On the Shady Side

These lovely sky blue asters (both their common name and an apt description of their unique color) are starting to bloom profusely in my yard's shade garden.  

Another shade-dweller -- mistflower -- is coming into full bloom now as well!

Firsts and Lasts in Purple

The very first of the New England Asters are starting to bloom (though most aren't yet)... I see these, I think fall!

The very last of the purple coneflowers are still hanging on, though most are to seed like the one on the left!

Updates

After days of wind and chill, cloud and drizzle, today is a beautiful, sunny (and, I should add, windless) fall day.

Today is one of those days when, as you walk , swarms of grasshoppers jump out of the way, a constant wave of motion preceding you by a foot or two... 

Also still around: dragonflies (though green darners aren't so common anymore, mostly the red ones), butterflies (not monarchs, but sulphurs and whites), bees and wasps.

In the bird world, there are grebes on the lake (above, tiny) and goldfinches are officially brown, not gold.  This happened a few days ago but today I was watching a few eat seeds.  (No photo, though, they don't sit still!)

The prairie is looking autumnal, with lovely colors in the grasses.  The only flowers left in full bloom out there are the asters... New England a vibrant purple, and also the little weedy white ones. 

Bluestem shows its true colors... red.  (This is little bluestem.  Big bluestem is purpler, but neither is blue!

 In the tree world, sugar maples are turning... I'd estimate about 30% of them have gone orange.  The rest are still thinking about it.  Red maples look like this:

Prairie Plants

Peak bloom for New England aster, and clouds of bees hovering around it...

Goldenrod actually past peak, some plants are still in full flower but many, like these, aren't as bright yellow, have brown setting in...

Letting Go

Upon returning from my trip up north, what I notice most about my native prairie habitat isn't what's here but what's gone.  When I left, there were a lot of hangers-on... plants that were well past their peak bloom, but there were still a few left.  But, despite hot weather all week, a lot of the hangers on have let go, and in their place there are only seed-heads.  Among those things that are now totally absent:

• purple coneflower (peak bloom early July, but some of those things hang on forever)
• wild bergamot (peak bloom also late June'early July, but a few lasted)
• mountain mint
• blazing stars (even the rough ones are pretty much gone)
• ironweed
• yellow coneflower
• cup plant

So now, the prairie is dominated mainly by grasses and DYCs, especially goldenrod.  A lot of goldenrod this time of year!  A few NE asters (DPCs?) add a little purple color to the mostly yellow hues.

Here's one exception... I just this weekend noticed this boneset in bloom.  Either it really just started (Several Eupatorium species do bloom late!) or I missed it for all the other things going on! 

First of the Last

New England Aster is, if not the last, then one of the last flowers to bloom in the prairie each year.  Most of them haven't started flowering yet at all, but this one, for whatever reason, has.  A sign of fall impending... 

The Birds and the Trees

Acorns are littering the ground underneath the bur oak trees...
Aspen trees are yellowing and leaves are blowing off during windier moments.

This morning was a bird-heavy morning. I saw grebes in the lake, disappearing and reappearing in new spots; mallards dabbling, geese flying south, and a heron stalking some prey. RWBBs were also very active, dipping and diving as my students disturbed them. Also saw goldfinches and some other LBBs, plus a chickadee. Oh, and gulls. In less than an hour, and I wasn't looking for birds. So it's a bird-heavy day.

Other notes:

• milkweed pods are splitting open and spilling their seeds.
• Very few purple asters are left -- just a few New England's remain. A lot of white ones are still flowering, though.
• Goldenrod are also going to seed.
• Grasshoppers are sluggish but coming out this morning...

Summer's Still On!

Every day for the past few weeks, the cool night-time temperatures have caused the early mornings to be dewey, if not completely foggy. Every morning the world is weighed down with water, heavy drops that will burn off by about 10 am. But for a while, its magical -- although it makes for wet walking. The spider webs are among the most beautiful parts; here are two from this morning, taken in front of a friend's house. Above is a crazy web that covered every part of the seed head of a foxglove; and to the right, a perfect orb web.

Gentian has gotten its purple color, making it the last new flower of 2009 (at least in my yard). I do expect the color to deepen some... I find them to be especially interesting because even when the flowers are in full bloom, they look like a bud that is getting ready to open. They never do. But they are insect pollinated, mostly by bees or other large bugs that can force their way into the closed-up petals. Later, these petals will dry up and become a pouch containing a bag-full of little seeds!

