Everybody's Out...

...enjoying the beautiful weather. Yes, we finally got one of those days -- one of those weekends, better yet -- when you can sit outside, unmoving, and feel warm. When the temperature feels like summer although the colors are still early spring. A day that smells like sunscreen. One of those days when the slog through winter seems worthwhile, because we got to this, and it's marvelous because we waited so long for it.

And everyone is out enjoying it. We saw about 20 turtles, sitting on a log and soaking in the day. As we approached, they one by one plopped into the water, and then re-emerged, the sunbathing too enticing and the people too distracted by the little skull they found:

(About 3 inches long, non-rodent, not a lot of teeth... present or originally, for that matter).

Dragonflies were out, too... happy day!!! I first saw him as a flash, just that, that disappeared into the trees, but I knew that nothing else shimmers the same way in the sunshine. When we stood still and watched the pond, we were able to see several darting past, soaring and diving. They were male green darners and none alighted long enough for a photo op, but that's OK. We've got months of odonata watching ahead of us.

Snakes were out, although the only one I saw disappeared quickly into the grass. Frogs were out, also, calling loudly but there was also a froggy plop, animal unseen, as we approached the water.

The bugs were out, flies and gnats swarming... yesterday I saw my first wasp, and today I saw several more. First mosquito, too, although it is no more.

This tick (left) hitched a ride on my pants but didn't make it to my skin, thankfully. I also took a picture of this velvet mite, a much friendlier little arachnid, because the red dot caught my eye.

Spring ephemerals certainly aren't out in strength yet, but...

this hepatica decided to grace us with a bloom today, and violets are in full force. Others are just leaves yet, spring beauties looking like grass and trout lilies barely distinguishable from soil. But soon, soon... we're behind this year. Hepatica flowered on April 2 last year, and I still haven't seen even the leaves of mayapple or bloodroot poking through the soil (which were also noted on April 2 last year). I hope this isn't because mine are dead! But I feel like every year, I think they've died and every year they do eventually show up. Fingers crossed...

In the garden, carrots are planted now, and almost our entire front yard is covered in cardboard meant to smother the turf grass. We're putting in another native garden. Best, I still had time to sit outside and read lazily before the clouds rolled in and the winds became annoyingly strong a few minutes ago. I think I just heard thunder. Perhaps time to go close all the windows and doors? (I guess that's the beginning of the cold front, as today's 85 degree high is supposed to be followed by the 50's tomorrow.)

Between Scilla and Charybdis

We're not between a sea monster and a whirlpool, but somewhere between cold and warm; we're in the brown between the white and the green. In this time of anticipation, caught between winter and spring, come the scilla.

In garden news, I planted peas and spinach yesterday... carrots next weekend. The garden looks... hopeful. Empty, but that also means weed-free, with trellises waiting for the weight of vines to grab at them. The beds are so flat and rich brown and perfect. In the basement, tiny tomatoes (and friends), barely two inches tall and basking in grow light, wait for the time, 6 weeks hence, when they can sink their roots into the soil, too.

In the native world, early bloomers, like spiderwort, Jacob's ladder, golden Alexander are poking up through the dead remains of last year's plants, 2-3 inches tall...

Just Twisted.

It's been a great while since I've sat down and written. We went through weeks of no rain and wilting plants, but made up for it last night, as I shall explain. At 10:45 pm, which is nearly my bedtime over the summer (and past it during the school year), we received an automated phone call from the fire department. It notified us that tornadoes had been sighted in our area and that all residents should seek shelter in their basements or interior areas of the house. So, we gathered our cats -- not an easy task... though they are in general quite loving and social, especially for cats, they seem to know when they are being pursued for the purpose of containment. Although they cannot tell the difference between the evil carrier-to-vet type of containment and the benign go-to-basement-(where-you-spend-time-anyhow)-to-save-your-life type of containment. Anyhow, with only one scratch on Chris, we got them, and ourselves, downstairs.

