Dear Prairie - While You Were Sleeping

Winter is our time for burning, planning, planting and clearing even more areas to prepare them for the native plantings of forbes and grasses. With over 23 acres of soil available, we have an endless canvas where we can plant and then later, enjoy the summer blooming parties that result from so many varieties of plants.

Each fall, as all the trees are starting to shake off their summer leaves and the flowers are starting to make seeds, I start visiting the Hamilton Native Seed and Missouri Wildflowers websites and perusing their catalogs. This year, I found a new educational resource - I signed myself up for the Missouri Prairie Foundation's webinars via Zoom and yowza, are they fantastic! With Covid-19 lockdown and winter encroaching, now's the time for me to educate myself, read everything I can and discover new planting opportunities so we can provide more diversity in our native plantings. Thanks to MPF and Missouri Wildflowers, this year we decided to try something new - we now have over 40 new shrubs planted - wild hydrangea, ninebark, and witch hazel planted & hunkered down under leaf-mulch...waiting to spring their beautiful flowers on us this spring.

And thanks to Hamilton Seed and my own seed-gathering techniques (which consists of one step -  outrun the birds), I have over 4 oz. of a variety of coneflower seeds (at 7,000 seeds/oz., I'm pretty proud of myself!) and almost 1 full pound of my full-sun native wildflower mix too (see the hand-written labels on the bags in the picture below). These orders I make are my Christmas presents to myself...thousands of wildflower seeds. Thousands...maybe millions. Gazillions...all to be planted this winter.

This is another quarter-acre area that we cleared - where one bag of the above wildflower seeds has already been spread. And it's right outside my home-office window!

We've also started tackling the non-native Japanese honeysuckle. Ugggh, what a pain it is. Below is a picture of a sprout (probably Sumac) that finally gave up. The honeysuckle had wrapped itself so tightly around the trunk that it created these permanent twists in the trunk. Behold the strength and the impact of the non-native, for they are indeed impressive, but now, we need to rip it out.

I love winter, almost as much as I love fall. I can walk all the trails, even when covered with ice or snow and not be attacked by chiggers or ticks. It's a time when I can see everything from a different perspective. The ice-laden branches of the sandbar willows create their own beautiful reflections over the pond.

The cedar trees whine about the ice & cold as their branches droop, threatening to snap off, as the surrounding Sassafras and Ash trees stand tall and proud, bragging that their branches stand UP to such brutal weather, while simultaneously laughing at their sagging evergreen neighbors.

As I walked yesterday, I recalled the pictures I took this past summer and thought it would be fun to compare the summer versus winter pictures from the same perspective. Winter is part of their normal cycle - the plants take time to rest, the soil re-saturates from the rainfall & snow (measured in feet here in the fall, winter & spring), the ground heaves and contracts to absorb the seeds dropped by all the plants and the seeds that need it, as they are stratified, in preparation for growing a new plant in the spring. It is a time to shake off the past year, renew and change things - to try again to do better in the New Year.

The Sandbar willows on the pond:

Winter:

 

Summer

 

The Goldenrod and Indian Grass - Winter:

 

 The same patch this past August / September:

The West Trail around the pond, Winter:

 

The same West Trail, this past August / September:

   Part of the prairie, Winter:

The same part of the prairie was rioting this summer in June & July with coneflowers, prairie blazing start, Wild quinine, compass plant, etc.:

To some, this winter perspective may look like quite the dreary landscape. But for me, this landscape it quite exciting and holds a lot of secrets that will be revealed in the spring. 

Rest & renew, Dear Prairie. Bob and I have been busy this winter, so make sure you say, "Hello" to your new neighbors this Spring and let them know how much you love your happy home here on Gobbler's Knob.
 

June & July Summer Blooms

As I looked through my SD cards in my camera today, trying to clean them off, I realized that I had taken a lot of native wildflower pictures.  Every year, I try to document via pictures all the wildflowers that are blooming each month, so that I can see the progress we're making. There are several that do very well here and, in spite of the very hot, dry weather we've had, they are at least daring to spread their petals and square off with the intensely hot sun.

Late June Bloomers
These were planted in December, 2014.  They did okay, in 2017 but at the end of June this year, my gray-headed coneflowers were kickin' it in the west savanna area.

Gray-headed coneflowers

Black-eyed Susans

Virginia Mountain Mint

Butterfly Milkweed (bloomed from June through July)

Ox-eye Sunflower

July Bloomers

The heat intensified in July, but still, the wildflowers were determined.

Lobelia

Royal Catchfly (red) and Black-eyed Susan

Even more Gray-headed coneflowers bloomed in July

Ladino clover seems to love the heat

Queen Anne's lace (wild carrot)

And 4 years after planting - looky, looky who showed up!!  Royal Catchfly - there were 4 plants this year (also planted in the Savanna with the Gray-headed coneflowers).

The Partridge pea started blooming in early July, but has really been showing off since the last week of July into August.

Partridge Pea

Of all the blooming flowers I thought the honeybees would love, the sumac was not even on my list! But, turns out sumac is one of their favorites here.  So, I guess I'll let it stay.

Smooth Sumac - only 1 of 2 flowers on this page that the honeybees seem to really like.

Rose Pink

The Rattlesnake Master is spreading like crazy - it has basically taken over my specimen garden, ousting most of the coneflower varieties there and only the prairie blazing star is hanging on. Since it's a native wildflower and all kinds of bees and butterflies love it, I'm not going to try to stop it. It's too hot to try to fight it. The clever prairie blazing star has managed to spread to other parts of my field, so it has figured out how to outrun the rattlesnake master.

