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!

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.