Suburban Savanna - 1

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Shortly after I started the 9-month Missouri Woodland Mentor series back in January, I started pondering whether the sterile suburban yards (highly fertilized, sprayed with pesticides, rigidly trimmed, full of non-native plants, toxic to most wildlife) could be transformed into something with a positive impact on the natural environment. It seemed to me that the definition of a savanna fit closest to what suburbs looked like on the surface: grass interspersed with trees providing less than 30% canopy cover.

There are some qualities of a suburb that would work against it becoming a full-fledged savanna:

There is too much impervious surface: streets, houses, sidewalks, driveways…which means that water will run off more quickly. There are often water retention ponds in newer developments to collect run off – somewhat slow the flow.

The building of the houses and infrastructure often is a severe disruption to the land: scraping off topsoil and hauling it away, removing almost all vegetation, and planting of turf. Sometimes there are a few trees planted by the builder – but they are not necessarily natives.  It takes a long time to recover from that disruption. It is the starting point for neighborhoods to progress toward a suburban savanna.

Even with those challenges, there are things I am already doing to nudge my yard toward the savanna goal:

I don’t spray pesticides or herbicides….and I don’t fertilize.

I don’t mow the fall leaves in my back yard until late spring (let the moths and insects emerge.

The non-native trees to Missouri (a Kousa dogwood and an eastern white pine and a variety of holly) are not going to be cut down…but I am planting more native woody plants: pawpaw, fragrant sumac, spice bush (hosted spice bush swallowtail caterpillars last summer), red buckeye, elderberry, and Ozark witch hazel. A red maple and shortleaf pine are the two native trees that were already growing in my yard. The forsythia and Japanese barberry will eventually be dug up.

The violets that were contained in a bed on the east side of the house when I moved here have been allowed to spill out taking over half the grass/moss area of that side yard. I have noticed more birds finding food in the debris from the violets over this past winter – even that small change has made a difference to birds.

I have planted a native plant garden in the middle of my front yard. As it matures – I will extend it so that there will be less ‘turf’ remaining.

Last summer I avoided mowing patches of clover I found growing in the year as a step toward improving the quality of the soil.

I am learning to recognize goldenrod, asters, and Rudbekia coming up in my yard that I can simply mow around!

I will post next month about my progress transforming my yard into a suburban savanna. My focus currently is on my yard …but I will take every opportunity to encourage others in my neighborhood to begin the process as well.

Macro Photography – Springtime

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There are so many plants making moves in the springtime….which makes for a lot of macro photography subjects. These are all from my yard!

The short-leaf pine has dropped some cones and the cycle is beginning again in the tree.

The Ozark Witch Hazel is leafing out and its stems are growing rapidly.

Dandelions and henbits are blooming. I was surprised that I didn’t see any insects around the plants; perhaps the wind was too strong for them? Neither plant is native but they have deep roots that hold the soil and I usually see a lot of insects visiting the dandelion flowers.

There is a Chinese mantis case from last year on a plant in my yard. I’ll keep an eye on it – hoping to see some tiny mantises emerge.

A spiderweb caught a seed!

The Japanese Barberry is blooming. I am going to cut down my two bushes again since I really do not want the plant in my yard. There is a small one in the flower bed that has come up from seed. They are invasive and have thorns – nothing to like about them.

There were some insects on the last daffodil flower.

The lambs ear is coming up from everywhere it was last year. I like the tint of green…and velvety texture.

Finally – the violets are blooming. The plants started out as small clumps of leaves; then the leaves get bigger and the flowers open. I am harvesting some for greens (think salad and stir-fry), but the plants recover quickly. They are a great native plant for the shady parts of my yard.

Planting Native Plants in the Front Yard

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I waited a day or so to plant the young plants – when the nighttime temperatures would not be dipping into the 30s again. I planted into the oak mulch that I had put down last fall. As I made the hole for the first plant, I noticed that the surface was dry but underneath for very moist. There were worms and small grubs and white fungus hyphae. The new plants are going to love it. Of course, this also means that plants I don’t want there were going to love it too….I will need to recognize and pull as they appear!

