Before harvest time

I don't think I've posted many photos from 28 July 2014, when I drove along some of the dusty, gravel backroads SE of the city. It was another really hot day, so I just had to get out of the house and into the air-conditioning of my vehicle. Some of the fields were still pure gold - I liked this one with beautiful grasses growing along the edge. I love driving a gravel road, surrounded by vibrant yellow. Looked like some of the Canola fields had already lost their colour, though.

Birds seen that afternoon/evening included a Barn Swallow, a young Marsh Wren that was enjoying a dust bath, a single young Sora, several Coots including one young one, two or three different species of shore bird (will eventually post photos, but I may not have the IDs), American Avocets, a couple of Swainson's Hawks, a lone White-faced Ibis on one of the small sloughs in the area. and a Meadowlark (looking rather scruffy, so it may have been a young one).

There are 15,000 Canola producers in Alberta. Canola is one of the healthiest vegetable oils, if not the healthiest.

"Canola refers to both an edible oil (also known as Canola oil) produced from the seed of any of several varieties of the rape plant, and to those plants, namely a cultivar of either rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) or field mustard (Brassica campestris L. or Brassica Rapa var.). The oil is suitable for consumption by humans and livestock, and for use as biodiesel." From Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola