Some of my favorite TV shows involve drawing conclusions from evidence – The Closer, Law & Order SVU, Rizzoli & Isles, Harry’s Law, NCIS and more. I’m not an expert by any means, but even if I didn’t watch these shows, the evidence that lay before me was so obvious that there was only one conclusion to be drawn.
Are you ready to test your skills?
OK…Friday afternoon’s drive home from work gave me the first clue. This scene was repeated several times along the road.
Though I snapped a couple of pictures I put this out of my mind.
Until Saturday morning when I went out front to do my yard work. The front yard had several unexpected twiggy visitors scattered about…
Lest you think it was just a front yard issue, here are pix from the backyard!
By the time I finished cleaning up the front and back yards, my yard waste barrel was filled to the rim with these dried out twiggy things.
There was also a teeny problem with the butterfly bush in the front yard. I had to do some pretty serious pruning before tying it to a couple of stakes to once again make it stand upright.
And all of this pictorial evidence points to?
One heck of a wicked wind event!!!
So where did these unexpected visitors, also known as tumbleweeds, came from? Well, the ones on the wires relocated themselves from the field next to the poles, whereas the ones in my yard came from a field down the street or the one behind my house. In order to get into my backyard they had to climb up an 8′ tall block wall OR scoot across two backyards, up and over two 4′ tall cedar fences and one 4′ tall block wall. No matter which direction they came from, it’s a good thing they are covered with tiny little spokes that give them some grip as they scale telephone poles, block walls and everything else in their path!
Even when the tumbleweeds are green…
…they are NOT soft to the touch. I’ve pricked a few fingers in my weeding ventures when these guys need to be pulled out of the ground. They grow and grow and grow to all different sizes. I’ve seen a few green ones tumble around, but most of the time they are dried out brown masses of twigs – the plants dry out then one good gust and they’re off and running. One day last year I drove into a marching army of them. I was laughing so hard I forgot to reach for my camera. It soooooo looked like the western movies (except for the paved roads and moving cars of course).
Rarely do I have tumbleweeds in my yard, maybe 2 or 3 times in the six years I’ve lived in this house, so to have so many in one day clearly points to a wicked wind event. Too bad I wasn’t home to watch it!
Posted by ordinarybutinteresting 
