Our World......

[JRL]

We had a couple of freakish days of thunder storms, trailing off today. What weird weather the past few years.

I looked out at the bird feeders the other day and saw a squirrel had climbed the shephards hook and was hanging upside down like a finch stealing seed.

[Glider]

That is one goal oriented squirrel.  I wonder if he needs a job in IT...?

There is one lilac bush along the drive home that _still_ had full blooms, weeks after the rest of them are done.  I'm starting to wonder if it isn't a 10' tall plastic plant....

Took a drive through some different roads today.  Corn is going in some fields, 2-3" sprouts in others.  I guess I gotta plant my veggies or scrap the project this year.

Wild (feral?) Viburnums in flower around here, by the way.  No clue which species.

-G-

[JRL]

Not sure why the squirrel went to such lengths to eat, there was bird seed on the ground as well as squirrel food.

[laughingwillow]

LOL Squirrels are goofy sometimes. No stopping them.

lw

[JRL]

Love watching them, we got 4 or more that live in our yard.

[laughingwillow]

A big "thank" to all who have contributed to this thread about "lonely country roads," as Glider put it.

Went for a walk on the prairie the other day and ended up crossing the edge of some tillable land next to a friend's acreage. We had been wondering when they were going to plant this particular field. last year it was corn, so this year should be soybeans. It appeared to be unworked.  But while crossing an edge of the field I noticed bean sprouts just peeking out of the soil. A closer look revealed the entire field was just coming up. So this farmer must be practicing no-till. The beans were knifed into the ground BETWEEN last year's rows of corn. The field was never plowed after harvest last fall. SO the top soil tends to remain in the fields, rather that blowing into the waterways from a naked field. I'm happy to see local farmers taking up this ancient practice once again.

Got a call at about dusk last night. My friend said her dogs were going crazy by the trees on the edge of her property. Last time they acted that way, they ended up treeing a bobcat right in the corner of the yard.

lw

[Glider]

Are you certain that it was beans knifed into the ground this spring?

Sometimes here in order to achieve a similar goal the farmers will plant a "under crop" so that the field only needs disturbed once for several years farming.  Typically here it is something fast like oats coupled with something slower like an alfalfa or trefoil underneath.  By the time the oats are harvested in late summer or early fall, the legume hay should be just growing up through the oats.

I'm relatively certain that wouldn't be the case with soybeans and corn, but many of the legumes look similar to me when they are sprouting.

I'm curious as to what techniques they are using out there as opposed to around here.

Farmers around here that make silage from their corn will sometimes seed a legume hay as an under  crop, but if they aren't making silage, most of them prefer to plow the corn stalks into the ground.

-G-

[Glider]

Yesterday I spent a fair bit of time on the road.  An hour+ south of me the catalpas are starting to come into flower.  Much closer to home I saw an orange azalea that was still in full flower.

[JRL]

My brugmansias have all burst into bloom, smell delicious at night, as does the honeysuckle.

[Glider]

Mmmmmm.  Brugmansia.  I miss mine.

I have one left.  It is sitting above me, in a 1 gallon pot.  The only one to survive the Great Freeze.  Soon I'll have to take it out into the yard and plant it, see if it has some bloom power left in it.  It is a candida-heavy hybrid, bought it at Bob Smoley's back in the day.  It was labelled very simply "orange".  Turns out it is not an orange flower producer, but instead the very bland colored cream-ish flowers produce a scent that scream orange.  More the color orange, in scent form than anything citrus-y.  Yup, I sure do hope it has some bloom in it this year.

[laughingwillow]

The farmers around these parts plant every spring, alternating between corn and soybeans. The beans are a quicker crop, so they are usually the last fields to get planted. Unfortunately, the practice for much of the last century involved harvesting a crop in the fall and then immediately plowing the fields in order to get a head start on spring. However, this practice leads to extensive erosion and represents bad land stewardship practices, imo.

If the beans were planted in the fall, they would have come up much sooner. Possibly too soon to survive late frosts. So I'm pretty sure the farmer simply cut the corn down to very short stubble in the fall and then knifed the beans in a few weeks back between the old corn rows. And that's a good start to protecting our precious topsoil, imo.

lw

[Glider]

I agree with you.  Soybeans are a rather uncommon crop here.  We've got a few fields that have them every year, but the nitrogen fixing crops are usually alfalfa, trefoil, clover, and buckwheat, more or less in that order.

Crop rotation around here typically starts with corn, then after that oats are often the second year.  A legume-hay crop like clover or alfalfa is after that, though sometimes they go straight from corn to the legume hay.

How long the field is left in alfalfa varies, but usually 1-3 years.  Then it is either back corn, or there is a period of grass-hay, often a timothy mix, or a timothy-clover mix.  I suspect, but do not know, that the farmers who run a shorter alfalfa rotation probably favor the clover in the grass mix.

We've got a lot of small dairy and beef farms, and a smaller number of pig and sheep farms.  I'm not aware of anyone in the area that still operates a for-profit horse breeding operation.

[laughingwillow]

I was watering our tomatoes the other day and was bitten by a few half red/half black bodied ants. Yesterday while working in the garden, I found the same ants had started a colony in the soil of a tomato plant potted in a ten gallon smart pot. Anyone know if it should be a concern as far as the plant is concerned? And if it is a potential problem, how do I get rid of this ant colony from my organic tomatoes?

Thanks in advance.

lw

[JRL]

I got home last night around midnight and had to park a few doors down from the house. As I walked up the sidewalk I saw a huge raccoon coming my way. It spotted me, stopped and then walked my way a bit more. I think we were playing chicken because when i just kept walking toward it it turned and walked the other way away from me.

[AliceTepes]

I was driving home from work tonight, fumbling with my mp3 player trying to find something to fit my mood. I came over a small hill in the road and saw a cat that had gotten hit by a car I kept driving but in the glare of my tail lights I saw him moving so I put the car in reverse and moved it back to where he was. He was still alive...... blood was dripping out of his mouth and he was trying to stand up... I sat down next to him and cradled him in my lap until he slid off into the next place.....hopefully we will meet again.




It's insane to me that any human could hit a cat or fuck anything and just leave it there in the road without checking it's status.
If I ever did something like that I would kill myself, how do they live like that? denying any responsibility for their own lives.


As a race we can only be judged upon how we care for creatures that share this place.