Mowing in the Dark

I may have mentioned before that my neighbor behind us and to the south is...odd. She is the one who had raccoons living in her house when she was in the house next door to us (to the north). She wouldn't close up the corner hole in her roof under the eave because birds and squirrels made their homes in there. She wouldn't let us trim the viney stuff that climbed from her tree across the fence and onto our deck. That's not to say we didn't do it anyway, but she threw a fit about it afterwards. Same as when we tried to trim the low-hanging limbs from her trees hanging over our house....you get the idea. We aren't "tree-killers" or against nature or anything like that, but we also don't want nature crashing down on us or living in our attic. That makes us bad people in her eyes. Generally, people know that most trees and bushes need a bit of trimming in order to grow and remain healthy...except for her, of course. She likes to keep things in their natural state. To this end, she doesn't trim any of the vegetation and when she mows she doesn't also weed eat, she just mows around everything so there are patches of tall grass all over the place. She also doesn't move tables, chairs, bikes, or the pieces of whatever thing has broken and been thrown outside - she just mows around it. Of course when the grass gets tall enough it kind of hides the junk, so I guess it's working for her. She's a bit of a hippie, and the neighbors who were around then tell us that she let her children play outside naked well up into elementary school and they didn't stay in their own yard with their nakedness, either. (Apparently the neighbors frown on this type of behavior...Good to know ;) LOL.) The front porch of her house she's living in now is some kind of greenhouse - it's been glassed in and there are grow lights and it is lit up all night with that purplish glow. I know, it looks really suspicious, but I'm pretty sure she isn't growing weed in there...

So anyhoo, the weather has been really hot here lately and very humid. It's normal for folks to either mow very early before it gets hot or in the evening when it cools off some, right? I think we can agree that mowing after dark without a light of some kind is not only difficult, but potentially hazardous. This woman only mows at night. I kid you not - we have never seen her mow during the daylight hours. We have occasionally seen her begin to mow at twilight, but mostly we go out late at night to let the dogs out and she is out there mowing...in the dark. We honestly don't know how she's doing it without a light. A lot of times, we go to bed and her yard is un-mowed. When we get up, it's been mowed - almost like the yard fairies came out and did it while everyone was sleeping. Hubby gets up really early to go to work and it's mowed. That means sometime during the hours after 11:00pm and before 5:00am she has mowed. Last night she was out there in the dark, no flashlight, and no headlight on the riding lawnmower. How does she do it? Why? I don't think she mows naked or anything, so why only mow at night when it's dark and nobody can see anything, including yourself? Weird, right?

Magicicada www.magicicada.org

Annual or Dog Day Cicada www.marietta.edu

I still haven't seen many fireflies out - just one or two at a time, really. Not enough to put in a jar and admire, certainly. Usually by now they are thick! Locusts (cicadas, really, but remember that people here call them locusts) will be thick by August and they are loud! Apparently there are two kinds of cicadas: periodicals and annuals. Periodicals, or Magicicadas, are the ones that stay underground for 13 to 17 years and emerge in late May to early June on a schedule in large numbers. These are somewhat smaller than the annual or "dog day" cicadas that emerge every year here in midsummer, and they look a little different, as you can see by the photos. If you're interested, you can read an article about an anomaly that occurred in Kansas a couple of years ago with the periodical cicadas emergence. It said that those that were due to emerge in 2011 didn't show and there is supposed to be an emergence of periodical's this year (2013) as well. It doesn't say, but it seems to this average Joe that there's something wrong this year as well, because I haven't seen or heard any at all, and according to the article's information, I should be hearing them. At the bottom of that article is a link to a chart about cicadas, their brood numbers and locations, etc. Also, since I'm tossing out links, http://www.firefly.org/ is a good place for info on those magical little creatures.

I'm leaving you with a shot looking out over Kansas farmland taken from the back of the motorcycle a while back. You can see a long way into the distance as there are no mountains that interrupt the view. In this section of Kansas we have low rolling hills, so we aren't as flat as Western Kansas. I'm from California originally and we spent a lot of time camping in the mountains, so I miss them a lot, but an unending view of the prairie is quite lovely too.