Life Magazine in 1937

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Internet Archive has digitized versions of many Life Magazines. I have been browsing through them – slowly since there was an issue for each week. As I looked at the issues from 1938, I thought about my parents in elementary school then. They were probably still mostly oblivious to the events in the broader world – secure with their families in rural/small town Oklahoma. The sample images (one from each weekly magazine) show a variety of topics the Life editors chose to cover over the course of the year. The growing news of war in Europe was in the news but life in America was not impacted very much.

Life Magazine 1938-01-03 – the Mormon Temple (Salt Lake City)

Life Magazine 1938-01-10 – Florida

Life Magazine 1938-01-17 – Texas oil

Life Magazine 1938-01-24 – Chinese fighting against the Japanese invasion

Life Magazine 1938-01-31 – Helium from plant in Amarillo TX exported to Germany for Zeppelin

Life Magazine 1938-02-07 – Women’s shoes

Life Magazine 1938-02-14 – Georgia O’Keeffe

Life Magazine 1938-02-21 – Carl Sandburg

Life Magazine 1938-02-28 – Helen Keller

Life Magazine 1938-03-07 – Hitler at Berlin Philharmonic

Life Magazine 1938-03-14 – Products from Mexico

Life Magazine 1938-03-21 – Old music in new ways (radio and records too)

Life Magazine 1938-03-28 – Lives broken in Austria by Nazi conquest

Life Magazine 1938-04-04 – Junked cars

Life Magazine 1938-04-11 – Tornado in Kansas

Life Magazine 1938-04-18 – Lipton tea

Life Magazine 1938-04-25 – Bridge to Key West finished

Life Magazine 1938-05-02 – Three Musicians by Picasso

Life Magazine 1938-05-09 - Mussolini

Life Magazine 1938-05-16 – Solar flare

Life Magazine 1938-05-16 – Hitler and Mussolini

Life Magazine 1938-05-30 – Ford tires

Life Magazine 1938-06-06 – Princeton boys

Life Magazine 1938-06-13 – Pattern of War

Life Magazine 1938-06-20 – War in China

Life Magazine 1938-06-27 – New plane and train

Life Magazine 1938-07-04 – Copper Mine

Life Magazine 1938-07-11 – Coca Cola

Life Magazine 1938-07-18 – Hopi impact on modern home design

Life Magazine 1938-07-25 – Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret with their mother

Life Magazine 1938-08-01 – Refinery fire

Life Magazine 1938-08-07 – Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese communists

Life Magazine 1938-08-15 – Sears, Rowbuck and Co. catalog covers

Life Magazine 1938-08-22 – Air transport maintenance

Life Magazine 1938-08-29 – Beach clubs

Life Magazine 1938-09-05 – College clothes

Life Magazine 1938-09-05 – Nazi war preparedness

Life Magazine 1938-09-19 – Czechoslovakia

Life Magazine 1938-09-26 – Hitler facial expressions

Life Magazine 1938-10-03 – France’s Maginot Line

Life Magazine 1938-10-10 – Nigel Chamberlain

Life Magazine 1938-10-17 – Gas mask queue

Life Magazine 1938-10-24 – “America in 1938 needs fewer men with guns and more men of good will”

Life Magazine 1938-10-31 – US Navy

Life Magazine 1938-11-07 – Gorges of the Yangtse

Life Magazine 1938-11-14 – Halloween in Kansas City

Life Magazine 1938-11-21 – Coca Cola

Life Magazine 1938-11-28 – Rice Krispies

Life Magazine 1938-12-05 – Christmas toys

Life Magazine 1938-12-12 – Spanish War

Life Magazine 1938-12-19 – Mary Martin

Life Magazine 1938-12-26 – The Vatican

Ten Little Celebrations - May 2025

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So many places close to home to visit…flowers everywhere. Also a new volunteering activity…with butterflies.

Roston Butterfly House. The native butterfly house at Springfield Botanical Gardens opened in May…and I had my first volunteer shift there…celebrating the butterflies and the people that come to visit them!

Butterfly tour for first graders. There are so many little celebrations to observe and participate in on field trips with first graders: their exuberance at being outdoors, their awe of butterflies in general and joy when on alights on their shoulder or finger…celebration frequently rippling through the whole group.

