The Changelog

Many of you probably know what this means. That was what I saw early this morning when the weather woke me up. I went downstairs and checked the weather on the Internet. And sure enough, a line of thunderstorms was slowly moving across pretty much all of Kansas.

This morning, when we woke up, our driveway looked like this:



It was a calm, still, pleasant scene. Birds were chatting, rabbits were hopping, and there were soft rumbles of thunder in the distance. This must be why Terah says she likes thunderstorms.

On the other hand, thunderstorms make me nervous. Given the right conditions, severe thunderstorms can spawn tornadoes with little warning.

Friday night, most of Greensburg, KS was destroyed. So far, 9 people have been confirmed dead. Estimates are that 90% of the town's structures are lost. You can see the damage in aerial and land pictures. I know that Greensburg will rebuild, better than before. Tornadoes don't seem to ever scare people off. They seem to just make them more determined than ever to stay where they are because it's home.

There are a lot of beautiful fall colors that will be showing up in forests around the world shortly.

But here in Kansas, we get a little jump on the colors because this is sunflower season.

If you drive around Kansas this time of year (roughly August and September), you'll see sunflowers all over the place. The wild sunflowers thrive anywhere there's nobody to plow them under or mow them down. If you pick the right country road, you can drive along and see what looks like a yellow wall in the distance. As you get closer, you realize that you're seeing sunflowers growing along a small stream or creek, though they've completely hidden it.

Although I grew up here, I had never really paid attention to the sunflowers. Back in 2002, as we were moving to Kansas from Indiana, Terah noticed the wild sunflowers. She'd never seen wild sunflowers and has really enjoyed them ever since (and so have I).

So, here are some sunflower photos, for those of you that have never had the chance to travel some of the back roads of Kansas.

First we start with a small bunch of wild sunflowers:



This small patch is growing in the ditch by our farm (our house is in that clump of trees in the background). These sunflowers are pretty young, so they aren't very tall yet. Also, there's a butterly fluttering around in that photo.

Most of the wild sunflowers get much taller than these. They seem to usually grow to about 5 to 7 feet (1.5 - 2.1m) tall. Here's a taller patch, about 1/2 mile away from the first one:



Neither of these two example photos show a very "deep" view of a group of sunflowers, because they are so dense that it's hard to really see what the individual plants look like in such a photo.

But here's a photo of a sunflower field:



These sunflowers don't grow as tall as their wild cousins, but their flower heads are quite a bit larger. This type of sunflower can be found many places. Wild sunflowers like we have here can be found in different places, too, but I've never seen them so common as here in Kansas.

You've just arrived in the country in some quiet midwestern state. You know, one of those flat ones. You're in the kind of place where the sky is black at night, not orange. The kind of place where you can see stars, planets, and galaxies at night. The kind of place where the loudest noise at night comes from insects.

Sounds peaceful, right?

Then all of a sudden, you hear a frightful noise. Sounds like somebody is screaming. What's going on? Then more people start screaming. Are you in danger? Are there some redneck muggers out there?

Nope. Chances are you're hearing several of these:


This is a coyote. It's rare to see one, but common to hear them at night. On a calm night in Kansas, you can probably hear them from almost a mile away.

The sounds that they make can sound amazingly human-like at times. I tried to find some good recordings, but I couldn't. The closest I could find was this page -- try listening to the long howl and the coyote pack. (Unfortunately, there's a lot of background noise on the coyote pack recording)

Terah was scared the first time she heard these, and didn't believe me for awhile that they were coyotes.

So why am I telling you this?

Well, mainly because I'm surprised at how many people have never heard coyote packs howling. If you've lived all your life in a city, that's quite possible.

Plus, Cliff provided some inspiration. (Great post, Cliff)

PS... For those of you not keeping track very closely, this story was posted on March 31 local time, and is not an April Fool's joke.

This photo is public domain from the Wikipedia entry on coyotes.