Heat, adequate rainfall keep wildflowers lush, thriving

The heavy rains came over the weekend, just as I finally got all my garden in. I don’t know if the radish and lettuce seeds I planted got washed out or not, but time will tell.

My wildflowers have gone crazy with all the heat and just enough rain to keep them watered.

The real heavy rain and hail on Saturday (6/23) didn’t do them much good, however.

It chopped some leaves off the trees in places and made the ground snow white for a short time.

The temperature dropped about 20 degrees. Karen even had to shut the windows.

I’m sure the folks out in Colorado wish they would have a little of this rain, but I see the temperatures in Denver were in the 90s and 100 for the last few days.

That’s not good news for the fire fighters. Conditions like that sure help the fires get bigger and bigger, and now over 200 homes have been consumed.

The milkweed flowers are ready for picking and eating in many places—almost two weeks ahead of schedule.

Just cut them off with a couple of leaves and pile them in a pot.

Add water and boil for seven to ten minutes. (The ants and spiders will normally come to the top.)

Put them in a bowl, add a little vinegar, salt and pepper and dig in for some great veggies.

They taste better than they smell, and that’s saying something.

I had some small plants over at the banding station for supper one night.

The other folks at the table said I had to eat them first. They wanted to see if I had a reaction before they would eat them.

Everyone tried them and agreed they were better than the wild asparagus we had the night before.

I made a trip over to the Denley Trout Farm on Thomas Road in Port Leyden to get a few fish for my pond last Friday.

Proprietor Joe Kraeger was waiting for me with the trout I had ordered in a holding tank.

He put a few pails of water in a plastic bag in a garbage can, put in the trout and then some oxygen from his welding truck, tied the tops of the bags and I was on my way.

They made the hour trip with no problem and my son helped me get them into the pond.

I haven’t seen them since but there are so many minnows in the pond that they wouldn’t have to surface to feed.

I got them for my fly fishing clients who wish to learn how to catch a trout on a fly. I just hope they get more active.

I’ll watch for the Osprey who cleaned out the pond a few years ago.

When I was out with John Scanlon last week he told me he had picked up a Bald Eagle that couldn’t fly at Unirondack on Beaver Lake by Number Four.

It was taken in for rehab but died a couple days later from what was diagnosed as lead poisoning.

He said this was the seventh Eagle they had that died from lead poisoning.

I haven’t tracked down the source, but it must be from fish they are eating that have a lead sinker in them or attached to them.

This is how the Loons get a lead sinker. They can also get them by picking up small stones for their crop and they get it off the bottom.

These birds aren’t being shot with lead shot.

So far, the Loons are doing quite well. The rains have been coming an inch at a time rather than four inches at a rip, so no nests around here have gone under.

I’ve had a couple late nesters that won’t come off until the middle of July. That’s not too late as I’ve had some hatch as late as August 15 and still make it out before the lake iced over.

Last week I lost one chick on Limekiln Lake to an unknown cause. The other pair there now has a chick.

I haven’t had any reports of chicks on the Fulton Chain, but I’m sure some of them have chicks on the water, so steer clear of them while you are out and about in a boat, canoe or kayak.

It’s taken them 27 days to hatch the eggs and they will be on the water with the chicks for 12 to 14 weeks, so give them a break.

You will know when you are too close by as they will be running on the water and hollering loudly.

Some pairs tolerate you more than others, but if you are close by they are paying attention to you instead of  predators that might be lurking from below, such as a snapping turtle.

Also they won’t feed their young when you are close by.

Karen and I found a newly hatched chick yesterday and that pair certainly didn’t want us anywhere near them, much less on the same lake.

I collected the egg sac from near the nest site and we left.

On the second lake we found the pair setting on a new nest that was surrounded by Rose Pogonia flowers—thousands of them in fact, and many were double flowers. What a beautiful setting.

Other orchids are starting to bloom, but that’s another story. See ya.