes in North America. It has no outlet.

Throughout its long existence, salts and minerals have washed into the lake from Eastern Sierra streams. Freshwater evaporating from the lake each year has left the salts and minerals behind so that the lake is now about 2 1/2 times as salty as the ocean and very alkaline.

Location/Directions
Highway 395, 13 miles east of Yosemite National Park, near the town of Lee Vining, California.

Seasons/Climate/Recommended clothing
The weather can be changeable; layered clothing is recommended.

Winter is a particularly beautiful time at Mono Lake. The crowds are gone, a quiet stillness prevails, and snow crystals sparkle on the tufa towers.

In winter, State Route 120 is closed from 5 miles east of the junction of US 395; which allows for access to South Tufa if weather permits. The South Tufa road is not plowed.

South Tufa, Navy Beach, and the Old Marina area are all wonderful places to cross-country ski when snow conditions permit.

Facilities – Activities

Visitor Center

The Mono Basin Scenic Area Visitor Center is a great place to start your visit to this area. The center is located just off Highway 395, north of Lee Vining and includes a variety of exhibits about the natural and human history of the Mono Basin. Visitor center staff stand ready to help you plan your explorations of Mono Lake and the Eastern Sierra. 

Outdoor Activities
Hiking, photography, bird watching, swimming, boating, and cross-country skiing are just a few of the many activities you can enjoy at this unusual lake.

Photographers come from all over the world to capture the interplay of light on the mountains, desert, and water. The natural history of the lake is described and explained in a one-mile self-guided nature trail at South Tufa. This is the best place to visit if you have time for only one stop. A boardwalk (ADA) trail below the Mono Lake County Park allows access to the north shore tufa area and wetland. A new trail links the Scenic Area Visitor Center near Lee Vining with the Old Marina area at the shore. A trail at Panum Crater leads to the dome and crater rim.

A swim in Mono Lake is a memorable experience. The lake’s salty water is denser than ocean water, and provides a delightfully buoyant swim. Old timers claim that a soak in the lake will cure almost anything. Keep the water out of your eyes or any cuts, as it will sting.

Camping
The State Natural Reserve is surrounded by the Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area, operated by the Forest Service. There are no campgrounds in the State Natural Reserve or the Scenic Area. Established campgrounds are located nearby in Lundy Canyon, Lee Vining Canyon, and the June Lake Loop. Dispersed camping is permitted in most of the Scenic Area above the exposed lake bed lands. Campfire permits are required.

Boating
All types of boating are permitted on Mono Lake, although access is restricted to all islands between April 1 and August 1 each year to protect the nesting gulls. Boaters must not approach within 200 yards of Osprey nesting sites located on offshore tufa towers April 1st through Sept. 1st. It is advisable to stay near shore while boating and to be alert for sudden high winds. We recommend launching canoes and kayaks at Navy Beach, on the south shore, where a parking lot is close to the water. For those with boats too large to carry, an unimproved launch ramp is available near Lee Vining Creek. Stop by the Scenic Area Visitor Center for directions or for more information.

SOURCE: CA.GOV

Azure Kingfisher

Appearance

An Azure kingfisher is a small aquatic kingfisher. It has a long black beak and a whitish rear eye spot. This bird gets its name from its beautiful coloring, being dark glossy blue, its underside an orange-rufous; its legs and feet red. Males and females have very similar appearance and juveniles are less vibrant in color.

Geography

Azure kingfishers live in Tasmania, Northern and Eastern Australia, the lowlands of New Guinea and the neighboring islands, and North Maluku and Romang. These birds are generally sedentary, although they can perform some seasonal migration. Azure kingfishers live near streams and rivers, billabongs (small, stagnant lakes joined to waterways), swamps, mangroves, tidal estuaries, lagoons, and various other bodies of water that have low, overhanging branches.

