Prime Prairie

I'll admit it... There are times of the year when the prairie isn't the most aesthetically interesting ecosystem. But she is coming into her own now, and from June through October, the prairie will display staggering biodiversity.  A slowly but constantly changing cast of colorful characters will appear in the endless sea of waving grass.

Here is a partial (because I won't remember them all) list of what I saw blooming in the prairie today:

Shooting stars (still holding on!), golden Alexander, spiderwort, cream false indigo, wild indigo, wild roses (pictured below), lupine (pictured below below), wild hyacinth (pictured way below), wild geraniums, Canada anemone, daisies, fleabane, mustards -- yellow, white and garlic (I didn't say all the flowers were desirable), cow parsnip, bladder campion, hawkweed, irises, a patch of something bright red and far off the trail in a wetter area, no idea what it was... That's all I'm remembering at the moment.  I'm sure there was more, but I probably got the best ones. Even so... That's a lot!

Weather Moves Back, Spring Moves Forward

Yesterday's emergence: midges, all over the school walls.  Thanks to Chris for the ID.  

I promised we'd get crabapple blossoms today, and here they are!  Though these are early adopters, most are still bursting at the seems, but closed.  Maybe they're waiting for the mercury to top 50. 

And look!  Golden Alexander is blooming.  Color in the prairies!

Slow and Steady...

Turtles are laying eggs!

Here are things in full bloom in the prairie today:

Golden Alexander and spiderwort color the prairie with yellow and purple...

Cream Indigo

Wild Rose

Canada Anenome

Columbine

Prairie Alumroot

Phlox

Jumping In...

Having stopped writing for so long, it's hard to start again. I feel like I have to have something spectacular to say, something more than just that the columbines are in full bloom, and the lilies of the valley. The prairie alumroot. The phlox. The golden Alexander, Jacob's ladder. Shooting star and may apples. Although this is what I need to write, I suppose... Right now, there is plenty to report, though we are sort of in the lull between spring flowers and summer ones. Plenty happens in that lull, though, it's still spring, after all.

In the past four weeks, I started and finished the spring camping trips that I take with students. I traveled to Devil's Lake in Wisconsin and then to Warren Dunes, MI, for two rainy and chilly weeks in a row. (Both were beautiful...) Our front yard has been transformed from turf grass into a native garden and all the vegetables and herbs are in the ground. And finally, on Memorial Day, it got hot. Sweat-while-you're-doing-nothing hot... this, following a 48 degree high on May 26, which tied the record for coldest May 26 here ever! Spring in the Midwest...

School winds down this week for the summer, but we're busy busy all through the month of June. I shall try to be better about keeping data and blogging...

A Few Quick Updates

I really haven't the energy or inclination to write much. I actually feel like I want to draw, but the plant I want to draw is no where near a place I could sit. And I don't draw from photographs, and I don't want to pick it, and it's getting dark anyhow. And so, a quick update on what's happening, mainly for record-keeping purposes. And there is so much going on, I'm leaving out a ton. Beech leaf outs, maple leaf outs, flowering ornamental shrubs all over the place...

First, early wild strawberry.

First, early golden Alexander.

Bellwort blooming (this is what I want to draw.)

Hepatica still blooming... it was the first of the ephemerals in my yard and it may well be the last... although spring beauties are still going strong...

Bluebells are in full bloom and I'm starting to see their color all over.

I used to have these dwarf irises all over my yard, and several large varieties that bloom later. The person who used to live here must have loved them. I have mostly killed them off by neglect. I liked them all right, but my attitude is this. The first year, I'll give you TLC like crazy. I love my plants and am very good to them. The second year, I'll help you out if I can. After that, you gotta be able to take it on your own. I don't want any perennials that I have to care for. This is why I plant native.

But it's also why I have tulips (full bloom) and daffodils (mostly spent at this point). If you're not evil, and you can compete with the big boys, you can stay.
If you're evil, on the other hand, I'll take care of you. This is creeping Charlie flowering. Creeping Charlie is the bane of my existence this year; I hate it. And I am losing the war against it. In other news of the evil, garlic mustard has started flowering as well. But not in my yard! I did win that battle the first year I lived here and have never had any since. I wish it were so easy with the others. I fight buckthorn every year...

