Springfield Botanical Garden – March 2024

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Springfield Botanical Gardens is one of my favorite places; I will try to go at least once a month for the rest of this year. We went on a sunny cool day in the late morning. The sky was almost clear and the light was very bright….making for some ‘almost high key’ pictures of the blossoms on a tree growing close to where we parked.

There were other trees/bushes in bloom as well.

The maples were already making seeds (i.e. past blooming). The seeds were still colorful.

Spring bulbs were still blooming….

But I was more interested in the new growth all over the hosta garden. It will be very lush this summer.

I took some pictures of the garden mosaic…carefully avoiding getting my shadow in the picture.

Lenten roses were blooming. My daughter has some in her yard too. They do seem to grow well but I tend to not like them because their blooms face downward.

There were birds in the gardens too. Lots of robins. We heard a brown thrasher and then saw it high in the tree….too high for a good picture. I did get a picture of a blue bird though!

My husband was very tolerant of my walking around to take pictures even though he didn’t see anything he was interested in photographing. He seemed very intent on macro photography….and didn’t see any opportunities. I find that the zoom on my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) is good enough to take some ‘almost macro’ pictures without being close to the flowers (or birds) at all!

Springfield Yard – March 2024

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My daughter’s yard in Springfield MO is full of springtime. I visited to help get pollinator/butterfly garden seeds planted. After we got that done – I enjoyed the beauty of the yard which has been a work in progress since the house was built in the 1950s…and my daughter’s since 2021.

The oakleaf hydrangea is leaving out; the plant gets more sun this time of year before the big trees get their leaves. I noticed it as we were picking up sticks around the base of her river birch and oak tree.

The vinca, growing in a bed thick with leaves from last fall, is blooming.

Her wood hydrangea still has flowers dried from last fall…not leafing out yet in its shady location.

A Japanese quince was blooming. I hadn’t noticed this in her yard before, but I must have just missed being there at the right time.s. Would birds get ‘drunk’ from the (probably fermented) fruit?

The crabapple tree was full of buds – and some crabapples left from last season. Most of the fruits had been eaten and I wondered why there are still some on the trees. Would birds get ‘drunk’ from the (probably fermented) fruit?

There is a young cherry tree near the corner of her front yard. The blooms were everywhere.

A red bud is in the other corner also full of blooms. My daughter commented that it really is misnamed since it isn’t red.

We also observed that most of the plants damaged from a too zealous application of herbicide by a yard crew last year seem to be recovering with the new season.

What a great time to get outdoors and into a garden….

Sequiota Cave Boat Tour

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My daughter enjoyed a boat tour of Sequiota Cave (in Springfield, Missouri’s Sequiota Park) last spring and encouraged us to sign up when they were offered this year. They only do the guided tour a couple of weekends in the spring and fall – leaving the cave to the roosting bats for the rest of the year. The instructions were to ‘bring your own headlamps’ so we grabbed our headlamps that we have for astronomy nights/emergencies.

It was my first visit to the park, and I was a little disappointed that Galloway Creek was dry. It has been channelized in the area near the cave entrance with abutments and concrete additions. There was a bumpy area of concrete that might work to slow the water a bit.

The buds on some of the young trees near the sign-in pavilion were colorful close up.

We picked out hardhats (which seemed to be fall squash colors!) and flotation vests and gloves for our visit to the cave. The boats were loaded at the mouth of the cave; they held 4 people (including the guide). Our guide worked for a non-profit associated with water quality and was volunteering for this event. I appreciated his comments about the cave and its water quality (and the water quality of the region).

As we entered the cave, my husband took a picture of the mouth of the cave with the truck/trailer that brought in the boats.

The cave is not pristine in the sense that it was used as a fish hatchery in the 1920s and the mounds that were once mushroom beds are still visible. The water course has been cleared (probaby would not have been navigable by boats originally). Nubs of metal from old infrastructure are still visible. But the cave features are in great shape – still actively growing…unbroken…no algae growth. There are not any blind cave creatures; if there ever were any, they didn’t survive the fish hatchery days.

