Thursday June 2nd, 2022

 

Mikinaak Creek has been flowing fast, bank full (125 yards wide)

    This extremely wet spring is one for the books. When it rains, it rains a lot. There’s no place I can walk that the ground isn’t sodden. Mikinaak Creek has been flowing fast, bank full (125 yards wide), for weeks in a row towards its confluence of the south fork of the Roseau River.

    At a glance, tree and grass growth are making up for last year’s drought particularly here in Palmville when potential precipitation systems consistently split and went around us to the north and south. Despite inadequate moisture, the Palmville wheat crop wasn’t too bad as I understand, but the cereal rye suffered.

    If we get as much rain this year, as we got sun last year, we’ll have a bumper crop of lawn grass and I’ll have to start mowing it again when gasoline prices are over four dollars a gallon. I had to hire a friend to mow our whole lawn last week prior to arrival of expected company over Memorial Day, the worst of it about five-inches high. I’ll have to mow it again soon, then windrow the cut grass and burn it off as it has accumulated so much. I may have to put up an electric fence and get a couple beef calves to keep the grass down if this growth continues. High grass promotes mosquitoes, flies, and ticks.

 

2022 a 20 year high. About June 11th, of 2002, the water was even higher.

    The temperatures we’re having now in the fifties and mid sixties, make it hard to remember the blistering heat of 2021 that persuaded the wife and I not to go outdoors any more than absolutely necessary. I wondered if the climate had changed so dramatically that this had become the new normal, then remembered that all the years before I had been working at the toy factory and went outdoors every day whether I wanted to do it or not; I just endured it. These days of retirement, I have a choice.

    With all this rainwater, comes puddles and lawn lakes for mosquitoes to hatch from so I try to quickly drain away the low spots in the yard. One of the problem spots this year was an old fieldstone culvert under our farm lane that had become clogged with dirt and tree roots. Upstream from it, water in the corral and tree rows stood a phenomenal three feet deep and threatened to top the road. Wearing chest-high waders, I had to work a couple hours feeding an improvisation of snow rake handle sections and small-diameter steel pipe in and out of it from both sides to get the flow going steadily; once that was done, the water level dropped quickly.

One day the sun came out briefly.

    One day the sun came out briefly between rain storms, so Jackie and I scattered wildflower seeds about the yard hoping to create accents of color in the sea of green grass, trees, and water around our house. With the exception of a lovely hanging basket of petunias we purchased last year (requiring constant watering); a flowering bush that was gifted her fifteen years ago that I demolished with the tractor snowblower and grew back even better; and a few daffodils that come out in the spring that she planted years earlier, it’s not happened until very recently when the crab apple trees started blossoming.

     I admit the four-wheeler is handy (and fun) to get around on in these conditions. I never owned an ATV before this year so its usefulness, like driving through deep water and muddy conditions getting to where I want to go, is relatively new. I won’t be getting stuck with the tractor or Toyota pickup, as in years past. “That’ll be the day!” I hear my friends gaffawing (like I have history of it). It’s been over a year already (May 2021)  that any one of them has had to pull me out. Thanks David.

Thanks to this four-wheeler ATV ....

This will never happen again.

Or this.

This either.

And never this, ever again.

    The foodplots I use the four-wheeler on, are greening up like they’re newly planted; they didn’t grow at all last year. Despite the fact there’s a lot of work to be done on them as they develop, I’m ahead of the game when it comes to weed control; I will still have to spray of course but the area has been defined and that work doesn’t need repeating.

    The seeds I planted, the spraying I did last year, the ample notes I took; the equipment that was purchased and the various handling systems that were developed, in the crudest sense, on tips from friends and stuff I learned on-line are all foundations that I have to build this year. It was fun; the drought not so much.

    I had hernia surgery a couple weeks ago. The before and after of it limited my physical activity dramatically, but was minimal in comparison to more serious long term situations others have to suffer, so I am greatly thankful. In another couple weeks, I’ll be back to mowing my own grass, planting trees. 

    At my post-op meeting, I asked the doctor to extend my convalescence another couple weeks as my wife has been doing all the work in my stead and I know I’ll never meet her higher standards. Laughing, he didn’t comply.