I planted 8 plants on the first day:

Wild Blue Indigo Baptisia australis and Cream wild indigo Baptista bracteate

Rattlesnake master Eryngium yuccifolium and Golden ragwort Packera aurea

Missouri Evening Primrose Oenothera macrocarpa and Nodding Onion Allium cernuum

Yarrow Achillea millefolium and Little Bluestem Schizachyrium scoparium

The Soapweed yucca Yucca glauca was planted the following day in a bed where I had to remove rocks and landscaping cloth. The bed is not covered by our sprinkler system and some of the plants previously there had not done well with the dry conditions.

Now that this first round of plants is in the ground, I am in monitoring mode….to water if it doesn’t rain enough and to pull weeds. I am expecting some elderberry seedlings that I will add to the front garden….and some pawpaw seedlings that will join one I planted last year in my back yard (completing the pawpaw patch).

Buying Native Plants for the Front Yard

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The local nature center hosted two native plant vendors (Ozark Soul and Missouri Wildflowers Nursery) on a recent Saturday, and I bought the initial plants for my new front yard native plant garden. The oak chips have been in place since last fall, and the temperatures are warm enough to begin plantings. It was a damp morning, but my daughter helped by volunteering her time and her car; we loaded up three bins of plants.

I took pictures of the bins when I got home and documented what I bought. I’m keeping a record of what I buy, plant…what survives.

In bin1 there are:

  • 10 Missouri Evening Primrose Oenothera macrocarpa The one near my mailbox is doing very well and these plants will become the ground cover level of my native plant garden.

  • 2 Little Bluestem Schizachyrium scoparium It will be the background for the lower part of the garden….and show up more after other vegetation has died back for the winter.

  • In bin 2 the rows from top to bottom are:

  • Little Bluestem Schizachyrium scoparium, Nodding Onion Allium cernuum, Wild Blue Indigo Baptisia australis

  • Rattlesnake master Eryngium yuccifolium, Nodding Onion Allium cernuum, Wild Blue Indigo Baptisia australis

  • Rattlesnake master Eryngium yuccifolium, Yarrow Achillea millefolium, Rattlesnake master Eryngium yuccifolium

In bin 3 the rows top to bottom are:

  • Golden ragwort Packera aurea, Soapweed yucca Yucca glauca

  • 2 Cream wild indigo Baptista bracteate

  • Soapweed yucca Yucca glauca, Golden ragwort Pakera aurea

My next post will be about planting these into the garden. There are 28 plants in all.

There is another native plant sale at the botanical garden in early May. Hopefully these plants will be thriving, and I can focus on filling in with the plants that will bloom into the fall…provide food for pollinators at the end of the season.

Luna Moths

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I’m not sure why I decided to check the luna moth cocoons I had put in my John Deere room last fall. I was surprised and excited to see 6 moths in the cage! They hadn’t been out long since there were males and females…none mating.

I knew that there were some moths that hadn’t emerged last fall, but I wasn’t sure how many would make it through the winter months. I released the first 6 at dusk on the evening they emerged last week. They seemed reluctant to leave my finger although when I tried to release them on my red maple they crawled onto the branches; red maple is a food plant for the caterpillars. Two more emerged the next day and I waited until the frost warning was over before releasing them.

The red maple is barely leafing out. I hope that if the moths lay eggs there we be sufficient leaves by the time the caterpillars emerge.

Neighborhood Turtles

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As I walked across my backyard to the gate I noticed a late blooming daffodil – all the rest of them are spent except for this one!

I was doing my quick walk to look at the phenology of plants in my neighborhood and decided to continue around the storm water retention ponds. There were no geese or ducks on the pond….but the turtles looked bigger and more numerous than ever! There were at least 17 of then sunning themselves on the bank…even the smallest one considerably larger than my hand. No duckling or gosling would survive our pond for very long….and maybe the small fish are not faring well either.

