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.

An Ozarks Mason Bee Project - Part 1

I’ve been reading a lot about the plight of the honey bees for years now and wondering what I could do to help them.  Some people, like our local friend Andy, have setup honeybee hives on their property.  I had thought about doing that, but after listening to Andy’s experiences, now I’m glad I didn’t.  I hate getting stung by any flying or crawling insects and apparently, even with protective suits, sometimes you still get stung.  The costs of getting started with honey bees really weren’t very appealing to me either.
My desire to help the honey bees became even stronger this past year after watching several documentaries about the problems they’re encountering.  This “TED” talk by Marla Spivak was very interesting, well done and enlightening. The solutions she talks about are so obvious and simple, it makes you wonder why more people haven’t already put them into practice.

http://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing.html

Nevertheless, the honey bees are not the only bees that are in trouble.  My problem for the last 2 years has been dealing with the question of, “where do I start and how could I really make an impact”?  Turns out, the impact I can make starts in my own backyard.  I learned last year that there are actually more benefits and less costs involved when raising Orchard Mason Bees.  One of the benefits delighted me; Mason bees are actually more docile than honey bees and are less likely to sting!  Woohoo – I can dig that!
Orchard Mason Bees are also supposed to be better pollinators than honey bees.  They will work in cooler and damper weather as well.  Why are they better pollinators? They carry pollen on the underside of their abdomen and then scrape the pollen off within their nesting hole. Because the pollen is carried dry on their hair, it is more easily transferred, resulting in significantly more pollinated flowers than their cousin, the honey bee, who wet the pollen they carry on their legs.

http://www.crownbees.com/what-makes-mason-bees-such-good-pollinators/

http://www.citygirlfarming.com/Bees/MasonBeeInfo.html

http://www.citygirlfarming.com/Bees/BeeKeeping.html

Step 1 is to plant food to attract the bees - native wildflowers. The native wildflower project has been ongoing since 2007 and am loving the results.  But I had to smile to myself as I had uncovered yet another hobby where I would have the challenge of providing food for something I was inviting to my backyard. 
Step 2 is to provide shelter and housing. 
In researching mason bees I found that there are many simple ways to attract and provide housing for them.  If you search the internet, you will find tons of cool pictures of logs and various other natural things that can be drilled out and placed together to make visually attractive housing for them.

However attractive they are though, to my disappointment, I learned these structures are not very practical or safe for the bees as they allow various parasites to also take up residence and kill the hibernating bees.  And the housing is not very easy to clean.
I realize these natural cavities are where 99% of the mason bees lay their eggs and somehow, some percentage of them survive.  At some point, I will probably grab a bunch of hardwood, reeds and other materials and build one of these beautiful structures and just burn the materials and start over with fresh-drilled wood, reeds, etc. every year.
While I'm talking about making your own housing, here is a fun project you can do with your kids to build your own bee housing.
http://www.nwf.org/How-to-Help/Garden-for-Wildlife/Gardening-Tips/Build-a-Bee-House.aspx

But for now, I wanted to be able to see this evolution of life and I elected to try artificial housing.
I finally found a really good source for housing and ordered 4 of these blocks.
http://www.masonbeehomes.com/pro-bee-block
Mason bees usually work within a 300 foot radius of their home, so I placed these 4 blocks in strategic places around my property.

4 houses - sides & top are cut from cedar boards and the roof overhangs almost 2".

This one was hung in front of the orchard on 4/28/2014 where cherry trees, elderberries and blackberries grow.

This one is located under a tree limb, facing south as required by the instructions, overlooking a large grove of black hawthorn (viburnum).

This one was hung in front of our Viburnum forest on 4/28/2014 that blooms om early spring.

I was afraid that I had put out my Mason bee homes way too late for our region, but I was hopeful that I might pick up some stragglers.  After all, the plum trees (our first early spring bloomer in this region) and the viburnum were still blooming!  Maybe I would get lucky my first year, but I'd have to wait and see.

The Stage is Set: Milkweeds and Other Forbs Planted

After evaluating the wind, we were finally able to burn on Saturday, April 5th.  We were surprised that the majority of the grass was a lot drier than we anticipated.  I was happy about it, thinking, "yay - a more thorough burn!".  My husband, not so much.  We were able to get most of the area burned with a low & slow back burn, but if you live in the Ozarks, you're aware that you can never really rely on a consistent wind speed or direction for a whole day.  We had some very unpleasant moments of choking on clouds of smoke blown in our face and a few times we were chasing down an unexpected 6 foot-high head fire that went roaring towards an equally tall stand of ultra-dry Indian Grass. My inner-pryo, was jumping with joy, "burn, baby, burn!".  My adult self was screaming in terror.

My husband is so cute when he's panicking and feverishly pumping water on a fire that I just worked so hard to get going.  After years of burning stuff together though, I have learned though when is a good time to take pictures and when to put the camera away and grab my rake.  I really am a well-behaved, somewhat-controlled firebug, well, most of the time. 

Wind coming in from the south, created a low & slow back burn on this acre.

After burning we dragged the field with a large cut cedar tree to remove the burnt matter and break up any remaining debris so that it can compost more quickly.  The unique shape of this area was cut out on purpose by my husband when he made the fire breaks.

This is the most northern half of the acre.

