On Sabbath morning I wasn't feeling too good. Congestion had arrived and was making the back of my throat tender. Rob had lost his voice on Friday, he said from "talking too much." But by Sabbath morning it seems he had a bit of a cold too. So we stayed home from church and rested.
I made myself a mixture lime juice, orange juice, onion, garlic, ginger and dates for sweetness, and drank that periodically through the day. And took Vitamin D and Vitamin C in large doses.
By mid afternoon I was feeling much better, and Rob was doing pretty good too. So we set out for a walk out from the station toward the sea. It was windy, but had not been raining, so the red dirt was not slick. We had about 2 hours to enjoy the comfortable afternoon. These plants are Pandanas, also called Screw Pines. The fruit is edible, but not quite ripe.
There were Bamboo Orchids blooming over toward a creek gully, and I set out through the ferns to go seem them. At first the ferns were about ankle high. They are the dry and scratchy kind, but I didn't mind. By the time I got to the orchids, the ferns were waist deep and I was starting to mind because they were scratching up my bare legs. It felt a bit like drowning in ferns.
Of course the little dogs followed me but soon turned around as the ferns got deeper. But then Piglet and Zippy changed their minds. They came back to me, leaping up out of the ferns like rabbits. I tried to video them, but was too slow. What a comedy!
The Bamboo orchids have a lovely seed pod. It pops open when dry and the seeds scatter. I wish I could see one of them do that. I wonder how hard it is to grow Bamboo orchids from seed.
The flowers are only about 1.5 inches across, but the color makes them sing.
While admiring another clump of orchids I discovered I was looking at a different kind of orchid than I had seen before.
The flower grows on a long stem, and the leaves are down on the ground with textured parallel veins. I looked it up on iNaturalist just now and discovered it is a Philippine Ground Orchid. https://www.inaturalist.org/guide_taxa/499141
We came to an area that had more red dirt than foliage. There was a clump of Pandanas trees. Some were alive and some were dead. Rob saw evidence that fire had gone through the area. I thought the dead pandanas had been beheaded. One the remaining trunks some interesting orange fungus was growing.
And a mushroom with long orange gills grew on the side of one of the dead trunks.
They are such unusual plants.
The leaves grow in a spiral pattern, extending the trunk higher and higher with new growth. The old growth dries up and falls off, leaving the spiral pattern behind on the trunk.
You can see Fibonacci's Golden spiral in the Pananas Tree. It is also called Screw Pine. Here are some more examples of Fibonacci's spiral in nature. https://www.pinterest.com/njoycookn/fibonacci-spirals/
As we walked we got closer and closer to the sea. The wind was blowing pretty stiffly. You can see from the Ironwood trees in the photos which direction the wind was going.
The weather service said the ocean was not safe. Surf is high. The chance of rip currents very high.
The sky was pretty and the views north toward Agat Marina and the Navy Base were very nice.
What are these rocks? We walked across an area with these roundish rocks scattered all over the ground. Here is a place where three were piled together, like they were made to fit that way.
Looking back towards where we had come from, the AWR towers kept us oriented to where home was.
The jeep trails ended. The evening light started to get quite nice as I followed Rob through some grass, headed out to a point.
I don't know what these flowers are. Actually, I think they are what remains after the flowers are gone.
A lone Ironwood tree shading the point above the water. That is as far as we got. We sat under this tree and enjoyed the view for quite a long while. We think we have it worked out how to get all the way down next time. But we will need at least 3 hours and not just two.
The dogs sat with us for a while. Piglet kept trying to chew on us, probably thinking we were sitting too long and should get moving.
Zippy had other ideas and actually sat still for a while, and then zipped off to help Lucky hunt for creatures in the bushes.
As the sun was getting low, we reluctantly decided to head back. Not to far from the tree. I found this bit of WWII history laying on the ground. Rob says it is the 50 caliber machine gun bullet. There wasn't any writing on it so I don't know if it is American or Japanese. It is solid metal with no explosives in it, so don't worry about danger in handling it.
After I found the bullet, I moved on to thinking. But my finding got Rob excited and he started looking more closely at the ground. He didn't find another bullet, but he did find the track of a pretty large three-toed bird. We don't know what kind it is.
We got up to the top to see the afterglow fill the sky with light. We had a nice afternoon. We had just enough twilight to make it back to the house without flashlights this time.
While this quote comes from wikipedia, I have seen it repeated by other authorities: " all orchids are myco-heterotrophic during germination and seedling growth" Myco-heterotrophic means they derive critical nutrients from some specific species of fungi . So to grow your orchids you will need to use the appropriate fungi. Good Luck!
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