Sophia M. Sachs Butterly House

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After a day at the Missouri Botanical Garden – we headed to the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House near St. Louis MO the next morning. Its another facility that is part of the Missouri Botanical Garden. We were there a few minutes before it opened and walked around the outside gardens. It included a giant butterfly and caterpillar sculpture!

There was also a butterfly bench like the ones in Brookside Gardens in Maryland!

There were many fall plants blooming too – including cone flowers, butterfly weed, and goldenrod.

We entered the building as it opened. Everything had a butterfly theme – even a wall sculpture near the restrooms.

The conservatory is a year-round climate-controlled space for butterflies. We were familiar with many of the butterflies there because of our experiences at Brookside. Some of the butterflies were tagged – not sure why. We enjoyed watching the children with their families experience the butterflies – noticing butterflies in the air…looking to see them on the fruit or in the foliage.

The exit  from the conservatory leads to another garden with a water feature and sculpture of a child with butterflies on her hand and knee.

It was a good morning activity. We enjoyed photographing the gardens and butterflies (would be even more appealing in the winter when the conservatory would be pleasantly warm compared to outdoors) and we headed home afterward.

Native Plants for our Missouri Yard

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There are 5 new native plants at our house! I bought them at the Fall Wildflower Market located at the Shaw Nature Reserve about a week ago and have them all transplanted into our back yard:

Callicarpa americana - American Beautyberry

Solidago speciosa - Showy Goldenrod

Ratibida pinnata - Grayhead Coneflower

Pycnanthemum pilosum - American Mountain Mint

Aralia racemosa - American Spikenard

 The largest plant – and the one I had been wanting since I bought one for my sister last spring – is Callicarpa americana - American Beautyberry. The one I bought already has some berries on it which I hope will turn purple this fall. In a few years it should be the dominant plant in the area where a pine tree used to be in our yard (it fell over and had to be hauled away…the stump ground up).

I also planted three of the other plants (smaller) in that same area and will propagate them to other parts of the yard as they become established: showy goldenrod, grayhead coneflower, and American mountain mint.

The American Spikenard is planted at the edge of a flowerbed overflowing with violets where I can see it from my office window. It is a shade-loving plant that has red berries in the fall. It won’t this year but I hope it does next year….food for birds and a good scene from my window.

I’ll post again about how the native plants (these and the fragrant sumac I planted earlier last summer) survive (or not) in November.

Lake Springfield Meadow – July 2023

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Earlier this month, my husband and I headed over to the Lake Springfield boathouse for some photography of the meadow.

Before we walked to the meadow, we looked around the boathouse itself. The American lotus is blooming in the shallow water near the boathouse,

The plantings of native flowers in the beds around the structure, and

A non-native, invasive rose is growing at the edge of the forest.

The Purple Martin houses are still full and there appeared to be a young one in the grass…still being fed by the adults but also beginning to fly about as well.

Summer flowers are beginning to bloom profusely in the meadow.

There are lots of insects in the meadow too; they present a little more challenge to photograph. This month I photographed bees, butterflies, and dragonflies. The dragonflies and butterflies were intentional; I waited until they were posed. Milkweed in bloom is impossible to photograph without bees; I am including the picture that had two well positioned bees – selected from many images where they weren’t. I couldn’t resist the bumble bee butt image…a zoomed picture of a flower that a bee just happened to be flying over!

As usual, the meadow is an active place and there is always something to photograph. In August, I’ll be looking for grasshoppers!

Missouri Botanical Garden – June 2023 (1)

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So much to see at the Missouri Botanical Garden…

The Climatron is full of lush tropical plantings. Intimate landscapes of ferns and bromeliads…

Flowers (including orchids) and seeds tucked into the greenery….

Cycads….

Flowers and stems different than we see in temperature parts of the world.

Out in the summer sunshine…cone flowers and sunflowers thrive.

Daylilies are blooming profusely.

There was a very odd plant in Linnean House. I took several views of it…and should have taken a picture of the tag too!

I found myself interested in objects where the light was not overly bright or overhead.

