I normally “brown-bag” it for lunch and sometimes I’ll
quickly eat leftovers from supper that we enjoyed the night before and I’ll
grab my keys, leave the office and just take a drive. Do you ever do that? Just drive around with no particular
destination in mind? It certainly beats
being indoors in a little office staring at four walls. It doesn’t take me but about five minutes to
be out in the country, away from emails and phones ringing. There’s a lot to observe driving down country
roads. Not long ago on one of these same
roads, I showed you IN THIS POST some coyotes hanging on a fence that a successful cattleman
was able to kill. Killing time and
killing coyotes are just a couple of things you can do when you are on a back
road in ruralville.
On this particular day a strong Gulf breeze was blowing
out of the south bringing with it warm, humid air that smells salty, although I
could be imagining that, but the Gulf of Mexico isn’t far away. Clouds were building up on this day and the
skies were darkening and as the day’s heating wears on, it almost guarantees an
afternoon thundershower or two. This is
a pattern that plays itself out over and over again during the summer, so much
so that it becomes redundant in the local weatherman’s report.
As the wind gusted, I noticed another pattern that
happens every year at this time. I don’t
know the name of the grass, it looks like it may be in the panicum family or
perhaps switchgrass or purpletop. I’ll
call them “Louisiana tumbleweeds” since I don’t know for sure what it is, but
at this time every year, the tops of this grass that is native to this area
blows off and flies through the air, and accumulates on any obstruction that
might be in its way as it blows across the Cajun prairie, spreading its
seedhead and seeds.
As I drive in a southwesterly direction on this back
road, I observe the ‘Louisiana tumbleweeds” were caught in all five strands of
a cattleman’s barbed wire fence, creating a pretty neat visual as far as you
can see as the sun’s rays illuminated its golden color on the fence.
Well, it is almost 1 o’clock and about time for the
southerly breeze to blow this “Louisiana tumbleweed” back to the office…
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