Welcome to my SkyWatch Friday post for this week, coming to you from a farm in the state of Iowa, in the U.S.A.
*******
Please visit the SkyWatch Friday website to find multitudes of links to SkyWatch Friday sites around the world!!
**********
Thanks again for visiting!
**********
Culver's Root, of the Snapdragon family, is saddled with the impossibly long scientific name of Veronicastrum virginicum. Other common names are Blackroot, Culver's Physic, High Veronica, and Tall Speedwell. The roots of this plant contain powerful chemicals that were used in folk medicine......so says my wildflower book, Tallgrass Prairie Wildflowers by Ladd and Oberle, published by Falcon Press.
I have done a previous post on Goat's Beard. This is simply its remaining seedhead. But what I hope you can see is the SHINY GOLD color of the strands, which makes this seedhead simply fascinating to gaze at as it shimmers in the late morning sun. It should be called "Gilded Goat's Beard" at this point!*************
*************
3. Winter Cress (I think)***Update 8/1: I think it may be a type of mustard plant.
It might be something else......if anyone knows, just tell me. I could be wrong about anything. The scientific name of Winter Cress is Barbarea vulgaris.
*************
*************
4. Queen Anne's Lace - Wild Carrot
The queen is actually Daucus carota, and when her flowers age, they curl up into a cuplike shape, and even into a ball, like this one.Click to see Queen Anne's Lace in black & white.
************
************
5. Common Mullein
************
************
There you have it.......the five Fascinating Flower Award-winners for today!
**********
**********
************
Yes, my niece and nephew loved the car racing game! Their family follows racing......they sometimes attend big races around the U.S. on their vacations.************
IF I knew the slightest thing about playing video games and was able to take part in this racing game, I would definitely choose to drive a VAN, because I spent 15 years hauling my kids around in a big, old Dodge van, our second home. The faithful, but rusty, old clunker still runs, although we don't use it much.......yesterday I moved it so I could mow the weeds popping up around it.
My nephew chose the purple cruiser. Looks like his sister should have used some CAUTION in her driving! Hopefully, these dear, precious children will never drive this fast in real life!!
After the car racing finish line was reached, it was on to Donkey Kong! If this game is relevant to anyone in my audience, please let me know!!!
***********Bloggers, go ahead and blog for an audience, or blog for yourself.......just keep blogging!
***********
(Caution.......I hope you didn't mind........the photos just fit right in, and I couldn't resist!)
Hm-m......they do appear to be a rather quiet, WORDLESS pair! In reality, the models for this painting were the artist's sister and the town dentist........I'd keep my mouth shut, too, if I were standing next to A DENTIST WITH A PITCHFORK IN HIS HAND!!!
*****************************
**************
I ordered a five-pound box from them, at a price of $9.00. Just now, I prepared most of them for freezing.......we like them in pancakes and muffins. But, eating them fresh is really my preference, and quite a few of them somehow ended up in my mouth while I was working with them.
***************
***************
Blueberries figured into a recent post on Egghead's blog, "The Little Egg Farm". This particular post was lovely, informative, and thoughtful........which come to think of it........describes her blog to a "T"! Therefore, I'm passing this shiny little "thinking blogger" award on to Egghead. And.....hey......the little guy on the icon looks like he IS an egghead!! Thus, blogger Egghead of Oregon has to be a perfect choice for this award!!
.JPG)
***********
.JPG)
*************
*************
Its a girl!! Other members of the Birth Committee step forward to do their duty........licking the calf's hide with their rough tongues, to clean her off and encourage her to stand. Its easy to read the calf's mind: "What on earth is going on......where am I.......what did I do to deserve this.......why am I being rubbed with sandpaper??"
************************
The Committee continues the cleaning task, using tongues to exhort, "Get up.....get up, little one!!" The calf soon obliges, unfolding her awkward legs for a brief moment of standing, then teeters and drops to the ground again. She'll be fine......it takes several tries before standing is successful and a few jerky steps taken-----the first of many in her hopefully long, comfortable, and productive life on this dairy farm. She's a girl calf, a heifer, meaning she will grow up to become a cow and give milk someday!
***********
***********
Oh, yes, there was one more Birthing Committee member, overseeing the whole event from a few feet away.........the ever-grinning Mr. Badger, from his perch on the feed bunk!! (Badger is the brand-name of a line of livestock feeding equipment. I think their signs are cute, that's all!)
***********
***********
Have a great day! I must now figure out what to name this new calf! Her mother is Rosa, so I'll try to come up with a similar name for the calf.
**********
**********
*********
**********
Ha! And, here you thought a rogue was "a tricky, dishonest, worthless, rascally person", or "a mischievous person", or "an animal with a savage nature that live apart from the herd"! A rogue can be any of those, of course, too.
**********
Back in my own detasseling days, we spent a day or two roguing before we started removing the corn tassels. For roguing, we carried a long-handled tool with a curved knife-blade on the end which was used to cut rogue cornstalks off at their base. (Watch your toes, please!)
**********
A rogue cornstalk is one that stands out by being taller and having more leaves. It must be eradicated so it won't replicate its weird, freakish self by fertilizing innocent, unsuspecting female cornsilk strands.