A late-summer surprise... Each year I plant cosmos. They are not, honestly, in my normal gardening style, but I cannot resist them. They seem almost whimsical to me, laughing in color and slender leaves. And they seem somehow untamed, despite their non-wild-ness. So this year, as in past, I bought some babies at our school/farm's organic plant sale, and they bloomed earlier but I didn't really mention them here, because I don't really think you can count, as a phenological occurrence, the blooming of a plant that was started in a greenhouse. They could bloom at any time. But we had three hearty ones that self-seeded from last year's dead heads. They emerged and grew taller than anything else in that garden, including the sunflowers. But had no flowers. Until this morning. This opened! (And there are many more buds tinged with pink where that came from.) So, after most of my annuals are past their prime, a little present for the end of summer. Yea!

Seeds on bigleaf aster.

ps -- went raspberry picking today. Made raspberry vanilla jam, which I hope will be very spectacular, since, even at the relatively low price of $3.50 per pint, one recipe used over $17 of berries, (not to mention a whole vanilla pod) and netted 9 1/2-pint jars of jam. I was excited to make it, though; I got the recipe for vanilla raspberry jam from the preserves of English heritage sites I got when I was there. I have never tasted such a jam... intriguing concept...

Another Day...

There are grasshoppers everywhere. Green ones, brown ones, orangish ones... so many grasshoppers, like the grass is moving independently just a step or two before I actually get there.

The asters at work are just pinkier than anywhere else. No idea why.
One linden tree that thinks its fall, although all its friends are still green.

Seed pods on prairie mimosa.

Purple Power

New England Aster, another of the last things to grace the garden with its bloom, began opening this weekend. Just a few of the hundreds of blooms opened up -- and just the outer-most ring of disc flowers -- so there's still another 3-4 weeks (?) of aster bloom left. Although they are a bit weedy, I quite enjoy them and all their Fibonacci-spiral composite friends. (Perhaps more on that later...)

Gentian will be, at least as far as I remember, the last thing to flower in my yard. Here the blooms are starting to turn just the tiniest bit purple, but there are still a few days or more until these open up. (The brown-eyed susans and goldenrod are still going strong, so the yard is very yellow and purple right now...)

In sad news, I suspect that the large portion of my yard given over to melons will have been wasted land, associated with waster time and water, this year. With the generally cool summer, and especially the cool August-into-September, the melons just won't ripen. There are a lot of them, small, green and hard. So it will be a real shame. Last year's were so delicious.

An Unearthly Being?

We found this praying mantis this morning, measuring in at about 3 inches long. These things are fascinating to students, and also serve as good proof that those science fiction people? Aren't really that creative after all. It's actually one of those things that boggles my mind... every time you see some fantastic creature or planet in a movie, it's always just an extreme version of something we have here on earth. What could these things be like if we could divorce ourselves from all we know? And are there places in the universe that not only have sprung forth life, but have conditions different enough from ours so as to generate something we can't even imagine?...

In general, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about stuff like that. I'm not a sci fi/fantasy person. There's plenty of fascinating things here on earth, crazy, diverse, unfathomable things... no need to leave earth or reality in search of the amazing.
Primrose in full bloom.
Morning dew on big bluestem.
These white asters (no identification beyond that) have just started to bloom.

Almost Sunflowers

Brown-eyed Susan,

filling in the void before sunflowers bloom. They are well-adapted to survive long periods without rain, for their hairy stems keep water from evapo-transpirating very quickly and their roots are wide-spreading and fibrous.

Culver's root begins to bloom. These tiny white flowers are actually in the snapdragon family, like beardtongues or the foxgloves that my dad so admires in England. They bloom from bottom to top, with the bottom ones forming seeds while the top ones are blooming -- so these are just starting, with the top ones still buds and only the bottom few in bloom.

Below, the first large-leaf aster (or big-leaf, some people call them, but that doesn't sound as good to me). These woodland asters are supposed to be some of the latest blooming flowers in the fall, and yet, mysteriously, a few are starting to open up in my yard. No idea why. My yard is apparently a mysterious place.

It is sprinkling outside, almost raining. Could we please, please, please get some measurable precipitation around here?