And there were some places/plants that became immediately special: a large puffball under a bald cypress that was growing before the garden was started, button bush (one of my favorite native plants), and a woodland area with a gurgling stream (artificial but made to look natural, I enjoyed a short rest on a bench).

I appreciated the Stumpery garden….learning a bit about the history too.

And a few more plants I enjoyed photographing….before we went into the restaurant for lunch (and air conditioning) before we headed home.

Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge – June 2023

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It was hotter and dustier than May on the afternoon I was at Hagerman…a stop on the road trip between my home and Carrollton TX. The riot of wildflowers of May has shifted toward thistles and sunflowers and lotus…with the May flowers producing seed.

There were three types of egrets I saw: cattle and snowy…

And then a great egret on a snag - scratching.

The black vultures were on the ground. They didn’t appear to be around feeding. They were just in a group at the edge of one of the ponds…socializing.

The butterfly garden near the visitor center has a wider variety of flowers still blooming.

And they were attracting butterflies. I watched one getting nectar from a cone flower.

There were several other kinds around too…and I saw one butterfly laying eggs on a plant that didn’t have any flowers (must have been the plant that the caterpillars like to eat). I had a pleasant conversation with a woman as we both enjoyed the garden; she was about my age, had bought a butterfly kit for a granddaughter (the caterpillar had successfully developed into a butterfly that was released), and was part of the rotation caring for her elderly father in his home…a wonderful chance encounter that made the road trip unique!

There were bees in the butterfly garden too. One was taking a break on a bench…an easy picture!

Hagerman Wildflowers – May 2023

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The wildflowers were abundant at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge in May…and the cloudy weather didn’t impact photography of them as it did for the birds. I enjoyed taking some assemblages of flowers in the roadside meadows.

Most of my images were zoomed in shots of single species – queen Anne’s lace, amaranth, coneflower, butterfly weed, milkweed….and more.

Some of the plants had insects on them too…an added attraction.

I experimented with some high key images too…the advantage of a cloudy sky.

The redbud near the visitor center is one of my favorite trees to photograph – an easy access specimen for macro photography.

I’m looking forward to seeing the changes when I visit the refuge in June. Some of the flowers will last through the summer….others will be done with their blooms for the year. Being able to visit a refuge like Hagerman every month is one of the best things about 2023 (so far)!

May Yard Work

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There is a noticeable uptick in yard work in May….always something to do. The temperature is warm enough – and there is sufficient rain – for the grass to need to be mowed (weed eating/edging) weekly. Most of the time my strategy is to do the front yard one day and the back the next. In the back I am realizing it was a mistake to plant alliums in the grass since they are not done yet….so there is a patch of taller grass along with them.

There was one week that had a lot of rain in the forecast, so I opted to mow everything in one day before the rain. I took a little break after I used up the batteries…only a little left to go and I needed some down time anyway. When I started again, the most robust pine in our yard was in my path. When I bumped it – yellow pollen swirled through the air – and I diverted to give it wide berth. Some of the grass near it did not get mowed! The allergic reaction didn’t start until somewhat later – one of the worst of the year so far; I didn’t even realize I was allergic to pine pollen until now.

One of our other pines is problematic. It is leaning toward other landscaping and our house – the ground freshly heaved upward. The arborist says it can’t be saved so they will come soon to take it down.    

Both rose bushes appear dead. They are older but the landscaping fabric/rocks were added by the previous owner before she put the house on the marker and they might have caused them a problem. I’ll start cutting them up and burning the sticks in my chiminea fire pit soon – a better solution than cutting them up and taking them to the recycling center (yard waste) since the thorns making handling hazardous.

I cleared away rocks and landscaping fabric from an area and planted sunflowers, black eyed susans, cone flowers, gladiolus, and a wildflower mix in the big plan and some mini-pumpkin seeds in a smaller area nearby.

I sprinkled the area with spent flowers and empty edamame pods as a kind of celebration of the bed after I finished. I’ll be collecting seeds from the things that grow this year (except for the gladiolus) to plant in other areas next year. Creating places to plant has been hard  work (rock is heavy and landscaping fabric is tough).

Realizing that the weight of the rocks might be a problem for some of our other plants, I raked rocks away from the small cedars that have looked sick from the beginning. And there are more plants that might need the same help. Always something else that needs to be done in the yard!

