First Frost

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The first frost at our house happened on Halloween! It was not universal…just on the most exposed parts of the front yard. It was the microclimates made visible! I took some pictures of the grassy areas impacted; I had mowed them the previous day. I took a few images of the grass…interested in the patterns ice crystals make on different surfaces. The ice seemed to outline the leaves. On the grass, the ice tended to enlarge any texture.

There is still a lot of green. The low temperature did not last long enough to be the killing frost for many plants. That will probably happen in the next few weeks.

MDC Partners Roundtable

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I’ve posted about the side trips I did to and from my trip to Jefferson City…but the reason for going was the Missouri Department of Conservation Partners Roundtable! It was a 2-day conference and a learning experience for me as a Missouri Master Naturalist.

There was the usual bling – a canvas tote (I might leave this one in my car to use when I don’t have my regular grocery bags with me), a 2026 MDC calendar (beautiful Missouri pictures…we’ll hang it on the side of our refrigerator in January), and a lanyard. I picked up a small flashlight from one of the tables and won a hammock when I asked a question in the closing session!

My favorite of the Plenary Speakers was Dr. Nadia Navarrette-Tindall from Lincoln University….talking about native plants….edible ones in particular. I stopped by her table after the talk and enjoyed a persimmon. I also picked up a card about a plant with edible leaves -Rubekia laciniata; common names for it are sochan, golden glow, and cutleaf coneflower. There was a native plant sale the weekend after the conference, and I bought golden glow and a pawpaw….so the talk prompted an immediate action. I hope Dr. Navarrette-Tindall will talk at next summer’s Missouri Master Naturalist Conference.

I was asked to play an ‘expert witness’ in a mock trial of an invasive species in one of the sessions the next morning. It was fun…a little stressful in front of a room full of people but worth it for the experience. It was part of a session for Show-me Green Schools.

There was a session where some brainstorming was done, and the organizers said they would send out a summary…but I haven’t received it yet and am disappointed. It was the most strategic session of the conference.

In general – I came away from the conference understanding that there are a lot of good things being done by MDC and their partners…but there does not seem to be much wiggle room for innovation or doing more. That is concerning because climate change and growing plastic pollution…maybe other factors too…are causing changes that existing conservation efforts might not address very well.

On the way home I stopped to get a snack…and scraped the bottom of my car (a concrete berm at the front of the parking spot…a little too high for the front of my car). It didn’t seem like anything was wrong until I was back on the highway. I heard a noise from the front passenger side of the car…stopped…discovered there was a piece of the tire well hanging down/damaged. I used my phone to photograph underneath. The piece could be pushed up but wouldn’t stay so I moved to more secure place on a sideroad rather than on the highway…and called for a tow. It was a very different process to get home than I anticipated!

Zooming – February 2025

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There seems to be more going on this winter than usual. Most of the pictures I selected to represent February were taken within a 100-mile radius of home in Nixa MO…except for a few at the Josey Ranch ponds in Carrollton TX. There were some warm days…and some snow. Some of the bulbs are coming up --- growing slowing in the still frigid temperatures that keep coming. Enjoy the February slideshow!

Our Missouri Yard – November 2024

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We haven’t had any extremely cold weather yet. Some trees have lost their leaves but not the oaks. We already are well above the monthly average for rainfall so are recovering somewhat from the drought through the summer and fall…just as we are bracing for winter.

The violets are reduced in volume but still mostly green. They have been a great plant for extending the flower beds on the east side of our house into the yard (I have several feet of ‘grass’ that is so thick with violets that I haven’t mowed it for at least two months!).

I have an area that is full of pine needles and clippings (grass, boxwood, yew) that I will plant with hostas next spring – as soon as my established clumps of hostas begin to sprout and can be easily divided. The rhododendron looks great…lots of buds for next spring’s blooms. The grapevine that I’ve draped over the stubble of a crape myrtle is turning yellow. I’m not sure what I will do with it next year. I don’t want it growing into the rhododendron but there is not a lot of space where it can go otherwise.

The seeds are falling out of the chives. These plants were started a few years ago from seeds I got from my mother’s garden. There is an oak seedling growing in the lambs ear. The closest oak tree is a pin oak, but the squirrels might plant acorns from further afield. The parent of a maple seedling might be one of the maples in our front yard…although it is on the other side of the house from where this seedling is growing.

The spicebush that I bought and planted about a month ago is showing some fall color…hope it comes back in the spring.

It is obvious we haven’t had a hard freeze yet this year. There are ‘intimate landscapes’ with fall colors everywhere.

I am trying to ‘leave the leaves’ this year rather than mow them. There were two piles that had been created by the wind in my front yard so I gathered them up into the wheelbarrow to move to my compost spot where the hostas will go. Otherwise I am leaving the scattering of leaves on the yard. I might have to move some oak leaves that fall into our yard once our neighbor’s tree drops its leaves. Overall, the wind had done most of the ‘raking’ of leaves either away from my yard or into areas where they can stay.

