Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

I have hoses in my garage that I usually string out around the yard to keep at least some green in my yard most summers.

That hose is still in the garage and hasn’t moved since I parked it there last fall. There has been no need for it this year, it has rained just about every week since last spring and I don’t think I have ever had a lawn that was so consistently thick and green.

Recently I was listening to Mark Seeley on Minnesota Pubic Radio talk about the weather. He’s a weather guy and the author of the Minnesota Weather Almanac.

He said that this summer west central Minnesota was about 15 inches above normal in terms of rainfall. I sure can believe that!

Even weeks when we were told that it might be dry we ended up getting rain and not just a little sprinkle, often a half inch or more.

Not only has my yard been nice but just about everything else has been growing like crazy. On my adjacent lot I had burdocks that were six and seven feet tall. In a walk through Barsness Park I saw thistles that were the same size. I’ve never seen those weeds that large, in a normal year I would have considered about half that size large.

(I did whack the burdocks down so they didn’t get a chance to spread too much seed around.)

Driving through Pope County and looking at farm fields it sure seems the corn is mighty healthy and the beans look very good too.

While the extra water may have been hard for some to get crops in, the regular rainfalls seem to have made up the difference.

Near the end of June we attended a Minnesota Newspaper Association event in Austin. Crops south of here did not look good at all. Of course south of here there are a lots of flatter fields and they suffered from standing water.

Of course the lawn mower has been busy, too. It hasn’t been so bad that a person puts the mower on idle, grabs lunch and then starts over again, but the usual (for the past few years) once a week mowing or once every 10 days to two weeks starting in August has been more like once every 4-5 days all summer long. If one didn’t keep up he could get behind and trying to mow 12-inch grass would be hard!

I would have to think that all this rain would be good for our aquifer. We’ve been taking water out of it for years without putting much back. This year I would suspect we’re putting water back and not drawing as much out, either, with all the natural rainfall.

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Have you noticed many trees are turning color already? I’ve seen maples starting to turn along with many other trees. One doesn’t think of that so much when it has been so summer like since May. But now we’re through August and fall will soon upon us.

I’ve also got a tree, I think it’s a cottonwood, that is already shedding leaves so it is time to get the leaf collecting equipment on the mower.

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One other place the water has been nice is up at the Minnewaska Golf Club. The course is probably as green as it has ever been with all of this rain.

I was talking with another golfer recently and we’ve discovered our average scores have gone up five or six strokes.

The reason is that the roughs are really rough. It is a real penalty to go into the rough.

Normally the roughs have taller grass but it is thinner and not much of a problem. This year the rough is thick. In many places it is wisest just to chip out of the rough and onto the fairway. Learning this lesson costs many strokes!

I guess we should be thankful for all of this water. It seems to make a lot of things healthier and maybe we’re storing a little for future use!