More Spring Yard Dreaming

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Back in February, I posted about the seeds I had bought for spring planting; now I have more purchases for planting as soon as it is warm enough: roots and bulbs:

Cone flower and black-eyed Susan roots for sunny flowerbeds….good for pollinators.

Cinnamon, Christmas, and Ostrich ferns to go in the deep shade under the holly trees and one of the bird feeders. I am trying to decide whether to move the rocks completely out of that area. There is landscaping fabric under the rocks that I need to remove so I’ll have to move them temporarily anyway.

Gladiolus to provide cut flowers. They bring back memories of my maternal grandparents who always had a lot of them in their summer garden. The flowers were planted along the side of the large vegetable garden closest to the road along with cannas. I will probably plant a few of the bulbs in the front flower beds but most will be where I can see them from my office window!

We are still having some cold days; it isn’t time to plant yet. But - I have been getting out on dry sunny days to begin the preparatory work. The big job is moving rocks aside and removing landscaping fabric on the places I want to plant!

Zooming – July 2022

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Lots of photography locations in July. In Missouri: our new yard, the Springfield Nature Center, the Springfield Botanical Garden. In Texas, my parents’ yard in Carrollton. In Maryland, Brookside Gardens. There were still plenty of summer flowers to photograph…although fewer than previous years. The insects and birds are not as numerous either. So – enjoy the slide show for the best garden/nature views where I was in July 2022!

The very hot temperatures in Missouri and Texas are taking a toll, but areas that are watered are surviving. Hopefully we will start getting some rain showers soon.

Springfield Botanical Garden – July 2022 (1)

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The Springfield Botanical Garden is already one of my favorite places to walk around….easily taking the place of Brookside Gardens in Maryland. We parked near the rose garden. The roses were looking a little challenged by the summer heat but there were plenty of summer flowers to enjoy: cone flowers, zinnias, sunflowers (to name a few).

The hosta garden is always a cool and damp oasis. We arrived before 8 AM….before the heat of the day. I enjoyed photographing the flowers and leaves with water droplets on them.

There was one caladium leaf that had a shape like butterfly wings!

The lilies were still blooming profusely (see the June post for earlier in their bloom period). I took very zoomed images to avoid spent blooms that are part of the scene this month. It seemed that mesh had been put around more of the beds…maybe deer have become a problem.

I hadn’t noticed the Osage orange tree near one of the pollinator gardens before. It is full of fruit now. It is an interesting tree….without an efficient means of propagation without human assistance. Its seed dispersal evidently was via extinct megafauna (giant ground sloth, mammoth, mastodon, etc.). But – it was widely used for fencing/wind breaks by settlers and has been planted in all 48 contiguous states of the US and in southeastern Canada. It is not a rare tree even though it could become so without continued attention.

Stay tuned…in a few days I’ll post about the animal life I noticed in the garden this month.

Texas Macro

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I enjoyed two sessions of macro photography with my phone and clip on lens in the Carrollton, Texas. Getting very close to the vegetation with a magnifying lens provides a different perspective of the plants. Can you find the red yucca pod, the cosmos flowers, the rabbits ear leaf, the underside of a fern, hydrangea leaf, black seeds of the chives, cone flower seed pod and French flower? There is an occasional insect. Each image can be enlarged by clicking on it to pop up a larger version.

This is probably the last hurrah for summer type macro images. The subjects will shift to leaf color transitions and snowflakes …or indoors with store bought flowers for the holidays or holiday decorations.

Going to Seed

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This time of year, the plants are going to seed. I walked around our yard finding a few:

A dandelion puff in the grass – not a many as in the warm days of late spring and early summer…once the dandelion crescendo they continue flowering and making seed puffs through the warm months until frost.

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Many of the ferns have spores on the back of their leaves.

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Coneflowers look almost threatening with the spikes of seeds….a drape of drying petals below.

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We had a pyracantha at one corner of our house when we move here over 25 years ago – it died back but has now come up from the roots and has orange berries again this year – a pop of color beneath the huge bush growing above the re-emerging pyracantha.

