Today was a little busy for blogging. But I got out the camera on the way home from town as a thunderstorm was rolling towards Saskatoon behind me. The yellow flowers are canola, and the bloom is actually beginning to wane – the colour on the fields was a little more intense last week. Driving through the countryside, canola perfume hangs in the air – subtle and pleasant. About 40% of the farmland in this region is planted with the oilseed this year. The aerial view must be spectacular.
I had almost forgotten what it was like. Three years of dust storms, unrelenting heat, grasshoppers, high wind, barren pastures and withered crops. This region of the province had a drought that surpassed that of the 1930’s – the land saved only by modern no-till cropping methods.
(Dust storm, late May 2002. The street looking west from my house.)
But this year, the rainfall has been normal, the dust storms are gone. Summer heat was slow to arrive and crops are late, but they’re healthy and catching up fast. And the cold and wet meant trillions of grasshoppers perished, unhatched.
If anyone is considering a road trip into this province, this is the year, this is the time.
Why doesn’t the Saskatchewan government name you Photographer Laureate for the province?