Harold Prairie. I celebrated  visting a narrow swath of never plowed prairie in need of restoration…the flowers beginning to bloom after the recent mowing and the prospect of volunteer hours in the future.

Noah Brown’s Prairie. Getting to see 3 different prairie situations in a short walk is worth celebrating: a never plowed prairie recently burned, a never plowed prairie that is due to be burned in the fall, and a prairie restoration project. There was plenty to see in all three areas!

Linden’s Prairie. Another never plowed area…celebrating seeing some new species and some ones I had seen in the previous prairies.

Ag Academy. I celebrated the 5th grade Ag Academy students that were selling seedlings as a fund raiser….and getting some milkweed, zinnias, and coneflowers to plant in a big pot for my patio.

Irises. Big beautiful flowers…one of the big celebrations in my yard in May.

More native plants. I added an American Spikenard, red buckeye, and native columbines to my yard in May…celebrating that they were easy to find at a local native plant sale and that I got them planted the day after I bought them.

Successful surgery. Often times things that cause a lot of anxiety (like pending surgery) result in a celebration when the best happens…rather than the worst. That happened for my husband this month.

Young robins. I celebrated seeing fledgling/juvenile robins…and realizing what they were…in my newly creating spikenard/hosta garden. They seem to be finding things to eat in the pine needle mulch!

Zooming – May 2025

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May was full of blooms both in my yard and places I visited close to home: Springfield Botanical Garden, Springfield Nature Conservation Center, road cuts along US 65, Harold Prairie, Noah Brown’s Prairie, and Linden’s Prairie. I am realizing that the work I did to create a new shade garden (with American Spikenard and hostas growing in pine needle mulch) is a magnate for fledgling/juvenile robins….such a joy to see them from my office window. The month was a great one for being outdoors – even if it meant dodging thunderstorms!

Roston Butterfly House

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The seasonal Roston Native Butterfly House at the Springfield MO Botanical Gardens opened in mid-May and I have enjoyed my initial shifts. It will be my primary volunteer activity until September! The mornings are still cool enough that sometimes the butterflies are not as active when my shift starts at 10…. they warm up and are more active before the shift ends at 12:30 PM. I signed up for mornings-only from the beginning but have already learned that in May, the temperature for any of the shifts would not be problematic!

It is easy to get pictures with my phone!

I find myself enjoying being in the butterfly house just as I did in Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy in Maryland (pre-Covid). There is something magical about so many butterflies in a confined space. The Roston Butterfly House is only native species so there no biological containment requirement…which makes it less stressful for volunteers!

In a Waiting Room

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Last week my husband was scheduled of out-patient surgery. The situation had changed significantly from my January 2022 outpatient surgery experience when Covid-19 protocols closed waiting rooms. The expectation now is that patients have a person, usually a family member, that stays at the waiting room during the surgery. We left for the hospital at 5 AM and were home by a little after 11 AM.

We went to the lobby registration desk for initial sign in…and were given a buzzer like restaurants sometimes use. Within a few minutes of sitting down, the buzzer went off and we went with an administrative person to make sure all the payment information was correct. Back in the waiting room for a few minutes…and we were called again by a person to take us back to the pre/post op area. I helped my husband into the hospital gown and socks….put all his clothes in a bag that I would keep (that was the expectation…and I found myself wishing his clothes were not as bulky). The anesthesiologist and surgeon came to talk to us. By 7:15 AM he was prepped and on his way to the OR and I was on my way to the waiting room. I had been given a number so I could track his status on the screens there. I checked in at the desk …in anticipation of the surgeon coming out after the surgery was complete to talk with me.

I filled the time between 7:15 AM and 9:35 AM in that waiting room. Getting a pastry from the bakery/café for breakfast was my first activity. I had loaded some novels on my phone for reading material. I made 3 Zentangle tiles. The time passed relatively quickly. The area was not crowded but it was clear that there were quite a few morning surgeries. One man lay down on one of the longer bench chairs and napped. Most people were reading on their phones; I didn’t hear a single phone ‘ring’ so people must have followed direction to silence them. The green plastic bags with patient’s clothes were near every person in the waiting room! I kept my daughter apprised of the everything via texts.

Everyone must have been a little anxious…most seemed hyper alert (except for the one person that slept) but at the same time relatively calm and appreciative of the quiet, calm demeanor of people at the reception desk in the room….they set the tone.  

