Signs of September

The hot weather finally broke. We’ve had rain all morning and a cool breeze. It feels lovely and it's so good for the range.

My garden is finally bearing. Oh, how we love fresh vegetables. Mark says they taste like what they are. A cucumber tastes like a cucumber. Crisp-tender and so delicious!

If you read my stuff much, you know that weeds often intrude on my writing. This time of year it’s goatheads that, well, get our goat. We know there's other weeds knocking at our door as well, some worse than what we've got. Mark came in the other day and asked if I knew what the yellow-blossomed plant was growing down in the corner pasture. He grumbled about a new noxious invader to deal with. I checked it out and didn't recognize the plant either, so I took a photo and emailed it to our county weed supervisor. Imagine my surprise when the email was returned with these pleasant words: “the plant is a native wildflower important for pollinators.” I was so happy. I told Mark, after all our weed worries, that it was a good omen.

We had a big herd move in the mountains. We had to go through the neighbor's cows in an adjacent pasture and over a mountain. There were creeks to ford and gates to thread the herd through. We had plenty of riders and the move went well except for the wind. The range was dry and several hundred hooves kick up a lot of dust. We were coated with dirt by the end of the day. I had put on sunscreen and chapstick which only attracted the dirt and turned my features black. Mark studied me, then handed me his handkerchief to wipe my face. I told him I was fine, I wasn’t far from water, but he insisted. “It’s awful,” he said.

Mark and I stayed overnight to clean up any pairs that got separated and came back to find each other. We heard bawling in the night and knew they were walking back individually and hopefully finding one another in the dark. After a leisurely breakfast the next morning and a 4-wheeler ride to check grass in the fields behind us, we had 12 pairs and one calf to take back. The air was still and it was a nice ride. I asked Mark if I could come next year for clean-up day only. “No,” he said, clean-up day is the reward for helping with the move.

It's a grasshopper year and one of the worst we've seen in the mountains. We witnessed a strange phenomenon when we came upon an especially heavy area and decided they were mating en masse. They were in clumps of one female and one or more males. The males are small and yellow, the females larger and brown. Their eggs will lay in the ground and hatch next year. Not something we welcome, but with the bad is always the good. About a week later, I was changing water at home and saw two monarch butterflies in a mating embrace. Another omen!

photo by Anita

it  only got windier as the day progressed 

yellow bee plant

everyone should grow a vegetable or two

lots of milkweed but no caterpillars