For almost an hour, we sat there, cleaned and chatted and puzzled and whatnot, sometimes jovially and other times -- like when we heard loud booms from above -- in fear. The booms turned out to be thunder, not the house falling down or some sort of disaster-burglar taking advantage. So. I finally asked when this little drill would be over. You see, I sort of had to pee. We don't have a bathroom in the basement, although, as Chris pointed out, there is both a litter box AND a floor drain. Not amusing. So, would the fire department call back? Chris thought they would, although neither of us had any experience with this form of tornado alert system. For everyone's future reference: They don't call back.

But we didn't know this, so we sat there and waited a bit longer. Eventually, we decided to venture upstairs and check some sort of media to determine if it was safe... and use the bathroom. It seemed fine outside and inside, but the television told us that our area was in a tornado, flood and thunderstorm warning zone until 7 am. OK, then... We gathered pillows and a DVD, and headed back down stairs. I creatively commandeered some camping gear and set up a sleeping mat and blanket bed under a table (in case the house fell while we were sleeping). And so, around 12:30, we settled in for a long night on the floor of the basement with the spiders and the millipedes.

This lasted about 1/2 hour. The sleeping mat, which fit perfectly under the table, was really not large enough for two people, even on our sides. The blanket wasn't warm enough. But we toughed it out until we heard, right by our heads, a retching sound. And another. Ah, bueno. Cat barf. And it was smelly. Chris found the light (it is really dark in the basement at night) so that we could see to clean the vomit, which was on my puzzle. Really, kittens?

In the end, we decided that we probably weren't going to be in the path or a tornado. In fact, when we went upstairs, it was so calm that the tree branches weren't even moving, and it pretty much remained that way for the remainder of the night. We got some hard rain this morning, as well, and by 11 am it was sunny.

Time to assess the damage. In the time I've lived here I've had tomatoes and peppers blow over, sunflowers fall down, large branches land on the lawn, all the normal things you'd think would occur in Illinois summer storms. But this storm? Hardly did a thing. One pepper plant snapped off -- it was already staked because of its tendency to fall over under its own weight -- so now I have many, many too-small peppers to use. Otherwise, everything is fine. Including a lone sunflower I have that is, no exaggeration, 12 feet tall, and not surrounded by other plants or staked. So, it was a bust. I haven't talked to anyone else who experienced any damage, but I haven't talked to that many people.

I feel pretty lucky that all this happened last night, and it's supposed to rain some more tonight and tomorrow, and then Sunday is supposed to be sunny and high around 80 F. We are getting married outside on Sunday, so I sure hope that prediction rings true! Perhaps I"ll post pictures, at least of what flowers are blooming that day. (Note to self: charge camera.)

Other things that have happened since I've last blogged:

• I have seen a lot of dragonflies, including a few unusual ones like a halloween pendant or a painted skimmer -- something with orange and black mottled wings -- what did not let me photograph it.
• We have whiteflies in the garden, mostly on the cucumbers, which I'm sort of OK with since I've already made a whole year's worth of pickles and we're going out of town next week, but I don't want them to move to my birdhouse gourds, which are doing GREAT and I want to get a lot of gourds so that I can make a lot of birdhouses. We got lacewings and set them free today, so we'll see.
• Also in the garden, we harvested garlic and are getting some tomatoes, tons of beans, some peppers, carrots, etc. In addition to lots of jams and pickles, this year I have canned carrots, green beans, and jalapeno peppers.
• Silphium of all varieties are in full bloom. But my own compass plant is not blooming, because its head was tragically chopped off by friendly fire in a rain barrel installation incident. It is growing a new one, so I may get flowers yet.
• Joe Pye weed is blooming, and... on and on and on... it's mid-summer. It's hot and lots of things are blooming!

The Birds and the Bugs

Male Blue Dasher, I think. Dragonflies do make me happy.

