The beginning of the month was very hectic….but I recovered in the later weeks. There was a lot to celebrate.

Violet leaves with spaghetti sauce. It’s such a joy to simply walk outside in the back yard and cut a few leaves to eat almost immediately!

Microplastics talk to Missouri Master Gardeners. The audience was not large, but they made up for it in enthusiasm. I celebrated that I’d gotten it done!

Clumps of mushrooms around native plant garden. The edges of the oak mulch are evidently perfect for mushrooms. I celebrated that they looked like a natural ‘edge’ to the bed.

Hummingbird and squirrels and chipmunk seen from my office window. Hurray! We finally have a chipmunk visiting our yard…the first time I’ve seen one here. The hummingbird is coming to our feeder regularly and the squirrels run along the fence tops and through the pine to get to the holly just out of my view.

New glasses. I celebrated new single vision glasses for distance….and really like them for driving.

Hellbender tour. The hellbender conservation lab at the St. Louis Zoo was a great opportunity to see an animal I’d heard about but never seen….and the two flamingos on nests were another sight to celebrate.

Audubon Center at Riverlands. It was too hot to truly enjoy Riverlands and confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers…but I celebrated that it will make a great birding trip for next winter.

Telecon about data centers in Missouri. I celebrated an interesting telephone conference on data centers in Missouri; I now feel more knowledgeable about the issue.

Yellow and white wildflowers between Missouri and Texas. The yellow and whites along the roadside are the colors of summer along my route…celebrating the season.

Glorious summer yard. There are so many good things happening in my yard – so many reasons to celebrate native plants!

My first field trip associated with the Missouri Master Naturalist state conference was to the Audubon Center at Riverlands. I made better time on my drive from Springfield MO to the St. Louis area to I arrived to the place early….and opted to drive past the center to see the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi River. There were pools along the way with Great and Snowy Egrets.

Once I got to the confluence parking lot (after a drive on a dusty gravel road) and started the short hike to the confluence, I started a bird id recording on Merlin; in 30 seconds - it picked up sounds from red-winged blackbirds (I saw a lot of them while I was driving as well), Northern Yellow Warbler, Indigo Bunting (saw one later), Orchard Oriole, Northern Cardinal and Common Yellowthroat.

I also enjoyed the variety of trees along the path.

At the confluence itself there was more infrastructure…with evidence of flooding (debris in the water and on the concrete abutment).

As I started the walk back toward my car, I noticed an area of forest with little understory and debris (flooded frequently?).

Along the path the plants were quite thick. There were a couple of tall trees that looked like they might have been struck by lightning.

Closer to the car – I saw some cottonwood leaves…and ‘cotton’ – there was a lot of the seeds floating in the air.

About halfway back to the center (driving), a bald eagle flew overhead – being chased by a smaller bird!

I was back at the Audubon Center just before the start of the program. It was a hot day so the bulk of the ‘field trip’ was a slide show inside the center. I’ll visit again in the winter when I will be more comfortable hiking…and when there are large numbers of wintering birds.