Prairie Blazing Star in a field of Rattlesnake Master.

Wild Quinine

Turns out, the most favorite plant on my property for the Bumblebees have been all the St. John's Wort bushes I've planted.  They are crazy about it...unfortunately, the Japanese beetles are too. *sigh*
Interestingly, I haven't found one honeybee on the St. John's Wort and the Bumblebees are enjoying a pollen Bonanza!

St. John's Wort

I have a lot of favorites, but Wild Bergamot scores in the list of my top-five.

Wild Bergamot

Trumpet vine

We plant a LOT of red clover - the Bumblebees love it and the Honeybees don't use it (due to the difference in the length of their "tongues").  Guess who just bought 50 more lbs. of red clover? Heh!

Red Clover - Bumblebees LOVE it!

Common Milkweed and Wood Sage

Bindweed - the flowers are open in the morning, but close up when the temperatures start rising.

Ironweed (with Queen Anne's Lace in the foreground)

Prairie  Fleabane

This picture doesn't do the wildflowers justice - Wild Quinine, Queen Anne's Lace, Coneflowers, Sumac and Prairie Blazing Star are just a few of the predominant native wildflowers you can see here (click on the picture to get an enlarged view - that's true for all of them).

July - Wild Quinine dominates, but it will soon retreat and another will come up to carry us into Fall.

Passion Flower

Wood Sage

Lastly, a few of which we're not sure

Wild Potato Vine?

Well, I have searched & searched and we thought the vine & flowers in the picture to the left were either a variety of Morning Glory, or "Redvine"; but the best online site I can find calls it "Wild Potato Vine"

UPDATED 8/15 - Thanks to Chuck Yetter & his wife, these have now been *correctly* identified -  they're called "wild petunias". 

A field of wild petunias - you're welcome, Chuck!  :-)

Field full of "wild petunias".

Out of all the flowers above, the only ones I've found that my honeybees really like are the Butterfly milkweed and the Smooth Sumac.  I've been searching all my August blooming flowers and haven't been able to find from where my honeybees are getting their pollen and nectar stores for the Fall.  Today though, my investigation may have identified their source.  Stay tuned....pictures and details are forthcoming!

Fall Dresses Up Like Summer

This has been such an unusual Fall - not at all like the typical windy, cool Falls I've been accustomed to in the past.  I'm beginning to think that Fall chose "Summer" as its Halloween costume.  With the highs averaging in the 80's last week, it was windy, but not at all what I would call 'cool'. 

The only real weather-related evidence indicating Fall really is coming is the ghostly fog that hovers over the ponds and in the lower valleys. 

Common Milkweed is even regrowing new shoots.  This picture was taken on Wednesday, 11/2/2016.  No, no, no!

Even the ever-present, persistent and invasive thistle is re-blooming.  The main shoots of these were cut off earlier in the season, thinking they would die (note the cut off stems), but the extended warm weather has given them new life. Ugghhh!!

My landscape bed is a juxtaposition of both new life and death - the New England Asters and American Beauty Berry bushes going to seed, yet the lavender and clover are re-blooming.  It feels so very weird and strange right now.

Lavender bed - 11/2/2016

Clover regrowing and blooming - 11/2/2016

We can all debate the *cause* of global warming, but it's hard to deny that something is definitely changing with our weather. Plants are re-growing and blooming at a time when they're supposed to be preparing for their winter nap, storing up energy for next spring.  I'm hoping once Fall does decide to start dressing them down, the plants will have enough time to prepare for their winter's sleep.

Now is normally the time I gather seeds from all my native plants.  I was bummed with a rather lackluster performance by my coneflowers and prairie blazing star plants this year, but I was able to gather buckets full of New England Aster branches after the flowers went to seed.

New England Aster seed heads.

New England Aster seeds after being removed from the branches.

I had never gathered cardinal flower seeds, so when I cut off the stems with the seed heads and shook them, I was shocked at all the stuff that fell out, looking more like pollen than seeds.  Not quite trusting these were seeds, I looked them up and sure enough, these teeny tiny specs are cardinal flower SEEDS!  I think I have about a bazillion of them now.  Not really sure they will all come up next year, but I have plenty of them with which I can test various methods to get them to sprout!

Cardinal flower seeds!

I bagged all the seeds I collected in a large brown paper grocery bag that will absorb moisture while they wait for me to perform my favorite winter rituals - burning off dead stuff, raking and scattering seeds!
My backyard feels so abandoned now that my purple martins are gone and all the gourds are cleaned and put away.

If you've noticed that I haven't written much over the past few months, it was because I had a very rough, emotional summer with my purple martins.  It was one that tested my principles and dedication to all the wild things I love.  It was such a tough journey and I had to come to grips with many decisions and fight many battles with my own brain and heart.  It forced me to grow emotionally - painfully beyond what I initially wanted.
I am only now ready to write about it - silly me, my healing comes with writing this blog.  Probably should have started writing about it sooner, but it was still too fresh.  I have come to the conclusion that I will be taking down my Trendsetter before next purple martin season.  This is a tough decision for me because I am so attached to that house.  Stay tuned, I'll be writing more about the events of this past summer, what led to this decision and some upcoming changes. 

My Trendsetter - washed for the final time and wrapped up for winter.