Four Bars and a Church

There's new construction in our little hamlet, and since we don't see much construction, it's pretty exciting. Just last week the hole was dug to make room for a church in town.

My husband grew up in this town, and he remembers there being five bars in town and no church.

For some years, LDS (Mormon) services were held in the old high school. More recently, the community church and Catholic services have been held in the community center. But now, due to a generous donation and dedicated community members, we are going to have a bona fide church.

They had the forms out to pour the foundation.

The church won't be big, but it's going to be highly visible.

Just a week later, noticeable progress has been made. The foundation has been poured, and they're about ready to put up the walls.

It will be neat to follow the progress. The plan is to have the church finished by the first of June.
Although I have to wonder if all this spring snow might slow them down a bit. They've been out working in the not-so-great weather, so perhaps they will make their goal.

So what has happened to those five bars of my husband's younger days?

Well, two are still operating. Three have closed. And two different ones are now operating. So we'll be a town with four bars and a church.

Swimming in Winter

We needed groceries and I had a really strong yearning to go to thrift stores, so we packed up and headed to Cedar City yesterday. The forecast was not good, but we decided to try anyway, and went through several snow squalls on the way, but the roads were in pretty good shape.

We found wonderful treasures at both the Catholic Thrift Store and DI (Desert Industries thrift store). The Catholic Thrift Store had a flyer about a yard sale to benefit the Japan tsunami victims. So we headed to it (held indoors because it was snowing), and found even more things we couldn't live without. There's nothing like going into a thrift store or yard sale not needing anything but coming away with something that you suddenly realize will make your life more complete (or cluttered).

After lunch and grocery shopping, it was time for a trip to the Cedar City Aquatic Center. My friend Chandra had told me about it, and I couldn't wait to go. We got our day passes, changed in the immense locker rooms, and then went out to the pool area.

We were totally amazed. Before us was a huge leisure pool, with basically a playground set in two feet of water. Behind it were three lanes for laps and a lazy river. In one corner was a four-story water slide. Over on the side was a little play area for toddlers in about six inches-one foot of water.

And that wasn't all!

There was also a hot tub for age 14 and up and a competition pool for lap swimming with eight lanes.

In the summer there's an outdoor pool with diving boards.

I didn't take my camera inside, so I don't have any photos (which is sad, but I'm not sure if I could have kept my camera dry!). Here's a photo from the Iron County newspaper that gives you a little taste of the pool, looking from the lazy river over the hot tub to the big play area:

It was a Saturday afternoon so pretty crowded, but it was still so much fun. Desert Boy went down the slides countless times. I did some laps to help get ready for a triathlon in May. I had to try out the big waterslide, too (it was fun but dark). Desert Girl started out standing in ankle-deep water, a bit stunned at all the commotion. By the end, she was eagerly going down the kiddie slide and even getting her head wet. My husband loved the hot tub and found that the pool water was pleasantly warm.

We'll definitely be heading back! It's across from the middle school up on the hill near Walmart, and adult admission is $4.50. They have a website to check out hours and fees.

We don't see much water in the desert, so when we do, we definitely get excited!

Footprints

We are getting a little tired of all the snow, but to look on the bright side of things, Desert Girl is still fascinated with it.

Here she is doing a little happy dance out in the snow.

Then she started realizing that she was making footprints and decided it would be great fun to walk all over some fresh snow and make lots of new footprints.

It's wonderful when the entertainment is cheap!

Oops! Sometimes walking in the snow can be difficult.

Desert Girl is no quitter. She got up and started right back to work making more footprints. She's gotten a lot better on uneven ground, but still has that cute little drunken sailor walk.

More snow coming tonight...

My Backyard Birds-Part 1

So what birds have seen in your backyard?

I hope you're keeping a list, because this is just the beginning of some fun bird watching, and over the next couple of months our lists are going to grow considerably (hence the Part 1 of this blog post title).

Is this one of the birds you've seen?
Turkey vultures are found all across the U.S., with year-round habitat in the southern part up through the Midwest, and summer habitat everywhere else. We see them in this area primarily in the spring and fall, although from time to time in the summer we also spot them. With the turbulent spring weather we've been having, they've been having a grand old time soaring in the wind. Turkey vultures might be considered good clean-up birds--they take care of those messes like road kill for us. (Kingdom: Animalia; Phylum: Chordata; Class: Aves; Order: Falconiformes; Family: Cathartidae; Cathartes aura).

