Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Thursday’s Thoughts #18.
Good morning to all of you on this beautiful Thursday! I hope everyone is feeling well and enjoying your day! Here it is cloudy, windy and we are supposed to get some showers today. There is actually supposed to be a lot of clouds and showers over the next few days, and a bit cool too, on the long weekend coming up. But it is September now, so we need to expect that. People have been asking, so here are a few stats. Officially our fire season runs from April 1st to October 31st, so we have more time to go. Our worst fire season on record has been 1961 when approximately 1,530,000 acres burned.
This year we already broke that record with 1,537,000 acres burned, and still nearly 2 months to go. This is just for the northwestern region of Ontario. So far we have had 706 forest fires, but taking in the whole province there has been 1,174 fires. The yearly average is 766 fires. The record number of fires for our region was in 1976 with 2,092 fires, but not as much area was burned. This part of Ontario is huge, so even with all this land having been burned, there is still so much that hasn’t been touched. And trees will begin to grow the very next year, and sometimes even the same year. Many plants and shrubs begin to grow the same year.
But it does take 70 to 100 years to get the pine and spruce trees back to where they were, even longer as you go further north. Fires this year have burned deeper so it can take longer for those areas to come back to life again. Speaking of turkeys. Theodore didn’t show up yesterday. I guess he just wanted to say hello. Likely he is getting enough natural food still so he doesn’t need anything extra. The blue jays, at least 11 of them, and the chipmunks are sure busy this morning. And they have really gotten to the point where they tolerate each other enough that they will sit side by side picking up their food. I haven’t yet been able to get a picture of that though. But I will keep trying. Muffin is in a frisky mood this morning and I think she wants someone to play with, which means me. Have a great day everyone and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
Steve And Muffin’s Weekly Art In Nature #2.
Hi everyone! Welcome back! As I have mentioned many times, art can be found in nature in so many ways and so many places! In the picture above we can see a colorful array of lily pads heralding the arrival of fall. This is a season where nature’s art can be seen in abundance everywhere we look. But in reality, nature’s art is abundant any time of the year. However, in fall it just seems to explode all around us, especially in it’s magnificent colors that abound everywhere. Though I guess in some areas of the world fall is not quite so pronounced as it is in other places. Yet nature’s art can be found in every place. Have a great day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 