I am wondering how many turtles the pond can reasonably support. At some point it will reach its carrying capacity and the turtle population will stabilize.

Backyard Greens

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My backyard greens are ready to eat! I won’t be buying arugula or spinach again until the late fall. Since I don’t put any chemicals on my yard – they are safe to harvest/eat just before I need them.

Right now, the dandelions are full of blooms and I pick mostly flowers – although there are a few leaves too. I generally use them in stir fry since cooking reduces the bitterness of the leaves. The flowers are tasty cooked or fresh!

I use violet leaves like arugula. The flowers are edible – but only available in the spring. They are easy to harvest and seem to replenish themselves quickly. The violet patch has gotten bigger each year we have lived in our house – once I stopped mowing the area where they were spilling out of the flowerbed. They will be the ‘carpet’ under the American Spikenard and the small Red Buckeye and pawpaw and spicebush.

The dandelions are not native…but they are attractive to pollinators and their roots are deep – they hold the soil. So – I am OK with them in my yard. The violets are native and I am encouraging them to grow as far out into the yard as they want. They have taken over about a third of the yard area on the east side of the house; there they get morning sun but once the neighbor’s River Birch gets its leaves the area get less sun even in the morning; the violets thrive in that environment!

I am enjoying the green bounty of my backyard!

Battle with a Forsythia

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The forsythia was in the northwest corner of my backyard when we bought the house. It is non-native and does not do anything for my yard’s ecosystem – no pollinators visit its blooms; nothing eats its leaves. I have been trying to keep it controlled for the past few seasons, but it always seems to grow faster than I can prune it. I should have cut it and painted the stumps with poison last fall.

I did manage to cut it back more than ever before one morning last week and will go back to cut more soon. It was a lot of work, and I managed to clog my pruning chainsaw; that will take some effort to get it working again. I did most of work with my manual long handled pruners.  My gardening seat worked well….I slowly moved it around the plant cutting everything I could reach. My back only started hurting when I started carrying the trimmed branches up to the patio to dry (and then burn in a few weeks in the chiminea).

Last year I waited until after the plant had bloomed and it was a big mistake. This year there were a few flowers open….but I cut it all away from the plant! I am going to plant some native plant seeds in the soil left bare – it will be a bonus if any come up. I’ll keep cutting the forsythia back as severely as I can over this next season to give the other plants a chance to take over.

Ten Little Celebrations – March 2026

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Some different types of celebrations in March…

 

Dad surviving a hospital admission. My sisters and I celebrated that my dad survived an awful hospital experience (bad reaction to drugs he received there, lack of attention to his response to medications and delaying administration of his regular medications). He is back in his memory care residence now and much happier. We have transitioned him to palliative care based on his experience.

Springfield Botanical Gardens. Many of the plants were still in winter form…but there were enough early spring flowers to celebrate the season.

Red-bellied woodpecker. We celebrated when one of the birds came to our feeders. It doesn’t happen often!

Big buds on the red buckeye. The buds on the red buckeye were an early celebration of spring. They were large and they were open with the leaves beginning to expand when there was a hard frost and the celebration turned to sorrow; I am monitoring the plant to see how it recovers.

Earthworm parade. I celebrated that it rained…and the earthworms made a parade across a sidewalk to find new homes.

George Washington Carver National Monument. My husband and I celebrated an early spring day with a day trip to the monument.

Garage door fix. The spring on my garage door opener broke and I was worried that I’d be parking in the driveway for a few days...but a company was able to make the repair the same day we called. I celebrated the quick response!

The Plastic Detox. I viewed the documentary available on Netflix…celebrated that there were indeed babies at the end!

Sunrises. I was in Texas for 5 days….and 4 of those days had wonderful sunrises. I celebrated with my dad in the hospital on 3 days and the last one I was in a hotel! Noticing the beauty at the beginning of the day always lifts my mood.

Baked chicken salad. Days are getting warmer and I find myself wanting salads more than I do in the wintertime. I celebrated combining veggies from the crisper…an apple…diced slices of lemon (including the skin) and green salsa --- with chicken baked in balsamic vinaigrette. Yummy!

