edgeinfotech.com

Since I broke my ankle almost eight weeks ago, the only thing that salvaged at least 80% of the vegetable garden was our son, Tim, coming over for a few hours every day and pulling up weeds and harvesting. In the 10 days after the accident, before he got started on it, the garden was almost completely overrun by weeds, and eggplant and okra were almost wiped out.

As for the tomatoes, the war with the deer continues.

We were late setting up the water scarecrows, but about a week ago finally got them up and running. But that evening, we forgot to turn them on, not having gotten the habit going for the year. Naturally, the deer sensed this, and swept through and wiped out the couple dozen tomatoes that had managed to set, and to boot they cropped the plants themselves. They even pretty much destroyed the okra plants that had gotten a start, something I have not seen them do in the past. They had already helped themselves a couple of weeks ago to the blackberries on the one plant I started last year that was starting to bear this year.

Just to make matters worse, after we finally got all four crows set up and working, in the past four days two new garden hoses from Lowe’s have failed. One burst out of the coupling as soon as the water was turned on. Two nights ago, a second one, same brand and batch, simply ruptured in the middle of the night halfway along its length. I heard the sound of water at the spout on the side of the house when I got up about 5:30, and knew we had a problem, got dressed, and went out and turned it off. That one is going back to Lowes for a second refund this morning.

This morning, when I went out early to start to collect the ruptured hose and start the sprinklers on the garden for the remaining producing squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, and a few remaining cabbages, plus some sprouting okra and beans and lettuce we are trying to get started in the middle of what the weather service is calling an “excessive heat watch” and dry spell, I discovered our friendly local turtle had found a tomato the deer had knocked off a vine but not eaten.

At least I am happy the turtle is profiting from all this.

Tags: Animals, Gardening by Ron
Comments Off

Steady rain came through from the wee hours on into morning, finally letting up right after dawn. Here are some shots of birds coming for their morning feed on our upper deck, looking a little more bedraggled than usual. It was fascinating to see them this way close up.

Note the first photo, which is a fledgling Redbelly Woodpecker. He hatched this spring, and his parents have been bringing him to the deck with them.

The young fledgling woodpeckers do not yet have the colors of the adults.

Male Redbelly Woodpecker, soaked, and showing signs of molting on the head.

Redbelly hanging on the feeder. You get a really get view of the red on the belly, made even more prominent by being soaking wet.

Female Cardinal.

Male Cardinal flapping wings while feeding.

Mockingbird.

Catching the Mockingbird flapping to stabilize hanging onto the feeder.

Nuthatch fussing. It could see me through the class of the door.

Titmouse, photo catching its winks in motion as it hangs onto the feeder.

Tags: Animals by Ron
Comments Off

We are on the northern edge of a stalled weather front that runs from Texas / Oklahoma right up the Ohio River Valley. For the past five days we have experienced one low pressure wave after another, bringing either violent weather with thunder storms and even some tornadoes, but mainly very heavy rainfall. I checked the NOAA web site this morning, and to the south of us in an area centered on Jaspar, and stretching east to west, much of that part of the state is at a cumulative 6 – 10″ of rain or more for the storm period.

This link goes to NOAA and weather.gov web site, with a link on the left to choose “Rainfall Storm Total” to flip the radar image to show cumulative storm totals over southern Indiana. In fine print above the image it will state the date range covered by the cumulative data. FWIW, the first static image defaults to a date range not necessarily through current date. Just click the ‘storm total’ link, and it will expand the date range stated above the image.

While driving home from some shopping this morning just before lunch, we passed at least two mature dead racoons on the busy US 41 Bypass, which is undergoing heavy construction. This is not normal. There is constant traffic on that stretch, and animals avoid this main thoroughfare because of that. I have almost never seen animals killed by traffic along that stretch. Carol told me she had read in the Bloomington paper, the Herald-Times, that the heavy rains have created flooding and conditions that are driving wildlife out of their normal habitats. The report quoted a group that specializes in trying to help wild life. Given that these are essentially urban animals, that habitat was already constrained in the area of the bypass, which is pretty well built-up and populated.

I wonder if this explains the turtle pictures below. I had been on a walk to take pictures of wildflowers during the brief period of broken clouds and a little sunshine earlier in the morning, before we left to go shopping. It is not usual to see a turtle up near the golf paths and open areas of the golf course mid-morning. But there he was. I have to wonder if the heavy rain is not affecting him and his movement patterns.

Here are a couple of the pictures. He is an absolutely beautiful box turtle.

Tags: Animals, Day to Day, Personal by Ron
Comments Off