But there are bats. The ones in residence during our tour were tri-colored bats – roosting alone. They are very small….but stand out because they are often darker than the cave walls (the bat is to the right of center in the picture below). There is a colony of endangered gray bats that roost during their migration that number in the 1000s. We’ll go in September to see their nightly exodus from the cave!

This might be my favorite cave tour! I liked it because it was not as commercial. The only light was from headlamps. The tours happen infrequently enough that there isn’t algae or moss growing on the cave features (although there was fuzzy white mold growing on poop from racoons that wonder quite a way into the cave). Spotting tri-colored bats was a great challenge during the tour. The water flowing through the cave made for lots of drips….but also added to the ambience of being in a cave now being left alone most of the time.

My Favorite Photographs from 2023

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Photography is something I enjoy frequently (one of those hobbies that pop up almost daily!). I’ve picked 2 photos from each month of 2023 for this post. Picking favorites is always a bit of a challenge; looking at the collection as I write this post I realize some were chosen for the light

  • A heron in morning light

  • A backlit dandelion

  • High key image of iris…and then a turkey using the same technique

…some for the subject

  • The busy fox squirrel

  • Two insects in one flower

  • The egret struggling to control a fish

  • The feet of the American Coot

…some because they prompted a strong memory of the place.

  • Driftwood at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge

  • Sculpture in the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House Garden in St. Louis

  • Metal iris and sunrise at my parents’ house

  • Geese on the snow and ice in my neighborhood in Missouri

  • Cairn as the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden in Springfield, MO

  • A flower blooming in December at Josey Ranch Park in Carrollton, TX

Enjoy the mosaic of images (click to see a larger version).

Drive Thru Holiday Lights (Vicariously)

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My husband and daughter drove through two light displays recently and sent me pictures --- another chance for me to enjoy the Springfield, MO area’s holiday decorations vicariously.

Candy Cane Lane at Rutledge-Wilson Farm Park can be experienced as a regular light display or with special glasses that make points of light into candy canes! My daughter is bringing the glasses she purchased when she comes to visit before Christmas; it will be fun to see how they work with the lights on the wreath and reindeer in my parents’ house.

Ozark’s Festival of Lights at Finley River Park is becoming a family tradition. We drove through it last year too. Kudos to Ozark for continuing the display.

Gardens Aglow Vicariously

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I am in Carrollton, Texas this December working with my sisters as we increase the daily assistance for my parents. It is going to be a very different December this year. The yearly tradition (started last year…our first December after moving to the Springfield MO area) of walking through the Springfield Botanical Gardens Gardens Aglow display will be a vicarious one for me this year. My husband and daughter did the walk last week and sent pictures.

It was a drizzly night so they both just used their phones rather than more expensive cameras. There were not many people walking the garden (probably because it was wet) so the pictures don’t have as many silhouettes of people as we had last year. The pictures put me in a holiday mood….even while I accept – even savor - that I am where I need to be, doing what I need to do here in Carrollton this December.

Zooming – November 2023

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November 2023 was a month of contrasts…an increase in day trips (to the Springfield Botanical Garden and Butterfly Palace in Branson) and then the more confined views while a parent was in the hospital/recovering at home. Photography is something I enjoy in almost every circumstance. I am either trying to capture a moment or create an artistic composition. And the zoom feature on my cameras are almost always used!

Springfield Botanical Gardens – October 2023

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A quick walk around the Springfield Botanical Gardens on a sunny fall day – full of photographic opportunities.

I always like the hens and chicks near the Botanical Center. I like the green and red/pink colors…the texture of the plants growing close together. I wondered which plants were the ‘hens.’

There were a few trees in fall color, but most were still green.

The hosta garden waterfall was sunny…and the begonia beside it added a pop of color.

Sometimes the veins of leaves remind me of Zentangle patterns.

