The scurs were close in the rainfall department, which counts if you were one of the lucky ones who received it. Notice how they slyly continue to evade the amount question? Will we see any improvement in the precipitation picture? Starting Wednesday, partly cloudy with a moderate chance of a shower or thunderstorm. Highs near 85 and lows around 70. Thursday, partly cloudy with a slight chance of s shower or thunderstorm. Highs around 85 and lows near 70. Friday, partly cloudy with highs of 90 and lows of 70. Hotter on Saturday with a slight chance of a shower or thunderstorm. Highs of 90 – 95 and lows near 75. Sunday, partly cloudy with a slight chance of showers or thunderstorms. Highs 95 and lows near 70. Monday and Tuesday, partly cloudy to mostly sunny with highs around 90 and lows of 65 – 70. The normal high for July 20th is 82 and the normal low is 65. The 20th is significant because we’ll slip below 15 hours of daylight for the first time since May 21st. We’ve also lost 29 minutes of daylight since the summer solstice on June 20th. The scurs will need to start their Tiki torches a little earlier to ward off the bugs around the “ceement” pond.
Vista’s noted Swedish astronomer has spotted Venus and Jupiter in the early-morning skies to the east at roughly 4:30 a.m. You probably recall that Venus spent much of the winter and spring shining brightly in the west. It is now a morning “star” again, outshining even the larger Jupiter. When the noted Swedish astronomer was asked what he was doing up at that time of day he claimed to be watering the flowers.
Crops continue to hang on through the heat, looking better perhaps than they have a right to. Corn continues to pollinate with some of the middle and later plantings coming online. As of this writing, for some of those fields it’s still a little too early to tell exactly how they’re reacting. One thing is for certain however, and that’s with every day we go without rain and endure the heat, it will not help ear length. Soybeans are beginning to set pods and are for the most part R3. It is past the labeled time to apply glyphosate at this point. A few soybean aphids have been found but the heat has been slowing them down too. With the dry conditions one thinks about spider mites but so far they have been no-shows in and around Greater Bugtussle. Having said that someone will cut some hay or a road ditch somewhere and we’ll probably see some. We also could see some grasshopper movement into crops given some of the same circumstances.
It was a week of hoping it would rain substantially and for most it did not. The showers and thunderstorms that moved through the area on Friday the 6th offered very little in the form of relief unless one was living on the east side of the viewing area. Gazing at the sky from the Waseca County Fair, one could see the high top of a thunderstorm developing to the south and east. Trouble was, we were looking at its backside. As we were leaving the fairgrounds we heard a report of a large amount of rain near the Holy Land (they always get more rain there) so we were optimistic that we may have received some. The road was wet all the way home, a good sign. When we turned onto our road however the pavement suddenly was dry and there was no puddle to greet us at the end of the driveway. We’d been missed again and there was only a 10th in the gauge, part of which had fallen earlier in the day. The kindly neighbor phoned me the next morning to see what we collected in the gauge at the ranch. One gauge there read 2” and that’s less than a mile and a half as the crow flies from the ranch. Ground truthing it with a soil probe in the field a few days later and there was no doubt: Him speak ‘um truth.
The dry weather woes don’t seem to faze the bird population at the ranch. The bluebird young have fledged and their call was scattered among the trees. A young male cardinal has been spotted cleaning up under the birdfeeders along with a mature male. A pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks enjoys the sunflower feeder when the large numbers of goldfinches let them. A few more hummingbird sightings although they’re still not as numerous as they were through the months of May and June. There are still a few barn swallows yet to leave the nest adding to an already prolific group of young patrolling the grounds. Not sure if they’re why the mosquitoes are seemingly starting to let up but having them around certainly doesn’t hurt.
Seldom do sheep qualify as intelligent, but they seem to be smart enough to accumulate a knowledge base that makes them a threat to get out at any given inopportune time. Take last Friday at the Waseca Coounty Fair for instance. When the animals were being judged, those that were chosen to come back for State Fair lineup were temporarily put in small holding pens on the side of the show ring. Every year it seems one or more figure out how to undo the gate latches and a sheep rodeo ensues. This year was no different and several of them became so difficult it became necessary for me to hold a few gates shut so Mrs. Cheviot could attend to her ring duties. Another ring man and I ended up nicknaming one lamb “Einstein” based on his performance.
We were just about to head back to the fair that evening and as we were going down the driveway we noticed a couple of our own lambs were out. They’d slipped through the electric fence and as soon as we chased them they went back in. We put the fence back up but it wasn’t charging. It was getting toward dark and since sheep are clannish there was little danger that they’d stray very far should they decide to get out again. We took off and had a great time with some friends and when we came home the lambs were still in. The next morning I was up early and found them still asleep as I did the chores. I then set out to find where the fence was grounded and after walking almost the entire length I discovered the broken wire and repaired it. While I was eating breakfast, I looked out the window to see what appeared to be the instigator warily strolling towards the fence, about to test it. The ewe lamb kept walking slowly then suddenly did a backflip when it contacted the wire, nearly causing me to spit my coffee out. Ya gotta get up purty early in the morning to put one past ol’ Mr. Cheviot.
See you next week…real good then.