The Virginia creeper on the west side of the house has already lost its leaves but the plants near our front door are spectacularly red.

The aromatic sumac has lots of buds. I hope it makes seed clusters next season.

The Ozark witch hazel is probably too small to bloom in January but hopefully it will in a few years. I found a small tree growing under the holly trees. The leaves are rough…maybe a hackberry? I am going to leave it be for now…just as I am all the redbud seedlings!

I still have work to do before it gets too cold: pulling/digging out Japanese honeysuckle primarily.

Sprouting an Acorn

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I picked up some acorns back in September – pin oak (neighbor’s oak) and white oak (from Identifying Wood Plants field trip). Some of each were wrapped in damp paper towels to sprout. Only one sprouted! It was a white oak which was not too surprising since they are known for sprouting in the fall (didn’t learn this until I had the acorns in the damp paper towels).

The sprouted acorn is now in a modified soft drink bottle with some soil…in the window of my office. The pictures below show the young white oak over the past 7 days.

The plan is to keep it indoors through the winter and plant it outdoors after the last frost next spring. It could be the only white oak in the neighborhood!

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 7

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The 7th week of Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training included one evening class and my first solo volunteer gig.

The class lectures were on

  • Forest Ecology and Management

  • Pondering the Pond as a Wildlife Habitat

Forest Ecology and Management was done by a Missouri Department of Conservation Educator; I would like to have the charts since he went through them very quickly! The last segment of the lecture was hands-on…passing out small branches from the tree to everyone and then using the dichotomous key in the back of the Fifty Common Trees of Missouri booklet to id it….a red maple. I photographed my branch’s buds, branches and leaf imperfections!

Pondering the Pond as a Wildlife Habitat was done by a person that has been a MMN for over a decade…and done a lot of videography at a pond in a hayfield (i.e. not used by cattle…with adequate vegetation around its edge). Her Youtube Channel – Nature in Motion is something I will be viewing over the next month! She showed over 100 species in 17 minutes of her talk…fast paced…prompted me to think later about the richness in the intersection of science and art.

The volunteer experience was an after-school event at a local school for gifted students…15-20 minutes sessions with two groups of about 12 students each…on two days. My theme was getting outdoors in the fall and looking at some things that could be found.

My table was set up with items to look at: pinecones (3 different kinds), acorns (3 different kinds), Osage orange fruit, black walnuts (in a bag complete with emerging caterpillars), goldenrod (in flower and seeds), magnolia pod, maple branches, and a holly branch.

It also included a hands-on experience with pressed leaves/small branches. Each student made observations about their leaf (color on both sides, holes, insect eggs, shape)…and then compared it to other leaves at their table. The leaves were mostly oak or maple although there were some that were unique (river birch, magnolia, oak leaf hydrangea, boxwood).

The time past very quickly!

Missouri Master Naturalist Field Trip (1)

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Last weekend was probably the best of the Missouri Master Naturalist training field trips. The location was a privately own mixed forest, old fields, a cemetery and a creek: a place with history and almost 30 years of restoration work. It was a scenic drive of about 20 miles from my house…quickly going to 2 lane road…then a road without a center stripe….and then a single lane gravel round with some low vegetation in the center which I heard brushing on the bottom of my car.  

There were three rotations with lunch between the second and third ones. The day started out cool but was close to 80 by the time we ended so I was pleased to do the walking rotation first. It was focused on native trees and plants…and fungi.

There were lots of black walnuts on the ground….and looking up…it was easy to see which tree was producing them since there were still nuts on the trees.

As we walked along the road – there were several fungi to see on rotting logs.

There were familiar leaves and bark….and heart shaped leaves of wild ginger. The leaves on the ground were brown but there was color in the leaves still on the trees.

The millstone from the old mill (broken into two pieces) was near the entrance to the cemetery…brought there when it was found in the creek. Both areas are reminders of the history of the place as much as a place along the creek we were told about over lunch where many arrowheads had been found (a place there they were made over many hundreds of years before Europeans arrived).

Our guide for fungi had brought some other specimens found elsewhere to share with us since the drought had reduced what we would see otherwise on our walk.

The hour past very quickly and we headed back to our next rotation which was journaling…I’ll post about that tomorrow.  

Ten Little Celebrations – July 2024

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4th of July. The holiday was full of the poignancy of the First Americans Museum and the Oklahoma City National Memorial (site of the Murrah Building bombing)…and then fireworks observed from our hotel window. It is probably going to be one of the most memorable 4th of July celebrations for me.