The allium in the chaos garden has green seedpods. They’ll take a little longer to dry and pop open to let the black seeds escape.

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Macros – September 2021

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My smartphone, a clip on macro lens, and Bluetooth shutter control were the gear I used for the macro photos feathered in this month’s post. They are all from a short walk in Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant from the parking area and into the Honors Garden. The set up works very much like the bridge camera (with lens, diffuser, manual focus) in that I must get close to the subject and move the phone to get the focus perfect. It has the advantage of being a lot more compact than the other set up!

The rain from the night before had left everything with a sheen or droplets of water. Often the wet increased the richness of the colors…and the shine. The thin clouds provided good, diffuse light – a good day for smartphone macro photography. The cedar was on my way to honors garden.

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The seed pods on the magnolia were not flat enough to be an easy shot! The depth of field is very narrow with magnification.

I experimented with different perspectives of cone flowers

And asters. In the last picture, the depth of field gave me the blurring around the edges than I wanted.

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The birds nest fungus was in a mulched area near the parking lot. Some of the cups seem to hold water!

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Even grass seeds take on a different perspective in a zoomed image.

…And these are the best of the rest (note the insect hiding inside a flower)!

Yard Work

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My husband maintains the lawn part of the yard while I am away – but the bushes and flower beds are left for me to get back in control when I return. The milkweed was dominating the front flowerbeds….but there were no caterpillars (or signs that there had been caterpillars) on the plants; it was time to cut them down. There were some black eyed susans that came up through the day lily leaves beginning to bloom.

With the milkweed gone, the black eyed susans show up more. In my next round I’ll do my annual cutting of the day lily leaves to have fresh green ones growing until first frost.

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The Virginia Creeper is growing better than ever on the oak tree. I am leaving it alone this season.

I trimmed the Virginia Creeper growing into a window ledge. There were some ants underneath the leaves on the ledge….not good. I’ll monitor to keep it lower than the ledge for the rest of the season.

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The plant has suction cups that hold it to tree trunks and bricks…not as damaging as rootlets that some other vines have. I still cut the vines on the exterior of the basement because they were about to reach the siding and I did not want them to grow on or under the siding.

While I was cutting the milkweed – I noticed several things to photograph: 1) blooming mint. I have harvested it in years past but am opting to just let it grow among the day lily leaves now.

2) an insect exploring the nine-bark bush. I love the varying leaf color on the bush. It is growing well now, and I am reluctant to trim it because I like the lush and colorful new growth!

3) a zoomed images of a black-eyed susan flower.

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Our tiny holly has berries this year; they’ll start to turn red soon. I cut back the growth of the old bush (dying) behind the holly to maximize the space for the young bush.

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The ferns and grapevine are growing better than ever before under the deck. We are trying not to bother them although I worry about accidently rolling over them when I get the wheel barrow in and out.

The second morning of yard work, I took two wheelbarrows of trimmings from the chaos garden. There is one cone flower there….otherwise it is lemon balm gone wild, some blackberry canes, other invasives….leaves and sticks from the sycamore. There is still more to do in the coming weeks.

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The sycamore is already dropping its leaves…which is normal. The ones on the yard will be chewed up when we mow the yard. The ones on the stairs to the deck will be swept off and onto the yard before we mow.

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When I was taking the last load back to the brush pile at the edge of the forest, I found a red maple leave on the ground – already looking very much as all the leaves will look in upcoming months.

My goal is to work in the yard for 2 hours a week….trying to get it done first thing in the morning – when the temperature is the lowest of the day.

Springfield Botanical Garden – Part 1

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This was my second visit to the Springfield Botanical Garden….and we parked in a different place…saw the garden in a different order than before. It’s a large enough place that I didn’t see the whole thing either time.  The morning was still cool and there were not many people around when we first got there. We started out near the flowering shrubs, white garden and mosaic. I’m paying more attention to native plants these days and the gardens seems to be skewing in that direction as well. There were lots of showy clumps of cone flowers and wood hydrangea. There didn’t seem to be as many butterflies around as were there during my previous visit in July 2019.

We spent more time walking through the hosta garden….very shady with water features….the garden furniture was too wet to enjoy. It’s probably the most pleasant garden area during the hottest hours of summer days!

