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! 

We're Back

We're safely back from the UK with loads of pictures... so many that the task of choosing them and blogging them seems terribly daunting. I will get around to it soon, though!

Here, coreopsis and spiderwort are still blooming, and a few foxglove beardtongues, but the primroses seemed to have finished while we were gone. Bergamot is at "almost" and butterfly week and queen of the prairie are just about to get started, too... Puple coneflowers are also flowering.

Bugs and Other Things

I found this female common whitetail today in the parking lot at Lowe's. It was moving but looked a little worse for the wear (her head was a little wonky looking). I rescued it and released it near a little pond, so in my brain she made a full recovery and is doing well! (Her wing is fine there, just caught in a breeze. And, the males actually do have white abdomens; on the females, the name seems rather odd.)
This question mark was also looking a wee bit wobbly when we found it on Tuesday, but may have been OK. Who knows? I was struck by how hairy its wings were in the center.
The monarchs -- this one and several others -- all looked healthy and happy, feeding, dancing with each other.
These are interesting berries, no?
Wild bergamot blooms.
A wild onion flowers, picture taken from underneath...

More From Today.

OK... first thing's first. Today is ICE OFF day! This morning there was still a largish mass floating, but strong winds broke it up. There are some ice-cube sized chunks that have floated over to the edge, and were making a clinking sound as they were pushed together in the wavelets. It sounded like nature was throwing a cocktail party to celebrate spring! (You know, before it snows again.)

The sexually precocious American Hazels have begun to display their bright pink female flowers. (Many shrubs have none yet, but several have branches adorned with these almost impossibly small but beautifully colored flowers.) Alders are also girl-flowering (in addition to the male flowers noted earlier) now, but I didn't get a picture of them.

I have discovered, by the way, that if I carry a white index card with me, I can slip it behind small subjects and it makes it a lot easier to get the auto-focus to focus on the proper thing. I recognize that the sacrifice here is the artfulness of the photos, but sometimes, the goal is scientific documentation. Especially when I have 20+ kids waiting for me and not understanding why I am stopping to take a picture of something random like a bud when they are studying something totally different like birds, for example. So the boring backgrounds aren't necessarily my first choice, but they serve their function.

Many buds are swelling up and showing peeks of green between their scales. Not that many species, but enough that it's starting to be exciting out there...

shown above, Linden, serviceberry, and weeping willow (with catkins showing).

And more from the baby plant front, here are prairie smoke flower buds (left) and baby bergamots, in the shadow of Naomi (right).

"Winter" Wildflowers X

Wild bergamot, a square-stemmed, spicy-smelling member of the mint family. It has a few crispy leaves remaining, but most leaves, and some flowers, have already fallen off.

Another Dreary Day

(ironweed seeds, bergamot seeds, m. mint seeds, compass plant leaves)
The prairie is getting browner and seedier. (Though not drier. It is, again, raining and in the 40's! Yea!) I, like a little kid, love the seeds of milkweed, pictured above. It's not the flying and spreading that draws me to them, but rather how they look like fish scales when the pod has popped open but the seeds haven't yet escaped.
Despite the less-than-hospitable weather, there are still some creepy-crawlies about. In addition to these beetles, I also found a sluggish but moving grasshopper, and a very active jumping spider.

I'm Back...

I'm back... Today I learned how dependent we've become on technology. At school, we had no internet, email, copier or printing. There were a lot of things I could not do. I can still sketch, though! This sketch of a bergamot was part of an exercise students were doing on cross-hatching. Cross-hatching is not my preferred sketching style, and I tend to sacrifice good cross-hatching for good drawing... thus not really getting practice in the technique. But oh, well. Notes next to the sketch were "covered in powdery mildew; no seedhead; leaf tips turning brown (especially on lower leaves)." I also noted that cicadas -- the ones with the droning noise -- were extremely loud this afternoon. There's a sign of late summer for ya.
And here is a sign of fall. The hazels are turning orange and burgundy.
Coneflowers, both yellow and purple, are long blooming. There are still just a few hangers on of each type at this point. But most have lost their eponymous colors and dried up into seedheads, ready to propagate new plants... as seen in the photos.

ps -- After about three bone-dry weeks, it rained hard and steady last night.

Endings

Crickets chirp in the still, humid night air, welcoming the darkness that comes earlier as the days march on. The air is heavy with heat and the weight of the world.

In phenological recordings, people generally note firsts, peaks, and lasts... as in, the purple coneflower first bloomed on June XX; peak bloom was July XX, and the last bloom was August XX. Loyal readers may have noticed that I am diligent about recording firsts. They are exciting and new! Who wouldn't record a first? Peaks I sometimes mention, because they do tend to be pretty. But lasts? I am not so good at making mention of the lasts. Besides lacking the excitement of a first, they are often harder to record with certainty. How do you know that monarch is the last? What if I see another tomorrow? In fact, I falsely reported the last strawberry this June, and ended up getting quite a large handful a few days later. So lasts... not my thing.

But coming home from England, I have noticed some lasts. Queen of the Prairie no longer rules the "wet prairie" located at the end of my drain spout. Spiderwort is completely finished flowering (and probably was before we left). Bergamot is looking pretty sad. While some things are just getting started -- Joe Pye bloomed while we were gone; my sweet brown-eyed susans, much later bloomers than their black-eyed friends, are finally in full bloom; big bluestem and Indian grass are flowering; and better late than never, my compass plant finally got itself a flower -- but anyhow... while these things are starting, summer for some things is winding down.

Perhaps I am taking note of this especially because summer is also winding down for me. Hard to believe, what with the fact that I am practically melting (A/C malfunction, that's another story); the fact that I just today made my first, small batch of tomato sauce; and the fact that the summer solstice is like a month and a half away... but summer for us officially ends as we go back to work this week. Pfffft. It's been a fun, but short, ride. How depressing.

Bergamot

Bergamot, with leaf and flower details. Not my favorite sketch ever. The flowers are so complex that I thought some details were lost to other details. But, oh well, here it is!

July 12: A Day of Firsts

July 12: First bergamot flowers in my yard.
July 12: First tomato harvested in my garden. It's a roma, not big, but quite red. Also harvested: 5 cucumbers, 3 broccoli with disappointingly small flowerheads, some carrots.
July 12: First sunflower in my yard (I know I am well behind other people's gardens in this area, though...)
July 12: Yellow coneflower starts to take its shape.
And, another damselfly, this one unidentifiable. It's either a female or a juvenile and those are hard to distinguish... but it's still pretty!

Some photos

Too busy/distracted for good writing, but here's the phenology updates from yesterday.

Yesterday was cold and intermittantly rainy.  I made the mistake I always accuse students of -- dressing for yesterday.  I was quite cold during my outdoor classes.

I heard a bluejay, but I didn't see it.  (Can't blame the bird.  I wouldn't have shown my face to 21 first and second graders, either.)

At right is a picture of the hazelnut flowers, both male (catkins) and female (bright red!).

Here is the baby bergamots, sprouting purple and fragrant in the prairie.

Also, I tried to get a picture of a migrating duck, so we can play name that duck.  Scaup?  Any other ideas out there?