The colder weather sure can be felt and it is making my cat unhappy, not because it is too cold for him, but because the chipmunks are not out playing for him to try to be the big hunter.
A chipmunk can gather up to 165 acorns in a day and I saw one that had three acorns stuffed in its cheeks. The chipmunk’s den contains at least two chambers, one with a cozy leaf-lined nest and the other used as a storage pantry for the chipmunk’s favorite foods, including nuts and seeds (the seeds from my bird feeder).
Chipmunks hibernate, but instead of storing fat, they periodically dip into their cache of nuts and seeds throughout the winter.
When fall comes, the eye is drawn to the bright, colorful leaves so it is easy to overlook the fall flowers, especially if tiny ones. I was surprised to see the Forget-Me-Nots still blooming in October when I had photographed them in June, but there they were, along the stream bed displaying their blue, below a colorful hillside of autumn foliage.
The Forget-Me-Not, a tiny bright sky blue flower with a white ring and yellow center, was chosen as Alaska State Flower in 1949.
I started the red/yellow week on Monday so I could have ended the week with Saturday’s picture so both the yellow and red had equal showing, but like in baseball, the National League Championship Series went seven games to determine a winner. But since I like everyone to win, today’s picture will be both a red and yellow picture.
But like the windmills, the old wooden corn cribs are losing out to metal corn cribs or the more common metal corn bins. Corn cribs were first used by Native Americans. The early corn cribs had many designs, not all made from wood, but generally had some type of slats in the wall to allow air to circulate, drying the corn to prevent mold and decay. A roof to keep the corn out of the weather and elevated to prevent rodent infestation were common of the designs. They may have been a single long building, or one with two cribs and a center driveway. But whatever the style, they are disappearing like the wooden barns and windmills.
Continuing with the week’s red / yellow theme, the yellow ears of corn are making their way up an elevator to the top of a corn bin. Eventually the ears will find their way to the bottom door when it is ground for feed unless the squirrels or birds eat them first.
Since it seems that I started a yellow / red theme this week, it’s time for another red picture and this barn fits the bill for red and there even is a hint of yellow in the corn field.
I have been hearing the song God Bless America several times this past week, even the Fed Ex driver had it on when he delivered a package, and while there is not a line that says farm land, the prairie line will have to include this scene since it’s not a mountain or the ocean white with foam.
It is getting harder to find bright colors as the fall continues its march to winter but occasionally some yellow dandelions or other yellow flowers might be spotted like these Butter-and-eggs also known as Common Toadflax or Yellow Toadflax. While native to Europe and other parts of the world, the Butter-and-eggs were not native to North America but have been introduced and now very common along roads ditches and disturbed lands and is considered as a weed, although sometimes cultivated for cut flowers and used in folk medicine for a variety of ailments.
Because this plant grows as a weed, it has acquired a large number of local names, including brideweed, bridewort, butter and eggs, butter haycocks, bread and butter, bunny haycocks, bunny mouths, calf’s snout, Continental weed, dead men’s bones, devil’s flax, devil’s flower, doggies, dragon bushes, eggs and bacon, false flax, flaxweed, fluellen, gallweed, gallwort, impudent lawyer, Jacob’s ladder, lion’s mouth, monkey flower, North American ramsted, rabbit flower, rancid, ransted, wild flax, wild snapdragon, wild tobacco, and yellow rod.
Like snapdragons (Antirrhinum), they are often grown in children’s gardens for the “snapping” flowers which resembles the face of a dragon that opens and closes its mouth when laterally squeezed thus the flower ‘snaps’ or ‘talks’.
The reds, orange and yellows of the maple trees are gone but the oaks are still providing some fall color, even if many of the oaks have a more brownish color. But some oaks have a bright red color too and often mixed in with green right next to the reds. Although many of those pretty oaks leaves took flight over night and are now covering my lawn.
Many fields have been harvested and corn stalks have been baled, but there are still some fields with standing corn yet. The yellow ears so critical to the farmer’s success and the constant worries of the year’s weather conditions will come to the end once the field is harvested, hopefully before the snow comes.
This fall it seems like the clouds have taken on a lot of unusual formations, probably since they haven’t delivered any needed rain, but instead they are wispy and thin.
