Gardens Aglow

/

The seasonal Gardens Aglow lights are a wonderful evening activity. They continue until December 28th (check the website for dates and times) at the Springfield Botanical Gardens’ Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden. Online tickets are $6 for adults and $4 for children…but admission is free to Friends of the Garden or Springfield Sisters Cities Association! My husband and I are Friends of the Garden so the passes for the show I got in the mail because of my volunteering at the garden were given to 2 of my daughter’s students.

Our first visit was last week (we’ll probably go again before the end of the season). It was a cold and cloudy day, and we opted to arrive shortly after they opened at 5; we were early enough to park in the parking lot rather than the grassy area parking which is opened for the event. It didn’t take long before it was fully dark. I opted to use my small Canon PowerShot SX730 HS in night scene mode (stacks images in the camera) rather than my phone because the camera is easier for me to hold for the duration of the longer shot and the mechanism to zoom is easier too. There seemed to be a higher density of lights than I remembered from previous years. It is always well done; I liked that they have added lights to direct people to stay on the paved walkways…less chance of people trampling plants in the dark.

I enjoyed getting shots of lights and their reflections in water. There were plenty of opportunities!

Our walk took a little under an hour. The temperature was in the low 40s, and I was comfortable in my winter gear. My daughter bought some spring rolls at one of the food trucks – which she enjoyed but her hands got cold without gloves; she bought some hot cider just before we left to warm up her hands and to drink on the way home. My husband said his coat was great, but his gloves and shoes were not quite warm enough. It was a good first test of our winter clothing selections.

Aurora in Missouri

/

The aurora was visible from the Springfield MO area this past Tuesday! My husband said that he couldn’t see it when he walked outside at our house in Nixa – but his phone certainly did! The picture was taken at 8:20 PM.

Dr. Mike Reed (a colleague of my daughter’s at Missouri State) saw it too – at 9:20 PM.

One of my daughter’s students (Bishwash Devkota, MSU astrophysics senior and president of Ozark Amateur Astronomy Club) went out to Missouri State University’s Baker Observatory and provided 5 photographs taken after 10 PM.

The sky is not particularly dark at our house; seeing the aurora and a few stars demonstrates how good the phone camera is!

Dickerson Park Zoo

/

The Dickerson Park Zoo hosted an early evening Fall Fest for Friends of the Zoo. We enjoyed free popcorn and fed the giraffes tree trimmings. There was a young giraffe – clearly smaller than the others and not getting as much food from the visitors because the adults were better positioned to the people on the deck with their height.

It was a cool evening. The parrots, that are usually a noisy welcome to the zoo, were already retired for the evening. The peacocks were out as usual…not as grand as earlier in the summer because the males are molting. They were walking about with very few tail feathers. We spotted one that must have been a hybrid of a normal and leucistic bird.

The cheetah cubs were out but not very active.  

The ostrich in the enclosure next to cheetahs was moving about…looking for a last snack of the day.

The two grey crowned cranes were active (one even flew toward the other!). The two appeared to be molting – there were more feathers than usual on the ground in their enclosure. I took a picture of the head feathers from the back…a different perspective than usual.

The floor of the flamingo enclosure had even more feathers!

There is only one lion left. She was napping. Evidently, she is elderly, and the zoo is not going to stress her by adding another lion into her environment.

The peccary family was in a pile in their enclosure…the babies snuggled with their parents. There was not enough light to get a good picture, but it was fun to watch then move around a bit – getting comfortable.

The fall display just inside the zoo was my last photography stop. It was getting dark, and we had enjoyed our visit.

Butterfly House – August 2025

/

So many things to see in the Botanical Garden and the Roston Native Butterfly House this month. There are plenty of native plants in bloom in the rain garden on the walk between the Botanical Center and the house….but I just take a quick look since I want a few minutes to get things cleaned up before turning the sign to ‘open.’

Sometimes we find butterflies that have died overnight. I took a picture of one before we put it in the small bin we keep for butterflies that have succumbed. Another morning I found the 4 parts of a cecropia moth’s wings scattered on the floor; maybe a mouse ate the body during the night?

I like to see butterflies getting nectar from flowers…but sometimes it is enough to see them ‘resting.’ There are often fresh zinnias for the butterflies – freshly cut from the Master Gardener area of the Botanical Gardens. And there is always something blooming in the house itself. I like the Zen of the place when there aren’t many people but there is always the magic of a child’s wonder seeing a butterfly in a way they haven’t before.