There was a female Monarch Butterly on some butterfly weed still blooming in the butterfly garden. It was a larger insect…one that would be migrating south to Mexico.

I saw a black swallowtail in the butterfly garden as well but it flew away before I could photograph it. There were bees and skippers everywhere there were blooming plants – but these photos were taken in the Master Gardeners area.

I took several pictures of hibiscus – probably close to the end of the season for them. This magenta one appealed to me because of the color, the freshness of the petals, and the angle of the flower from my vantage point. Even the shadow of the central part of the flower in the midday sun is appealing.

While many of the flowers are fading fast, there were some that seemed to be in full bloom – the last hoorah of a productive growing season.

Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden – October 2023

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The weather for our Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden visit last week was near perfect: sunny, just under 70 degrees, a little breeze. I photographed every Japanese lantern I noticed!

Fall is just beginning. One of the bald cypress trees was ahead of the others…and the dogwoods always are part of the ‘early’ changers. The water as backdrop or mirror is a big part of the draw for photography in this garden.

There were two cairns left behind by other visitors – one of pinecones and other of small rocks.  Most of the plantings are trees and bushes but there are a few perennials near the entrance.

They are already preparing the garden for Gardens Aglow that will begin on November 24th. The bridge in this picture will be brilliant red during the event! I am already planning to see the garden multiple times during the holidays.

Zooming – October 2023

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The optics of my camera allow me to capture images that are better than I can see with my eyes – flowers, insects, birds, cave formations and seed pods that fill the frame…driftwood isolated from the noise of other things around it….sculpture, glass, and fall gourds specially arranged….sunrises and a sunset….the beauty of a fall morning. Every picture is a memory moment – a visual that also serves as a reminder of a place and mood and relationship with the people that experienced it with me. The places were mostly close to home in southwest Missouri (art museum, meadow, caverns) but also St. Louis and along the route between home and Carrollton TX.

Fantastic Caverns – October 2023

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A cold fall day – the 60 degrees F. tour inside Fantastic Caverns was warmer than outside! We arrived shortly before 10 AM and had almost no wait before our tour (via Jeep-drawn tram) began. I used the ‘night scene’ setting (causing the camera to stack multiple images for each image) to capture the cave scenes. My favorite is a zoomed image of ‘soda straw’ structures on the ceiling – with water droplets visible!

There are plenty of drapery and column formations to photograph. The lighting in the cave does a good job of enhancing the structures. Unfortunately, it also encourages the greening tinge (algae) to some of the formations.

This was my second visit to Fantastic Caverns, and I quickly realized that different guides emphasize different things. For example – I am pretty sure the guide for my first visit did not share that the darker gray color in the formation below is from manganese!

The reddish color in many of the formations is from iron….and the white is calcium carbonate without anything else to provide color.

Back at the visitor center – I enjoyed a display of pumpkins and other squashes/gourds.

Another successful outing…and afterward on the way back to my house we enjoyed a huge BBQ lunch!

Springfield Art Museum – October 2023

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One of my favorite places to enjoy with family that visits me is the Springfield (Missouri) Art Museum. This time it was the backup plan; we had originally planned a visit to the botanical garden, but the day was cold and wet.

The museum was not busy, but we weren’t the only people there. We wandered through the Tradition Interrupted exhibit (August 19-November 12). I enjoyed the pieces….recognizing many of the traditions and enjoying the descriptions about the way they were interrupted. Trying to capture the pieces photographically is always part of a museum visit for me; I keep a small camera that fits easily in my purse rather than lugging my bridge camera; it provided optical zoom giving me more options than my phone does. My favorite piece in this gallery is one called Teardrop (middle image below)…a metal piece that imitates embroidery or lacework. The lighting is part of the work and I was only able to capture the shadows immediately behind it; there were also shadows on the ceiling and floor!

The museum is also hosting a series of exhibits in collaboration with Missouri State University. The one showing now is titled Blue on White (July 22 – December 3) – featuring Chinese ware (with connections to Persia)…appropriated through imitation and export to Japan, Europe, and the Americas. Curated by MSU students.

