The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes
Nature journal
injest:
at the first of last year the big round bales of hay were 35-40 dollars for good horse quality hay...today we are paying 100-115 and the hay is horrible...stemmy and rotty looking (horses will dig thru spreading it out looking for something palatable)...some suppliers will no longer sell to anyone except their old customer...the local feed stores are limiting their customers to buying 25 bales (small ones) at a time. and telling them that there is no guarantee there will be more.
It is lasting too long...some of our local lakes are down 2-3 FEET..one local lake is 6 feet down...
Prices for cattle are dropping in proportion to the rise in feed prices and a lot of farmers are afraid their cattle will be worthless if they try to hold on...some people are letting their animals starve and the local rescue operations are swamped...
Andrew:
How terrible to have the animals suffering for it. In New England we had so much more rain than usual I couldn't go out and watch birds this spring, it was always coming down. Or go out and mow my little city backyard as the grass got longer and lusher. And yet they say it's not because of El nino this time, I'm not sure what the explanation is...other than suspecting it's because of Meddling with Nature.
Those are great daylilies, I planted a ruby red one this year but it's its first year and I'm not expecting a bloom. I don't recognize the flowers in the bottom picture.
Front-Ranger:
Here is the dotted gayfeather or liatris spectata, which is a wildflower blooming right now in the Rocky Mountains. It looks much like the cultivated liatris, but is shorter.
Andrew:
We've been having beautiful cool, dry air from Canada the last few days. More like the last week of August or early September. The birds and animals are taking notice. Last night in the darkness I heard the Canada geese flying over fast near the ground, with that coordinated
honkhonk honkhonk
between the males and females.
Is the end of our brief New England summer coming so soon?
I know that there will be more hot weather, so this interlude is a kind of dream of what is about to come, a warning to make better use of my time outside.
injest:
I have a part time job at a company with a big gravel parking lot. This bird and her mate made a nest in the gravel along one side. The owner of the business put the boards near it to warn the drivers not to run over it. She laid three little spleckled eggs that matched the gravel almost exactly. If we went to look at them the parents would get off the nest and run a ways. Flop around with one of their wings flopped out like they were injured something fierce! LOL! Good parents!
Well something got their eggs. So she laid four more. Unfortunately it was just too hot and in spite of them standing bravely over the eggs with their wings spread trying to shade them; they never hatched and eventually they gave up.
But I am so taken with them. With the willingness to keep going. To try again. I know it is instinct but I think it is a good lesson for us too....
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