The waiting room had small rooms at each end where the conversations with the surgeon could happen in private. There was a picture of a dogwood in bloom on the wall in the room I was assigned. The surgeon came in…reported positive results…talked about the recovery instructions which would be printed and provided to us by the nurse. I was back in the waiting room for a few minutes before they gave me a post op room number where my husband was.

He was groggy still from the anesthesia. He seemed to be very challenged to rank the amount of pain he was feeling. It took about an hour for him to eat a snack and get dressed…meet the criteria for being released.

I called my daughter to meet us at our house since I wasn’t sure how mobile he really was. When we got home, I held onto his arm to go into the house…and used the path with the fewest steps. It was slow going but we managed, and he immediately took a nap. The pain med he was given just before he left the hospital had taken effect!

Fledging Robins

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The first brood of robins in our yard has fledged! I’m not sure where the nest was but I have been seeing the fledglings looking and finding food in the area between our eastern white pine and hollies…among the pine needles, hostas, wild strawberries and violets.

They are smaller than the adults and transitioning to adult plumage. They still have a few white marks on their head and back…and their breast is not all red yet. At first, they are clumsy fliers too; one grabbed onto the screen of my office window and held on for a few seconds before fluttering down to the flower bed below.

I am celebrating that my work to transition the area from grass over the past two years (i.e. adding pine needles collected elsewhere in the yard to those already there from the white pine, transplanting hostas, letting the wild strawberries/violets/lambs ear encroach, and adding an American Spikenard) has resulted in a place the young robins found…and found food!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 24, 2025

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

American Schools Have Been Feeding Children for More Than 100 Years. Here’s How the School Lunch Has Changed - The National School Lunch Program is the longest running children’s health program in U.S. history, and it has an outsized impact on nutritional health.

Pompeii’s Most Fascinating Finds of the Decade—So Far - From children's drawings to ancient fast-food counters, new finds continue to reshape our understanding of daily life in the ill-fated Roman city. very year, archeologists come across remains and artifacts that broaden our understanding of what daily life in Pompeii and, by extension, the rest of the Roman Republic was like.

Where in the world are babies at the lowest risk of dying? – Data collected by countries…and then tweaked to be made more consistent so that comparisons can be done. It’s about how to look at statistical data.

How gardening can help you live better for longer - In 2015, Norway became one of the first countries to create a national dementia care plan, which includes government-offered daycare services such as Inn på tunet – translated as "into the yard" – or care farms. Now, as researchers recognize the vast cognitive benefits of working on the land, more communities are integrating gardening into healthcare – treating all kinds of health needs through socially-prescribed activities in nature, or green prescriptions.

Chasing Unicorns: A Photographer’s Journey Documenting Rhino Conservation - Bringing the rhinos from one conservancy to another was a monumental effort. A photographer documented the work of conservationists and veterinarians.

Gilded-Age Tiffany Window Heads to Auction with Multimillion-Dollar Price Tag - With most surviving examples of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s mastery of mottled glass still affixed to the walls of churches or stately homes, purchasing opportunities are rare.

Pit Stops on the Monarch Flyway: Arkansas Partnership Benefits Pollinators - You just don’t see as many monarch butterflies as you used to. Researchers have documented that eastern populations of monarchs have declined by as much as 80 percent since the 1990s. A partnership in Arkansas is restoring pollinator habitat, providing those critical stops for butterflies to rest and feed. The habitat is also utilized by migratory songbirds and northern bobwhite, a popular gamebird that has seen significant declines.

Vitamin supplements slow down the progression of glaucoma - In glaucoma, the optic nerve is gradually damaged, leading to vision loss and, in the worst cases, blindness. High pressure in the eye drives the disease, and eye drops, laser treatment or surgery are therefore used to lower the pressure in the eye and thus slow down the disease. n experiments on mice and rats with glaucoma, the researchers gave supplements of the B vitamins B6, B9 and B12, as well as choline. This had a positive effect. A clinical trial has been started to see if the vitamins have the same impact in people.

163 Treasures from King Tut’s Tomb Arrive at the Grand Egyptian Museum - The museum one step closer to staging the first-ever complete display of the legendary boy king’s golden treasures. I remember the two King Tut exhibits I have views – in New Orleans and Baltimore.

Sulfur runoff amplifies mercury concentrations in Florida Everglades - Sulfur applied to sugarcane crops in South Florida is flowing into wetlands upgradient of Everglades National Park, triggering a chemical reaction that converts mercury into toxic methylmercury, which accumulates in fish.

