Pretty Prairie

I thought this photo showed just how lovely the prairie is at the beginning of June.  

The cast of characters is changing... shooting star has left the stage.  As you can see above, spiderwort and indigo have become numerous and prominent.  

In addition to the foxglove beardtongue pictured earlier in the week, other new flowers include wild quinine, shown here:

This I think is a smooth phlox, which was blooming last week but I didn't include a photo.  I said "I think" because I don't think phloxes usually have those pretty spots around the center, but I can't figure out what else it would be.

This flower is a mystery to me.  I spent a while with guide books, and Chris with a computer, and we didn't figure it out.  Might be we could with the actual plant, but with only a photo, no luck. 

I saw this huge snapper laying eggs.  And when I say I saw it, I mean, I actually saw the white, golf-ball sized eggs dropping from her body into the hole she dug.  It was really cool.  Unfortunately, my trigger finger doesn't have the luck or skillful timing to catch that in the photo. 

Addendum

What I forgot yesterday... Dame's rocket and phlox. What I didn't notice because I was running... False Solomon's seal.

We went back to closely inspect the red patch, which involved a significant off-trail jaunt. Here's Chris standing by them:

And here's a close-up:

It is, I believe, Indian paintbrush.

We also rescued a turtle today. 

And saw a lot of crayfish remains.

Flowers

A few more from today...

Mayapple flower.

Woodland phlox.

Jack in the pulpit.

Canada anemone.

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...

Look Up Sometimes

This may strike you as a strange photo to put front and center. Perhaps it is. After all, it's practically a picture of nothing. But yesterday afternoon, I was walking with a class, and looking up as I walked. I'm not sure why I was looking up, but I was, and I was moving on one direction and the clouds were moving rather swiftly in a different direction, and I actually got dizzy. I had to stop walking. This caused a whole bunch of kids, who are not allowed to walk in front of me, to stop. They saw where I was gazing, and they, too, looked up at the sky. I heard comments, "Look at the clouds!" "They're so cool." "They keep changing." So I decided, while we were stopped, to take a picture of them. They act as a reminder, written in condensation, that sometimes things that seem like almost nothing are still wondrous, still worth stopping and taking a look at. And that pausing to notice what's happening around you will enrich your day.

In flower news, we have purple:

geraniums, and

woodland phlox.

We have white:
bedstraw, almost open, and

pussytoes.

And finally, we have bayberry, not native and not my favorite shrub, with its prickly demeanor, but the tiny flowers are actually quite striking, when you look at them up close.