Zooming – March 2026

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We had some warm days….and then some cold days. At the end of the month, I am hoping that my red buckeye is not permanently damaged; its leaves were beginning to enlarge when a hard frost came. It was an interesting month for travel (to Texas and a day trip to the George Washington Carver National Monument…and the yard was beginning to show signs of spring (bulbs and the boxwood bloomed). I enjoyed all my forays outdoors.

Yard Work – March 2023

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So much to do before it’s warm enough to plant into the new native plant garden in my front yard – that’s the April project. Now I am working on existing plantings. The Missouri evening primrose has come up in the small bed near the mailbox. There is a stone crop there too. I trimmed off the seed heads from last season so that the green at the base will show sooner. I try to leave the small twigs and leaves in the bed…reducing any bare  soil that might wash away during the spring rains.

I need to trim the boxwood, but I’ll wait a bit on that. The electric hedge trimmer will make fast work of that job. I got a little sidetracked while I was looking at it when I realized it was blooming…and had a lot of new leaves; it was a good opportunity for some macro photography.

In the back yard – the iris bed where we cut down a pine several years ago was full of stalks from goldenrods. I cleared them away and realized that some of the leaves are rounded instead of pointy like the irises; those are naked lady lilies and there are more of them than last year. The bed is not formal, and I am letting it develop with the idea that the America beautyberry will eventually be the tall plant.

The fragrant sumac that I planted the first fall that we owned the house is blooming! I noticed that there is Japanese honeysuckle (an invasive) in the bed. I have spent several mornings working on it and am at the stage of digging out some of the hubs of the vines. I’ll work to keep the plant in check (or eliminated) this summer.

In the area where the small red buckeye is unfolding its leaves, the debris from last season’s violets and leaves provides good mulch that does not overwhelm the small plant. As it gets larger, I’ll decide if I’ll just leave it with that groundcover or put wood chips around it. There will never be a lawn mower near it….but no bare soil either! way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

After the rain…earthworms

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I went outside while the pavement was still wet after a rain last week – looking for earthworms. I didn’t find many on the driveway or the sidewalk near the street – but there was a parade crossing the sidewalk between our driveway and front door!

The majority seemed to be headed from the yard to the corner flowerbed that is rocks on top of landscaping cloth around the plantings. It does not seem like a welcoming place for them to be going. Most were large but there was one that was clearly smaller than the rest.

Check out The real reason you see earthworms after rain from Cool Green Science to understand why the earthworms were on the move after a rain.

Phenology in my Neighborhood

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Spring is a great time to start participating in citizen science phenology (study of periodic events in biological life cycles and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors) via the Nature’s Notebook app. I selected an area that included my backyard and part of the common neighborhood area that included 5 plants I would begin monitoring: 2 Eastern Redbuds, a Red Buckeye, an American Beautyberry, and a Common Hackberry. The monitoring consists of looking at each plant every 3 days and marking the phenophases as yes or no. The list of phenophases for plants is:

  • Breaking leaf buds

  • Leaves

  • Increasing leaf size

  • Colored leaves

  • Falling leaves

  • Flowers or flower buds

  • Open flowers

  • Fruits

  • Ripe fruits

  • Recent fruit or seed drop

So far, the plants are in winter mode – so all the phenophases are marked ‘no.’ I am observing some changes in some of the plants and I’ve done a little photography to document their late winter look.

The 2 Eastern Redbuds are very different: one is very young and the other is old and lost some larger branches last year. All the buds are still very small on both trees. I took some pictures of lichen growing on the older tree…nothing to do with phenology of the redbud…but something to photograph while I was looking closely at the tree.

The Red Buckeye is a very young tree and probably won’t bloom this year, but the leaf buds are very large. It will be interesting to see how they develop. The ‘breaking leaf buds’ phase is when a green leaf tip becomes visible at the end of the bud. There is one that appears to be closer to that point than the others!