So... this was the weirdest thing that happened to me all weekend. I was trimming some bushes -- with no nest in them -- and this mourning dove came and started pecking away at the leaves and bricks around where I was working. It was absolutely fearless -- I could step or make sudden motions and it wouldn't react. At first we thought it must somehow be injured, but we couldn't find anything wrong with it... except, of course, over-trusting-ness or stupidity. It could fly, and did, when Chris, unable to resist after a while, tried to catch it in his hands. I actually thought, several times, that it would peck my toes... though it didn't, actually. Whatever it was eating, it seemed happy about it, as it returned a few times before leaving for good.

Aphids. I still love them.

And, in garden world, we are being overwhelmed by spinach, and I made my first pesto today with our first 5 garlic scapes and a grand harvesting of basil.

It's Good to be Back Home Again!

I have, like, a million... well, that's a slight exaggeration, but many photos to share from the final camping trip of the 2010 spring school trip season, but I haven't the time or energy to share them at this moment. Instead, I'll briefly share a few things from my return. First, the school is wearing its yellow outfit in honor of the last day... while we were gone, coreopsis bloomed and they are everywhere! (Also, some evening primrose bloomed).

And... in an ironic twist... this was my breakfast this morning, harvested from my garden. So delicious. The thing was, we had decided to take out strawberries this year because they really didn't produce a lot last year and it seemed like a waste of space. This haul was probably, in one day, about as much as I got all last year, and from a smaller space (some were already removed), and I did nothing to keep the birds at bay this year. I guess the birds, or the berries, heard my plans and decided to show me what they could really do! (Look at June 12, 2009's entry to read about the strawberry wars of last summer...)

Weekend Update

A cute and fearless baby robin waits for its mom to bring it a meal.
An early spiderwort. Mine isn't close, and looks to be more on what I think of as a normal track -- blooming in June.
Lewis' prairie flax. A lovely, delicate blue flower, I like this plant especially because of its connection with the Corps of Discovery -- it is named for its describer, Meriwether Lewis... it's a native of more western prairie states, but I got the seeds at Monticello and I couldn't resist planting some and I quite like them.

In other news this weekend...

• ducks have started having baby ducks.
• We planted all the frost-intolerant planties outside in the ground, taking our chances on a freak weather occurrence... peppers, squash, tomatoes, basil, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... it's all out there.

Oh, What a Difference a Day Makes...

...Especially when it's a day such as the last 24 hours have been, warm, mostly sunny, partly windy, all around beautiful. Yesterday morning's round buds...

are today's hepatica flowers!

Mayapples popped open their still-tiny umbrellas.

Ginger leaves burst through the soil.

And trillium's three-leaves have appeared.

Couldn't resist showing the bloodroot again, now that the flower bud has poked out.

In the non-ephemeral plant world, here's the yellow coneflower, which emerged a while ago but I was struck by how big it's already gotten, about 4 inches tall.

And, my maple-leaf vibernum leafed out... along with some crab apples and other shrubs.

Unfortunately, these leaf-outs are not all good. Throughout the yard, previously nearly-invisible little sticks have sprouted buckthorn leaves... they are everywhere, these little weeds that want to be terribly invasive, soil-poisoning trees. And among them are tiny leafing-out box elders (whose parents are flowering at the moment). I could work for days and days, it seems, and still have these invasive babies around. The honeysuckle, which has become the bane of our gardening existence, has also leafed out. (When I installed my vegetable garden on the south side of the yard, there was a honeysuckle hedge, about 8 feet tall, in the neighbor's yard, that did not interfere with the garden. Six years later, those things are about 20 feet tall and shade out more of the growing space each year. The boughs that hang over our yard get chopped, but the trees are not ours to level. I could make a lovely garden in that area, though, if I were allowed...)

And speaking of the garden... we planted carrots and peas this morning, to go along with the spinach that I didn't mention we planted earlier in the week.

It's definitely getting autumnal around here. Trees are turning vibrant colors and prairies are turning browner. Above, a maple, bright red, is already shedding its leaves. Below, the ash tree in my front yard has a burgundy crown with yellow underneath. (You can tell from the photographs, it's a cloudy, dreary day...)
Snakeroot blooms in my yard. This was a little treat when I arrived home, as I had forgotten about this final flower.

