Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Same here CF....not many honey bees last few years, but did notice a slight increase last summer, and many more this summer.....great to see!

Pheasants are here, but not in huge numbers.....lots of rabbits in last 5-6 years.... plus all the others you mentioned, although I don't think I've ever seen a fisher cat. Flying squirrels, an occasional bear, and weasels too.

 

47°

 

Saw the resident fox Sunday morning searching the "woods" out back, then went thru the swamp next door. Early one morning last week (4:45 AM), I saw a coyote on the street. He came to investigate what the sound was as I was rolling the bike out of the garage before heading to work. It's been a tough year for the wildlife around here. The squirrels that have normally flourished (some probably feeding the aforementioned canid and vulpine), are scarce. The chippies are gone and I haven't seen or smelled the resident skunk in weeks. No frogs in the former swamp next door since it is dry. No crickets, no birds except the occasional crow or pigeon. There are no berries or nuts being produced that I can see except a couple of the Lily of the Valley's. Not very helpful for the wildlife since those are highly toxic.

Ahh, the cycles of nature.

 

46 F here. the wife was upset with me that I left the bedroom window open a couple inches. Still seems plenty warm in here to me. 72F.

 

69° in da house....wont be long and the quadrafire will be burnin.... 65° itll get turned on

 

Hard to fatten up for winder with those skimpy conditions. One positive thing about the dry weather has been far fewer insects bothering us. To that end, I haven't seen our garden snake in several weeks. Bet he has moved into the woods where there is still some moisture in the shade.

 

My wife won't wait that long. Any cooler than what we have and she will be complaining until I do something about it. She is usually a 76-80 F person.

 

Weirdly, the years that people have noticed a drop in honey bee populations, I have had plenty (both at my old house and here). I don't normally do fertilizers or weed killers except that damm poison ivy (but even that I try to use more mechanical means and a vinegar solution when possible) . I don't use bug sprays (although the cats get flea collars) nor do I use fungicides. I must admit that I did use bleach water on the ramp to the back door to get rid of algea, but I did that in the heat of the day while there were no insects braving the high 90's, and then I washed the ground very thoroughly to dilute the concentration.

I don't know if any of that has anything to do with my healthy bee populations, but it certainly can't hurt.

 

Been 66 in my house since yesterday. I would have touched off the P43 this morning to take the chill out if I didn't still have the exhaust stuffed and covered. We'll see what happens this weekend. May have to do some test runs to ensure that both stoves are in proper working order. However, if it is supposed to get hot out again, I'll just tough out the cold mornings with extra clothes. After all, I still rode to work at 47* this morning (which makes the wind chill anywhere from 21* to 35* depending on if you use the "old" or the "new" calculator).

 

Old system was "wind chill factor". New is "Real Feel temperature". Silly.....

 

I was chased to my car last week by our new neighbor.

 

Must be like the Humidity factor during summer. Used to be in percent - which I understood, that is how much humidity in the air at the current temperature. Now the measure seems to be dew point - which tells me absolutely nothing except that when the outside temp reaches the dew point temp, dew will develop.

NOAA must be trying to be relevant and progressive. You can bet someone made pretty good $$ to come up with the new systems.

 

Relative Humidity is the amount of moisture in the air compared to what the air can "hold" at that same temperature measured in percent. Dew point is the amount of moisture in the air measured in degrees. Two different ways of measuring essentially the same thing. Typically we only hear about the dew point in the summer during hot weather.

 

I know all about the humidity level (kind of says it all in the name). But the "Dew Point' is only really of use to me in the early mornings (or the forecast for the morning anyway). As in, "can I expect dew on the car or not"? It does absolutely nothing for me when they tell me what it is in the middle of the day because seriously, do I need to know when condensation will occur on my body? No, I care if I'm going to be sweating and whether that sweat will be rolling or evaporating.

Now, 94* at a relative humidity of 70% tells me something (there is a lot of moisture in the air so when I sweat it won't evaporate and will just roll down my armpits and I better take extra deodorant).

So does 94* at 20% humidity (even when I sweat it will evaporate so fast that it will not seem as hot and my clothes won't be wet just from walking from the car to the building at work).

I'm sorry, I'm just a simple person who has lived with the Relative Humidity index for 55 years - the change is not helpful.

 

Them's good eaten'.

 

Didn't grow any potatoes this season - I'd be stoned on Turkey until Spring.

 

47° again

 

You can have it.

 

multi-taskin today