USSR Crafts

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The ‘book of the week’ is another one published in the waning days of the USSR in 1987. It documents the folk art of the country – which is now split apart – and is available on Internet Archive. The book is in English, translated from the Russian by Jan Butler. It is well illustrated by the author’s (Alexander Milovsky) photographs – well worth browsing.

The Pure Spring Craft and Craftsmen of the USSR

Sustaining Elder Care – May 2025

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My sisters had shared with me that Dad seemed to be sleeping more…rebelling at doing physical therapy because he was too tired. But he seemed alert and, while not enthusiastic about doing physical therapy, he acquiesced and did reasonably well. He went outside to sit on the patio while I watered the garden too. When we came back in, he complained that he couldn’t see.

He did go to an eye specialist since my last visit. They confirmed that his vision is one eye is very limited (light/dark only) and that the eye pressure is still too high to preserve the vision in the other. New eye drops were prescribed, and they seem to be reducing the pressure considerably. But….there is already damage. I suspect that coming from bright light (outdoors) to indoor lighting is a problematic time because his eyes don’t adjust to the change very quickly. I guided his walker until we got to the puzzle table.

His eyesight makes the puzzles more challenging than ever, but he still manages to place a few pieces…although I am not sure how he does it. We finished a puzzle that was already mostly done during my afternoon visit. He is still pleased when the puzzle is finished – it’s an accomplishment. This time there was a piece we found on the tray that was obviously too small of the current puzzle (and there was not a hole for another piece)! A little mystery.

The next morning, I arrived before his breakfast. I took a few pictures of the big trees in front of his assisted living residence while I waited for them to open the door. Now that he is not going on walks around the neighborhood, he doesn’t see them very often.

We took the completed puzzle apart and started a new one. He takes longer to find edge pieces (always the first step). I think he is doing it totally by feel now. We made the frame, minus one piece, before breakfast was served and I left to begin my drive back to Missouri while he enjoyed it.

Linden’s Prairie

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Linden’s Prairie was my 4th field trip this spring and 3rd prairie (post about the first three: Harold Prairie, Geology field trip nature center and road cuts, Noah Brown’s Prairie). The prairie walk was sponsored by the Missouri Prairie Foundation. We had been cautioned about ticks, so I wore my bug repellent gators and shirt…sprayed my jeans with OFF! above the gators. I decided to use my point and shoot camera (Canon Powershot SX730 HS) rather than my phone (iPhone 15 Pro Max) for most of the photos. The first picture I took was of the sign near the mowed area where some of us were able to park.

The hike was in the late afternoon – sunny, warm but not too hot, a little breeze. There was a lot more grass on Linden’s Prairie than Noah Brown’s prairie last week. There might have been some armadillo holes, but they were harder to see!

Our guide talked about two things that are not around anymore on the prairie: passenger pigeons and elk. There is good documentation that both were plentiful originally. There were enough passenger pigeons that there were market hunters for them; it’s hard to imagine that pigeons were food…until they were hunted to extinction.

The swaths of red color from the Royal catchfly won’t be for a few more weeks across this prairie but there were plenty of flowers to see among the grasses…some almost hidden until they were close at hand. We saw corn salad, yarrow, delphiniums/lockspur, coreopsis, golden alexander, phlox, hoary puccoon, wood betony/lousewort, goat’s rue/hoary pea, lead plant, and wild indigo. The grasses were too hard to photograph…I concentrated on the flowers.

There was some prairie vocabulary too: mima mounds (small mounds in an otherwise gently rolling prairie landscape) and motts (clumps of woody plants in a prairie).

My favorite flowers on this walk were the prairie roses…small plants, lots of buds, grasses waving higher over the pink flowers. One had to be almost stepping on them to see them!

New Plants (in my yard)

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I added 4 new native plants to my yard recently: a red buckeye, another American Spikenard (the first is almost 2 years old and is doing so well that I wanted a second plant for another shady place), and two (eastern red) columbines.

The red buckeye was in the largest pot and I planted it first – on the east side of my house with violets growing almost all around it. I put some wood ships from mt daughter’s tree trimmers around the base. Right now the American Spikenard that is nearby is taller than the buckeye but that won’t be for too long. I hope it gets a good start this year and will – in years to come – attract hummingbirds when it blooms and shade the violets and spikenard through the hottest part of the summers.