 A neighborhood walk before the rain. There is always something to notice on a walk around our neighborhood…I celebrate our robins and dandelion puffs and magnolias in bloom…relatively common things that brighten my day.

A protein drink that already has lactase enzyme in it. I was pleasantly surprised that the protein drink that I can find easily at the truck stops along the way to Dallas includes lactase so that I don’t have to remember to take a Lactaid….and it tastes good. Celebrating!

 Philbrook Museum and Gardens.Celebrating finding a ‘favorite place’ in Tulsa.

 Planting orange daylilies. I ordered 25 daylily roots and planted them around the two maples in my front yard. I am celebrating that maybe I can reproduce the ruff I had around my oak tree in Maryland.

 A robin’s egg. Celebrating finding an eggshell…and realizing – from the color – that it was a robin’s egg.

Springfield Botanical Gardens daylilies and pollinator gardens. Celebrating one of my favorite places in Springfield. There is always something worth seeing there.

Out to lunch with my daughter. My daughter and I are exploring locally owned restaurants for brunch or lunch. All of them have been good experiences….celebrating my daughter and the food.

Friends of the Library. Celebrating my first volunteer gigs in Missouri. I got some additional training this month so I can do more tasks. I enjoy the work and the other volunteers.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Zooming – July 2024

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As I reviewed my group of zoomed images from July, the favorite subjects of the month emerged: hot air balloons, animals (birds, butterflies, a squirrel), museum and monuments, and (of course) plants dominated by flowers. The places included areas close to home, Springfield Botanical Garden, Oklahoma City (First American’s Museum and Oklahoma City National Memorial), Tulsa (Philbook Museum), and Joplin (Wildcat Glades)

The hot air balloons are from a Balloon Glow event. They didn’t leave the ground!

I enjoyed the pottery room and garden structures at the Philbrook, the light of late afternoon as I walked around the Oklahoma City National Memorial, and the wall art in the First Americans Museum).

Animals included a robin, a green heron, a skipper, a swallowtail (not sure what kind), a fox squirrel, and a juvenile male mallard.

And then there were plants. Most were flowers but there were seeds (dandelion puff), a pine cone, and olorful new redbud leaves.

It was a good month for photography and being outdoors. Only the pot and the wall art are indoor images.

Our Missouri Yard – June 2024

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I always enjoy a walk around our yard – particularly when the plants are changing so rapidly. Our two rose bushes died back almost to the roots – just as they did our first winter here – but they are blooming now. I enjoy the new reddish leaves and the buds/flowers. I keep thinking that one year I will just dig them out…but it won’t be this year.

The wildflower garden is different every time I look.

It is also the place that has the highest diversity of insects; it really proves the point that native plants are good for wildlife! I was taking a picture of one of the plants when I noticed what I thought was some kind of seed or debris….then realized there were bugs!

In the front yard, there are mushrooms again this year – where a tree was cut down and the stump ground up before we moved to the house. I photograph them before I mow! It’s another sign that our yard is doing well with our strategy of mulching grass and leaves into the yard and very little fertilizer (and no pest or weed killers).

I am including a picture of the holes I made the front flower bed….clearing rocks and cutting away landscaping fabric…to plant miniature pumpkin seeds.

I hope they come up soon. I have some in the back coming up. They did very well there last year, and I hope the ones in front will also do well. The vine was so robust with large green leaves that I thought it would look great covering some of the rocked expanse in the front flower bed….and a larger crop of miniature pumpkins would be good too.  

Snowy Day on our Patio

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The birds were very active at our feeders recently with the temperature in the single digits (Fahrenheit) and the wind blowing up to 16 miles per hour! Multiple perches were in use much of the time. The house finches were the most numerous but there were sparrows (white-crowned) and a woodpecker (hairy?) and a female Northern Cardinal too. It was quite a feeding frenzy!

I was taking pictures through an office window with a screen so the pictures have a softened focus. Sometimes birds were still enough for portraits (female finch, male woodpecker, white crowned sparrow, cardinal).

I attempted a picture of sparrow through vegetation….and liked the artsy veil that the automatic focus produced with the challenge.

Of course, there were other items catching snow around our patio – the chiminea, the holly trees, the gnarled vine to the side of the stairs to the deck, a paver near the almost covered lambs ear, fall leaves in the bottom of the wagon. I stepped outside to take these pictures….and all the birds flew away!

The birds returned within minutes of my exit from the patio back to the warmth of my office.

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!

Bringing Fall Foliage Indoors

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I found a small oak and a maple growing in my flowerbed…cut them since they can’t grow large there. They were colorful so I put them in a kombucha jar on one of my office tables and have been enjoying them for the past week or so.

The oak was the largest of the two small trees and the leaves were a variety of colors. It is probably a child of the oak in our neighbor’s yard – maybe planted in our flower bed by a squirrel.