In the garden, we planted garlic yesterday. Last year (harvested this summer) we grew 18 bulbs in 2 varieties, of which we saved 2 bulbs for planting this year, and have 3 bulbs left BUT we have been eating garlic from the farmers market because I wanted to save some of ours for a little while. This year (for harvest in 2010) we planted 42 cloves, in 10 varieties! It's exciting to do something for next year in among the cleaning-up and destroying... yesterday I also removed all our tomato, pepper, basil, melon, corn and bean plants (and a lot of weeds that had grown in between them to snugly to take out before). And I started the long process of flower bed tidying with the composting of the nasturtiums. So it was a long, chilly afternoon in the garden -- and several more are needed before the winter sets in!

Back in IL

Where to start? I don't even know... I'll guess I'll begin with the present. Back in Illinois, there was a hard frost this morning. Perhaps not the first, but small bodies of standing water (puddles, the water in our grill, etc.) are frozen solid; the morning glories and nasturtium are down for the count. The ash tree in the front yard is turning burgundy and losing its leaves. My typing is full of typos because my fingers are quite cold.

We have had quite a week; I wish I could show the hundreds of photos I took... but I'll have to cut it short so I don't risk losing readers to boredom at my long-windedness...

This afternoon we took what will certainly be our last trip to the Chicago Botanic Gardens of the 2009 (official) summer. Here are some of the photos... Above, a branch dons its fall colors.
Pumpkins ready in the garden. Although we use them for Halloween and Thanksgiving -- and they will store very well until then -- my experience growing pumpkins always has them ready well before that. (And a side note: today I ate the melon that we brought inside to ripen; it did ripen. It was small and not as tasty as my melons were last year, but still delicious.)
It is also apple season, with many varieties ripe for picking.
Cool tiny flowers on a tree.
Acorn cap on the path. Squirrels were eating the nuts overhead and dropping these onto the ground!
Berries on false Solomon's Seal.
Cardinal flower's brilliant red plumage.
Solomon's seal wears its fall colors, with blue berries and leaves turning to yellow, then crispy brown.

This sign, I think, represents some interesting phenological data, and proof that I'm not alone in the world of plant-bloom record keeping.

I love dahlias, I've decided. They come in so many spectacular colors and they last a long time. This one is a lovely deep purple, and the yellow ones had many bees on them.

This crazy spider has a web outside my mom's house. That triangle thing is actually his abdomen!

And this orange fungus was in the neighbor's yard. From the photo you can't tell that it's about 18 inc hes across. People just moved into that house -- for me, that would be a wonderful treat in a new lawn. But I'm certain they don't see it that way. Oh, well.

Melon Query (with Alder)

Speckled alder, with parts both male and female. The male flowering parts, the catkins, hang down in an, um, traditionally masculine way. At this point they are green and tiny, preparing for spring's early bloom. The female cones adorn the tree in both green (new) and brown (old), making it a fascinating specimen to students, who can't understand why a "pine cone" resides on a broadleaf tree...

In sad garden business, the melons seem to have left their holding pattern of not ripe-not growing and died. The plants, leaves, at least, have turned crisp and brown and mildewed, while the melons themselves... still small and unripe. We picked one to see if it would ripen inside. Does anyone know? Should we harvest more? Please advise!!!

Labor Day Sketches

A tomato sitting on my counter.

Ironweed seeds not quite ready to fly off.

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.

Another Rainy Night

Well, we awoke to another wet morning after a rainy night. A month ago, we would have gone out and danced and celebrated this rain. But it's the third rainy night in a week and at this point, we really don't need it. In fact, it's not good for the garden. The tomatoes, especially with late blight in the area, don't need the coolth and rain. The pop corn in the garden is supposed to be drying out right now. The melons, indigenous to the desert, really shouldn't get so much water at this point in their life cycle -- in fact, the extra rain will leech the sweetness right out of them. And the lack of warmth is not to their sensibilities, either. I hope some even get ripe before it's too cold! (Last year I only got melons for about 2 weeks... but for 2 weeks I had the most delicious muskmelons every single day. They are heirloom ones that I got at Monticello...) Peppers are not doing as well as in the past with the cool weather, either.

