Killer Bees!

According to a post at the Hard Copy board, Africanized bees have moved as far north as Rio.

Be careful out there.

Pray for solution to invasive species?

At Invasive Species Blog:

There's an interesting little piece in today's Christian Science Monitor about an invasive species control method that I must admit I have never considered: prayer. The author of the article notes that global efforts to manage invasive species are stalled by politics and by social issues, and goes on to suggest praying as something that can be done right now and that could inspire folks to come up with potential solutions and lead to greater cooperation.

Hey, why not? What with local nurseries selling invasive Ligustrum (privet), there's a lot of material to pray about.

Dear Lord,

I never thought I'd ask you
To strike the shrubbery dead
And brown the foreign fescue
Which fills my heart with dread.

While you're on this killing spree
Please smite the nasty tallow tree.
If you're inclined to really hustle,
Zap to death the zebra mussel.

Formosan termites need a blast,
As does that thug called Johnson grass.
Fire ants, kudzu, Ligustrum vulgare,
A list too long for this brief prayer.

Take no prisoners, leave no seed,
Thanks for helping in my hour of need.
Amen.

Global warming?

That's what must be to blame for this unseasonably cool weather, huh? LOL.

Possibility of sleet was predicted, but I didn't see any - though we weren't up all night. Gentle rain falling on the hacienda now.

We spent a lot of time spreading mulch over the newly sprouted beans and such, to save them from being beaten to death by falling ice. I'm glad it wasn't needed, although the kids sure would like to see weather weirdness.

NWS screen shot this a.m. - click to enlarge:

The heat is on!

Suffocating temps are on the way, and we get a sneak previous of that in April.

Check your air conditioning filter. Change it or wash it.

For the window units, best thing is if you can remove them, take off the outer housing, spray with water and brush the dirt off the coils. Let dry in the sun, reassemble and slide back into place. Dirty coils can be one reason they'll "freeze up" with ice and/or leak water into your room.

The cost of electricity only goes up, so it makes sense to keep your a/c operating as efficiently as it can, by cleaning it yearly, and changing/washing the filter monthly.*
---------------

* Clean/change filter more often if your equipment is exposed to a lot of dust.

My eyes! My eyes!

I can tell every year when spring is well underway; the populous areas of Washington Parish turn a screaming, bilious hot pink.

Azaleas. They're everywhere. The South is overloaded with 'em, along with crape myrtle (more pink!) and Loropetalum (even more pink!). I won't get into those dang Bradford or Callery pears, which should all be torn out (they're invasive). Thank goodness they aren't pink, y'know?

We have many charming native shrubs which are waaaay underused.

If you've gotta go with azaleas, choose native cultivars. They are a shy but lovely ballerina next to the big, blowsy hot pink things that hurt my eyes. And they're often fragrant.

MSU Extension Service published a nice page with pics detailing 30 native shrubs for your landscape. Some are fragrant; many provide wildlife food.

And they don't hurt my eyes ;-).

Coming soon: A rant on invasive plants.

Global warming?

Wishing ain't gonna make it so:

Entergy said this winter has been colder than any since 2003-04...Link.

Heh.

Tonight's headline at Drudge [click to enlarge]:

Weather follies

Hard to figure out to wear when there are such disparate weather reports. Both are screenshots from today, early a.m. Note the temperatures:

New blog and group

I was lurking in a Usenet group and ran into a link for this Time magazine article [excerpt]:

A little over a year ago, 10 friends got together in San Francisco over a potluck dinner. There were a few teachers, a technology marketer, an engineer, a dog handler. What would it be like, they wondered amid the Christmas shopfest, if they all pledged not to buy anything new except food, medicine and essential toiletries for a year? Thus was born a movement that they named, in a light-hearted way, after the 1621 Mayflower Compact. "We are a group of individuals committed to a 12-month flight from the consumer grid," they wrote in a chat-room manifesto that lists their aims as going "beyond recycling," reducing clutter in their homes and simplifying their lives: "Borrow, barter or buy used."

Here's the San Francisco blog.

I've begun a blog for Louisiana. Posts coming this p.m.

The Louisiana Compact Yahoo Group. Ya'll are invited to join :-).

The huge The Compact Yahoo Group.

So far, it's been a warm winter...

... though we've got another cold spell headed our way. Down to around 30 at night in a few days.

Wild azaleas in the woods are budding, and trees are beginning to leaf out. It's the middle of January, and they're acting like it's March. I saw many big tulip poplars that Katrina laid down still alive :-). We have a horizontal forest.

It will be a shame if a hard frost kills the tender new growth - especially for trees and shrubs that are still trying to recover from the storm's battering.

I took cuttings of the azalea. If I can't enjoy it in the woods this year, I'll see some blooms near my desk.

Could be worse. Dallas-Ft. Worth has an ice storm warning goin' on.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...

Excitement at Lake Peigneur:

Lake Peigneur, which drained into a salt mine after an oil rig accident 26 years ago, was bubbling Thursday morning, area residents said.

Richard Suire, a retired oilfield worker who lives on the lakefront, said he saw it when he let the dog out Thursday morning. "It was bubbling up probably a foot and a half high, and 15 feet north and south, and about two to three feet wide," he said.

More reading on the 1980 Lake Peigneur disaster.