The adjoining areas in the above and below pictures have now been planted with Common and Butterfly milkweed (approximately 1000 seeds), Side Oats Gamma, Little Bluestem, Yellow and Pale Purple Coneflower, New England Aster, Prairie Blazing Star, Lemon Mint (thank you Gail!), Black-eyed Susan, Trailing Lespedeza, Hairy Mountain Mint, Wild Bergamot and Purple Beardtongue.  Every patch of bare soil is blessed with a seed or many in this case; the fire breaks have even been planted with Red Clover.

This is the southern half of the acre. 

For the west field pictured below, the winds were coming from the west consistently, right up until the last 30-40'.  Then suddenly, the wind shifted 180 degrees on us and we had a head fire for the last few thrilling, heart-pounding minutes.  It was a good reminder of why we take the time to create really, really good firebreaks, but it's still fun to create a little bit of excitement in the neighborhood and watch their eyes grow wide as the fire roared towards their property lines.

West field - this area started out with a nice back burn but ended with an awesome head fire.

The area pictured above (during the burn) and below (post-burn) was formerly a hayfield and it was very thick with fescue, then dead, dry duff after killing it.  We were suspicious that all of the fescue had not died yet so, after burning and dragging it with a cedar tree, we decided to wait a few days and see if it would pop back up for another dose of glyphosate.  It did and we obliged. 

West field - post burn and drag.

Now, we wait another 4 days until the glyphosate has dissipated, after which I will be able to spread more of my precious native wildflower seeds that still slumber in my very cold refrigerator.  But they will be on the ground soon and then we wait another year or so to see the results.  I'm sure I can find another project to work on in the meantime!

The Hidden Beauty and Wonder of a Seed

“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there and I am prepared to expect wonders.”
― Henry David Thoreau

For the last 5 years, I've been working on establishing native wildflowers on our land.  After getting a small patch of soil prepared & planted near the house, I had to wait patiently for the first 2 years until the showpiece flowers started blooming.  Over the next 3 years,  we burned the small patch every winter and each spring even more flowers would grow.  I was fascinated with the huge numbers of insects that surrounded the native wildflowers.  By the thousands, they come.  So many varieties of bees including honey bees, bumblebees, carpenter bees, mason bees and even little sweat bees were availing themselves of the sweet nectar produced by these plants and I could watch them for hours.  Their ability to work so energetically for hours is something of which I'm very envious!

Honey bees on Butterfly Milkweed in the hot July sun.

And when the butterflies arrived - oh lordy, I knew I was hooked on native wildflower gardening and needed to plant more.  After all, I have 23 acres, so why not plant it all in flowers?

Black Swallowtail on Prairie Blazing Star in July

Crimson clover makes a great cover crop.  We planted it in the late fall and it provides plenty of food in the early spring for the bees that emerge early from their winter slumber.

Last Fall, I spent a lot of time out gathering native wildflower seeds on our property which included thousands of Butterfly milkweed and Common milkweed seeds too.  I was delighted to receive seeds from new friends and I went even further and purchased a variety of packets of seed from the Missouri Wildflowers Nursery (MOwildflowers.net).

Normally, I would have already scattered the seeds over the areas to be planted so that the freezing and thawing from winter would naturally stratify the seeds and get them ready to sprout this summer.  But, the areas I’m going to plant this spring are still thickly covered with dead fescue that we killed last Fall.  If not killed, the fescue would continue to choke out the native plants and I might as well throw the seeds in the trash, because they wouldn’t sprout until the fescue is gone, gone, gone.  The dead grass then has to be burned off too so that the seed, once scattered, can make good contact with the soil.  I’ve been seeing some whorled milkweed struggling through the thick grass in this area for the last 2 years, so I can’t wait to see what happens when we burn it this spring.

Mr. Freeze has plowed a fire lane to the south (to the right) of this 3/4 acres, so we don't burn down the neighbor's barn & house.

While we’re waiting for the perfect burning weather (we don’t want our names to be part of a headline story in the local newspaper), I am manually stratifying the seeds.  Well, this is the way the experts recommend stratifying seeds at home, so we’ll see if it works.  At least this way, I’m not feeding the local mouse population too!   I moistened some soil less potting mixture (sphagnum peat moss) and mixed the seeds in, dumped it into trays, then put them in the spare refrigerator.  

These flats contain seeds for: Praire Blazing Star, Purple Coneflower, Yellow Coneflower, Pale Purple Coneflower, Horsemint (Bee Balm), New England and Aromatic Aster, Royal Catchfly, Rose Verbena, Hairy Mountain Mint.  The bag contains both Common and Butterfly milkweed seeds.  All require 3-6 weeks of stratification.

I have placed them outside at night a few times, just so they could freeze over and then brought them back in.  It’s what would happen in nature, so I’m helping, right? 

I've also potted some Common milkweed plants to have around for any Monarch caterpillars that I’ll find this year.  I’ll be able to set the potted milkweed plants inside of their houses for them to eat, eliminating the need for me to cut fresh leaves every day from the field plants.

4 seeds were added to moistened potting soil in each recycled 1/2 gallon milk jug.

I put together 34 of these, sealed them shut and left them on the deck all winter.

All I have to do now is wait until the perfect burning weather to do our prescribed burn.  Mr. Freeze always lets me throw the first match.  I think he knows it appeases my inner pyro, who needs to be unleashed often.  I love fire - not because it is destructive, but because of what happens after it passes through.  It brings new life to areas where it was once suffocated, it renews and rejuvenates and some seeds even require it for scarification.  After a long, cold winter, I am ready to turn up the heat!