The caterpillar that was ‘new to me’ this month was a Zebra Swallowtail…large enough to make its chrysalis – picked up off the floor when it was trying to leave the plant!

The moths are easily photographed because they are not very active during the day. The Luna moth is my favorite….but the Polyphemus is beautiful too. They, along with the Cecropia, have large caterpillars that are always interesting to visitors.

Springfield Botanical Gardens – July 2025

/

We visited the Springfield Botanical Gardens in mid-June….on a cloudy morning. There was a breeze to help make the warm, humid air more comfortable. My husband was keen to photograph insects in flight. It was probably warm enough, but the insects were not as active because of the thick clouds and everything being so wet.

The Botanical Center was our first stop. Then we walked by the rain garden (indigo with pods and golden rod) and down the sidewalk past the Butterfly House and surrounding garden.

The daylilies were blooming profusely and were the main draw for my visit. I started out doing some macro shots with my phone (iPhone 15 Pro Max)

But changed to zoomed images with my small point and shoot (Canon Powershot SX730 HS). Both cameras captured the water droplets on the flowers.

As we started back toward the car I saw something off the paved walk landing in the grass. It stayed put as I carefully walked over….and got a picture. It was the only large butterfly I saw all morning (other than in the Butterfly House).

Before we left for home, I got a small branch of sweet gum leaves for my luna and cecropia moths.

Lake Springfield Boathouse – July 2025

/

The garden around the Lake Springfield Boathouse is maintained by Springfield Plateau Chapter of the Missouri Master Naturalists. I’m not part of that team but I do enjoy their results. My husband was looking for a place to practice a technique for photographing bees and the first place I looked was a good starting location for him: the buttonbush near the front door of the building! I took a few pictures before he even got his gear unloaded!

While he tried out his new technique, I photographed the other plantings. The second place I hoped to find insects/bees was the cup plant, but it wasn’t blooming yet. It did have buds…so should be a great place to check later in the season.

We headed past the purple martin houses (which were very busy) to the meadow area. The milkweed was blooming but the flowers looked less colorful than I expected, and they were not attracting large number of insects either. The bee balm was more attractive to bees than the milkweed. There was a spiderweb that looked a little like a hammock in some dried stems from last season; it was highlighted by the heavy dew. I took some backlit images of 2 plants that were not blooming but had interesting shapes.

One of the pictures I took of an insect on a milkweed leaf had a surprise when I looked at it on my big monitor at home: a tiny egg (maybe a Monarch egg)!

Across the walking trail there are brambles and trees. The locust was full of still-green pods and vetch was blooming in the undergrowth.

It was a productive morning activity. My husband thought maybe it was not warm enough for peak insect sightings; he might have been right but, with the humidity, it was the best time for us to be there!

Yards in June

/

There was a lot going on in yards in June.  I enjoyed documenting my own yard and that of my daughter’s too.

The native plants in my yard are doing quite well: fragrant sumac (the first one I planted),

American spikenard (one that is a few years old and another than I planted this year),

Missouri evening primrose with its big yellow flowers,

Common Primrose that is becoming well established in my wildflower garden, and

Mushrooms keep coming up in the area where a tree was cut down several years before we bought the house.

My daughter and son-in-law planted some native plants in an area near their driveway and the street recently; they are thriving along with the yucca that has been there for a long time.  

There are non-natives: daylilies in both yards,

Asian hydrangeas in her yard (that she generously cut for a bouquet now in my office window),

A very large Southern Magnolia in my daughter’s house,

Lambs ear – that bumblebees like when it is blooming at my house,

Roses and hostas at both houses!

I have arugula flowers since I didn’t start eating the leaves soon enough. Oh well – they attact some small pollinators. There are zinnia flowers nearby too.

We are both challenged with grass growing where we don’t want it…and some invasives like Asian bush and vine honeysuckles. I have a lot of tree seedlings to control too – particularly hackberry, mulberry, redbud, oak, and maple.

Roston Native Butterfly House – June 2025

/

Of course there are butterflies in the Roston Native Butterfly House…

But this post is focused more on caterpillars. The cecropia moth

Has very large caterpillars which are the stars of the caterpillar table!

The luna moths (male with feathery antennae and the female with more thread like antennae)

Also have large caterpillars but they are not quite as large or colorful.

The tiger swallowtail caterpillars have fake eye spots. They are often on the tulip poplar tree in the butterfly house…at eye level with many adult visitors. We sometimes move a caterpillar on the table so that the children can see it more easily.