Habits and Lifestyle

Azure kingfishers hunt in the same way as most other kingfishers, by searching the water for prey from a low-lying branch, then diving swiftly, catching the prey, and returning to the branch. Then the bird flips its prey around until the head is in its mouth, so it can swallow its head first and whole to avoid being cut by the bones or scales. They can eat snakes in the same way. They are experts at diving deep for their prey. Their flight is direct and quick. They will often bob their head and move their wings in anticipation of sighting a fish. To catch a fish they stab it, with either a closed or open bill, depending on the prey’s size, and kill it by beating it on the ground or their perch to break the bones. They are most active in the morning and evening, but if it’s not too hot, they may also hunt in the afternoon. Most kingfisher species are solitary, only pairing up with a mate during the breeding season. Azure kingfishers are usually silent, but make a sharp, squeaky call when breeding. Their voice is a high-pitched, shrill ‘pseet-pseet’, often in flight.

Mating Habits

Azure kingfishers are monogamous birds and form a pair that will defend a breeding territory. A pair builds its nest together, taking three to seven days to construct the tunnel. Kingfishers are fiercely territorial when defending their nests. Mating is from October to March. The female lays 5-7 glossy, white eggs. The eggs are incubated for three weeks by both parents. The chicks grow quickly. They are altricial (naked and helpless) on hatching and require constant feeding and care by their parents, who will bring the food to the nesting chamber. Soon the nestlings travel towards the tunnel entrance, where they meet their parents and wait to be fed. They fledge at around 30 days, from when they will feed themselves and be on their own.

Fun Facts 

Azure kingfishers take it, in turn, to burrow out a tunnel using their feet, then they hollow out a thin chamber at the tunnel’s end where they lay their eggs. These nesting tunnels can be as long as 1 meter.

Transparent membranes on these birds’ eyes protect them when they dive.

Kingfishers dive so quickly that they can cut through the ice to catch fish.

Kookaburras are a kind of kingfisher.

Kingfisher nests will contain piles of droppings and a smelly pile of fish bones.

Kingfishers can look bright blue but are actually a dull brown color. The iridescent coloring we see is due to a difference between structural and pigmented coloration. If we saw light reflected directly from their wings we would see brown, but the light is bouncing around the structure of their wings.

SOURCE: ANIMALIA

Purple Sweet Potatoes

I found this article on The SpruceEats website about purple sweet potatoes:

Purple sweet potatoes (sometimes mistakenly called purple yams) are fun to cook with and can be used in many of the same ways as the more familiar orange or white sweet potatoes. Though some varieties have white skin, cutting one open will reveal their violet-colored surprise. Popular in some Asian and Latin cuisines (but not to be confused with Japanese sweet potatoes), they add a brilliant pop of color to food and require just a few adaptations to cook.

What Are Purple Sweet Potatoes?

Purple sweet potatoes are root vegetables. The tubers taper to points on both ends and are members of the Ipomoea genus, just like other sweet potatoes (yams are of the genus Dioscorea). There are two main varieties—Okinawa (white skin) and Stokes (purple skin)—though they share the characteristic of having a deep purple flesh. The color comes from anthocyanins, the same pigment that gives cherries, strawberries, purple carrots, and other vegetables their color. These sweet potatoes are easy to prepare and cook. They’re not as easy to find as regular sweet potatoes and are more of a specialty item, so they will cost a little more.

Sweet potatoes that have brown, red-orange, or white skin with orange or white flesh are native to Colombia and southern Central America. After Columbus’ discoveries, they were brought to Asia, and varieties with white skin and speckled pale purple flesh were developed on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Today, they are widely grown in Hawaii and exported to the United States mainland where they are popular with Asian and Latinx communities.

How to Cook with Purple Sweet Potatoes

Purple sweet potato skins are edible, though some recipes recommend peeling them first. When cooking, purple sweet potatoes will take longer than regular sweet potatoes. You will need to bake them anywhere from 90 minutes to 2 hours at 350 F to make them pleasingly moist.

Purple sweet potatoes are wonderful boiled, steamed, or baked alongside regular sweet potatoes. They can be used in many of the same ways you’d use an orange or white potato, and the colorful result puts a fun spin on mashed potatoes, fries, and soups.

