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- Life...A Changing Kaleidoscope August 2024
Life...A Changing Kaleidoscope August 2024
JOIN US... August 🌻 Celestial Fireworks 🌠 Milkweed Info 🦋 Aerobatic Swallows 🐦 Cartoon 😸 Plus Wit & Wisdom 🤔🦉❗️ 😻♥️
Mission Statement
Curated information to make small choices which impact our natural world and inspire us to nurture nature. Plus, a dose of wit + wisdom.
 | “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. It’s what the flowers do.” — Helen Keller |
What’s the state motto of California?
Whose 1965 state funeral was the first ever attended by a reigning British monarch?
What’s the square root of 900?
What race is the longest-lasting non-mechanical sports event?
Whole first hit song was Ain’t That a Shame?
Answers below.
 | Hello Friends, I for one am not unhappy to say goodbye to July. In my little part of the country, July was hot, hot, and humid. Plus, it seemed as though an albatross took up residence on the roof of my house. A metaphor of course, for a month-long chain of events which went from bad to worse. Hurray, that’s over! |
Welcome August — the strange in-between month which marks the end of summer and the start of fall.
The farm stand across the street is starting to fill with local produce, my garden is starting to fill with weeds and my tomatoes might just become ripe before Thanksgiving.
We made some subtle changes in our logo and still waiting for the updated website to make its internet debut.
The article about swallows rekindled my frustration at my attempts to entice barn swallows to my barn. I have tried everything to no avail. I grew up taking great joy each spring when we heard their melodious twitters as they returned to the nesting brackets all around our Connecticut house.
Next year I may just resort to putting on a ski hat, dark glasses and attempt a midnight “swallow-napping.”
See you in September. That wonderful school bus month.😻
Cheers!
 Photo by Joel Herzog | Natural Healing Part II: Wild Animals & CBD By T. J. Banks More and more often, Cannabidiol (CBD) oil is being viewed as a viable go-to therapy for cats and dogs. But does it work with wild or zoo animals? Ask Fedzia, a 23-year-old female Asian elephant in the Warsaw Zoo. |
Following the death of Erna, another elderly female elephant or cow in 2020, Fedzia began showing signs of severe stress. Elephant societies are matriarchal, and Erna had provided a buffer between Fedzia – the leader of the herd – and Buba, another 23-year-old cow. Without that buffer, Boss Fedzia was “more stressed and controlling” of Buba.
 Brad Sutton/National Parks Service | Natural Fireworks in the Sky Are you ready for the 2024 Perseids? Their peak is expected to be on the night of August 11 through the morning of the 12th, with good seeing to be had the nights before and after. |
You may have already spotted a few Perseids streaking across the summer skies! This shower, part of the debris stream of comet Swift-Tuttle, actually starts in mid to late July and lasts through most of August.
 | Milkweed - Saving Our Monarch Butterflies It’s not a weed, and it doesn’t produce milk, but the humble milkweed is one of the most important plants you can have in your garden. |
Unfortunately, many native plant species are mislabeled as weeds to the untrained eye but you and I know better than to judge a plant by its name!
Help Swallows, Nighthawks, and Flycatchers by Creating an Insect Buffet Birds that swoop or dart to catch bugs in flight are called aerial insectivores—and they need your help. |
By Robyn Bailey, Becca Rodomsky-Bish, and Holly Grant
Tree Swallows chase mayflies.
Graceful. Colorful. Helpful. You may have seen them in flight, swooping up, down, and all around, on the hunt for their insect prey. Then again, maybe not. Some are nocturnal. Camouflaged. Elusive.
But they all have one thing in common: birds that gulp down insects while flying—whether it’s dawn, dusk, day, or night—are known as aerial insectivores. In North America, this group includes species in the swallow and martin, swift, nightjar, and flycatcher families.
Cartoon created by Stephanie Piro
“Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.”
—Albert Camus
Eureka
Winston Churchill’s
30
The Tour de France
Pat Boone
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