The Creating an American Identity exhibit is a semi-permanent rotating exhibition from the museum’s collection of over 10,000 objects. The middle one below is an early Jackson Pollock – created in the 1930s before he became famous for ‘drip’ paintings!

There is a copper sculpture that I’ve seen every time I have visited the museum. It is difficult to photograph because the background is always so cluttered. This view is about as good as it gets!

The Survey of Ceramic Art is also a semi-permanent exhibit. Even if many of the pieces are ones I’ve seen before, I like ceramics so much that it is probably my favorite exhibit/gallery in the museum. This visit, I thought about how lighting of objects makes a big difference….but often reflections from glass cases is problematic; it’s more apparent in photographs but it distracts even when simply viewing the pieces.

I waited until the end to photograph the Chihuly chandelier in the foyer of the museum. It’s titled Autumn Persians and Feather Chandelier. I zoomed in to eliminate a spotlight; the lighting of the piece is required…but it can also be a distraction.

Most of the plantings around the museum were fading fast…and it was too wet to walk around for botanical photography.

The museum was a great way to spend a wet fall afternoon!

Daughter’s Yard

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My daughter’s house was built in the 1950s and has some very large mature trees. Even the plants that are not of that vintage, are robust. By the fall – the summer growth has often become overwhelming, so I offer to help with the grand cleanup before winter. On the day we chose – it was cloudy…warm rather than hot. The yard had been mowed the previous day so we could focus on other everything else rather than leaves. It was a good day for the project.

I noticed the holly berries on her two trees had almost all turned orange (or their way to red); those trees didn’t need any maintenance!

There was pokeweed in several places that needed to be pulled (she is still battling it…no truce or peace yet in her yard!). It was growing in the woodpile, between bricks of the patio….and other places too.

The path to the side of the house overhung by a mature redbud shading the hostas and ferns on both side of the flagstones yielded several armloads of sticks to supplement the wood pile. Hopefully they will have a cookout using their firepit (and burn a lot of the pile) when they have their annual pumpkin carving event.

There was a mimosa that had come up in one corner of the fenced area. We didn’t have a saw, so we cut the top out with big pruners and girded the trunk further down. I’ll brink my saw next time we work.

It didn’t take us long to fill a dumpster with vines and weeds (including pokeweed) that we pulled.

What I thought was a cherry tree turned out to be a crabapple (when I cut open one of the fruits). I learn something new in her yard every time I work there!

The other plant I hadn’t recognized before was (I think) a silverbell. I’ll look next spring for its flowers. It’s a small tree growing under her big oak.

Other beauties in the flower beds that I couldn’t resist: cedar, wood hydrangea, Asian hydrangea, lichen, shelf fungus, southern magnolia seed pods (another huge tree).

I took home 3 magnolia seed pods - hope to watch how the seeds pop out as the pods dry.

We had some productive hours….and we felt good about what we had accomplished!

Fall Meadow at Lake Springfield Boathouse (2)

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Now to share some photos of the insects we saw in the meadow near the Lake Springfield (Missouri) Boathouse last week…

There were bees visiting flowers that were still blooming.

There were several pipevine swallowtails (iridescent blue on hindwing) being very active on the few thistles still blooming. These butterflies seemed to be strong fliers in the breeze; they managed to hang on as the thistle moved about too.

Several Monarch butterflies fluttered over the meadow. Finally - one landed on some asters. This Monarch (female) looked like one of the slightly larger ones that is headed to Mexico for the winter.

On the milkweed pods, groups of milkweed bugs at various stages of development were everywhere! The adult bugs migrate south to survive the winter and migrate back to Missouri in the spring and summer. I wonder how many of the immature bugs will mature in time to make the migration south!

There were lots of medium sized grasshoppers. I didn’t see any larger ones. They were very active…and I wasn’t fast enough to capture any portraits. A couple I talked to mentioned they had seen very large garden type spiders in the meadow feeding on grasshoppers but the spiders didn’t seem to be around on this fall morning.

