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April showers bring May flowers but we got squat rain last month so any flowers are the result of Joyce’s assiduous watering. Not only was April dry but ended hot. Joyce some days watered the seedlings several times. Here efforts are paying off as the seeds are beginning to sprout. These are mostly wild flowers I planted in the garden beds. They are the default while Joyce is adding a few tomato plants here and there just because she can’t help herself.
With the help of the neighbors we moved the trampoline to the caliche mounds. It hasn’t been getting as much use since it was sadly disordered by high winds in the spring last year. When mowing we have to move it, mow, then put it back, which is a nuisance and no mowing is required on the caliche mounds. With the five of us lending a hand it wasn’t any problem at all to move it from the south end to the mounds on the north end. In addition, Chris made some necessary repairs to a brace on a corner posts around the garden and to the potting bench adjacent to the garden while Abigail mowed 2005 for the first time. Chris and Kari had laid out a tennis court for Rebecca to practice on by lowering the volleyball net to a tennis net and marking the proper boundaries with white cord. I had mowed it with the tractor before they put the cord down but suggested they mow it with a push mower going forward, which they did.
Meanwhile out at the Bluff, Joyce watered the milkweed while I planted a rue I got at a nursery. I have several of them in the front of our house and the butterfly larvae like them. I also planted dill in one of the Bluff’s planter boxes because the butterfly larvae also like that. Despite the dry weather, the wildflowers are doing well out there. There are a couple of roadrunners that hang around the nature center and they have reproduced. Two little ones half the size of the adults follow the mother around begging to be fed, which she does as she finds insects.
An interesting thing happened the second weekend of the month. As I was setting sprinklers going in the backyard it started to sprinkle. Before long it began to rain. I kept the sprinklers going, skeptical that the rain would amount to much. Turns out the gauge collected .21 inches which is not nothing. It equaled what we got in April and May so far. Now before we get too jubilant, I must point out that that amount of moisture had no effect on he fissures we see around the place. Still, it’s nice to know it can rain. I’m sure the weeds were grateful.
Joyce and Rebecca planted the asparagus Joyce ordered. There was already some she planted years ago but she felt more was needed to avoid conflict with the neighbors who also like asparagus now and then.
I was amazed the second week of May to see both types of milkweed native to this area, antelope horn (Asclepias asperula) and big leaf (Asclepias latifolia) sprouting up. Last month I checked the places where I had seen them last year and they weren’t there. They die back to the ground and the dead growth usually gets mowed so no evidence is left of there being there. I’m going to encourage them with a little water to try to get them to seed out and propagate. It’s much easier for them to grow naturally than to plant seedlings. We still have most of the seedlings we planted in April but as of the middle of May they haven’t done much other than stay alive, though that is no small task, especially as dry as it has been.
My beautiful and talented assistant finished up her freshman year and joined me in the fields this month. We hauled off a load of trimmings that had accumulated in the last few months and stopped off at the Bluff to water the milkweed. The roadrunners I mentioned previously called our attention to a large bullsnake they were harassing, which was gratifying to Abigail given her deep affection for snakes. Not the harassing. The attention.
Though we enjoy the pair of mallards that have frequented SA each summer for a number of years, I have always been grateful that they didn’t decided to nest here, what with all the cats and all. Our luck finally ran out and one evening Chris and Tino, out for their evening stroll, encountered the hen with a bevy ducklings in tow headed for the pond from who knows where. We were in a quandary about what to do but wound up not doing anything because it was almost dark. They spent the next day in the pond but the next morning Rebecca saw hen and chicks apparently headed for the lily pond with one of the cats trailing them. She and Kari shewed the cat away and herded the ducks back to the relative safety of the pond. Later in the morning Joyce and I saw them between the enclosure and the shop. They took refuge under the junipers north of the shop. We managed to herd them back into the enclosure but they apparently made their escape later in the day. Where they went we don’t know, nor why the wanted to leave the pond. Meanwhile the drake visited the pond and called for his family without raising them. Then a day or two later the hen showed back up at the pond without her ducklings and the pair of adults spent most of the day there together. I don’t know what instinct guided the hen to seek greener pastures but I like to think that someone saw them crossing a street or a yard and decided to rescue them. The ducklings wouldn’t be hard to catch but the hen would have flown off. Maybe they wound up at Wild West Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. I hope so anyway.
Joyce and I drove down to the river recently for a looksee. Riverland was as dry as SA. There were lots of cows and calves but the grazing wasn’t very good. From the rock house we took a nice walk toward the river and followed the road around toward Lake Meredith. It was early enough to be reasonably cool but after a couple of hours of walking we were glad to get back in our vehicle and turn on the A/C. Other than numerous birds and the cattle, the only fauna we saw were a lizard (skink) and a snake (bullsnake). There were a surprising number of egrets around the cattle. Where one might expect a few here and there, it was more like a flock. The uniformly black cattle and the white egrets made a pretty picture to relieve the scrubbiness of the prairie.
There is a one-legged starling I see out my bedroom window. It can fly and gets around pretty good, mostly, but topples over often when it is on the ground.