Update: The leaf buds had broken when I went to look on March 6th – just 2 days after I wrote this blog!!! All the other plants were still in winter mode. It was exciting to see the Red Buckeye leaves begin to emerge.

The American Beautyberry has tight buds that I keep thinking might be getting a little larger. The plant also has some dried berries from last season which don’t count for this year.

The Common Hackberry is also an older tree and might noy been entirely health; it lost a large limb last year and the woodpeckers seem to be working on the scar (maybe finding insects there). The tree has some dried leaves and fruit from last year. The buds are still very tight.

This is my first experience with a project like this. I will get to know these 5 plants very well!

Spring Bulbs

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The early spots of color from spring bulbs are always welcome after the drabness of the winter palette. The area outside my office windows includes crocus and daffodils as the early bloomers with the green spears of iris leaves as a backdrop (the irises bloom later).

The daffodils are in the debris of last year’s violets and pine needles. I planted the bulbs a few years ago and they are increasing a little every year. I used a piece of black cardstock as background for one of the pictures.

The pine needle area has a mix of crocus and daffodils…more crocus at this point. The leaves of the crocus are thin enough that I often miss their presence until the flower appears!

This year the daffodils and crocus seemed to start their bloom together…with a lot of flowers opening on March 3rd!

Kousa Dogwood

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Our Missouri house came with a kousa dogwood – an Asian dogwood. It does not fit my ‘plant natives’ goal but I’m leaving it. During the winter, when its leaves are gone, I always notice that it has a nest or two in it, so it does provide shelter for breeding birds. I also like that it flowers and produces interesting seeds.

This spring I happened to take some closer looks at the terminal buds – noticed that they have a covering that splits in the spring – forming a little hat on the buds!

The hat eventually falls off, and the buds begin the process of enlarging and eventually opening. I’ll try to catch a series over the next few weeks to show what happens to the buds.

I am not doing formal phenology logging on the tree, but my monitoring for eastern redbuds, common hackberry, American beautyberry, and red buckeye has increased my awareness of the phenological phases of other plants. For example – my hybrid maple is blooming right now!

Zooming – February 2026

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The images from this month were all close to home: my yard, my neighborhood, Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, and Lake Springfield Greater Ozarks Audubon Trail. There was a mix of snow and winter images….the beginnings of spring. There would have been more places if the big snow had not cancelled two hikes that had originally been planned for February! Enjoy the zoomed images of my times outdoors during this month!

High Key Flowers

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The day after the rainy-day macro flowers….the sun was out and I enjoyed creating another round of photos of my store-bought flowers – this time High Key images. These are made with bright light behind the flowers and using the zoom on my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) to compose the image. It’s a very different perspective on the flowers.

The yellow rose bud floating in water in a blue tulip glass cup was my first subject. Sometimes I like the softer focus images! I was sad when I got the bouquet home and discovered the stem on one of the rose buds was broken – but it still looks lovely floating in water and has unfurled a bit.

I took 6 other images of the flowers in the bouquet. I simply left them all in the vase on the windowsill and isolated flowers by zooming in close. I was sitting halfway across the room with the camera stabilized on my knee! Sometimes a bit of the window screen behind the flowers is visible but I decided it was not distracting enough to bother me.  

Our Neighborhood – February 2026

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It was a sunny day in the mid-60s in our neighborhood. As I started my walk around our storm water ponds, I saw two robins – the first ones I’ve seen since last fall!

There seemed to be quite a few eastern white pine cones on the ground and in the trees. The tree in my yard is not old enough to produce cones yet.

There were turtles on the bank and in the water at the place I seem them most frequently.

There was ice on the second (smaller) pond. There were leaves stuck in the ice. One area has a circular center and then branches off that center. The ice would likely be gone by the end of the day.

Further around I noticed ice along the edge of the larger pond. The patterns there were changing…visible melting.

A recently ripped branch of a river birch was in the water, and some curly bark from the same kind of tree was on the shore nearby….both detached from the tree during the recent storm probably. One of the trees has exposed roots damaged by mowers.

