Hard to keep up!

Moving is a lot of work! How's that for stating the obvious? Almost everything is packed. On Thursday, 9/30 5 men and 2 trucks are scheduled to appear at our house at 7:30am to schlep our stuff to the condo. We console ourselves that unpacking will be easier. At least we'll be on the downhill side.
Our contractor assures us the condo will be ready for occupancy in the next day or two. That means the all new floors, kitchen cabinets and counter tops, all new appliances, new shower, new vanities in the bathrooms, all woodwork, walk in closet with built ins, new opening from kitchen to great room, door closed off to den, new shelving, and everything painted will be complete. All than in just over 30 days! Yes...it did need some work. :)
We took this weekend off and are in Chicago where we got to babysit last night when Mai-Evy's
parents went out.

Grassland

Three years ago I was able to enroll some of my land into the Federal Conservation Reserve Program. Native grasses; Big Blue Stem, Switch grass and Side Oats Gamma were planted. The subsequent years have been very wet and idea for starting grass plantings. Now the Big Blue Stem is taller than I am. The Switch Grass is about 4 feet tall and the Side Oats Gamma about 3 feet.

In addition to soil preservation it makes wonderful wildlife cover. Many varieties of birds and mammals use it. There are also many butterflies and especially Monarchs who use the Milkweed for their larva.

It is one this land that I plant 6 acres of corn each year for winter food plots for wildlife. The last two years I sprayed much of the corn with Roundup which has given good control of the thistles. Therefore, I did not have to spray it this year because the other weeds do not spread on the wind like thistle seeds do. I cultivated it twice which was sufficient for the corn but left many weeds. With the abundant rainfall, at least double the average, the corn has grown well and so have the weeds. Any self respecting farmer would be ashamed to have such a field. But I'm delighted because my goal is wildlife cover. The corn and weed mixture; fox tail, wild sunflowers, rag weed, pig weed, etc., make wonderful habitat full of food that will feed the critters all winter.

In addition to the corn I also planted six acres of trees. They, too, have benefited from the abundant moisture and are growing rapidly. The varieties were chosen to provide winter cover and food for wildlife.

I'll enclose some pictures of the prairie grass.

Learnings

Ah so many details around moving. I thought that changing addresses online would be sooooooo easy! Wrong. It turns out that it is much easier to do by snail mail than online. The online process requires a password and much more rigmarole.
The house passed inspection with three small things to correct. Therefore we are still on schedule with plans to move on September 30, and close on this house on Oct. 4. Our contractor tells us the condo updates will be done on time.
I had pack almost two thirds of our stuff to stage our house. So I decided to pack the rest and only hire movers. Now I'm almost done packing, however, there are problems with that. During a hot spell I packed all our cold weather clothes forgetting that September can be cold. We had tickets to Prairie Home Companion at the State Fair on a cold evening. God show!