Lake Springfield Boathouse – July 2025

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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!

Fishmobile – Take 2

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My first experience with the Fishmobile was back in April at an elementary school in Carroll County (posted about it here). I got an email just after I returned from Texas asking if I could help with the Fishmobile’s visit to a nature center near where I life for a weekend event. I still had committed to anything else so I accepted. The day started out well when I checked the milkweed in my front flower bed and found a good-sized Monarch caterpillar!

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The day was not too hot and my ‘shift’ was from 10-12 when the temperature was in the mid-70s. Most of the animals that were there for the school were in the tanks again: horseshoe crabs, Larry the diamond backed terrapin, a blue crab, and a box turtle.

The American eel was silvery and was more active this time. The only thing I missed from last time were sea horses but there were some preserved ones to talk about with the families that came through. In the two hours I was there, almost 200 people came through. Some of the children came through the exhibit several times (after they built up their courage to experience the two touch tanks).

During one lull I stepped off the Fishmobile bus and photographed some bees on the plants just outside. The bees were very active and focused on the flowers…not flying amongst the people coming to the Fishmobile.

After my shift was over, I walked over to the compost demo and filled out the form to get a free compost bin. After the tour yesterday and further education today, I am going to do my own compost. My plan it to put the bin back near the forest and start it off with some shredded paper and veggie/fruit scraps from the kitchen. This time of year taking the watermelon rinds to the compost bin will be a lot easier than lugging them to the curb in a trash bag that might leak! Stay tuned for posts about my compost adventure.