Quack Landing

Yesterday evening a mallard hen made a quack landing in the pond, the first time I’ve seen a duck visit in a while.  I got in the pond week before last, pulled up some of the cattails and cleared some of the moss so there was a little open water.  Perhaps that’s what encouraged ms. duck to visit, that and the fact that there is precious little water for ducks other places.  The playas in our part of the panhandle are dry.  Anyway, I always experience gratification when the wild folk visit us.

Now here’s a mystery for you.  There is a turtle in the pond.  What’s that? Oh, it’s a red-eared slider maybe a little bigger than a saucer  Now how do you suppose this feller managed to make his way to our pond?  I know they travel from pond to pond.  I’ve seen specimens as big as a hubcap crossing roads and fairways.  But come on, what’s the closest pond to SA, Dunivan Lake?  And usually when you see them going walk about it’s during wet weather.  That wouldn’t describe any weather we’ve had for ages.  I suppose it could have escaped captivity or was turned loose near by.  I’m sure they can home in on water from some distance.  Coulda been hitchin on I-40 and stopped for the night.  Who knows?  The funny thing about it is that Jill was considering filling in her pond and bringing Myrtle the turtle which she’s had for years to SA to live in the pond and we first noticed this turtle when she was here but she swears she didn’t bring her’s.  I guess we’ll never know but the turtle is welcome.  We are tolerant folk for the most part and celebrate diversity whenever it’s convenient.

Pardon me if I sound like a broken record but it is dry in southern Potter County.  SA has become an archipelago.  We water our yards and the trees so the grass is green around them.  Between them it is burning to a crisp so the grounds look like a series of green islands in a brown sea.  I’m experimenting with just running water underneath the area encompassed by the drip line of a tree.  Based on my observation, running a sprinkler under them is better than nothing, but only just.  I’ve noticed that where the neighbors have forgotten they had water running the grass turns green and stays green for a long time.  Dad used to irrigate the place, or try.  I don’t want to do that because it’s way too much work and because the grass doesn’t need it.  Oh, it looks much better, but as soon as it rains the grass reconstitutes itself and is off and running.  Chris and I dug a hole for the basketball goal they got Abigail for her birthday and even though Kari ran a sprinkler over the area that morning, only a few inches down it was dry as a dust devil.  We had to use a pick to break up the dirt so we could shovel it out.  I’m using a burbler attachment instead of a sprinkler and trying to soak the interior of a tree’s drip line until the water runs off.  This morning about 9 a.m. I started this method going on one of the American elms we hadn’t been watering at all.  They are reasonably drought tolerant but everything has its limits.  I didn’t turn the water off until 2:30.  It took it that long to soak the general area within the drip line.  One good thing about it, though.  I don’t have to run check on the water every half hour or so.  It would be nice to have a bit of wet spell.  We had all kinds of possibilities of rain early in the week along with cool weather but nothing came of it.