Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 374
The rain is welcome but too much like the 7 to 15 inches they got south of us was way too much. My sister Wendy in Clifton Park got seven inches and the small pond in her front yard became the front yard as did her garden. I only recorded a little over three inches here and water started going out of the pond again. I didn’t have to water my gardens and things are growing great, putting veggies and greens on the table every night.
The herd of deer that was here while I was in Alaska came through this morning munching everything in sight as the deer spray had washed away. The big doe must have lost her fawn as she was all alone but her offspring from two years ago, a nice little buck was with her as were her two offspring from last year all munching away. She could reach right over my five-foot fencing and take flowers right off my hydrangea bushes eating them like candy.
Out west the fires are burning with little or no rain and temperatures in many places are over 100 degrees. Over 60,000 were forced to flee in Spokane, Washington as three fires of 7,700 acres with 0% contained as of 8/2, 600 structures both homes and businesses were lost, more than 900 firefighting personnel on scene, fighting both on the ground and in the air. Thirty-five mile an hour winds fanned the flames and 9,000 homes without power. Since the start of summer more than 1,000 fires have burned about 450,000 acres in Washington. Smoke alerts in the neighboring states of Oregon and Idaho have been issued with fires also burning in these states. Rain is not expected until fall in this region so they are into a long haul with many more fires as all residential burning is being prohibited as this may have started these fires.
Locally I haven’t seen many blue berries as the late frosts may have killed the flowers. The cherries and my apple trees are covered with fruit which didn’t seem to be hit by the late frosts. I saw where bears had pulled over a clump of choke cherries along the Carter Road and they were cleaning off the fruit. Many of the early flowering plants were also hit by these frosts and they have no seed heads on these plants. The bears locally have dug up many of my jacks in the pulpit as they love the roots of these plants. I have a couple they missed which have a big seed head on them. Late last summer I found a big patch right beside the road by South Lake and took a few seed heads and scattered them around the property. They have mostly come up, and the bears enjoyed their roots. I’ve also seen where they have been eating some of the grasses around some of the lakes where I watch loons. They eat much vegetation this time of the year. I photographed them once at Fly Pond munching on the grasses on the old beaver dam there. Turtlehead flowers are blooming all along my pond and I guess neither the deer nor bear like them.
The Herkimer County Highway Department has mowed down most of the roadsides of their roads locally. Chopping up the milkweeds that had many monarch caterpillars eating and growing there. Their mowers take no prisoners it just chops them up with the weeds. The Monarchs Butterflies have been declared an endangered species but along just the South Shore and Big Moose Roads alone probably more than five hundred caterpillars were chopped up. A few years back I saw that they were starting to mow and pick up over two hundred caterpillars along the South Shore Road and raised most of these into butterflies at my house. They could mow later when these butterflies have hatched with the same result to the roadside weeds, just saying.
Some roadside weeds bloom when not mowed but that’s another story. See ya.
Photo above: Turtlehead flowers