I took a break from planting and trimmed the small branches that were at too narrow angles from the main trunk on the two young redbuds that came up in my yard…and that I am letting  grow.

I had the two columbines and the American spikenard still to go.

The spikenard’s new home is on one end of the hosta garden. The area is between hollies and a eastern white pine….shady all the time. I propagated the hostas from dense beds that were planted before we bought the house and now there will be an American Spikenard there too. It will be towering over the hostas by next year!

I planted the two columbines in an area I had planted some milkweed last fall…but it didn’t come up. So now there are two columbine plants there…with mulch around them. The area is sunny for most of the afternoon.

There is a shortleaf pine nearby and I noticed some spring developments on that tree as I gather up my tools and the emptied bin from the wood chip mulch.

The yard is changing – little by little – into the yard I want…less grass and more variety of plants and animals!

Road Trip to Dallas in May 2025

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The drive was easier than expected – no heavy rain or high winds. I made such good time that I was able to stop at the Texas welcome center on US 75 to photograph their wildflowers before meeting my sister for lunch in Sherman. The bluebonnets are waning but other flowers are blooming profusely.

I had an odd experience with my hotel. My reservation was canceled a couple of hours before I arrived because they had overbooked! They wanted me to make a reservation at a hotel next door, but I was already visiting my dad…so I told them to arrange to have a room held for me….and they did. They didn’t apologize at all for their overbooking. When I checked into the other hotel, I told them that it didn’t seem fair that I would have had to pay for the night if I had cancelled a few hours before my arrival…but the hotel could do it for apparently no penalty at all. That is still the way I feel. I am looking at other hotels in the area rather than continue to patronize a place that chose to not honor my reservation shortly before I was arriving.  The experience was made worse by the second hotel having a lot of noise during the night…and a mattress so lacking in support that my back hurt.

Now that I am home again…I have decided to try another hotel for my June trip to Dallas.

Springfield Botanical Garden – May 2025

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My daughter and I got to the gardens well before the native plant sale started so that we could walk around beforehand. Once we bought plants, we would have to leave so they would not get overheated in the car. We were very glad we did.

The peonies were the standout flower. I took lots of pictures and noticed the different shape and texture of the flower centers. Many of the plants had wire frames under/around them to support the flowers that are sometimes too heavy for the plant!

Of course there were other plants in bloom: alliums, passionflower, tulip poplar, and wild indigo were the ones I photographed.

The water feature in the hosta garden is one of my favorite places; the benches and chairs were not wet this time…we sat for a few minutes to enjoy the sights and sounds of the garden.

The varieties of hens and chicks near the Botanical Center are also a favorite place in the garden.

A blue bird eyed us as we made the final part of our walk…to the plant sale. I bought an American Spikenard, 2 columbines, and a red buckeye. More about them later.

At my daughters, she called my attention to the tiny roses near her driveway; I like their colors; they seem to get pinker as they age!

She had another plant that was blooming; we’d decided that it was a legume in previous years; this year we used the plant look up feature on our iPhones and realized that it was a yellow wild indigo. She will be adding an American Spikenard to her yard under a crabapple tree.

It was a good spring morning to be out and about!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 17, 2025

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Iconic Hollyhock House Faces Closure Amid City Cuts – Budgets tightening across the board. It seems that cultural things previously funded by governments are among the first to go.

The surprising power of breathing through your nose – The nose can be the first line of defense for your immune system. Mouth breathing has been shown to increase acidity and dryness in the mouth, linking it to cavities, demineralization of the teeth and gum disease. You can think of the nose like a wind chime for the mind; when air moves through your nose, it seems to have a significant influence on your cognitive processes. Nasal breathing has positive effects on the limbic system – the parts of the brain that regulate emotion and behavior – in ways that mouth breathing doesn't.

Spring (Baby) Fever – A baby animals quiz….with cute pictures.

Dust in the system -- How Saharan storms threaten Europe's solar power future - New research reveals how Saharan dust impacts solar energy generation in Europe. Dust from North Africa reduces photovoltaic (PV) power output by scattering sunlight, absorbing irradiance, and promoting cloud formation. Based on field data from 46 dust events between 2019 and 2023, the study highlights the difficulty of predicting PV performance during these events.