And also? The rain is continuing into the daylight hours. And rain? Is not so good for those of us who teach outside classes. Means a lot of last-minute re-arranging and running around.

Not to be too whiny and complainy. The weather happens and we deal with it. Soldier on.

Welcome Home.

Well, we're back. And, the worst has happened. We have tomato blossom end rot. This is bad. It has, so far, attacked only the heirloom tomatoes I got from my aunt, which are separate from the other tomatoes and potatoes. (And which were, btw, the healthiest looking of all our tomatoes before the fruits turned up with black, moldy ends.) We have sprayed them with copper, but chances are... these plants are goners. Won't get one single fruit out of them. I just hope it doesn't spread to the others.

Regarding our trip, I could go on for a while. We took a million or so photos, which I have yet to sort through; we saw some lovely natural areas and gardens and parks. I may or may not get around to describing or posting photos from any individual locations. But for now, some overall (tongue in cheek) impressions.

I love the American landscape. The ruggedness of it, the expansiveness. The harshness. I am enamoured with, and remorseful for, the history of this young nation; I can't imagine (and don't want to) a world without cowboy and Indian lore, Lewis and Clark adventures, the wild wild west, the rolling prairie that seems to stretch on like an ocean. But visiting England, I can't help but think... that religious persecution must have been really bad, because it would have to be to make you leave an ancestral home such as that. Mosquitoes? Not so much. In private residences and hotels alike, windows didn't have screens. They just open them. Ticks? Don't think so. Strawberry season? Still going on. Although. Tomato season? Not yet, likely due to the not at all how weather. A striking difference from the three-digit (F) temperatures we're supposed to have here tomorrow. Irrigation? Hardly ever necessary, I'd guess, because it seemed like it sprinkled pleasantly a lot. (And occasionally, not so pleasantly). Snow? Pretty rare, I'm told. Which is actually a negative point, in my book. I like snow. But I know that the moderate climate (this despite the high latitude, mind you) would be a positive point to many out there.

And I totally get where our whole completely unnatural fetish with green-grass lawns came from. It's not so totally unnatural and hard to maintain over there. We did note an interesting garden phenomena, though... When you visit the grand estates with spectacular gardens, many of them have plant stores there, so that you look at the gardens, feel inspired, and spend a lot of money buying plants, thinking you can do the same thing on your home on a smaller scale. Forgetting, of course, that the grand estates hire full time gardeners. And that's not plural because there are multiple estates, but because each one, I'm certain, has multiple gardeners. Anyhow, I have gotten away from the main point, which is that the most popular plant to purchase? Is the purple coneflower. Which is native to the North American prairies. So there you have it, folks.

Another cool thing about said estates is that at most of them, there is a restaurant. And these restaurants feature food grown on that estate or in the county. I'm not going to try and say that English folks are all into local foods; besides being a gross generalization, I only spent 8 days there and really didn't get that much data. But it seems to be a wee bit more important there than here. And Charles (as in Prince) is really big on local foods and sustainable agriculture, so that was exciting to learn about. At any rate. You know that when you travel to Italy or Morocco, to Mexico or Thailand, you are going to notice how much the USA lacks a food culture. Beyond the fast/convenience. But I certainly didn't expect to to be that evident from a trip to England.

OK. I have now been awake for about 21 hours, and travelling for much of that. So I'm tired (but I WILL stay awake til normal bed time) and probably not being that coherent and will sign off now.