Learning about caterpillars – and their importance in the environment as food for other creatures (particularly young birds) - is part of the butterfly house experience.

Butterfly Festival

/

The annual Butterfly Festival was held at the Springfield Botanical Gardens on the second Saturday in June. I volunteered for 2 hours in the Missouri Master Naturalist booth.

There were a lot of people and the children were all working on a passport where they collected a butterfly sticker from the booths they visited. The sticker we had was the pipevine swallowtail. We were completely out of stickers at the end of my shift and there was still 2 hours to go for the festival!

To the side of our booth, we had a small tarp with rotten logs and tools to dig into the logs. The children found snails, grubs, worms, ants, millipedes, spider…and roly-polies! We accumulated quite a collection in the magnifying containers on the table.

We talked the adults about Missouri Master Naturalists and hopefully some people will be interested enough to contact us and participate in our next core training in fall of 2026.

Evening at the Dickerson Park Zoo

/

My daughter and I enjoyed a late-in-the day visit to the Dickerson Park Zoo last week – seeing the animals and enjoying a Molly Healey concert in the amphitheater. It was sprinkling when we got there. The rain gardens at the edges of the parking lot were looking particularly lush after a wet spring.

The vegetation in the zoo itself was as well. I noted the oak leaf hydrangea in near the entrance and the catalpa trees along the raised boardwalk that were mostly finished blooming – and saw a catalpa seed pod beginning to form. There was clematis growing on the supports of the deck around the café. I noticed a stand of yuccas in bloom too.

Some of the signs looked like they had been updated recently….were in better shape than I had ever seen them.

The peacocks were around as usual although I didn’t see as many out and about so maybe some had already retreated to their roosting area. I didn’t see any peachicks either.

The high point of the animals were the 3 cheetah cubs that were out with their mom.

The baby giraffe is a bit older than the cubs. All the giraffes were reaching for lettuce and the shortest didn’t manage to get any!

The single lion was caroling as she moved around near the back of her enclosure – could be heard throughout the zoo as easily as the peacocks!

It was in interesting time – with the day winding down and light rain.

It didn’t rain during the concert but the humidly must have been very high. It was warm enough to feel sticky but not terrifically uncomfortable. The audience was probably a little less than expected because of the rain. We were glad we went and will consider going to other evening events at the zoo.

Butterfly House after Rain

/

One of my shifts at the Roston Native Butterfly House occurred after it rained most of the night and the hours before my shift. I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t rain for a bit over 2 hours that fit nicely with my scheduled time…only starting again just as the next shift arrived! Not many people ventured out to the Springfield Botanical Gardens during that time and there were only 14 visitors to the butterfly house…so I had plenty of time to sweep the floor and stand up the chairs! There was a cecropia moth on the floor that I moved to a flower bed so it would not get stepped on; it moved a bit when I picked it up.

The high point of the visitors were grandparents their two young granddaughters; they were having a ‘butterfly day camp week’ and the house was on their activity list! They were thrilled that the rain had stopped long enough for them to visit.

The butterflies that were not roosting were feeding on zinnias and musk thistle – probably hungry because they tend to roost when it is raining or dark (and it was cool as well). The oranges that are usually popular were probably waterlogged from all the rain; I didn’t see any butterflies on them. Two pipevine swallowtail caterpillars were actively feeding but most of the others were not very active. I had plenty of time to take pictures of butterflies, caterpillars, and plants.

There were at least 4 cecropia moths (other than the one I moved off the floor) that were in house…a little challenging to see in the foliage. Two butterflies emerged from their chrysalis but neither one dried off enough to fly away from the chrysalis house; the humidity was very high which probably prolonged the process. Some butterflies were on the low brick walls and floor; they might have been puddling although it appears they were on relatively dry places.

Roston Butterfly House

/

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!

Springfield Botanical Garden – May 2025

/

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!

Springfield ArtsFest

/

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!

Zooming – April 2025

/

Springtime photography….is April the best month? It seems like that might be true this year. The photographs were taken at the Springfield Botanical Gardens, my yard, the Missouri State University Campus, my daughter’s yard, Onondaga Cave, and 2 volunteer activities. There were so many images to choose from; I selected 23. I used three different cameras – iPhone 15 Pro Max, Canon Powershot SX730 HS, and Nikon Coolpix P950. Enjoy the slideshow!