The Draw of the Tumbleweeds

Rollin', rollin', rollin...

see those tumbleweed rollin'

Rollin', rollin', rollin' on by!

Tis the season of the tumbleweed!

See all those bushy like things out in that field? Well those are the curse of SW Kansas. Russian thistle.

They may look nice and green most of the year, I wouldn't know, drought you know, but this time of year is when they dry up and get blown all over. To give you an example; last weekend I was driving and for about a mile stretch tumbleweeds were constantly blowing across the road. I bet I saw at least 50 blow across the road in that one mile. DR and I have a game we play this time of year when we drive. We try to time it just right to hit the tumbleweeds as they roll across the road. It's quite a sight to see them obliterate! The chain link fence at the high school football field is covered with tumbleweed that has been blown in these last couple weeks!

For my boys tumbleweeds are cool! Of course they are cool to them. They've only seen them the last year and they've associated them with cowboys. I imagine their affection for tumbleweed would be similar to a Kansan's fascination with Indiana Morning Glory. Cool to look at, a pain to deal with.

The locals already think we are strange with our Purdue Boilermaker gear so I'm sure they thought this little scene was hilarious to them. The boys took off for about 30 minutes and came back with a long row of tumbleweeds tied to one of the bikes!

Oh my. And they are coming straight to our house with all those tumbleweeds! I can hear all the neighbors giggling right now,

"Those crazy Hoosiers!"

Yep, you can't see it but Yip there is pushing his bike attached to all those tumbleweeds right into our front yard.

Ha! It took those two silly boys a good half an hour to get the rope and tumbleweeds off their bike. They only work this well together when they are making a mess. Namely spreading a weed all over my front yard.

When I asked them what they were going to do with it they said, "We don't know...maybe we'll make a tumbleweed snowman out of them." Of course, since we don't get snow.

Now wouldn't that be a sight. Maybe I'll get lucky and stiff wind will blow the tumbleweed away before they can get to work on that project!