Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
There was good rain in early September, followed by another dry spell. A nice rainy front is blowing up from the Gulf of Mexico this week.
Some of the wild animals seem to enjoy the end of dry spells. This wren was taking a bath in the water dripping off the roof.
So far in September, six inches of rain have fallen here. That has made a huge difference in the cool-weather crops. The peppers, which merely survived during the hot, dry, summer, have become very productive and are even still blooming. The turnips, mustard and kale also are doing extremely well.
I couldn’t ask for better soil. It’s all about water.
Of all the many creatures that come up out of the woods and make themselves at home, the ugliest by far are the wild turkeys. Actually, come to think of it, they’re the only ugly creatures in the woods.
There was a once-upon-a-time when the chickens and groundhogs were wary of each other. Now they have daily grazing parties in the orchard.
I wish I had some idea what my groundhog population is. I’m pretty sure I have two separate families. The fence that keeps the chickens out of the garden also keeps the groundhogs out. Mostly the groundhogs seem to want my grass, and I’m fine with that. So I leave them alone. It’s the voles that do most of the damage, but the voles feed the foxes.
It makes me think of George Bernard Shaw’s preface to his play about Joan of Arc:
The saints and prophets, though they may be accidentally in this or that official position or rank, are always really self-selected, like Joan. And since neither Church nor State, by the secular necessities of its constitution, can guarantee even the recognition of such self-chosen missions, there is nothing for us but to make it a point of honor to privilege heresy to the last bearable degree on the simple ground that all evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct. In short, though all society is founded on intolerance, all improvement is founded on tolerance, or the recognition of the fact that the law of evolution is Ibsen’s law of change.
And so it is, I think, with Mother Nature, and groundhogs, and voles. I try to tolerate them to the last bearable degree.
Click on photos for larger version
I saw quite a lot of Mrs. Fox today. She crossed the yard several times as she went about her business, and she was hunting voles in the weeds. I couldn’t change lenses on the camera fast enough to catch her hunting voles, but it was fun to watch. She’d sit on her haunches, very still, and watch. Then she’d leap in a very high, graceful arc and come down with her jaws and front paws ready to make a catch. Unfortunately she didn’t get a vole while I was watching.
Mrs. Fox may be getting more and more comfortable being in the yard during daylight. I hope so. She makes a nice dog substitute. And I’m not absolutely sure that this is Mrs. Fox. It could be one of the pups she raised this year. These are the clearest photos I’ve been able to get so far, so I’m hoping the markings will help me distinguish one fox from another.
As I watched this snake, it appeared to me that it was lapping water droplets, like a cat, from the wet grass. It wasn’t just flicking its little red tongue. It was flicking it at the grass. I asked a friend who has kept snakes as pets if they lap water. He said no, that snakes get most of their water from their food.
I remain unsatisfied by that answer. It sure did look like it was lapping water like a cat.
The recent rain, much of which came from the remnants of tropical storm Lee, have given the fall greens a good start. I need to thin the turnips, though.
The triplets have grown since the last time I saw them. The photo was taken in very low light with no tripod, so it’s blurry.
This jewel weed grows along the roadside downhill from me, in an area where my small stream passes through a culvert under the road.
In the previous post, I mentioned jewel weed as a plant that might grow well in the dark, moist area under my deck. As luck would have it, there is a stand of jewel weed along a branch downhill from me, so I can steal some seeds down there.
The native wild jewel weed grows in the shady undergrowth along small streams. It has dangling, horn-shaped flowers. In the fall, it forms elongated seed pods. When the pods are ripe, taut fibers along the seed pod are like springs. If you touch a ripe pod, it will explode with a surprising amount of force and fling seeds as far as 10 feet. It’s a magical little plant, even without the seed bombs.
Michael’s suggestion was that I gather some jewel weed plants when the pods are ripe and lay the plants under the deck. When the pods explode, they’ll seed the area under the deck.
I don’t know how Mr. Groundhog manages to stay so fat on little more than my parched summer grass. I call all my resident groundhogs “Mr. Groundhog,” but there are more than one. I can’t really tell them apart. There are at least two — one to the south of the house, in the rabbit patch, and one to the north of the house, at the edge of the woods.
