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! 

A Page of Prairie Dock

The notes read: "Flower stalks of the prairie dock rise high above their leaves, which are enormous, rough, veiny, cool. In the early morning, the buds still lean towards the setting sun of yesterday afternoon. Already, as I finish they begin turning their hears toward the east... The leaves are tipped in red, translucent and deeply shadowed with the morning sun... Still rolled tightly, terminal buds hold the promise of yellow.... Grasshopper rests on a leaf, hops when I touch him... Leaves clasp the stems -- the lower down on the stalk the longer the leaf's stem, like increasingly evolved giraffe necks [getting only so long that they can effectively reach food without giving up the ability to hold up the food grabber; leaf in this case, head in giraffe's]. Higher up, the "necks" are stubby, short, even absent at the top. Leaf teeth also get larger the further down the leaf is on the plant."

I am thrilled to have these stalks to draw in my yard. See, I planted this prairie dock, and 2 others, at least 6 years ago. They've done well enough, coming back the first couple of years with a few leaves and the last several years with huge leaves, many of them, looking robust and healthy. But this is the first year I have gotten the flower stalks. There are 8 of them total. I used to fear that my plants were somehow not happy, didn't like their places although the leaves were large. Now I think they were just children, and they have finally reached adolescence and started to grow tall. Next week, perhaps, the first yellow flowers will bloom upon them.

That reminds me... I saw this other phenology blog (I know, right?) that used a really neat method to convey a lot of information really fast. It listed plants and then weekly progress reports, as in:

Prairie dock:

last week -- flower stalks about 3-4 feet tall

this week -- flower stalks 5-6 feet tall, still no flowers

Ironweed:

last week -- the first, bright purple flowers opening

this week -- full bloom

Etc. I love this idea... and, although I don't like the idea of copying another person... well, no ideas are really original anymore, right? And this format would allow me to go back to making more scientific phenological observations and recordings, which I haven't really been doing lately. I've just been profiling a few plants as they catch my eye enough, at some point in their life cycle, for me to want to draw them. Well. We'll see. (Opinions welcome.)

The Pull of the Pencil

It has been so long since I've blogged, I almost couldn't start up again. In the end, after a month of watching first and last blooms, after seeing the earth thirst for water in hundred degree heat, and then soggy from many days of 2-inch rainfalls, I finally sat down with my sketchbook and that brought me back. (And speaking of back, mine got sunburned, despite my religious daily application of sunscreen. I may have sweated it all off, as it topped 90 degrees today and we took a long bike ride before stopping to draw/read.)

Culver's root has been blooming for a while now, the delicate white flowers opening first at the bottom and progressing towards the sunshine, the sky, the tippy top of the plant. At this point, most of them are getting close, but the top of each stalk still has buds on it... but I chose to focus, instead, on the whorled leaves in this sketch. Five toothed leaves shoot out in irregular stars, getting smaller toward the top of the stem.

What else is noteworthy right now?

The prairies are jeweled with coneflowers, both yellow and purple, and with blazing star. Compass plant blooms everywhere but in my yard, oddly enough, where queen of the prairie is still holding on to its pink color. Ironweed blooms, some coreopsis still hold on.

In the wooded areas, it's not the most exciting time... sort of ironic, that the summer is really the prairie's season to shine, but all that shining... of the sun, that is... makes enjoying the prairie's colors difficult... BUT the Campanula's purple flowers are blooming and are quite a treat.

Hey, not to be totally random, but that reminds me of a little anecdote... my dad kept talking about the bluebells in England in the spring, and we had all these long conversations about the bluebells that carpeted the woods there and in my mind, there are Mertensia, but his bluebells are actually a Campanula (though not the americana that is blooming here), which I didn't figure out until eventually we saw some still blooming in Scotland. And which genus I generally call a bellflower. There's a lesson there about the danger of using common names... and yet I will persist in doing so, despite being plenty versed in the scientific names as to be able to use them.

And speaking of our trip to England and Scotland. I think that may have been one reason why I stopped writing. It was too much, too overwhelming. I have hundreds of pictures of plants. Almost a hundred just of heath orchids, which I found to be so beautiful and yet so... subtle, with their small size. I thought about writing an entry for each day, but honestly... that's not really the purview of this blog, it's not phenologically relevant and it STILL seemed overwhelming. But here are a few of my thoughts:

England is nice. That seems like a bland statement and also a silly, not-at-all-deep-thought statement, but that may actually go along with what I mean. It's so mild, with warm, pleasant summers and, though I have not been there in the winter, I believe those are also absent of the weather extremes that we experience here. (Although, global climate change may, um, change all that. Or submerge it. Whatever.) And while pleasant may not seem exciting, there is something alluring about pleasant. That religious persecution must have been really bad, only I wouldn't want to leave the English countryside to avoid it. (Please read as tongue-in-cheek!)

It's a personality match thing, I guess. As we hiked the Scottish highlands, Chris brought up Scottish-born American naturalist John Muir. Upon returning to his birthland in old age, after a lifetime of bagging peaks in the US West, he proclaimed Scotland to be inferior, and not just a little bit so. His must have been a personality that thrived on ruggedness and stark grandeur, as many are. And others of us want to be cradled in something... nice. Like an English garden.

Here's the thing. There is something deeply ingrained in us about the aesthetic of English gardens. Believe you me, I have tried to break myself of this. I plant native plants and I recognize that turf grass is ecologically horrible (at least here) and I really, really try not to see its appeal. Anyone who's been in my yard knows that straight lines and order are NOT how I roll. And yet. And yet... culturally, embedded almost as deeply as a biological truth are the ordered landscape of a lawn and an ornamental garden. The well-planned natural meadow that has been tamed for centuries in a way that things here just don't seem to be tamable. I don't know.

Although I will say, it was hard to get over the nativeness of some things that here are terribly invasive weeds. Funny, how things program themselves in my head to be desirable or not based not on pleasing looks (or lack thereof) but on what I know about them. Because some of them are quite lovely...

Well, that's enough for now. Perhaps tomorrow I will decide to draw some more...

Time Marches On ...

The first blazing stars opened maybe a week ago. Ironweed opened a few days ago. Silphiums are in full bloom... I'm not sure why I haven't felt like writing about it.

I can't believe summer break is 1/2 over. So not fair.

"Winter" Wildflowers VII

All the winter wildflowers are soggy and drippy, due to the rain we've been having. It still hasn't been that cold, but that's about to change -- they're predicting a first (small, non-sticking) snowfall by the end of the Holiday...

Ironweed is a favorite of mine in the summer with its jewel tone purple. In the winter, its former flowers look like mini brown actual flowers once all the seeds have flown (and like tan paintbrushes while seeds still inhabit them).

Anyhow, it's a messy sketch, but there it is...

Happy day-before-thanksgiving, everyone!

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.

Labor Day Sketches

A tomato sitting on my counter.

Ironweed seeds not quite ready to fly off.

My First Ironweed

Such a pretty color, no?

We are hopping across the pond for a few days -- not sure if we'll be able to log on over there, but I'm sure I'll have a ton to write about when we return! (A place where purple loosestrife is native, imagine!)