Louisiana Tumbleweed

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…