************
*************The refreshments were bright and delicious!
**************Husband's aunt made this beautiful pillow; she's a superb seamstress, and in recent years has acquired a sewing machine that does embroidery. Handy!!
***************Well, what do you know!! The weather decided to get in on the fun, too! If a storm can be considered fun, that is. The appropriate timeliness of the rain shower did give us bridal shower attendees a chuckle, however!
****************.JPG)
.JPG)
***********
***********
Happy Saturday evening!!
YYYYYYYY
Since I was there in the rustling corn environs, I decided to take a few photos for the blog, for the advantage of any readers who have arrived here from an alternate universe where corn doesn't exist.
*********
Pointing the camera upwards........this is the view........the cornstalks are way above my head by now, at probably eight to to ten feet tall. That would be absurdly tall for a human, but I don't think the corn will reach its normal height this year, due to late planting and adverse spring weather conditions.
The silks are rather pink and pretty.........they must be female, right!!?.JPG)
Well, after seeing all these amazing reproductory sights, I was ready to leave the confines of the soppy, wet cornfield.......my camera was getting dripped on. Corn plants are made to catch and hold water, which they do very well. Also, the sharp leaf edges are very apt to cause itching or slice your eyeball, so a cornfield is truly not a comfortable, safe place to spend much time in. And, if you have toddlers around.......it is one place you NEVER ever want them to end up lost in!!The cornstalks stubbornly barred my way from leaving the field, however, and threatened to STALK me in the future, unless I promised to add plenty of "CORN-trast" to one of their photos........which I tried to do with this final scene. I hope they are satisfied!! (They erroneously assumed I have Photoshop, but really it is archaic Picture-It........I didn't enlighten them.)
I also just realized that I failed to explain what "detasseling" is all about. Well.......you can probably deduce what it involves.........removing the tassel. That needs to be done in fields where the corn is being grown for seed. Usually there are two "male" rows to every six "female" rows, if I remember right. When I detasseled as a teenager, we would walk through the "female" rows------which had already had most of their tops cut off by a machine-----pulling out what remained of the tassels. The pollen from the two "male" rows would then pollinate the silks on the "female" rows. That is how different hybrids of corn are developed and produced for seed.
Detasseling was..... well...... not exactly the most pleasant job in the world, but when you're a teenager, just being with a group of your friends is fun.......so we usually had a pretty-darn good time. We'd laugh and gossip and joke our way across the fields. Most of the seed corn fields we worked in were located right south of Waterloo, Iowa, in Orange Township. I worked on DeKalb crews, if I remember right. We made $1.50 per hour! I pulled in $150 one summer, and, wow, did I ever feel wealthy!! It was used for back-to-school shopping, though.....:(
We'd start very early in the mornings, of course, when the cornfields were sopping wet. We'd quickly be drenched, our shoes caked with heavy globs of mud. Then the sun would rise higher and hotter in the sky and the fields would get very steamy. Yuck, yuck. Porta-potties had not yet been invented back in the Dark Ages of the early 1970's (also part of that murky era before the advent of cell phones, VCR's, CD's, DVD's, iPOD's). So-----if you can imagine-----we'd have to traipse into someone's farmhouse, in our dirty duds, to use the bathroom. I don't think we went in the fields......for there were boys' crews around, too. Nowadays, the crews are mixed, and when my daughter detasseled, she came home grossed out one day because she had accidently walked up to a boy who was relieving himself in the field. I'm happy our crews were segregated, I guess.
So, yes, if you weren't acquainted with the details of corn sax and detasseling before this......well, consider yourself informed, as of this reading! Aren't you lucky!! Actually, the truth is.......farms are saturated with SAX.......its all around! In the fields, in the barn, in the sheds......even the tractors get involved!! Egads.......hydraulic hoses and hook-ups on tractors have "female" parts and "male" parts. Imagine my mortification when I've been sent by Husband to get parts for the tractor and I have to speak these words across the counter to the poker-faced parts man: "I've been sent to get a male end for this hose.......do you have one that will fit?" And, yes, that's what they're called, officially......."male" and "female" ends! So, you have to say it that way!! And, people wonder why I'm so meek and quiet.
***********
***********
(Yes, the flies send an ambassador to immediately welcome and get acquainted with each new farm resident!) 
I------of the very short eyelash persuasion------wonders why on earth God blessed these fashion-consciousless animals with lovely, long, graceful eyelashes. They don't even care a bit! But, I suppose it does help keep the flies out of the eyes. Good thing the calves don't demand mascara.......we'd go broke trying to keep them supplied in that!
*****************
*****************
Hey.........here's few links I picked up from this week's SkyWatch Friday..........that's the hazard of surfing that fascinating site........falling in love with more beautiful blogs!
The Road Less Photographed (Indiana) (I love that blog's name!)
******
Country Captures (Pennsylvania)
******
Photographic Memories (Indiana)
*******
Raboul Daily Photo (New Guinea)
*******
O Meu Espacinho (Switzerland)
*******
Of course, I could have latched onto many more links to equally excellent sites! Better yet, why don't you just surf on over to SkyWatch Friday yourself and explore the skies around the world!!
*******
Have a great day!!
.jpg)
.JPG){kind=link}