LOTS OF EXCITEMENT ON HWY. 13

BAD ACCIDENT ON HWY. 13

PURPLE LOOSESTRIFE...

...FLOWERS

Tuesday, 8:00 AM.  73 degrees F, 78% humidity.  Wind W, calm to very light.  The sky is mostly blue but the atmosphere  is rather hazy.  It was a nice evening and it is a nice morning, but it will be hot again today and we need rain badly.  The Tree Board volunteers watered all the newly planted city trees yesterday and I think we will have to do so on a weekly basis if the drought keep up.
    We ran errands in Ashland yesterday, and a lot was happening on Hwy. 13, some not so good.  On the way, about 11:30 AM, a rather large young bear dashed across the road in front of us and disappeared into the tall grasses of the Whittlesly Creek Wildlife Area just north of the intersection with US Hwy 2.  Its hard to say what he was up to, but he acted as though he was late for lunch.  There was no time to grab the camera.  He was lean and rangy, looking more like a huge black dog than a bear.  On the way back we pulled over for numerous emergency vehicles heading towards Ashland.  Turns out there was a horrific accident just north of Washburn, which looked like there was only one car involved, that had rolled over numerous times. There must have been multiple serious injuries, I hope no deaths.
    Also on Hwy. 13, between the Sioux and Onion Rivers, I found this patch of purple loosestrife, Lythrum salicaria, a member of the Lythrum family. It is a tall perennial which is very invasive in native wetlands.  It is quite pretty, is of European origin and is a garden escapee that is now on the state Invasive Species Restricted list. The population had been exploding until the rather recent introduction of a beetle that feeds specifically on the species.  Loosestrife populations have obviously been declining since, so the beetle introduction is a success. Like many other things in life, if it would just behave itself we could allow some of it to hang around.  Let’s just hope the beetle doesn’t find another host species after it runs out of purple loosestrife.
    The NRA is getting hammered by the Left for its defense of our Second Amendment rights after the Colorado massacre.  And now we will be asked, over and over again by the same pundits, to empathize with the defendant with the red hair and the creepy stare who has been brought before the bar of justice.  Governor Huckabee had  it right the other night, when he said; “We don’t have a gun problem, we have a sin problem.”