If you’re going to use this sweet potato in baked goods, you do need to be cautious about recipes that include baking soda. Combining the two ingredients may turn the potato’s flesh green.

What Does It Taste Like?

Purple sweet potatoes have a rich, almost winey flavor with a creamy texture. They are denser and drier than regular sweet potatoes, which is why moist cooking methods and longer times are recommended.

Purple Sweet Potato Recipes

While you may be hard-pressed to find recipes that specifically call for purple sweet potatoes, they can work in nearly any recipe that uses regular sweet potatoes. Just keep in mind the extended cooking time when using them as a substitute.

Where to Buy Purple Sweet Potatoes

Okinawan sweet potatoes enjoy a year-round season while the Stokes Purple variety is typically available from September through June. Like other sweet potatoes, the peak season for the purple varieties is during the fall and winter months. They may not be available in every grocery store, depending on where you live. You’ll have the best luck at specialty markets, including those that cater to Asian foods. Like other potatoes, they are sold by the pound, either loose or weighed out in bags (3 pounds is common). You can also buy them in larger bulk quantities at some stores or online. You can grow purple sweet potatoes at home, though the availability of the slips or shoots for planting is limited and not always easy to find. The Okinawan variety needs a similar climate to Okinawa, such as Hawaii, while Stokes Purple is a better choice for home gardens on the U.S. mainland.

Look for purple sweet potatoes that are firm. Avoid any with soft or brown spots, sprouts, or wrinkled skin.

Storage

Sweet potatoes, in general, do not store as well as regular potatoes. Avoid bruising these potatoes as the slightest damage can cause the entire sweet potato to go bad. You can keep them at room temperature for about a week. For longer storage, keep them in a dry, dark, and cool place with good ventilation and use within a few weeks. Storing any sweet potato in the refrigerator can throw off the flavor and lead to a very hard center.

Cooked sweet potatoes can be stored in an airtight container for a week. Like other sweet potatoes, you can also freeze them after cooking, whether whole and baked or as a casserole.

SOURCE: TheSpruceEats    Darlene Schmidt

The Rose-Veiled Fairy Wrasse

Around the Maldives, between 130-230ft beneath the Indian Ocean, there are flickering shoals of brightly colored, finger-length fish that never venture up to the coral reefs at the surface.

The rose-veiled fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa) is one of many species that deep-diving scientists have found in the mesophotic (or twilight) zone, which lies between the sunlit shallows and the dark, deep ocean. It extends about 150 meters down and contains its own distinct mix of species.

“The mesophotic zone is one of the least explored regions in coral reefs,” says Yi-Kai Tea, postdoctoral fellow at the Australian Museum Research Institute in Sydney, by email from a research ship in the Indian Ocean. “This area is generally situated at an awkward depth – not deep enough to survey with submarines, too complex to trawl and dredge, and too deep to dive with traditional scuba techniques.”

The rose-veiled fairy wrasse was named in 2022: finifenmaa means rose in the local Dhivehi language – a double nod to the colorful fish and the Maldivian national flower, the pink rose, which goes by the same species name. One of the scientists involved in finding and naming the new wrasse is Ahmed Najeeb from the Maldives Marine Research Institute. This is the first time a Maldivian researcher has described a new species native to the region, Tea says.

Like other species of wrasse, the rose-veiled fairy wrasse change their appearance and sex as they age. They start life as females and mature into males, becoming considerably more colorful. The males adorn themselves in stunning nuptial colors during the mating season, presumably to impress females.

The finding was part of the California Academy of Sciences’ Hope for Reefs initiative, which aims to better understand and protect the world’s coral reefs, focusing on mesophotic reefs.

What Shall We Make Today?

I found this recipe for Bunny Tail Candies on the Hungry Happenings website that looks adorable!  It takes a little bit of prep work but basically, they are easy to make and look so dang cute! 

As you can see from the above photo, you can make these using vanilla chips or peanut butter chips (and I suspect chocolate would also work just as easily.)

