After getting everything rinsed off by the Thursday evening and early Friday morning rains last week plus the recent heat and humidity, the scurs are still soggy. Will this next week change all that? Starting Wednesday, mostly cloudy with a good chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs 75 and lows near 60. Mostly sunny and gorgeous on Thursday with highs around 80 and lows of 60. Partly cloudy on Friday with a slight chance of an evening shower or thunderstorm. Highs of 80 and lows around 65. Slight chance of a shower or thunderstorm on Saturday and warmer with highs of 80 – 85 and lows around 65. Mostly clear on Sunday with highs around 80 and lows near 65. Partly sunny on Monday with continued pleasant temperatures and a chance of an evening shower or thunderstorm. Highs around 80 and lows near 60. Cloudy and cooler on Tuesday with a chance of rain. Highs of 80 and lows around 65. The normal high for June 20th, the summer solstice is 81 and the normal low is 59. We will experience the longest day of the year with 15 hours and 28 minutes of daylight. The sun will rise at 5:31 a.m. and will set at 9 p.m. The scurs will be bottling some of that sunlight and warmth for January.
Heavy rains went through on Thursday last week and brought an end to another too-dry spell. When one looks at the rainfall pattern, it has gone in spurts, preceded by high winds then followed by two weeks with very little other than very localized precipitation. The results have actually been overall favorable thus far with a corn crop that appears to be well rooted and soybeans that are shrugging off their annual dose of iron deficiency chlorosis quickly. Once we get by Wednesday’s rainfall event we should be in for another drying out period. Corn has really jumped and some of the later planted fields changed dramatically. The nodal root system has expanded deeper into the soil profile where more nitrogen could be found. The result is that nice deep green color we like to see this time of year. Some soybeans are starting to flower already and while no soybean aphids have been found just yet locally, they have been found elsewhere so it’s generally just a matter of time. Second cutting alfalfa is underway in some fields and the tonnage looks better than what was harvested for first crop. Hay supplies will be tight so getting as much as one can will be important.
The early mornings at the ranch are generally brought in about 4:30 a.m. by a robin that I swear has a bullhorn. Never seen bird with a set of lungs like that. It wakes up the chipping sparrows and the house wrens so that by 5, it’s so loud you have to close the windows if you plan on getting back to sleep. Usually by July, much of the loud singing has subsided and it becomes easier to deal with the usual sheep bellering. This past week brought a male rose-breasted grosbeak back to the feeders to keep all the bright yellow male goldfinches company. The hummingbirds have located the min-petunias in the pots now although they don’t pass up the sugar water in the nectar feeder either. The killdeer continues to sit on the nest at the kindly neighbors while on a sad note, the brown thrasher nest in the garden was devoid of eggs as of last weekend. Just before that I spotted a brown thrasher in the yard that appeared to be injured as it managed to escape into the underbrush. Just before that I noticed a stray cat that apparently has set up camp in one of the numerous brush piles. Over the years I have developed a dim view of stray cats and put them in the same category as skunks, opossums and raccoons, to name a few.
As some have noted, the fireflies are out and at the ranch, it’s no exception. Not sure if we’ll see the numbers we have the past several years, but they’re certainly on the early side. This also coincides roughly with the hatch of corn rootworms and reports are that feeding on corn roots has begun. In the garden you may want to keep an eye on your vine crops. Why? Lots of striped cucumber beetles were noticed feeding on seedling cucumbers at the ranch on the 18th. Control measures were taken quickly so the other vine crops will bear watching as well. Spotted cucumber beetles have been seen in area corn fields for almost a month already, so I’m not sure what they’re up to. Also seen at the ranch were some click beetles. These develop from wireworms in the soil, generally a pest of corn seedlings. We used to enjoy playing with them as I’ve mentioned before. Flipping them on their backs, they flip over with a click of their head capsule. Oddly enough, I find myself still playing with click beetles.
The soccer mom van recently developed another malady, namely a loud exhaust system. Made it difficult to be very stealthy when sneaking off with my driving wig on to the store where you go to the bathroom in the big orange silo. The boys at J & S just grin when they see the contraption coming, affectionately dubbing it “The Cash Cow.” There is virtually no end to the repairs they could perform on it but there is a limit as to what the checking account and common sense allows us to spend on it. Somehow we got off easy this time as the exhaust system had just come unhooked ahead of the catalytic converter. It only took an hour or less to repair with the part being readily available locally. Mrs. Cheviot said there were almost tears of sadness when they couldn’t milk more than a hundred bucks out of it. Oh well, we have lots more vehicles. After all, June is Dairy Month.
See you next week…real good then.