Posted by: "M, J, & V Phinney"
> Walt - are you anywhere near the big fires that have been making the news
> around the Georgia/Florida border? Gald to hear the southeast is getting =
a
> bit of rain...
Most of a day's drive from here. Or a good part of a week on my trike.
It's in Southern Georgia, other end of the state from me, pretty close
to the Florida border and I live in the GA Piedmont east of Atlanta (too
close to Atlanta, unfortunately).
Fires like that are part of the natural system, otherwise eventually the
swamps fill in. I know that country down there well. One big fire set is
in the Okefenokee and will probably just burn naturally, a result of the
drought conditions. The other is in a big area that's behind locked
gates in mixed timber and swamps that feed the Okefenokee and I'm sure
it will be fought by the timber company. They don't care about natural
cycles, just growing one species of pine. Actually more likely they will
get the state to spend the money on the fire on their land.
It's only a bit of rain we had, we have just over 9" on the gauge here
for the year. It should be about 20-25" by now. I'm watering just about
everything, all new plantings, my fruits, the bamboo, even many of the
trees. We have a 460' drilled well that could supply a small city. And I
have to pump water with the tractor from the creek into the pond I've
built in the creek bottom for the frogs on a weekly basis. Otherwise the
hundreds of tadpoles won't make it. And the frogs were happily putting
more eggs in last night. I'm building that pond as my small compensation
for the swamp a little ways down the creek that a real estate developer
drained to "pretty up" the land (the creek floods it from time to time
so you can't build on it).
http://wwknapp.home.mindspring.com/docs/dry_pond_swamp.html
However, the frogs did not wait for me to finish, as soon as there was
any water in it they started using it. I now can only work on expanding
it during the slack season for tadpoles.
The nice thing to see is the return of at least some afternoon
thundershowers. Been years since we have had them. Also the first named
Atlantic storm was off the GA coast recently, the more of those the
better as they sometimes break through the dry pattern to give us rain.
Unfortunately this first one was a bust.
Walt
|