Ingredients

12 ounces peanut butter candy melts (or vanilla or chocolate)

100 pink heart sprinkles

300 pink sugar pearls

50 miniature marshmallows

50 pretzel rings or mini pretzel twists

Instructions

Pour candy melts into a microwave safe bowl.

Heat on high power for 15-30 second increments, stirring after each, until melted.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Paint a ⅜-1/2 inch oval onto the paper and immediately press one pink heart into the center and three pink sugar pearls around the heart for the toes.

Repeat creating 100 bunny paws.

Pop the candy into the freezer for a few minutes until the candy hardens.

Roll the marshmallows in the palm of your hand until they are round.

Set the pretzel rings on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.

Re-heat the peanut butter candy melts for 15 seconds, then pour it into a squeeze bottle.

Pipe peanut butter candy into the center of a pretzel ring.

Immediately attach a marshmallow tail and two candy bunny feet.

Repeat.

Freeze for 5-10 minutes until the candy is hardened.

Peel off the parchment paper and they are ready to serve.

SOURCE: Hungry Happenings

Barron

From Biography:

Who Is Barron Trump?

Barron William Trump is the son of former model Melania Trump and U.S. President and real estate mogul Donald Trump. Barron is the couple’s only child and the only one of the president’s offspring residing with him in the White House. His mother, Melania, told ABC News that the youngest Trump likes wearing a suit every day — he is “not a sweatpants child.” Also, like his famous father, he enjoys golfing a lot.

Early Childhood

Barron William Trump was born on March 20, 2006, in New York City. Having grown up inside of Trump Tower in New York City, where he has an entire floor to himself, Barron has always known a life of luxury. In an interview with Parenting, Melania revealed that Barron really liked planes and helicopters when he was little and that, as a hands-on mom, she cooked his breakfast and prepared his lunches. She also believed in encouraging his creativity — even when he would draw on the walls. “His imagination is growing and important,” she said. “If he draws on the walls in his playroom, we can paint it over.”

Life at the White House

Barron and Melania stayed at Trump Tower for almost the first five months of Donald Trump’s presidency, so that Barron could finish his studies at the Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School on the Upper West Side. He and his mom moved into the White House on June 11, 2017, and attended St. Andrew’s Episcopal, a prep school in Maryland.

Barron is the first son of a president to reside in the White House since John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1963. Although he stays out of the spotlight for the most part, he has turned up for some of the White House’s fun holiday-themed events in 2017, including the annual Easter Egg Roll in April, where he joined his parents in signing cards for members of the American Armed Forces. He also supported his father’s pardoning of the turkeys before Thanksgiving and soon after, stepped out with his mom on the North Portico to receive the official Christmas tree from Wisconsin, which went up on display in the White House’s Blue Room.

Nicknamed ‘Little Donald’

“He is a mixture of us in looks, but his personality is why I call him ‘Little Donald,’” Melania told Parenting. “He is a very strong-minded, very special, smart boy. He is independent and opinionated and knows exactly what he wants.”

She also noted that Barron has spent a lot quality time with his father, mostly at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, where they would play golf, eat dinner together, and enjoy family time.

Skills and Interests

Thanks to his Slovenian mom, Barron is already fluent in both English and Slovene and is also learning French.

Though he’s a long way off from officially joining the family’s real estate business, Barron does like to build cities and airports using Legos and Magna Tiles, but he has his own aesthetic. “He likes clean and white,” Melania told Parenting. “He builds big projects. He has a big imagination and it’s very impressive. He loves to build something and tear it down and build something else. He is very detailed at drawing. We travel often and he remembers everything he sees.”

Modern Family

As the youngest of the president’s five children, Barron has four half-siblings: Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric, as well as his older half-sister, Tiffany, from Trump’s marriage to Marla Maples. He has six nephews — Theodore James Kushner, Donald Trump III, Joseph Frederick Kushner, Tristan Milos Trump, Spencer Frederick Trump and Eric Luke Trump — and four nieces — Arabella Rose Kushner, Chloe Sophia Trump, Carolina Dorothy and Kai Madison Trump, who is just one year his junior.

