Warm Cloudy Night, Full Moon and Meteor Shower

Was a full moon and the clouds rolled in yesterday. I could hear thunder miles away up the mountain where the clouds touch the ground along with the lightning. There's that annual meteor shower going on but the moons like takes that away to a point. If you face north with the moon to your back you should see them. It's not just one night if you hear it on the news but a period where it goes from a few per hour to many per hour as we pass through the debris of a comet that has gone by.

Was out on the porch with my little friends when I saw one buddy that walked a was to get here and was covered with the Velcro like seeds. I got a hair brush and started brushing her. She didn't mind and sort of backed into the brush. I could tell as I pulled the seeds out it was pulling on her hair and she would make a little sound but didn't run away. She didn't like me brushing her tail and would drop it away from me. I resorted to picking them off one at a time. It's amazing when the wildlife sense your helping them they don't get upset at all.

I'm not sure how to get rid of these plants from growing here. I haven't found any wildlife or insect that takes advantage of them. I've been pulling out the none native grass hoping that would cut down them from growing next year. In the past I've mowed them down but that just seem to reseed them. I don't like the idea of using Roundup early in the year because there are plants that the deer eat. There are also tree frogs everywhere. A little 1.25 to 2 inch frog that you never see but hear at night. I've seen what Roundup does to yard, you end up with dirt. I have enough erosion that I don't need any more. It's like slow moving mass in motion over time.

Having tall grass helps out the baby deer hide and keeps the baby turkeys out of sight. I've been watch a mother turkey and it's only baby walking around getting seeds and bugs. There's horse flies going after everything big standing up mainly the deer. There' another bug that's black and flies around like a bee. Getting a lot of yellow jackets this time of year. I put out traps for them and there has been dozens of the yellow jacket that flew inside them. I see a lot of termites swarming at night around the light. One of them I think is a queen termite flutters around and if they get close to the raccoons, they are chewing on them catching them out of the air.

They cut down a lot well many acres of trees in the park next to me. Now it's about 10 degrees hotter here in the hot summer months. The Manzanita trees kept the sun from hitting the ground which now dries out in summer. It had a whole ecosystem going on there but a guy from the USDA came out and said he knew what was going on. So they ran over the trees and ground them up with a dozer and grinding machine on the front. The only thing growing back is poison oak bushes so far. The guy at the park was saying all the trees would grow so fast but it's been 5 years and it's still a void. No animals go there because of the heat. The deer don't cross the waste land because they are afraid of breaking their legs. Even with my big boots on, these are boots for rock and mountain climbing and still it's hard for me to walk across. They didn't seed the place so I don't know how pines and oaks are going to grow there. Any seeds that may find there way up there soon die because of lack of water and heat. It's going to take a century for the hills to be covered again. When you get someone that doesn't know the place come in and say he's going to return it to a natural setting  you have to wonder what good he is going to do. It was covered in natural plants and now it's not. I think they did this for the homes on one side of the park to prevent fires mainly the houses burning up at the expense of the forest and wildlife. There are still scars of hydrolic mining done over 150 years ago. They still haven't recovered.