I've been hearing lots of the sweet calls of the Western Meadowlark (Animalia; Chordata; Aves; Passeriformes; Passeridae; Sturnella neglecta). They're one of the earlier birds to breed in the spring time, and they are very common around the ranch calling for a mate from fence posts and the top of sagebush. The Eastern Meadowlark is found in the eastern U.S., with hybrids in the middle of the country.

Killdeer have been hopping around. Henry really likes to chase them, but despite that, every year they return to near our yard. Killdeer (Animalia; Chordata; Aves; Charadiiformes; Charadriidae; Charadius vociferus) have an appropriate species name. Vociferus is Latin for loud, and killdeer run around and fly saying what sounds like "kill deer, kill deer." They are known for pretending to have a broken wing and dragging their wing on the ground to distract predators from their nests on the ground. They're found all over North America.

Yesterday I heard sandhill cranes. My husband calls these flying pterodactyls, as they are so big and seem so prehistoric. Sandhill cranes (Animalia; Chordata; Aves; Gruiformes; Gruidae; Grus canadensis) are found in much of North America. Sandhill cranes remind me of family visits to a game preserve to see great displays. (The link has some fantastic photos my sister-in-law took. As you can see from the lack of photos in this post, photographing birds is not my forte.)

Birds that have been around all winter that I mustn't forget include:
(If you are following the classification scheme, you know that these are all Animalia; Chordata; Aves; so I will just omit that part.)

Red-shafted flicker (Piciformes; Picidae; Colaptes auratus), that likes to make holes in trees and our house;
Black-billed magpie (Passeriformes; Corvidae; Pica pica), with its super long tail and black-and-white distinctive coloring;
Common raven (Passieriformes; Corvidae; Corvus corax), the ubiquitous bird around the ranch
European starling (Passeriformes; Sturnidae; Sturnus vulgaris), the annoying invader from Europe.
Dark-eyed junco (Passeriformes; Passeridae; Junco hyemalis), with its distinctive outer white tail feathers.

And now we have snow again, so it might be a day or two before the bird sightings pick up. I hope you're seeing some interesting birds in your yard!

Figuring out Where Things Belong a.k.a. Classification

As we're doing the biodiversity surveys of our backyards, something to keep in mind is how does everything fit together?

There are several ways to think about that, but today we'll concentrate on classification. In other words, how is everything related to everything else?

Good old Aristotle, that Greek philosopher from a LONG time ago, laid the roots (pun intended) for modern day scientific classification, including using the terms 'Genus' and 'Species.'

Then a long (but not LONG) time ago, a dude named Linnaeus put most everything was put into either the plant or animal kingdom. That was fairly simple.

"Hey, organism, do you move?"

"Yes, then you must be an animal."

But of course there are always a few organisms that don't quite fit the mold (pun intended), so over the decades, classification schemes changed, with some lumping and some splitting. I won't go into details. If you want the details, click here.

Today, we're left with the modern version of classification. First, a diagram from a K-12 school that I really like for its simplicity:

So we still have plants and animals, but we also have fungi, bacterium, and protoctista. Note that sometimes the Protoctista are called Protista and that the Bacterium are also called Monera

In the middle of the star is the way we do the organization:
Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species

You probably had to memorize these for ninth grade science. What words did you use to remember the acronym: KPCOFGS?

You probably didn't have access to this cool website, which suggests acronyms for you to use.
For example, would you use:

1. Kids Playing Chicken on Freeways Get Smashed
2. King Phil Cleans Octopi For Gene Simmons
3. Keep Paying Casey Off For Gun Sales

You can leave your answer in the comments. Or perhaps you have a better one.

So this is how it works. Everything fits into a kingdom. Then each kingdom has several phyla (the plural of phylum; yes, those years of Latin in high school did actually teach me something!).
The phyla contain classes, and so on.


The diagram above shows how a leopard is classified. It is a member of the Kingdom Animalia (it does move!), Phylum Chordata (it has a backbone), Class Mammalia (air breathing vertebrate animals with hair, 3 ear bones, and working mammary glands in females), Order Carnivoa (placental mammals and meat eaters), Family Felidae (the cats), Genus Panthera, and Species pardus.

No other animal but the leopard is known as Panthera pardus. (Typically the Genus and species names are italicized. Genus is capitalized, species is not. And plural of genus is genera. (Latin was a more complicated language than English.))

Here's another view of how the kingdoms fit together:


Does anyone else find it slightly unnerving that humans (and all animals) are more related to fungi than plants?

If you're read this far, give yourself a pat on the back. I'll leave you with a little picture. Have a good day. Where ever you fit into it!