80AcresOnline

Most but not all the surface water has dried up, soils that were seeping and running with water last week are dry enough to walk on in regular shoes.

Main grass: Queen Anne’s Lace, gaillardia, scattered bluebonnets
stiff-stem prairie flax, coreopsis, goldthread, Venus’s looking glass,
skullcap, green antelope horns, others

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Earth Day 2016

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It was a dry fall, after a dry summer, and a dry winter followed the dry fall.  Other places got rain–sometimes nearby–but we had none for months.  March brought a little–April has brought a little–and now we have some flowers.

The bluebonnets may be only 4-5 inches tall, instead of knee-high, but they’re there–in a few places–and should be able to make seed for another year.    We had more through most of the dry winter, but many finally just died–or were eaten, since they were the only green thing out there.

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This is another year of brown spring and summer…though some people got more rain, we’re still behind, and the quick brown-off after the rain we did get proves it.

This is not how the land should look in early June: we should still have at least half the grass green, and the June flowers in full bloom.    This is a typical August picture: brown land, hard blue cloudless sky full of heat.   Before climate change really began to show here,  mid-June to mid-July looked more like the picture at the top of the blog.   But this is the third dry year, though we had enough rain in April and early May to produce thi river of gold (claspleaf coneflower) in mid-May, in the lowest part, where water had run for a few days.

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We get snow so seldom (and enough to take pictures of, even more seldom) that I feel several posts of snow pictures are justified.

This is on the trail north from Fox Pavilion to the north fenceline.

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Early morning, 22F, snow has crunchy crust…the little Eleocharis there in the wet area are ice-coated but they don’t mind.   What a difference a day makes.  I took different trails than yesterday and have over a hundred images–here are some of my favorites.

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On a snowy morning, the horses frolic like kids out of school.

Snow started about 6:45,  just as we entered town after driving through sleet/rain from Leander, where we’d dropped M- off at the bus terminus.   It’s snowed off and on all day.  Beautiful clean country snow, melting underneath from the warmth of the ground, but still…lovely.  Took a long walk this afternoon, up to Fox Pavilion in the dry woods, down the north fenceline to the creek, and into the creek woods, then home along the south fenceline.

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The cold front that hit central Texas between midnight and dawn Thursday certainly did change things…yeah, we’d had that 15 degree down-spike back in December, and some other overnights in the 20s (good for knocking the ticks back) but this was a serious Arctic blast like we used to get every winter 30 years ago and haven’t had for the past decade.  Of course we wrapped pipes in advance, put on the hose bib foam-thingies, blocked the air vents under the house, all the usual things you do.

Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn’t….yup, that’s a pipe that burst–not where it’s sawed off, but at an elbow just underground. Read the rest of this entry »

Every day brings changes to the land–the seasonal changes being among the most obvious–but from year to year we see changes–both desired and undesired–as a result of what we, our neighbors, and the weather do.

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