Sheela and GJ

Sheela has been playing golf (nine holes) with her GrampaJohn just like a grownup! Here they are at Tanasi course in Tellico Village.

Sheela and I attended a couple of Diversity of Life in America lectures this week in the Twin Creeks Science and Education Center outside Gatlinburg.

We learned about a rare spider that lives only above 5500 feet, in a particular kind of moss covering north facing rocks in spruce-fir forests. Interesting spider, booooring speaker.

Yesterday we heard an interesting speaker (Dr. Ernest Bernard) on the subject of "springtails" which are sort of arachnids (Collembola, to be specific) ... and among the most plentiful life forms on the planet. Who knew? They are tiny, but not microscopic, and we found a bunch of them in the leaf litter on the forest floor. They are EVERYWHERE.

High note: Sheela captured (sucked up in an aspirator) one of the rarest of them all ... only the eighth one ever captured ... and only the third in the Smokies.

Then ... Sheela and I were intereviewed by a photographer who was there doing a segment on the DLIA - Roger Herr, of HiDefSouth. (Sheela would not let me use the photo of her being interviewed.) That's Zora, and Roger behind the camera, and Sheela kibbitzing behind them. We are in front of the Twin Creeks Science and Education Center. It was fun - after all, we got to talk about ourselves!

More Smokies Stuff

The rate springtail that Sheela collected is shown on the big honkin' screen ... it is the thing that looks like an armored tank with white legs.

This is a photo of one of the slides projected on the wall during the lecture. It shows a springtail profile. Creepy critters, no?

A tiny little moth we spotted posing for us on a glass door in the Science Center.

Outdoors near the Science Center we spotted three water snakes ... this one posed for us nicely both days ... on the same rocks.

Thanks for reading this!

Sheela is here ... we've been pretty busy, but should have some pix to share soon.

She played golf with John on Father's Day ... he loved having her along just like a grownup! (They let me tag along ... I didn't even mind gettng beaten by them both ... it was still fun.)

I'm still here!

I'm just re-discovering how to do this ... and of course no photos today, because we had a lightning storm last evening and I left the computer on. No big damage, just the fact that it combined with a dead (maybe lightning-blasted?) wireless router - it all took up lots of time checking a rechecking and so forth and so on. For now, at least I'm back on-line and trying to get up to date.