We went in one entrance and out another…walking toward other gardens via the South Creek Greenway Trail. Those gardens are the topic of in tomorrow’s post.

Painterly Flower Photographs

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A photography project in my home office: sitting on the other side of the office from the flowers and using the zoom on the camera to get magnified images of the flowers….varying light and magnification. Sometimes I rest the camera on my knee to hold it steady – fold out the view screen to compose the image. Sit back and enjoy the slide show; it will last a little over a minute before it loops back to the beginning.

The advantage of using the zoom is that the depth of field is enough to get the whole flower in focus; getting close…using a macro lens approach…would make it harder to get the focus I wanted. The higher the magnification the more ‘painterly’ they become; the focus softens. I like that the background often is flat or washes out….even the window screen is a pale gray grid. Capturing curves and textures of the petals is the priority.

There are three kinds of flowers: black-eyed susans, zinnias, cone flowers. They all came from the CSA over the past three weeks. Some of the petals are already beginning to dry and curl; the part under the petals of the zinnias starts out as shades green…then turns to shades of brown as the flowers age..

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Sewing Machine. I have put my 47-year-old sewing machine in the pile I am collecting to donate. It still has all the things it came with – even the instruction book. I used it a lot for about 15 years. For the first 10 of those years I made almost all my clothes. I even took some tailoring classes in 1983 – thinking I would make my suits for work. Then my career ramped up and required more time; I started buying my suits and making my blouses. By the time by daughter was born I was sewing infrequently. I’m not sure why it took me so long to let it go; it was an easy ‘declutter’ decision.

Blue Skies. The hazy skies are gone…but the temperature is still on the cool side. The forecast shows a warming trend…back up to the 80s.

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More Butterflies at the CSA

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There seemed to be even more butterflies at the Community Supported Agriculture cutting garden when I went to cut my flowers and stevia this week. I’d remembered to take my better camera so got some reasonably good pictures. I managed to identify all of them using the Maryland Butterflies web page when I looked at the images on my big monitor.

I’ve seen the Common Buckeye many times but they seemed to be a lot more of them in close proximity than I had seen before.

The Pink-edged Sulphur was a new one for me. I knew it was a ‘sulphur’ when it photographed it but didn’t see the edges clearly until it was on the big screen.

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The Red Admiral on the cone flower was one I don’t remember seeing before but it is evidently found through most of Maryland.

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I’d seen the Palamedes Swallowtails in previous year’s Wings of Fancy exhibits inside the conservatory. This was the first one I’ve seen in the wild. I realized it was a swallowtail when I photographed it and that it looked a little different than the dark morphs of tiger swallowtails that often are more common in this area.

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What a thrill to see three new-to-me butterflies this week!

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Car service. We took my husband’s car to the dealership for a gear shift button repair (it popped off!!!). It turned out to be a recall item and they had the replacement part. Now the service is up to date on the car as well. My car will get serviced next week. We haven’t been driving much this year….but the cars do have a maintenance schedule.

Yampa Valley Festival of the Cranes. I started making my way through the videos. They are well done. It is positive story as well because Northwest Colorado’s Greater Sandhill Cranes have gone from endangered to threatened (1993) to special concern (1998). I’d like to go to the festival held just before their fall migration south some year….see the young cranes leaving the nesting grounds. Some of them end up in Bosque del Apache where we’ve been twice to the festival in November (cancelled this year).

Fledgling chipping sparrow. This is the time for fledging chipping sparrows (probably second brood). There was one that was trying to come to the feeder while I was out with my morning caffeine. It couldn’t quite manage getting on the perch so would flutter down to the deck railing and an adult bird would bring some seed. Hopefully, it will become coordinated enough to get its own seed soon.

Butterflies in the Cutting Garden

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I took a few minutes when I was in the CSA’s cutting garden this week to photograph some butterflies. The first one is a battered Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (dark morph) on a sunflower. I always try to check to make sure it’s not a Spicebush or Black Swallowtail. This one has dashes on the edge of the forewing (instead of spots)….which distinguished it as the dark morph of the Tiger Swallowtail.