Fall Meadow at Lake Springfield Boathouse (1)

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We visited the meadow near the Lake Springfield (Missouri) Boathouse last week  on a sunny, but relatively cool fall morning. Near the Boathouse, I noticed some beautyberry and asters.

The large cup plant has already been cut down - the stumps of the 4-angled square stems obvious.

We noticed that the purple martin houses had been taken down; there were big mowers in the area around the boathouse as we walked toward the meadow.

A lot of meadow plants have already produced seed. The goldenrods and asters are still blooming…and a few thistles.  

The area that becomes an overflow creek during heavy rains was dry but there were some interesting plants around it:

Invasive bush honeysuckle with lots of red berries.

Seed pods of mallows.

There was only one milkweed plant I saw in the meadow…and wondered what happened to the plants I had seen earlier in the season. Perhaps they fell over, and the other plants hid them?

On the other side of the visitor center, I did find some milkweed with bursting seed ponds. The plants had fallen over but the seeds were still spilling out and floating away.

The vines in the trees were easy to see. The leaves on both poison ivy and Virginia creeper turn red in the fall! The edge of the forest is full of trees with the vines growing up the trunks and into the higher branches.

Tomorrow’s post will be about the insects we saw.

Hydrangea Flowers and Magnolia Pods

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It won’t be long before we have afternoons blowing/raking/mulching leaves in my daughter’s yard…but until then I am enjoying the end of her summer yard when I visit there. The seed pods of the Southern Magnolia are full of red seeds right now. They always remind me of red M&Ms! The pods will eventually become a nuisance on the ground…but on the tree they are interesting – colorful, splitting to allow the seeds to escape- these are prehistoric flowering trees with seed pods that look very much like cones.

She encouraged me to cut the flowers from her Asian hydrangea since temperatures into the 30s were being forecast. There were 3 flower clusters (others too…but they were not mature enough to open if cut). I trimmed the lower leaves off right after I cut them and put the flowers in a large vase as soon as I got home. They’ve been on my office windowsill within line of sight from where I sit at my computer since then.

The flowers last for a long time – which gave me several opportunities to do some artsy photography with them over the past few days. What’s not to like with the gentle pink and blue…bright green! I managed some almost high key images….with smudges of color and screen grid in the background.  It was a good ‘rainy day’ activity.

Community Supported Agriculture (1)

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I enjoyed my membership in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) when I lived in Maryland. When I first moved to Missouri, I decided that I would try to simply go to local Farmers Markets for locally grown produce. That remained my plan until recently when I realized that one of the best things (for me) about belonging to a CSA is the prompt to enjoy more variety…maybe even a totally new-to-me veggie or herb. So – I researched Springfield MO area CSAs and discovered that I could become a mid-season member of  Milsap Farms!

It is a bit different from the CSA in Maryland.

  • Instead of being less than I mile from where I live, it is on the other side of Springfield. I pay a little extra for delivery of my share to my front porch.

  • In Maryland I went to the farm every week and did ‘swapping’ while I was there. In Missouri, the share composition/swapping is handled with an email prompt and then an online app which is completed by the day before delivery. I didn’t quite get the routine the 1st time around, so I got the default delivery for that week. By the 2nd delivery, I was comfortable…knew when to look for the email and do the tweaking.

  • My daughter lives closer to me now so we can split up the share after I receive it. For example, out of the first share I gave her half the carrots, celery, herbs, and onions (she suggested that I keep the kohlrabi since I like it better than she and her husband do). For the rest of this season (until the end of October), we are getting the small share and evaluating how well we like the CSA; at this point, we think we’ll sign up next year…but still need to decide if we want a small or full share.

The first week’s share (picture below) included: carrots, celery, Thai basil, dill, onions, and kohlrabi The second week included: salad mix, radishes, green bell peppers, pea shoots, basil, carrots, and watermelon.

