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| Happy St. Patrick's Day to ya |
Yesterday, the rain let up for the first time in a week lone string of nine rainy days. It was time to hit the road to see my favorite time of the year when the song birds are singing, the hawks are selecting their mates and sitting their prettiest in the top of trees and poles. The buds springing out and flowers beginning to bloom will get an old man like me every time. Plus, as an added bonus, seeing fishermen in their boats up stream on White Rock Creek brings back a lot of memories of my dad. And, if all that didn't make me happy, the sun tried to reappear a few times along the way. My eyes just could not take the brightness---it had been so long since I had seen the sun. I even began to wonder if I was not in Texas any more.
With Dallas getting near 3-inches of rain (officially Dallas got .98 inches because DFW is the official collection gauge for Dallas) the night before. Love Field got the 3-inches, the former home of the official gauge. The water in the streams, creeks and at the lake were near but had been over the banks. Debris was everywhere and rivers of it were moving across the lake with the flow current.
As I went about the route that makes a full circle of the lake, I was looking for the pelicans that migrate here every Columbus Day. Wondering were they might have moved to when these kinds of conditions happen during their stay here over winter, my concern was growing as I covered all the places where they duck (pardon the pun) into during these unusual rearranging of the lakes silt and where sandbars have shifted where the pelicans like to hang out.
Then, out of the blue, it occured to me that there was more missing to this puzzle. The absents of the cormorants and seagulls were also noted. Then, my brain clicked on like a thermostat control (one of my old friends, a shrink, tells me that is called a Eureka Point) and I realized it was the third week of March--the time the pelicans head North again. These birds are social and they stay together. So where the time went is just mind blowing. The pelicans arrived and six weeks later I'm in the hospital. I get out and six weeks later plus 2-weeks for weather confinement and the pelicans are gone!! This season of migration, for the most part, came as it flew out of here almost without notice.
After the lake's tour it was on to my little grocery store to get a couple of fill in items. Once again, what's missing? EVERYTHING! The shelves as the news has been reporting were wiped out.
It was an instant live view of what my little store's customers are buying and not buying. The over all customer base did not buy the things I don't buy and they buy every thing that I do buy!!. It was better than listening to the news. This was first hand and live shopping---very live shopping during an unusual start to this year's first quarter.
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| Kestrel Hawk aka Sparrow Hawk |
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| Not Blue Bonnets Yet, but these are blue bells! |
If you live above the Mason-Dixon Line remember the annual heavy wet snow that falls two weeks either side of St. Pat's Day. Maybe, you will be the lucky one where it didn't fall, because it's coming. The Upper Level Low sitting off the coast of California tossing moisture at the High Sierra's left Truckee with a foot and a half of snow over night Sunday. It rained on Monday until the temps began to fall again and they got another dumping of snow. Problem is that with the virus alerts no one seems to be flying into the airport but the Amtrak's Zephyr is still pulling a consist of 11 cars. That's pretty normal for the Zeph! But, the traffic to the slopes is down somewhat. However, the ULL system is now moving east so history will show that someone is going to be getting that St. Pat's snow storm! With Brady leaving the Patriots--look out Boston! Mother Nature does dish out Karma ( you know that when you fail to replace the toilet paper and you are the next to use the toilet!). From the looks of the grocery shelves besides toilet paper, a lot of people have experienced some bad karma.Me included.