COVID-19 Diagnosis

On October 14, 2020, Melania confirmed that like her and Donald, Barron tested positive for COVID-19. Initially testing negative, the first lady revealed that her “fear came true when he was tested again and it came up positive.” Melania continued, “Luckily he is a strong teenager and exhibited no symptoms. In one way I was glad the three of us went through this at the same time so we could take care of one another and spend time together. He has since tested negative.”

Life After the White House

Since leaving the White House, Barron, his mother and father have moved back to Mar-a-Lago. In August 2021 it was announced that Barron enrolled in private school at the Oxbridge Academy in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of the class of 2024.

Happy Birthday Barron!

The Last Boy Scout

Today is Bruce Willis’ birthday and I enjoy so many of his movies, but Die Hard, Hudson Hawk and The Last Boy Scout are 3 of my favorites!  I found this article on Mental Floss—fun facts about Bruce.

From Mental Floss

On March 30, 2022, Bruce Willis’s family members, including ex-wife Demi Moore and their three daughters, posted a joint statement to their social media accounts announcing that Willis would be retiring from acting due to a recent health diagnosis.

“Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities,” the statement read. “As a result of this and with much consideration, Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him.”

From his turns as unlikely action hero John McClane in the Die Hard series to smaller supporting roles in 1994’s Pulp Fiction and 1995’s Nobody’s Fool, Willis has consistently surprised audiences with his eclectic career choices. For more on Willis, including his recording career and how he made movie history with 1988’s original Die Hard, keep reading.

Bruce Willis was born in West Germany.

Walter Bruce Willis, the son of a military man, was born on March 19, 1955, while his father was stationed in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany. Just two years later, parents David and Marlene Willis moved to Carneys Point, New Jersey, where he spent part of his time in both high school and at Montclair State University trying his hand at acting. After his sophomore year, Willis decided to leave college and head to New York City to pursue a performing career.

Bruce Willis may have been one of the best bartenders in New York City.

While auditioning for acting roles and scoring the occasional break—he appeared in an off-Broadway play, Heaven and Earth, in 1977—Willis tended bar at Chelsea Central on New York City’s Upper West Side. According to actor John Goodman, who knew Willis before either of them became famous, Willis was notable even then. “Bruce was the best bartender in New York,” Goodman told The New York Post in 2017. “He kept an entire joint entertained all night. He just kept the show going. He was amazing.”

Bruce Willis was cast in Moonlighting even though ABC thought the role was “uncastable.”

Willis had done only some stage work and bit parts in movies like 1980’s The First Deadly Sin with Frank Sinatra and 1982’s The Verdict with Paul Newman before he went in to audition for ABC’s Moonlighting, a send-up of detective dramas. At the time, the role of David Addison was proving so difficult to cast that the network was looking to pay creator Glenn Gordon Caron, director Bob Butler, and co-star Cybill Shepherd to abandon the project. Then Willis auditioned, beating out 3000 other hopefuls and securing the part. The series ran from 1985 to 1989.

Thanks to Die Hard, Bruce Willis changed Hollywood salaries forever.

While doing Moonlighting, Willis spent his hiatus shooting feature films like 1987’s Blind Date with Kim Basinger. But it was 1988’s Die Hard that cemented him as a big-screen attraction. The action film about a New York City cop trapped in a Los Angeles skyscraper with his estranged wife and a group of terrorists was a hot commodity, and 20th Century Fox agreed to pay Willis the then-astronomical sum of $5 million for the role. (Richard Gere and Clint Eastwood were also considered.) At the time, major stars like Tom Cruise and Michael J. Fox were getting roughly $3 million a picture. The payday for Willis had other performers taking notice, and salaries reportedly went up as a result.

“It was an enormous amount of money at the time,” Willis told Entertainment Weekly in 2007. “And I was a TV actor! The day after I signed the deal, every actor in Hollywood’s salary went up to $5 million.”

The Bruce Willis movie Hudson Hawk was based on a song.