So far – a positive experience!

Zooming – August 2023

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Even though August was very hot, my photography was still dominated by outdoors locations:

  • At home in Nixa MO

  • At the Dickerson Park Zoo and Lake Springfield Boathouse in Springfield MO

  • At the OSU Botanical Garden in Stillwater OK

  • At Josey Ranch and my parents’ yard in Carrollton TX

  • At Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge near Sherman TX

Birds and insects are more prevalent this month than previously. Enjoy the August slide show!

Dickerson Park Zoo

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We made our first visit to Dickerson Park Zoo last week. It’s on the north side of Springfield MO – the closest zoo to where we live. We got there about an hour after their opening; the close parking lot was almost full…others taking the advantage of the cooler than usual August morning.

Colorful birds seem to dominate my pictures. Many times, I was photographing through fencing; sometimes you can see the blur/shadow of that barrier.

The preening Scarlet Ibis was one of my favorites. The surprise was seeing the nictitating membrane (an eyelid that is hinged on the inner side of the eye and closes horizontally across the cornea).

Flamingos were in the same enclosure as the ibis – feeding and preening. They feed with their bill toward their bodies. One of the birds had a range of colored feathers.

In the trees above the flamingoes, there were several roseate spoonbills. Their bodies are colorful…their heads and large bills are bare – at odds with the body.

Peacocks (and pea hens) roam the zoo; they are relatively acclimated to people. There were no males with full tails. All the birds I saw appeared to be juvenile birds (younger than 3 years).

There were two Gray Crowned Cranes. I had seen similar birds at the St. Louis Zoo too. The birds at Dickerson Park Zoo were better positioned for a photograph!

The turkey enclosure had one male and a lot of hens…some immatures as well. I heard a mother telling her child that it was a mom and babies; I guess she thought the male was the ‘mom’!

Black swans are dramatic. The pair seems to have more ruffled feathers than I expected.

There were several parrots; we heard them before we saw them! The one I photographed was using its beak like an appendage for balance as it moved around its enclosure.

There were two types of tortoises in different parts of the zoo with signage that they bite! The first one was large but not giant…and I was intrigued by the pattern of the shell…plates like flatted pyramids.

The second was a giant tortoise --- looking well fed!

There were monkeys – somehow they tend to look sad to me. The one I photographed had companions that were moving about, but he was sitting still.

The zoo was working on the giraffe exhibit (they usually have giraffe feedings) so we did not see them like they would normally have been out and about in the morning.

The zoo has a rescued bald eagle – large but one of its wings was not right. It didn’t move from its perch but kept a watchful eye on movements outside its enclosure.

There were metal statues for climbing on (with signs warning that the statues might get hot in the summer) and backdrops for photographs.

There was one elephant with the explanation that when the matriarch died, the two remaining females did not get along…so they each are outside on their own. They get socialization time off exhibit with a male elephant.

There were other animals to see but not easily photographed. The big cats and bears were either in their dens or sleeping.

We didn’t ride the train (I photographed it with a giraffe sculpture in the foreground) – but I like that it is available – another dimension to a visit to the zoo that we might try on a future visit.

The Dickerson Park Zoo might be my favorite. It is not overwhelmingly big or crowned…and its design provides plenty of shade along the paths.

Springfield Botanical Gardens – May 2023

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After my sister and I left the Japanese Stroll Garden, we drove the short distance to the Springfield Botanical Gardens botanical center parking lot.

I enjoyed the rain garden and beds near the building…particularly the different kinds of Hens and Chicks plants they had. Maybe I will eventually have some of these in the rock bed near my front porch.

We walked down to the hosta garden and back. I noticed the signs warning about ticks/Lyme disease for the first time (my daughter insists they have been around the garden previously); I guess Lyme disease is a problem in Missouri as it was in Maryland even though I don’t notice the over population of deer (and deer ticks) being as high as in Maryland.

Next time I go to the gardens, I will look more at the butterfly garden and daylilies!