In Galápagos, Iconic Giant Tortoises Get a Helping Hand - Fifteen species of giant tortoises — the largest in the world — once roamed the Galapagos Islands but today only 11 survive. Dome-shelled tortoises reach sexual maturity at 20 to 25 and lay 16 to 20 eggs at a time. When the park was established in 1959, some of the tortoise species were heading towards extinction while others were deemed vulnerable or threatened. But a captive breeding program launched in 1965 has shown great success and has released more than 10,000 giant tortoises back into the wild.

Walmart Announces Nationwide EV Charging Network - According to a press release from the company, “With a store or club located within 10 miles of approximately 90% of Americans, we are uniquely positioned to deliver a convenient charging option that will help make EV ownership possible whether people live in rural, suburban or urban areas.”

Shingles vaccine lowers the risk of heart disease for up to eight years - There are several reasons why the shingles vaccine may help reduce heart disease. A shingles infection can cause blood vessel damage, inflammation and clot formation that can lead to heart disease. By preventing shingles, vaccination may lower these risks. Our study found stronger benefits in younger people, probably due to a better immune response, and in men, possibly due to differences in vaccine effectiveness. The study was done in South Korea.

Hikers Make Stunning Discovery of $340,000 Gold Hoard in Czech Mountains - Most of the coins are French with the overall hoard broadly dated from 1808 to 1915. There is, however, a notable exception: the Austro-Hungarian coins. Small markings on the coins, known as countermarkings, indicate that they were reissued in 1921 in an area of Yugoslavia most likely encompassing modern-day Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The hoard remains under investigation and archaeologists hope that with the aid of archival records they will be able to work out the full story behind the treasure.

All of the biggest U.S. cities are sinking - The fastest-sinking city is Houston, with more than 40% of its area subsiding more than 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) per year, and 12% sinking at twice that rate. Some localized spots are going down as much as 5 centimeters (2 inches) per year. Two other Texas cities, Fort Worth and Dallas, are not far behind. Some localized fast-sinking zones in other places include areas around New York's LaGuardia Airport, and parts of Las Vegas, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. Massive ongoing groundwater extraction is the most common cause of these land movements. In Texas, the problem is exacerbated by pumping of oil and gas. Droughts will also likely worsen subsidence in the future. Some buildings in the Miami area are sinking in part due to disruptions in the subsurface caused by construction of newer buildings nearby.

How Herbicide Drift from Farms Is Harming Trees in Midwest - There’s growing evidence that agricultural herbicides — which are also used on golf courses, lawns, and rights of way — are inflicting widespread damage on trees and other vegetation across the Midwest and upper South and perhaps doing broader ecological harm as well. The problem is causing increasing concern and even alarm among landowners, state forestry officials, and scientists. In 48 percent of the cases, researchers found damage more than 1,000 feet from the nearest farm field; six samples showed herbicide damage at more than a mile. 

A Picture Book of Insects

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My ‘book of the week’ is one published in the waning days of the Soviet Union in 1989: A Picture Book of Insects by Vitaly Tanasyichuk with drawings by Ruben Varshamov. Like many Raduga Publishers books that came out in the 1980s, it is not now available on Internet Archive.

The illustrations (4 samples below) are the motivation to browse the book!

A Picture Book of Insects

Noah Brown’s Prairie

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I signed up for a guided tour offered by the Missouri Prairie Foundation of Noah Brown’s Prairie which is just to the east of Joplin MO. It is a prairie remnant with a reconstructed prairie adjacent to it. There were plenty of wildflowers to see in the hour and half we were there. Everything was wet from showers before we got there and for the first 15 minutes we were walking. Originally, I thought about writing this post as a wildflower id post…but when I looked at all my pictures I changed my mind….decided to just do a slideshow to give an idea of the ambiance of the prairie in May.

Of course, you can use the slideshow as an id challenge. Look for spiderwort, false dandelion, wood betony, Indian paintbrush (red, orange, and yellow), wild indigo (blue and yellow), prairie phlox, wild parsley, bastard toadflax, violets, rose, milkweed, shooting start (white and pink/purple), red sorrel….and of course lots of different kinds of grass.

