The start of summer has been a bit tumultuous around here. Starting with a Monsoon season then turning into multiple warnings for severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes. None of which hit here!
A tornado did touch down at Rocky Mountain House, which is a 45 minute drive west of us. The clouds that day were quite ominous from our vantage point.
All is well that ends well though! The system moved off to the north east of us. What we did get was very strong north wind about an hour later, I thought for sure we would lose some trees, in fact I could hear a tall old spruce tree cracking as I was watching out of our only north facing window in the bathroom. Thought for sure that old giant was going to come down, but it stood strong.
Now we have rain and smoke.... always something! But at least it has cooled off.
We have a lot of cliff swallows that have congregated here- they are very welcome because ever since they arrived, the mosquito population has been decimated- yay!
This is just a very few of them, the rest were reeling around the sky snacking on bugs.
My flower gardens are thriving, this is my Jacmani clematis which last year had only a handful of flowers.
The veggie garden is yielding carrots and peas now and the potato plants are flowering. That is actually all I planted this year, I still have enough green beans in the freezer from last year. I did plant a tomato that I picked up for 3 bucks, it may or may not have fruit before frost time.
Tuffy is growing and thriving too!
Thumper intrigues him.
Today was vet day, Happy came up open, no foal, so come mid August she will go live with Shayla and I will wean Tuffy early. Vet said wait and see until after weaning on how his hernia is, we hope it will close on its own.
Meanwhile, the little herd gets to enjoy summer. I will wait until end of August to start working with Dally.
9 comments:
Those clouds!! Glad the severe weather (and wildfire/smoke) avoided your place. Sorry Happy didn't take.
I am also enjoying a newer Jackmanii and need to get a larger support for it before next years bloom. I love clematis! Unfortunately, they barely survive here in sand land. I figured if Jackmanni can't make it, none of them will.
Tuffy & Thumper are cute, communicating together!
When you plant the Clematis dig a 2 ft pit and fill it with composted manure. I did that for the flower gardens here as we too have sandy soil. Then I laid bark mulch around all the plants to keep the moisture in. Jacmani like to be cut back and regrow from their base not on old wood. I cut mine back in late spring to reduce the risk of them getting frozen out.
Good to know Jackmanni are the type of Clematis that regrow/bloom off new growth. That will be helpful when I replace the support next season.
Back in the day, when the tag didn't say which type I usually just observed Spring growth. Sometimes dried up vines helped hold the vigorous new growth together. I don't have that "problem" here lol.
Beautiful flowers! Whatever you are doing is working great. I need to give it a go with that clematis. We also have smoke and heat now. It doesn’t bother me much this year for some reason. Maybe I’m used to it now. Just put an X through late July and August.
Your Clematis is a beauty! Those bumpy looking clouds always scare me, we had a tornado about 30 miles away that did lots of damage to homes along a lake. So far just some branches down here...nothing to worry about. When smoke is bad I have some heavy duty masks and we wear them if the smoke is bad. Hard to breathe through them but at least it is not smoky air. The horses look awesome and like they have a fine pasture!
Yeah it's scary when tornados are that close... the one near here was actually 2 tornados in the same system minutes apart. Glad you guys stayed safe too!
Tornadoes are scary but the clouds are amazing.
Those skies are incredible!
Just thought I'd let you know we had another go 'round with sheep and the guard dogs and the sheep came running next to us while we were riding on the opposite side of the fence. Dogs barking, sheep running and bleating.
Sunshine saw them and just walked away with no special concern.
So I have no idea what set her off last week. Odd right?
It might be that after the fist round she had it figured out and this time smart mule that she is, realised that noisy busy sheep were nothing to worry about
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