A male and female mallard swam out into the pond. The female was eating and posed for a better picture that the male. I wondered if they were the same pair that has been at our pond for the last couple of years…hatching ducklings…and then losing them to the turtles.

Our area has been very dry since a very wet spring in 2025…and the snow earlier last month must have soaked in very close to where it melted. My yard is a little wet (would be muddy if there was vegetation everywhere). The intake channels for our stormwater ponds were dry and the water level in both ponds was low as well. Maybe we’ll have spring rains again soon.

Plastics Crisis - Textiles

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There seem to be plastics everywhere. I’ve come to realize that in my home, the largest source is probably textiles! The carpets that were in the house when we purchased it a few years ago are likely all synthetic fibers (although about 1/3 of the house is tile or vinyl (plastic)). When we vacuum the particles are gray and powdery…the plastic there is already very small.

And then there are clothes. We have some clothes that are cotton or cotton/polyester (plastic)…but some items are 100% synthetic (polyester, acrylic, nylon, spandex). I don’t dry more than half my clothes that are synthetic fibers, but there are enough that the lint from the dryer should probably be considered toxic (probably should put it in a covered trash can so microplastics will not waft from it); I hope washing machine technology will eventually filter their waste water but I’m not sure how to handle what a filter would collect safely).

Back in March 2019 I posted some macro photography of textiles; I’ve copied it below with some commentary afterward.

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I am finally experimenting with my 60x macro lens that I got for my phone. Textiles around the house were an easy project. The lens has a light and I found it handy. With this lens, I use the zoom on the phone to avoid clipping the image to take out the vignetting around the edges. I’d rather compose the image in the camera.

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I liked the simple weave and colors of the worn dishcloth.

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A crocheted hat had brilliant color but was not flat enough to focus well.

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The washcloth had more fuzzy fibers than I expected but

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Not nearly as many as the wool sock.

I got stuck on a tapestry jacket…had a challenge to choose just 3 to include in this post. The last one was from the inside of the jacket.

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The machine embroidery of a silk jacket looked very different than I anticipated.

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The weave of a light-weight jacket was more complex.

I realized that the patterns on t-shirts were painted – but hadn’t thought about what they would look like with the macro lens. The blobs of color stand out on the surface of the cotton knit.

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The most non-fuzzy fabric was microfiber underwear!

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The yarn in the bulky cardigan was almost too big to look interesting at this magnification.

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Machine-made borders look more orderly than the fabric sometimes (the black is thread).

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The eye detects tiny holes in the fabric of the bag for delicate fabrics to go in the washer; with macro lens, it looks like a Zentangle.

After I got back to my office, I looked at two mouse pads with the macro lens. One is a woven surface…the other looks like a paint.

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The macro photographs make it easy to see how easily fibers escape from our clothes and carpets.

Right now I am thinking that at home the 1st priority is to not have any plastic around heat (mostly in the kitchen) and the 2nd is reducing synthetic textiles!

Our Missouri Yard – February 2026

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I put on my river boots to walk around the yard as the snow melted last week. I was glad to see the recently cut stump of the Callery Pear looked like it was rotting; I’ll be continuing to cut it until it is dead; the stems have thorns! The horse nettle fruits from last fall are a bit of color in the flower bed. An oat leaf blown from our neighbor’s tree was a point of interest in a snowbank on the far side of our yard. The forsythia in the northwest corner of our yard is another project where the pruning chainsaw will be used.

The high point of my walk was seeing that my small Ozark Witch Hazel is blooming! This is the time of year for it to bloom, but I hadn’t noticed the blooms before since the young tree kept most of its leaves. I am hopeful that it will take over the southwest corner of my back yard but that might take a few years.

Bulbs are up on the east side of my house, and the metal sculpture is marking something I planted last year (and adding some color). The Hens and Chicks are still doing well in our rock garden. The snow formed hieroglyph type shapes as it melted.

The forecast is for temperatures warm enough this weekend that I might get out to do some winter yard work!