The Backyard Science group regularly publishes The Daily Bucket, which features observations of the world around us. Insects, weather, meteorites, climate, birds, flowers and anything natural or unusual are among the worthy topics.
Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, where you are located. Each note is a record that we can refer to as we try to understand the patterns that are unwinding around us.
Many of us know the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, when Jack went to market with orders to trade the family cow for valued goods, but returned instead with a handful of worthless beans. However, the beans turned out to have a value all their own.
Continue reading below the tangle of orange bean vines, and peruse the outcome of my own purchase of a handful of beans, against strict orders.
The Saturday started simply enough. I'd weeded underneath the stunted apple tree, put down landscape fabric, and now I needed to cover the fabric with something attractive.
"Go get some of that Montana Rainbow gravel," ordered Mrs. 6, "It's very pretty. The pastel colors match well with our landscaping color scheme." We'd already use some of this pretty-colored gravel, reputedly from the Bozeman, Montana area. It appears brighter-colored than run-of-the-mill gravel, and you paid more for it too. All diary photos are in lightbox, so you can click on them to improve the clarity.
However, I decided to combine two trips, and hauled a couple of large sacks of used plastic planting pots to the we-recycle-everything center near Fanno Creek in south Beaverton.
From there, I was supposed to go to Big Box Depot to buy a couple of sacks of the pretty Montana Rainbow gravel. But that corner of town still has some small family-owned businesses, including a landscaping materials supply outlet just down the street from the recycling center
"What harm can it do to look," I thought.
Oh, was it a cool place! It had big flat rocks that looked like landscape agate, petrified wood, slabs of shiny mica-encrusted materials, rocks naturally shaped into bowls, and even the Montana Rainbow gravel. I wandered around for too long. Then I saw it.
It was the coolest looking gravel, all shiny and striped. I promptly bought 150 pounds of it, instead of the Montana Rainbow, took it home, and placed it under the apple tree.
Then Mrs. 6 came home and saw what I had done. It wasn't the Montana Rainbow gravel. She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. This was going to be bad. Not as bad as the day I rented a backhoe and dug way beyond what was authorized while she was gone, but still bad.
"This is unacceptable," She began, "These are all dark. It doesn't match our landscaping color scheme at all."
"Wait," I pointed out, "Collectively these may seem dark, but individually, each of these is a little jewel, with these colored stripes, forming a matrix around these embedded quartz crystals. They may not be pastel, but they are prettier than the Rainbow gravel."
I swiftly picked out a few of the more outstanding specimens.
"Now look at these compared to the Rainbow gravel," I insisted.
"You've got a point," she conceded,"They are prettier." Bullet dodged!
My remaining challenge was to determine the chemistry and geology that produced the lovely shades and designs of both gravels.
Gravel typically comes from erosion of mountains that tumbles into rivers, and eons of the water action wears the mountain rock into smooth ovals. Trace minerals and elements in the original rock formations would determine the colorings. Feldspar, which is 60% of the earth's crust, can produce orange, pink, grey and black. Horneblende can produce green. Quartz, which appears in the striped gravel, is often white or even translucent.
Iron can oxidize into a red tint. Copper can stain green. Chromium can show up as green or even black, when concentrated.
Regarding the original formation of this parent rocks, the six mountain ranges around Bozeman are part of the Rockies, which rose up from tectonic action. That pushed up the original metamorphic rocks and gave birth to a new layer of sedimentary rocks.
These gravels, especially when worn, do show various layers of the original deposition, so I am thinking they were originally sedimentary. However, the embedded quartz suggests an igneous contribution to their formation.
I have exceeded the limit of my geological knowledge, so I'll stop now.
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"Spotlight on Green News & Views" will be posted every Saturday and Wednesday at 1:00 pm Pacific Time on the Daily Kos front page. Be sure to recommend and comment in the diary.
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Now It's Your Turn What's interesting to you? Please post your own observations and your general location in the comments.
Thank you for reading. I'll respond to comments around lunchtime, PDT.