Bugs View of Life

I was sitting outside in the late evening the other night watching the sheep. The sun was at a low angle and I was looking toward the west. In the stream of light I could see literally hundreds of insects, big and small, flying back and forth, different levels, different directions. As far as I could see the air was filled with creatures. It reminded me of one of those cartoons depicting the future, when we would all be flying everywhere on different levels in the sky. You know, one of the 1965 cartoons predicting what the year 2007 would bring. I walked out into the pasture and put my hands out. trying to catch some of the insects to see if they were all the same species and what they were. The sheep clearly though I was nuts, any neighbors who drove by probably thought so too. I came to the conclusion that they were all different sorts of bugs, big burly flies, fast flying mosquitoes, tiny gnats of some sort. I don’t know if this was an exceptional night for bug journeys or if I could see them this night because the angle of light was just right. Sometimes you are just in the right spot at the right time and a whole new world opens up to you.

Lazy Fall days

We had our first frost on the 15th - a light one but it meant I had to bring in the tender stuff and cover the tomatoes. I put everything on the porch for 2 days then today I put it all back outside because we are supposed to have a spell of warm 80 degree plus weather coming up. I like it when everything comes inside all lush and shiny after a summer outside. It’s always a little crowded at first because I can’t stand to leave anything outside that might be saved. But some things die or get so bad looking that I toss them and that frees up space. My houseplants that I left inside this year have a bad case of scale, tiny shell like insects. They suck on plant tissue and secrete honeydew, which is tiny sticky droplets that are all over the window, etc. I am trying to clear that up before I expose any new plants to them.

I cut the pumpkin off the vine that grew by the back door and tossed the vine into the compost pile. The pumpkin is quite large and well shaped. If you turn the side that Henny Penny sampled from time to time, [ she left a few peck marks], away from you , it really looks good. Maybe I will get ambitious and decorate for fall soon. It looks better just to get that ugly vine out of the roses by the back door.

I find it hard to concentrate on anything in the early fall. I have a bit of allergy symptoms, probably ragweed, and I think the high air pressure in fall makes me feel drowsy and lazy. I just want to bask in the sun before these sunny days are gone. Later in the fall I will get my buzz on to prepare for winter and start loading the pantry, wanting to bake all the time and make craft projects. I guess this time of year I really start to appreciate what I’ll be missing before long and just want to soak it up. I went down to the pond and to the woods, just walking, collecting some seed pods and such. You have to be a little careful this time of year walking out in the woods - lots of people are very eager to hunt and some don’t wait for the official start of hunting season. There are sure a lot of deer around this year.

Usually our oak tree alternates producing acorns with the walnut tree producing lots of walnuts. This should be the year for acorns but it doesn’t look like there will be many. If this is happening all over there will be some hungry squirrels this winter. Maybe some of the little buggers will finally die- hopefully the ones that keep getting in my attic.

I am kind of ready to have the frost kill it all. I will have to water the potted stuff today and we are getting a little tired of tomatoes anyway. A heavy frost will kill all the flies and mosquitoes, which is always nice and I can then get rid of the hornets nest on the porch, in the sheep shed and under the fill lid on the propane tank. As of yesterday I was still seeing lots of hummingbirds. I guess they know there is still warm weather ahead.

the pond

It is a cool cloudy day here, a quiet Monday morning. I decided to be brave and go look at the pond. I hate to see it when it is so low. This spring it was very high and beautiful. Some people’s ponds in the area are completely dried up. Our pond is out behind the barn and not too visible when the trees around it are leafed out. I have to sneak out there because if the dogs see me they climb over the fence if they are able to join me or if they are not climbers they bark and howl. They haven’t been to the pond this year because the fence around it has several spots they can get through. Then I can’t enjoy the pond; I have to go after them. When and if we ever get any money we are going to replace the fence. The big dogs stay with me but the little ones are all over the place, finding a way out so they can kill something on the other side.
Anyway I quietly slipped down to see the pond this am. I figure it has lost 10 foot in depth at the deep end and the shallowest part is completely dried up, middle part only about 6 foot across now. Grass and weeds are growing where water was this spring. My yellow flag iris is 6 foot from water now.
I hate to see the pond like this, but I guess it is kind of natural for it to recede in summer.
When we first moved here the pond was only a year old and the person who dug it probably didn’t know much about pond building. The previous owners wanted it for swimming and fishing. They dyed the water blue to keep the algae out and they had stocked the pond with bluegills and some bass. The place where they chose to dig the pond was odd, on higher ground behind the barn instead of out by the woods where it is low and naturally wet part of the year. I guess they wanted it close to the house. But they had to dig a huge hole down to the water table, probably 30-foot and then they piled the clay they took out over the surrounding area. The neighbors told us they had a hard time keeping water in the pond as the water that did seep in from the groundwater wanted to run towards the woods. So the pond sits down in a hole basically. It is a rough oval, longer than it is wide, about 150 foot by 75 foot I’d say. At the deep end the water is easily 15 foot deep in the spring and the shallow area about 3 foot. When we first moved in the banks were still bare and eroding into the pond. There was a cut down area on the south side so that you could walk down to the water near the shallow end but in heavy rain a lot of soil washed down that slope. We set to work planting grass and other plants along the banks. In some places we had to pile brush and logs along the bank slope to stabilize it. We planted a few trees a little way back from the edge, including a weeping willow. That first summer we swam in the pond, and I could feel the seeps where cold water bubbled up from underground under my feet. We put the blue dye in and fed the fish just like the previous owners. It was an unnatural blue color but pretty in its own way. The fish thrived and for a few years anyone who threw a line in could get a runty bluegill or an occasional whopper bass that ate the rapidly reproducing bluegills. Then one winter all the fish died because the water was low going into winter and I think there wasn’t enough oxygen left after the top froze. We haven’t replaced them, although we talk about it each year. The first few years after the pond was dug it only shrank a little each summer as the ground water was still seeping in. But over time a number of things happened. I think the water table dropped after several drought years and a lot of new wells and ponds in the area. The seeps may have been filled in by silt too. We don’t swim in the pond anymore because the muck on the bottom is so deep. The trees that grew up around the pond and make it more natural looking also suck water out of it. I think the major source of water now is run off and some years that is a considerable amount of water. This spring was very wet and we started the year with a very full pond, very deep water and the whole width of the basin was covered. And now after a dry summer we are down to about 6 foot of water in the deepest spot and half the basin is dry.
Well I guess it is a natural wetland, pond now. We haven’t put dye in it for years and cattails have grown up in the shallow end. We do have more native birds and animals around it too. There were never many frogs in the pond when there were fish, now there are hundreds.
The ducks were doing fine- we have two domestic males that must be 6 years old now, their females were picked off years ago by coyotes as they set on eggs. They keep the wild geese off their pond. They come up to the back of the barn where I feed the wildest cats and eat cat food. In the winter they spend a lot of time around the back of the barn keeping out of the deep snow. They had plenty of water left to swim in but as I sat on the bank watching them they swam over to my side, where the water was shallow and began taking baths. I thought that was odd, they were splashing and throwing water over their backs as birds do when bathing, but they had just been floating around in the same place. The little birds do appreciate the open shallow water though; there was a whole line of goldfinches bathing at the waters edge and I saw chickadees and other birds pop in and out. A killdeer was walking around in the shallow water. I saw no frogs this time, but I didn’t get down close to the water. There are tons of frogs up in the yard now, including a huge bullfrog I saw up in the dog’s yard.
So there are good things about the natural habitat the pond is now. We discussed trying to dredge down to the water table again, but I think this pond is poorly placed and may never be any better than this. If I had a lot of money I might fill this hole in and start again, down in the low area by the woods, but that is not likely to happen. Or we could cut the banks down on this pond and push the soil toward the low area to raise that- but we spent so much time getting vegetation to grow again on that subsoil they had thrown up around the pond that I hate to ruin it and start over. Or if we were really rich we could dig a well and install a pump just to keep it full, as one wealthy neighbor has done. His pond is much smaller though. We may put some Koi in the pond next spring- something to get tame and play with, and maybe they will reproduce and we can sell some of the offspring or maybe just some minnows or bluegills. Maybe.

