Ten Little Celebrations – August 2026

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August was a great month of summer activities – trying to dodge afternoons that were way too hot to be outside!

Great cohort signed up for Missouri Master Naturalist core training. I’ve been working on the core training curriculum since last spring and everything began to come together in August….ready for the start of the course in September. I am particularly celebrating the existing Master Naturalists that signed up for all the volunteer tasks I identified!

Webinars when I was traveling. I am celebrating two excellent webinars (creating habitat that works and building a native plant movement in your community) that I watched from my hotel when I travelled to Texas.

Dancing oakworm catepillars. I celebrated getting a video of oakworms in action…and then being able to share it with peoole  visited our table after the caterpillars themselves had worn themselves out (i.e. were no longer dancing).

Stone edge installed around my native plant garden. Getting the edge around my native plant garden was a great addition. I’m celebrating how great it makes the front yard look!

Dark chocolate. Recently I remembered starting my day with a small serving of dark chocolate years ago…and I am celebrating every morning that I revive that tradition!

Mississippi Kites at Lake Springfield. I celebrated the 4 Mississippi Kites that were hunting for breakfast near the Lake Springfield Boathouse one morning I was there. They were finding plenty to eat!

Salmon for lunch. I’m still a little surprised about how easy it is to prepare! I celebrated a lunch on my own while my husband was away.

Sunlight through the spikenard leaves in the morning. The plant is leaning but I celebrate that its fruit is developing and it is still my favorite plant viewed through my office window.

Insectorama and an Io caterpillar. There was a sign that said “don’t touch” for the Io caterpillar and no one did. I celebrated that the visitors got to see it with no negative event!

Yard work done. In August I feel like I need to dodge high temperatures and the sprinklers to get yard work done….so I celebrate with I finally can just do it.

Insect-o-rama

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I was at the Master Naturalist table at the Insect-o-rama last Friday. It is an annual event held at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center, but this was my first year to volunteer there! It was an evening event on a heat advisory day, so I was very happy to be inside the air-conditioned building!

Our table had vases of trees with caterpillars. There was a sign for the Io moth caterpillars on sassafras leaves because they can sting.

There were several instars of cecropia moth caterpillars on black cherry and a goatweed leafwing caterpillar on goatweed (too large to role a leaf around itself).

My favorites of the evening were some young oakworm caterpillars (on oak leaves) that got agitated…and danced! They calmed down (or got tired) and were relatively still for the rest of the evening, so I showed visitors the short video I was lucky enough to capture.

There were several tables of insect collections. I remembered the one I made when I was in high school….and that the teacher asked to keep it! I didn’t think to take pictures of it at the time....over 55 years ago.

The families that attended were interested in everything and many went home with luna month caterpillars to raise (they eat sweet gum leaves). The event was well-attended but not overwhelming! Enjoyable for attendees and volunteers.