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common_nature2011-05-19 03:03 pm
facetofcathy) wrote in common_nature2011-05-19 03:03 pm
Entry tags:
The results of all this rain
Hello to everyone, I love this community, and I wanted to share some of my urban natural world.
I've been complaining about all the rain we've had--three days without rain since April 15--and much colder than normal temperatures to go with it. The effect of the urban habitat is interesting. I took a couple of pictures to illustrate.
The above is from this afternoon in the sunniest part of the front garden. The delicate little leaves in the background are the first fronds of my Clematis that was in bloom last year at this time.
This is our garage (it's a portable thing with a vinyl tarp over a metal frame), and the dots are snails. Sorry for the lighting, a big bright light suddenly shone in the sky for a moment while we were trying to take the photo, all the townspeople ran for their houses in fear.
If you can look very close, you can see tiny little dots that are baby snails. Some of these are about 3 mm across. Some of the big ones are really big. They're all over the outside and the inside, and occasionally try to go on car trips.
This photo was taken last weekend, and you can see that some of the trees haven't started to leaf out yet. In the last week, most trees have caught up to where they would be by the start of May at least.
This weather is a serious issue, not just in Southwestern Ontario where I live, but all over North America, where excess rain means delayed planting for grain crops. We currently have very low stocks of grain in North America as well, so expect our food prices to start to rise.
Forecast for the coming long weekend: rain every day. This weekend is the traditional time for folks around here to plant their gardens, as the risk of frost is thought to be nil by now. I want to do some container vegetables this year (we have way too much wildlife to try the heartbreak of an actual vegetable garden) and it might finally be warm enough, but I'm kicking around the idea of some sort of awning to keep the excess rain off them and/or a windbreak.
I've been complaining about all the rain we've had--three days without rain since April 15--and much colder than normal temperatures to go with it. The effect of the urban habitat is interesting. I took a couple of pictures to illustrate.
The above is from this afternoon in the sunniest part of the front garden. The delicate little leaves in the background are the first fronds of my Clematis that was in bloom last year at this time.
This is our garage (it's a portable thing with a vinyl tarp over a metal frame), and the dots are snails. Sorry for the lighting, a big bright light suddenly shone in the sky for a moment while we were trying to take the photo, all the townspeople ran for their houses in fear.
If you can look very close, you can see tiny little dots that are baby snails. Some of these are about 3 mm across. Some of the big ones are really big. They're all over the outside and the inside, and occasionally try to go on car trips.
This photo was taken last weekend, and you can see that some of the trees haven't started to leaf out yet. In the last week, most trees have caught up to where they would be by the start of May at least.
This weather is a serious issue, not just in Southwestern Ontario where I live, but all over North America, where excess rain means delayed planting for grain crops. We currently have very low stocks of grain in North America as well, so expect our food prices to start to rise.
Forecast for the coming long weekend: rain every day. This weekend is the traditional time for folks around here to plant their gardens, as the risk of frost is thought to be nil by now. I want to do some container vegetables this year (we have way too much wildlife to try the heartbreak of an actual vegetable garden) and it might finally be warm enough, but I'm kicking around the idea of some sort of awning to keep the excess rain off them and/or a windbreak.