There were skippers all over the cone flowers.

I took a series that shows the proboscis in different positions…and why they stay for such a long time on one cone flower (there are a lot of places to find nectar)!

Aside from cutting some flowers, I also cut stevia. I chop it up to steep in tea….a nice light sweetness for the whole pot. I don’t think very many others know where it is because the plants don’t look like they’ve been snipped much. Their loss…my gain!

By the time I finished the bit of cutting and photography in the mid-afternoon sun, my mask was becoming decidedly uncomfortable. I appreciated the air conditioner in my car for the short trip home.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Grocery day. Every time I shop, I realize I am becoming more accustomed to shopping every other week rather than weekly as I have for my whole life until this pandemic. I’m now beginning to think that I’ll stick with the less frequent shopping from now on. It takes a little more planning, but the benefits are reduced time for shopping and I seem to be spending a bit less (maybe because I am planning better). My grocery store is not that far from where I live – so halving the gas/electricity for the commute is not saving much – although it could add up over time. Overall – this may be a pandemic habit worth keeping!

Walk at Mt Pleasant – Part 2

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Continuing from yesterday’s post…..

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I took the wide path across the meadow toward the rock wall. I wanted to photograph the tree within a tree – a maple that has roots halfway up the trunk. I came to the shady side first. What a difference the sun makes! I think the early morning sun on the other side made for the best picture I’ve ever taken of the tree.

I also took pictures up and down the stone wall from that point…uphill (the way I was heading) and downhill (where  I had come from….the path I’d used to cross the meadow being the break in the vegetation on the upper right side of the second picture.

The rock wall is always an opportunity to talk about local geology…and lichens and mosses…and what might live in a rock wall. Of all the places at Mt. Pleasant, the rock wall was where I missed the field trips with children the most.

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I got back to the gravel drive and walked toward the Honors Garden. I stopped to photograph the flowerpot people in summer garb and remembered hand made ‘hook’ on the black smith shop.

The witch hazel that was blooming back in December (yellow petals like streamers) now has green immature seed pods. I’d never though to look closely at the small tree in front of the main building this time of year…so it was the first time to photograph the seed pods at this stage.

I got to the Honors Garden. The small pond near the entrance almost always has frogs. This time of year, they are green frogs. They were visible in and near the water. I walked around and then started hearing them – a rubber band chorus of 2 or 3 frogs. I went back for more photos.

There were lots of flowers, of course. I was somewhat disappointed that there were not a lot of butterflies. Maybe it was not quite warm enough for them to be active. The Joe Pye Weed was not quite blooming yet. The light was still great for photography. I liked a backlit fern; the stems contrast dramatically with the fronds.

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And then I spent time trying to photograph an orb weaver spider web! It was a good finale to my morning walk.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Air quality alert. I’m glad I enjoyed some extra time outdoors yesterday because today there is an air quality alert and I will stay indoors. It turns out that the alert is  not about ground level Ozone….it’s particulates (PM2.5) based on the Maryland Department of the Environment site. Our alerts come from Maryland now rather than the EPA because of Maryland’s higher standard of air quality – the desire to warn groups that are susceptible to air quality health issues. It seems like during the pandemic, everyone would need this type of information.

Last 2019 Student Event at Mt Pleasant

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Last week the annual Howard County Conservancy ‘Weather to the Extreme’ conference was held for 6th grade students from half the middle schools in our county. I volunteered as a session moderator. As usual – I was too busy to take pictures after the students arrive…but there was a little time just after I arrived. As I got out of my car, I heard a noise in the trees just above me and the squirrel continued to work on the black walnut long enough for me to take pictures. It’s amazing that the squirrels can get through the tough shell of these nuts.

There was a tiny amount of snow overnight…still evident in a few areas…no enough to cause any traffic challenges.

The witch hazel is still blooming, and the seed pods will be forming soon. There are buds on the witch hazel that blooms in February now. I’ll try to check them every time I go to Mt Pleasant over the winter.

Very few of the cone flower seed heads look intact. The birds enjoy the seeds….and probably knock some to the ground that will grow next spring.

There are always things to see around Mt Pleasant….even on a cold and damp day!