More Arkansas Adventures

OK. Let's pick up where we left off last, which, you may recall, was rural Arkansas. If I had grown up in rural Arkansas, there is a chance that I may not have become the Nature Nerd that I am today. A lot of nature there sounds... well, scary. We parked the car at Chris' grandmother's house, which has a long, up-hill gravel driveway (not great for Prius' suspension) and grass parking spaces. The grass has not been mowed since I don't know when, but my money's on last summer. So it was quite tall. And as we're walking getting out of the car, I am warned to watch out for rattlesnakes in the tall grass, and red ants. Also chiggers, but you can't watch out for those because you can't see them. Not to mention ticks, although I thought it was too warm for those. Grasshoppers were hopping out of my way, but there were so many of them that a lot just landed on me. This I didn't mind, but I could see where if you were a little kid or a person who was unaware of the grasshoppers' benign status, that you could be a wee bit freaked out.

I did not get bitten by any of the aforementioned terrors -- well, I do have itchy feet, but I'm assuming its mosquitoes and NOT chiggers -- and I will admit that the presence of 4 very cute little kittens (and several adult cats) definitely overshadowed the threat of snake bites. (I took about a hundred pictures, but I'll spare you. I'm sure there are other blogs out there about kittens.) Chris, in an effort to be kind and also possibly relive his youth, mowed the lawn At first I thought this was a good idea, but then I started to feel terrible, because when a lawn becomes that long, it ceases to be a boring monoculture and becomes a habitat. In addition to the aforementioned terrorizing creatures and grasshoppers, there

were crickets trying to escape death by lawnmower blade, spiders (see right) the size of golf balls (I exaggerate not at all. They were fast, too), praying mantises (see below for a baby on thumb) and other things. He only mowed a small part of the lawn due partly to time but also to the seeming cruelty of making all these things homeless.

But by far the most spectacular thing about the lawn was the dragonflies. There were probably 50 of them, swooping around all over. There was a pair of pondhawks, pictured below, which species has been a DotD in the past. There was also a twelve-spotted skimmer. Most of the dragonflies were some other sort of skimmer (I think) that was yellowish-orangey and black and never stopped. I never saw one perched at all. This impeded my ability to photograph or ID them. Amongst those, rarely, flew some large black dragonflies (some sort of darner?). These were the biggest odonates I have ever seen. There was a hummingbird that hovered around some of the yard's flowering shrubs, and these dragonflies were larger.

Praying mantis and carpenterworm moth. This picture does not show you that this moth was over 2 inches, strikingly large, actually.

Male and female eastern pondhawks.
This photo is trying to show how many dragonflies there were, since they never landed. Each black dot in the sky (I know, hardly visible at all at this small size) is a dragonfly.

Summer in Arkansas is also -- and I don't mean to state the obvious here -- hot. In a humid sort of way. We were lucky enough to be there during an unusually cool streak; it was also unusually cool here. The weather still gave me something to write about, though. Monday afternoon a storm blew in. The clouds -- grey and whirly -- rolled through and we were surrounded by lightning strikes. It teased for a while -- we stood outside waiting for rain, which finally did arrive. On Tuesday, when we drove home, there was more rain. A lot more rain. The radio said 2 inches in an hour, and this made visibility sucky. And that was all before 8 am. The rain continued for most of the afternoon, with flash flooding and everything. Of course, here, where we need rain very badly, there fell not a drop! [It did rain here on Tuesday night a little bit and a little on Wednesday, so I can't complain that much.]

One thing that I would quite enjoy about living in Arkansas is the growing season. (To clarify... this would be good for growing food. I do like me a good cold winter to kill off the molds, chiggers, etc.) In Arkansas, people were harvesting tons of tomatoes already, and even melons. They put these things out in the ground in early April, I guess. Here, there are a few tomatoes, but not a lot yet -- not enough to be canning salsas or making the year's worth of tomato sauce.

What we are getting here is cucumbers. In mass quantities. Some carrots and tomatoes. Also the first green beans. Small peppers are almost ready. And we harvested our garlic today, 17 bulbs hanging in the basement.

In the world of prairie plants, not a whole lot new has bloomed since we left, but there's just more of stuff. More bergamot, more yellow coneflower. Grasses are near to seeding, though, so look for that news soon!