This morning I found my old maple tree on the ground. It had weathered a lightning strike, wind storms but finally succumbed to the forces of nature and the beautiful maple is no more. It will no longer wave its bright colored leaves in the fall for the sun to see. Instead it will slowly decay back into the soil but hopefully some of last year’s seeds survived and a new maple will takes it’s place.
Autumn Maple Leaves
I had a couple of flower pictures picked out for today but they didn’t match my mood so when I went out to take the sunset, I found that the clouds moved in already so I took this cloud shot instead.
Dark Moody Clouds
I had a new visitor show up at my place, a cute baby little red squirrel. I have had gray, black and even white ones for a few years but this is the first red one. And he has such a high squeaking chatter compared to the other squirrels that I was able to find him the next day by following the different noise.
He sure is a cute little critter and about the same size as a chipmunk. I thought it was a chipmunk at first running up the side of a tree until I saw the bigger tail.
As kids, we would pick this grass and try to tickle each other with it (and that’s reason we always called it tickle grass). And while it’s pretty to look at, especially a full field waving in the wind, this foxtail barley grass is not a grass farmers and ranchers want to see in their pastures and fields. Foxtail barley grass has sharply-barbed awns that can cause sores at the nose, eyes, and mouth of livestock.
Foxtail Barley Grass
The work never ends for farmers and ranchers. It is a tough job since the livestock don’t recognize holidays and they need to be fed in blizzards and storms. There is always the gamble on the weather, whether or not the crops they planted will mature and be plentiful enough to make it to the next year.
Right now the oats are being harvested and hay is being baled. And the day continues well past sunset like this rancher moving his big round hay bales off the field so the new crop of hay can grow.
I take a lot of sunset pictures but this one was a hard shot to get since I was on the road when I spotted the tractor on the hill and for some reason it didn’t stop when I hollered whoa so the first shot had a tree through the tractor and this was the second shot and there were no more shots to take as it disappeared off the hill.
Working Tractor at Sunset
Since someone said they preferred butterflies instead of bees after I posted the Purple Bergamont with a bee, here is a butterfly picture but then it isn’t on a flower.
This is the Common Buckeye butterfly and I love the ‘eyes’ looking at me!
Common Buckeye Butterfly
It has been usually warm here this summer and this bunch of cows were hiding under the shade of an old willow tree yesterday. Normally there is a little creek next to the tree but that is bone dry right now.
There are calves in the long grass but you never know what else might be in the grass as I had a snake sunning itself on my path to the pond this morning but I didn’t get a picture since I sort of jumped so no snake picture, just cattle today.
Cattle under Willow Tree
Some of the road ditches have turned into a sea of pink. The Monarda media, better known as Purple Bergamont or Purple Bee Balm, is a native wildflower that is a member of the mint family. When I was taking pictures, there were more butterflies than bees on the flowers, or it seemed that way since the butterflies are larger. But I did spot one honey bee working hard so the Purple Bee Balm name could apply for this blossom.
Busy Bee on Purple Bergamont or Purple Bee Balm
Last evening I headed for a little creek where some little blue flowers called Forget-me-nots were blooming. But I was sidetracked with all the other wonderful things to see, including fish swimming in the clear water and this rock wall, and so the sun disappeared before I got many of the flower pictures. They are very small blue flowers and you can just barely see some in the lower left corner of the picture.
The Forget-me-nots are one flower where a close up shot is needed to see the tiny blossoms but they sure were pretty lining the creek sides. In a German legend, God named all the plants when a tiny unnamed one cried out, “Forget-me-not, O Lord!” God replied, “That shall be your name.”
Rock Wall near Creek
It is hard sometimes to pick the next picture after one of those rare spectacular scenes and I would have had a rare photo opportunity last night, but some idiot didn’t have the camera with. When I was mowing, I found three large freshly dug holes in my yard. I didn’t know if it was a woodchuck or a badger. The way the dirt was thrown back I suspected a badger and when I raced down to feed the fish before dark, two badgers came waltzing in and one came to the pond not very far away from me to get a drink. A frog hopped quickly in the pond to get away from the rather fierce looking critter.
But instead of their normal aggressive behavior, the two badgers seemed rather lovesick with each other, and the whole time I was watching them I was cussing myself out for not grabbing my camera since I had never been that close to a wild badger before.
I haven’t checked my lawn yet this morning since during the summer they normally use a new den each day and their burrows can be 30 feet long and 10 feet deep. Wisconsin got its nickname from the badger (course to me it should be the dairy cow instead). There was some lead miners in the far southwestern corner of the state in the 1830s who lived in temporary caves in the hillsides instead houses and the caves were described as badger dens and the miners were nicknamed badgers. And because of a few miners, I live in the Badger State instead of Dairy State.
I was surprised that the badgers weren’t more afraid of me since I was moving my arms when I was feeding my fish but they did seem a little love crazy as they were making noises and rubbing against each other and romping around. Mating does occur in late summer and early fall and since badgers experience delayed implantation, pregnancies are suspended until December or as late as February.
But since I don’t have a picture of the badger, because I didn’t take my camera along when I fed the fish, I guess I will have to use a picture of two other critters romping and rubbing each other.
Hereford Calves Playing