Also noteworthy: I have 13 stalks of sweetgrass flowers. Apparently it's hard to get it to flower, so I feel pretty good about that.

OK. It's 8 pm. Is that too early for bed?

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...

Sketches Here and There

Art can be frustrating. I do these drawings, you see. I haven't had an art class since... junior high school art class, like, the one you have to take in school. I sort of want to, but I'm also sort of scared to -- could formal training actually mess me up? I have these fancy pencils that I received as a very thoughtful and wonderful gift, but I don't know how to use them. All those hardnesses and whatnot... I draw with a cheap mechanical pencil (which is supposedly the worst kind for subtlety and shading). Actually, I can't draw most things, but somehow... somehow, I see plants, I see plant forms, and my brain can translate them and my hand can draw them, and I think I'm pretty good at drawing plants. And I'm not one to publicly say that I'm good at something, so I must really think so. Last week, I did some sketches that I was pretty proud of -- I thought the shooting star and the trilliums were quite realistic. But this weekend, I seem to have lost my touch. The golden Alexander, above, wasn't even identifiable, and I just gave up on the leaves. I thought the lily of the valley would be an easy draw, something to make me feel good after the geranium leaf and the golden Alexander. But it turned out to be a challenge to me, also. Ah, well. I show them, anyhow, not to solicit reassurances or anything, but, hey... why not? As for the drawing talent, it will happen, or it won't. I enjoy the sketching only partly because I like the final products. I also love how it makes me look at things... patterns and symmetries, textures, the way shadows and light play. I learn things, details, that I won't ever forget... lily of the valley have this little bract-like thing where each flower splits from the stalk; geranium sepals are slightly fuzzy...
Lily of the valley are my comfort flower. Like a hamburger to a carnivore, they remind me of home and of youth, and of my mom. She always liked them, I believe, because they remind her, in turn, of her mom. So I guess we have passed an affinity for these fragrant, not-as-simple-as-they-look flowers on through the generations...

The Daily Grind

It's funny how time and circumstance change our perspective immensely. Two months ago, in the midst of reporting on changing ice crystals, if I could even find a change in them, I would have given anything to have one tiny leaf, little emerging fiddlehead... anything to write about. Now, with embarrassing riches of change every hour of every day, I don't seem to want to write about something unless it's a magnificent new burst of color... I check the marsh marigolds for yellow blooms, but am a day or two early yet. I check the mertensia for their tightly-closed purple buds to turn blue, but am early there, too. And so I don't write. Even though the walnut trees are leafing out, significant not just because all leaf-outs are significant, but because compound leaves are usually slower than their simple friends.

I skipped these periwinkles entirely just because they aren't wildflowers or something I planted -- they bloomed last week. I didn't tell you that the bloodroots, which I chronicled from bud to blossom and some steps in between, are now spent, their pristine white petals littering the floor and creased with the brown of death. I didn't mention that my 4 mayapples have turned to 14, that hepatica, one of the first spring ephemerals to show their stamen, are still blooming strong. I skipped the reddish leaves of the queen of the prairie emerging from the blackened earth. And really? If I tried to describe the changes in the serviceberry, I'd practically be at a loss for words, anyhow -- they are different every day, but until I see an actual flower, what can I say?

I'm not sure, in the end, if I'm spoiled by the wealth of the season, or if I'm frustrated by my lack of words to describe it. See, I feel as though, in the second year of this blog, constant snapshots and factual reports of blossoms won't cut it. I want to say something every time I write, and I just don't have that much to say about phenology each and every occurrence. I notice them, I celebrate them to myself... but I don't always have words. Plus, there are a lot of gray areas. Do I report this golden Alexander flower even though the rest of the plants -- even the rest of the flowers on this plant -- look about a week away from wearing yellow?

And then there's things like this...

I don't have any clue what this fern is. We've planted a large variety, the tags are all gone, and it won't be until real fronds emerge that I have any hope of IDing them. So what do I call it?

You'll pardon my complaining about issues that aren't really problems at all... it's a lovely day, week -- enjoy all that's happening out there!