There were 3 distinct areas that we walked through: the recently (last fall) burned area of the remnant prairie, the area that is due to be burned next fall, and the reconstructed area. The recently burned area was the easiest to walk through and had the most wildflowers. The area due to be burned next fall had a lot of thatch which made walking more challenging and not as many flowers. The reconstructed area is a work in progress. It had some non-native grasses and the only thing blooming was the red sorrel (non-native); it was somewhat difficult to walk through because it had dense clumps and then almost bare areas. The remnant prairie had micro-communities: some low areas that had standing water (vernal pools) and some mounds that had different plants than the surrounding areas.

I was very pleased to see the Indian paintbrushes up close since I noticed them blooming as I drove through Oklahoma last month….but didn’t find a convenient place to stop to see them better while I was driving.

Rhododendron!

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The end of April and the first few weeks of May are when the rhododendron at our house is blooming. It is a large bush near my office – although I can’t easily see it from my office chair. I took a few steps outside to photograph the flowers after some rain. The blooms were in various stages of development.

I cut one cluster that still had some buds to bring inside. The buds opened and the cluster lasted for a week or more in my office window.

Some of our neighbors in Maryland had rhododendron bushes in their yards but my Missouri house is the first one I’ve had where I can easily observe it over the entire cycle. Most years the blooms are spectacular but there has already been one year then the buds were damaged by very cold weather. The bush is getting larger each year and I will probably do some trimming at some point. It is one of the evergreens around our patio along with some holly trees.

Springfield ArtsFest

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The annual ArtsFest in Springfield MO was the first weekend in May. My daughter and I went on the Sunday morning. It was just us this year – our spouses deciding to do other things. The temperature was a little cool, but the sun was shining. We parked in the nearby MSU parking garage and then walked over to the festival.

One of my fellow master naturalists was volunteering at the entrance table! We walked down the street fair with booths lining the way. There were lots of earrings but I am not wearing them as much as I used to, so I didn’t browse them. Hats might be my new ‘souvenir’ purchase since I tend to wear more of them now; there weren’t any booths that had hats at the Artsfest!

I did find the stainless-steel yard art vendor– which I had purchased from twice before. I bought two iris sculptures this year. The new teal one gets a spotlight of sun in the afternoon near my white pine. I looked up the name of the company from the Artsfest list of vendors: Uniquely Yours Metal.

Afterwards we went out to lunch at a Mexican food restaurant. I enjoyed the mural in their entrance…colorful botanical.

Back at my daughter’s house, the clematis was blooming on her gate and we discovered a buckeye sapling that is coming up in a place she can leave it to grow!

Irises!

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When we bought our house in Missouri there were already some irises. They didn’t bloom prolifically because the rhizomes were too crowded. I dug some of them up and planted them in the area where we had a pine tree fall (and was removed). This is their second year in that location, and they are blooming wonderfully. They seem to survive wind and rain without blowing over better than in the original bed…which is blooming better now too.

I cut ones that had blown over to enjoy inside…..and did a round of macro images of the flowers while they still had rain drops on them.

The iris rhizomes I dug up at my parents’ house before they moved in January 2024 did not bloom at all last year. There are not many of them yet, but they seem larger (both the flower and the stem) that the others. They are a burgundy/mauve color too! Hopefully they will proliferate and make the whole area along the fence an iris bed!

Volunteering – April 2025

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April was a month of volunteering and training for some new activities in the upcoming months. I was glad to use my tree materials again at the Scouting event, find 23 puzzles for my dad as I volunteered twice with Friends of the Library (at a used book sale and sorting books for the next sale), talk to people visiting Nature Touch Tables as part of Earth Day, and do another month of Feeder Watch (citizen science). I also worked on the programs (planning, prep, and follow-up) for the Master Naturalist Chapter. I am looking forward to Butterfly House related volunteering beginning in May.

I am thinking about my motivations in volunteering. After I retired more than a decade ago, volunteer activities became one of the best sources of interaction with a broader range of people. That is still the case. I chose to become a Maryland Master Naturalist since I also wanted at least some of the volunteer work to be outdoors; becoming a Missouri Master Naturalist is the same. In Maryland, the reactions of school groups on field trip hikes, conversations with other volunteers before and afterward, and positive feedback from non-profits that organized the events were the appreciation/acknowledgment that what I was doing mattered. In Missouri, it is the same although there is the added dimension of the Master Naturalist Chapter. I’m not sure what I expect….it could just be more ‘icing on the cake’!

Volunteering is good for my community and for me too!