September is here

Well it is September now, lets have that nice fall weather please. My Mom and dad were up to our place for the first time this year. Not much was in bloom in the garden, although I do have some impressive hardy hibiscus in the front of the house. They have these huge, dinner plate sized flowers of crimson red or bright pink. Very showy. They love moisture and are doing very well where they are because that us where we diverted the water from the kitchen sink. I chose to write about them this week in my garden site at www.gardenandhearth.com/plant-guides.htm

Mom and Dad and Steve and I had a pleasant talk while we watched the birds in the front yard and the friendly kitten tried to talk mom and dad into taking her home. We didn’t barb-b-que, just had some nice sandwiches and potato salad. I like to get mom to talk about relatives and the old days. There’s lot to learn about family ties. I feel bad for Steve sometimes as his mom and dad are both dead and his family doesn’t seem to keep in touch very well. And that reminds me that his brothers new address is now lost, as the big puppy carried the address book I keep out into the yard and Steve mowed it into a thousand pieces.

The new puppies are all doing well, although I did have one more dog incident this week. All my fault too, I was having a senior moment or something. I give Hazel, our old Border collie mix a pheno-barb tablet each night because she has seizures. She will only eat it in a piece of hotdog and we have an evening ritual at the house of giving everyone a piece of hotdog or two, right before bed. So I prepared Hazels piece with the pill in it and then I handed it to Bessie, who eagerly gulped it down of course. Bessie is the mother of the 6 pups and right away I was concerned that the pill would hurt her or the pups. So I called poison control- which by the way seems to have gone to a foreign country for its service-and they told me to feed her a large meal then give her 2 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide to make her vomit. She had just finished her bed time nursing mom meal of chicken and rice, so I measured out the hydrogen peroxide and surprisingly enough she took it without fighting me, although I had to give it to her in 3 syringes. Then she just sat there for a few minutes, just when I thought it wasn’t going to work the fun began. Poor Bessie, she heaved for quite a while. But the next day everyone was fine and I sure learned a lesson.

I am waiting for a fall crop of lambs I believe I am going to get. Our Barbados sheep are not seasonal breeders and will breed back after giving birth if the ram is with them. I have had double lambings in other years especially if the first set is born early or is lost. Two of my girls had their lambs die when we had that really cold below zero spell last February. I think they are pg but I also think the white ewe that had one lamb is too. They are all as fat as butterballs, even the rams, so it is hard to say, but my hunch is the 3 girls are going to lamb again. Which is good because it will keep them from having spring lambs too early next year too. I think they should lamb fairly soon, but it’s just a guess.

We need to sell off or butcher the two young rams as they are beginning to fight and fight with their dad too. They are quite handsome both of them and have a good set of horns already. I haven’t been able to afford an ad to sell them, but I probably can’t afford the butcher fee either. They sure would make good lambburger for the dogs. Barbados lambs can go longer without castration before butchering and still have the meat taste good, but they need to go soon. I can’t afford to feed that many of them this winter as the cost of hay is going to be out of sight. Thank God the rain came and got the pasture greened up again so we didn’t need to keep buying hay this summer. There is quite a bit of good eating out there for them right now.

I won ten dollars on the lottery last week. Let’s hope that is a sign that the money will soon start rolling in here and we can get caught up on everything. At least August is over and we survived one more month.