The oaks in our neighborhood retain their leaves longer than many other trees nearby…so maybe this young one will last longer indoors too.

The red maple seedling made an interesting macro image from above! It is smaller and more delicate than the oak…but the topmost leaves continued to grow after I cut it!

The maples in our yard have already lost their leaves but the small one indoors is still photogenic!

Our Missouri Neighborhood – November 2023

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I am planning to do a lot more walks around my neighborhood – get some quality outdoor time/exercise…maybe even what the Garmin calls ‘intensity minutes’. I’ll take a small camera with me…just in case I spot anything interesting. My daughter called me just as I was heading out so I didn’t photograph the great blue heron that was in a sunny spot at the edge of the pond; I just watched until it flew away while I talked to her.

I did some power walking almost to the furthest bridge before I stopped to photograph some oak leaves that had caught in the grass at the edge of the pond. The tree still had quite a few leaves to drop!

The willow seems to still have mostly green leaves!

A little further along there was debris on the walk; looking closer I realized it was seeds rather than leaves!

Even though the temperature was only about 40 degrees. The sunshine must have made the bank warm enough for a turtle to leave the water.

After I got to the other end of the ponds, I noticed a lot of maple leaves had fallen in the drainage channel and the grass along the path.

A short length of sidewalk on my route was almost covered with pine needles. I enjoyed photographing some cones that had fallen as well.

There was a stump at one end of the row of pines that must have been cut several years ago – maybe before we moved to the neighborhood. The color of the pine needles stands out against the gray of the wood and the powdery green of lichen/moss.  

A big plus – I accumulated 29 intensity minutes!

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.

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.

Road trip to/from Carrollton TX

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I made my monthly trip to Carrollton in the last week of September. It was very hot on the drive down. When I stopped at the Texas Welcome Center after crossing the Red River from Oklahoma it was already in the 90s. I had been listening to a wider variety of music during the drive down – relying on other sources than my usual USB stick; it kept me more alert during the drive.

The usual check of the beautyberry at the welcome center revealed that the berries are almost all turned purple. I also realized that there seemed to be a lot more plants than last year. Hurray for the beautyberry surviving and thriving the extra hot days this past summer!

The trip home started a week later – a little before 6 AM. The color before sunrise dominated the horizon as I made my first stop about 7 at a truck stop north of Denison TX.

The completion of asphalt work on several stretches of my route through Oklahoma made the drive the smoothest I can remember….and my husband had barbeque ready when I got home. As usual – it was good to be home again.

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.

Macro in the Garden

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My garden plot has done reasonably well for its 1st season. I am letting all the wildflowers bloom and make seeds. The bulbs will hopefully be more robust next year too. The plot has been a joy to see at every stage – a reward for my efforts to plant and keep watered.

The added benefit is the variety of plants for macro photography (using Samsung Galaxy S10e phone). My goal is to make the rounds at least once a month since the plants change throughout the season. The highlights this month are the poppies making seeds and the sunflower just beginning the process. The red leaves are a rosebush next to the patch of wildflowers and bulbs.

Next to the wildflower garden, I have a vine of miniature pumpkins. There are three that are getting  bigger every day.

I noticed that the petals of the showy flowers have spikes at the tip that shortens as the petals unfurl. When I first started looking at the flower, I noticed some small insects were there. I wondered if they were pollinators; then a black carpenter bee came, and I switched to video mode. Clearly the carpenter bee was the pollinator!

In the front yard – there were three types of mushrooms growing where the large tree was cut down well before we saw our house; I know it was there because of the depression and general bumpiness caused by the decaying roots. The most numerous mushrooms this time were white blobs pushing up out of the grass.

In closer looks – they remind me of toasted marshmallows!

The second type was darker and still had rolled edges. They had previously been the most numerous kind I’d seen in the area…but not this time. I wondered if there is a fungi succession when it came to tree stumps/roots.

The third type was a single specimen….more delicate looking than the others. I see it elsewhere in the yard.

 The macro world….easier to observe with my phone in hand!

Our Missouri Yard – July 2023

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There’ s always something to photograph when I walk around our yard. I photographed a mushroom that had appeared in the grass near one of the pavers along the route to our back gate for a walk around the neighborhood ponds.

The big players in my macro photography (done with my phone – a Samsung Galaxy S10e) around the yard this month have been the roses that came up from the roots of the bushes that died, the ornamental grass (also coming back from last year), ‘wildflowers’ I planted in a flowerbed near the house that I cleared of rocks and landscaping cloth, and the crape myrtle that came back from the roots (I have 4 and they all came back but only one is blooming so far).

After an early morning rain, I went out to photograph the water on the plants with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) so that I could use the zoom rather than needing to get close: roses, grass and leave/needless, hosta flowers, crape myrtle. The hostas are my favorite.

I like our new home – inside and out!