Musings

Temperate continental season-change

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Windy today, but with the sun: quite nice! Whatta surprise to find a few hardy lupins still blooming as autumnal overnight temperatures begin to turn the leaves, especially on the maples, glorious colors.

Stump life

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The stump hostas caught the late-day light in a nice way that belied the steamy heat of the evening.

Jackpot!

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It rained—that is, one of those late afternoon pop-up showers. Still, we got enough precip to make a difference to the plants (and wash the recycling container downhill into the bumper—oops!).

Summer bounty still green, but pale

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Afternoon pop-up storms are good for the ’maters, but may be accompanied by hail and/or lightning, which are scary. And wind.

Due to requests, I’ve posted yesterday’s recipe here.

Weather watch: rain cells

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We came down US127 through much of Ohio, and passed through the bottom of a goodly storm cell. We drove through hard rain for maybe fifteen minutes—that would be fifteen LONG minutes. Lesser rain lasted for, maybe another forty minutes. The rain in this cell came down so hard that it was standing in the fields, making the corn little green sprigs in a flowing lake. (I don’t know if this was the tag end of the Texas/Arkansas storm.)

The other notable cell we passed beneath was this one, in Kentucky. We were a bit buffeted by the wind by this one, whereas during the Ohio one we just noticed downdrafts, but not lateral winds.

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Posting early today; whimsy I guess. Rain came in overnight, drippy and good for the plants, although the accompanying cool temps slow them down.

When you’re inhabiting a small house, your living space extends to the out-of-doors, so you watch the weather a lot (or maybe I’m just talking me here). The breeze is kicking up a tad, but the lake still merely has riffles. Inbound, not offshore.

Anyway, the lupines are showing off another of their talents by catching water droplets in their leaves.

Spreading weeds

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Arum maculatum, which has poisonous berries…. Hmm.

This stuff is spreading! It’s a trio now!

I guess I should have expected that, since somehow it appeared in my garden.

Note that this plant was at the same stage on 7 May last year. For whatever it’s worth….

The meaning of “weed” in the title is from The Botanist: “any plant that’s growing where you don’t want it.”

Wet-day

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From a pre-rain visit to Lake Clara Meer, the algae is already…visible….

Recently the Ma-Nature stories were about the deep earth: volcanoes and earthquakes.

We’ve transitioned to liquids: precip (and more precip) and the (human-induced) oil flow.

Around here, we saw the rain. Lots of it. Not much sleep last night when the first bad spell pounded us, but there ya go!

Keep your eyes peeled

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I trust even the rodents noticed today’s weird weather—warm and windy. Supposed to be worse tomorrow.

Timing

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Our redbud, in the photograph, is almost a week behind the neighbors’, which is already beginning to lose petals. Not suprisingly, the two are different varieties….

Meanwhile, the garden needs rain and the pollen is here in force, a yellow cast to every slick-painted vehicle, and more…, so we need rain to wash it away, too.