Following Die Hard, Willis was a proven box office commodity that could help projects get made. In 1991, he starred in Hudson Hawk, a critical and commercial disappointment about a jewel thief with a love of music who is hired to steal from the Vatican. The film was based in part on a song written by musician Robert Kraft in 1981. Kraft knew Willis, then a bartender and actor, and shared it with him. Over the years, the two continued to shape the song, adding characters and stories. Eventually, it wound up in the hands of screenwriters Stephen De Souza and Daniel Waters.

Bruce Willis all but disappeared in Nobody’s Fool.

In contrast to conventional wisdom of the era, Willis parlayed his success as an action hero into opportunities to work with actors and directors he found interesting—even if it meant taking a small supporting role. (Willis spent just 22 minutes onscreen in 1994’s Pulp Fiction as boxer Butch Coolidge.) For 1995’s Nobody’s Fool, he passed on his normal $15 million fee to take $1400 a week since it meant working with Paul Newman. (Newman had forgotten the then-unknown Willis was a bit player in Newman’s 1982 film, The Verdict.) Because Willis felt so strongly Nobody’s Fool was Newman’s film, he opted out of having his photo included in the press kit and his name wasn’t in the production notes.

Bruce Willis had his own cartoon series.


In 1996, Willis lent his voice to Bruno the Kid, a syndicated animated series about an 11-year-old spy named Bruno who convinces his handlers he’s really an adult. “Bruno” was Willis’s nickname growing up as well as the name of his musical alter ego. In 1987, Willis released an album, The Return of Bruno, along with a cable special. The cartoon lasted one season.

Bruce Willis never finished shooting one of his movies.

In 1997, Willis started shooting Broadway Brawler, a romantic comedy about a washed-up hockey player falling in love. Just 20 days into shooting, Willis used his powers as producer to fire director Lee Grant, Grant’s husband and producer Joe Feury, cinematographer William Fraker, and wardrobe designer Carol Oditz—all reportedly over creative differences. The problems continued even after replacement director Dennis Dugan was brought on board. Rather than continue to waste money on the $28 million movie, studio Cinergi opted to shut it down. Cinergi’s parent company, Disney, absorbed the production costs in exchange for Willis agreeing to star in three Disney movies: Armageddon (1998); The Sixth Sense (1999), Willis’s biggest hit to date; and The Kid (2000).

SOURCE: MENTAL FLOSS

DIY: Pine Cone Bird Feeders

This is an easy craft for anyone to do…and it comes with a story.  First off, you need pinecones, some twine, peanut butter and birdseed.  Merely tie the twine around the pine cone, spread peanut butter on the pine cones and roll in birdseed.  (I microwaved the peanut butter to turn spreading into dipping—much easier.)

We live in a mature wooded area meaning there are extremely few—if any—trees with low enough branches for us to hang these pine cones on.  (This is also why we have no hanging bird feeders—that and the bears would attack them.)

We wanted to attract and feed birds during the winter, so hubby devised a wooden tree of sorts.  Similar to the one pictured below, but not as tall or full.  We put it in a plastic bucket with some rocks thrown in to make sure the wind would not blow it over and put it on the deck.  I tied about a dozen of these pine cone feeders to it securely with bright red ribbon.  The project was finished around dinner time and we didn’t expect to have visitors till the next day. 

We were wrong!  Watching tv that evening we heard a THUMP! and looked at each other.  We thought for sure wind had blown the pine cone tree over, but it wasn’t windy at all.  We turned on the spotlights and saw squirrels DRAGGING our tree!  They had the pine cones in their teeth and paws and had managed to bring the tree down to the deck where they were trying to drag the tree, bucket and all, off the deck and into the woods.

I was out the door and charging at the little thieves while hubby stood and laughed.  The squirrels took that moment to let go of their treasure.

I picked up some of the rocks that had spilled out of the bucket and was winding up to hurl a couple when I felt hubby grab my arm.  “Let them go,” he laughed.  “You scared them good.  They won’t be back.”

Guess what? He was wrong.  They came back in the middle of the night and CHEWED the ribbons OFF the tree and made off with all 12!!

Sigh.