Schuette Prairie

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I visited my 4th prairie of the spring/early summer last week for a Missouri Prairie Foundation guided hike – Schuette Prairie. It was a late afternoon hike with occasional light rain and rainbows adding to the adventures. Some the of the prairie plants are beginning to look familiar to me! It’s good to see the progression of development over time and the differences in plant communities on each of the prairies.

Schuette’s Prairie has some woody plants that are kept at bay by periodic prescribed burns…but not actively eradicated. The woody plants we noticed were persimmon, winged sumac, button bush, and sassafras. The first two are pictured below. The button bush is an indicator that part of the prairie retains a lot of moisture.

There are also areas of the prairie that have very shallow soil over dolomite and there are stands of prairie dock that grow in those areas. The rest of the prairie has sandstone under the soil (and the soil layer is thicker).

Lead plant was a plant I remembered from precious prairie hikes. This time it was blooming and the contrasting colors popped in the late afternoon light.

I saw more bugs that I was able to photograph. While it was raining, they were not as noticeable, but we had enough times when it was not raining to see them more active.

The compass plants are not blooming yet but their sandpaper leaves are very recognizable. They are a reason to come back again later in the season.

There were two types of coneflowers in bloom: Pale Purple Coneflower and Yellow Coneflower.

Goat Rue was a new-to-me plant. Maybe I had seen it elsewhere, but this was the first time I had seen them in bloom.

My favorite plant of the hike was the bunchflower. The flowers are showy and are above most of the other vegetation.

There were two kinds of milkweed. Neither one had any holes in their leaves….yet.

The orchids were blooming…small and down in the vegetation…worth noticing.

Quite a few of the prairie blazing star plants had galls in the very tip of the stalk…so they are not going to bloom normally…but the gall looked interesting at this stage.

Rattlesnake master is another plant I remembered from previous prairie walks.

The shooting stars that I saw blooming on other prairies…were seeds on this one.

Near the parking area was a stand of poison hemlock….this is a plant I seem to be more aware of growing on roadsides this year.

And now for a slideshow of the rest of the pictures I took!

I even enjoyed the drive home after the hike was over; there were rainbows visible the whole way!

Previous blog posts about my recent prairie hikes:

Harold Prairie in late April

Noah Brown’s Prairie in early May

Linden’s Prairie in mid-May

A Walk in our Neighborhood – November 2024

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A lot of the leaves have fallen; the oaks are holding on the longest. As I walked around our neighborhood ponds, I took leaf arrangement pictures – on pine needles, in shallow water, in deeper water, and on the path.

I noticed a pine that had dropped cones near the path and picked up a few for my sister to use for a craft project with her grandson.

There are still some green water plants that the community is trying to establish at the edge of the pond. We haven’t had a killing frost yet. I hope they come back stronger and more numerous next year.

There was a very small red eared slider on a branch above the water….on the other end of the pond I saw a large snapping turtle – too far under the water to get a good picture.

The day was in the 60s and sunny – the aeration on the pond created a rainbow.

It was not a long walk; I should make the circuit more often.

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2020

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We are still at home almost all the time, so the celebrations are mostly based there. There are two that celebrate the changes that we made in June that are away from the house….creating a sustainable new normal for the coming months.

Double rainbow. Seeing a rainbow is such a great way to celebrate summer! We’ve been having last afternoon thunderstorms and one of them was moving fast enough that the sun came out while it was still raining in the east….and it created a double rainbow! The arch was interrupted by our oak tree – but the colors were vibrant for enough time that I got a good series of pictures. I was so engrossed in taking pictures from our front porch that I didn’t notice our 18-year-old indoor cat escaping until he meowed; I was able to catch him before he escaped into the bushes.

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Day lilies. I enjoy having flowers in my office. It’s a way of bringing a bit of the outdoors into a place I can celebrate at closer range.

Ice maker fixed. My husband and I installed the part he ordered to keep our ice maker from allowing water to overflow into the rest of the freezer…..and it worked. We are both celebrating that we were able to do it ourselves rather than requiring a maintenance person.

Deck drapery. The deck drapery turned out to be a great project for us and we are celebrating the extra time we are already spending on our deck.

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Black squirrel. The black squirrel has only come to our deck once. I celebrated seeing it when visited because it was different than our usual squirrels….and it didn’t try to raid the bird feeder.

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Fledgling red-winged blackbird. If I hadn’t seen the parents nearby – I don’t think I would have seen it or be able to identify it. It’s a celebration of new life at the neighborhood storm water retention pond.

Plastic containers. The cabinet where we keep plastic containers in the kitchen had gotten so disorganized that it seemed to be overflowing…with us not adding anything new. I took about 30 minutes to reorganize it – putting the things we use most in the easiest to reach places…and putting some things in the recycle, trash, or give away. Moving from disorganized to organized is always something I celebrate.

Pleasant early mornings on the deck. Even on hot days, the early morning is wonderful on the deck. It’s a great way to start the day – often feeling like we are in the middle of a bird celebration.

Grocery shopping. Beginning to do my grocery shopping again is worthy of celebration. I take precautions (wear a mask, lots of hand sanitizer, go in the early morning, use self-scan and checkout, shop for 2 weeks rather than 1) but getting out just that little bit has made the new normal a lot easier to sustain.

CSA season. I always celebrate the beginning of our Community Supported Agriculture veggies. Picking up the share requires a mask and hand sanitizer…just like the grocery store. It’s an adjunct to the grocery shopping that makes the summer foods easily and abundantly available.  

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Unique activities for yesterday:

Rearranging deck furniture. The first afternoon I sat out on the deck to test the effectiveness of the deck drapery, I discovered that the table and chairs were not well positioned. They were in the patch of sunshine coming through the triangle of undraped screen near the ceiling.

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It was too hot to rearrange furniture that afternoon, so I did it during the cooler morning temperatures. I am also going to buy another prong to tie back the drape near the bird feeder (in the far left of the above picture) so that we can see the bird feeder when the drape is tied back.