Into August

"Prairie Bale - No.1" - Oil Painting - ©Bruce A. Morrison

 

Although this month has half expired, I still think of it as new.  I probably exhaust people with my lamentations of time slipping through our figurative fingers, but in my mind - August just arrived!

I just recently finished a small oil painting of a hay bale in a nearby county area planted to prairie.  It brings about many thoughts to mind.

About 25 years ago I met a farmer down in Larabee, Iowa who had hayed the prairie ground on Steele prairie (Northern Cherokee County) every summer during his youth and younger years. He talked of the amazing flowers and grasses, the Prairie Skinks, and the grassland birds...the ground had never been plowed.

 

It must have been just like the early settlers trying to make due with life on this virgin earth...imagine the smell of the fresh cut prairie vegetation, the sight and sounds of bounty back then!

 

A small plot of county land a couple miles north of us holds nothing quite as dramatic, but when I discovered the prairie planting there had been mowed and baled, I couldn't resist taking some photos and trying an oil painting of one. (SE O'Brien County)

 

Although the haying of prairie 100+ years back would not resemble the round bales of modern farming by any stretch of the imagination - I cannot resist the temptation of images of hay bales in the landscape. The Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) flowering around in the recovering native grasses give that hint of those days hearkening back to the pioneer beginnings on the tallgrass.

 

As the painting sits on my easel drying, I contemplate another perhaps...time will tell.

I have been posting fairly regularly on my You Tube Account the past few weeks...one from this week featured Cup Plants while another this week featured Swamp Milkweed.

Feel free to check them out! 

 

Consider subscribing to my You Tube Channel as well!

We seem to go from feast to famine here.  The rain shut off in early July...little over an inch of rain through some very hot and windy weeks.  Georgie has been having to hand water her two gardens, which never works as well as rain.  She has now gone through all 8 rain barrels.  We have no well here.

The pre-Christmas seeding I did on the south pasture has mostly dried up.  I don't know if the heavy spring rain here brought them on too quickly?  But they sprouted upward and had quite an impressive canopy of leaves - really surprised me.  Then the sky turned off and the heat and high winds turned on...now most of the new growth is shriveled and dried up looking.  But that pasture is mostly gravel slope...just drains too well.  I'm of the thought that the early abundance of moisture may have handicapped new plants...hope I'm wrong.

A wet Red-headed Woodpecker appreciates any rain showers as well!

 

We are getting some light showers right now - about time!  So appreciate any rain what-so-ever...

I hope everyone out there is doing well and having had a decent summer so far.  We still have about 5 weeks of it left to enjoy out there - please do!

Be good to one another, we are all in this together!