My Missouri Yard – May 2025

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There is always something happening in my yard this time of year. I often notice the mushrooms when I mow. There are several different kinds…most often near the place in our front yard where a tree was cut down sometime before we bought the house. There is still a lot underground that the fungi are decomposing.

I noticed a crane fly in the white pine as I was mowing….right at eye level.

The common saxifrage (Saxifraga stolonifera) was growing in a protected corner flowerbed on the east side of our house when we bought it. The plant has overflowed the bed and bloomed profusely this spring….a benefit of not mowing an area that is very shady and was beginning to be mossy. It is not a native plant, but it has deeper roots….will hold the soil on the slope better than moss…and better than grass too!

The rose bushes are blooming…recovered again from dying back during the winter. The wildflower patch I planted the first year is doing well…although I am realizing that not all the flowers are natives. I am letting it continue this year but will have to begin taking out the non-natives next year.

The mock strawberry (Potentilla indica) seems to be in several places in my yard. It is invasive but I am not doing anything to get rid of it at this point.

I have a hummingbird feeder on my office window for the first time this year….we don’t have a lot of ruby throated hummingbirds, but enough of them come by to make it worthwhile to keep it clean and full of sugar water!

Linden’s Prairie

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Linden’s Prairie was my 4th field trip this spring and 3rd prairie (post about the first three: Harold Prairie, Geology field trip nature center and road cuts, Noah Brown’s Prairie). The prairie walk was sponsored by the Missouri Prairie Foundation. We had been cautioned about ticks, so I wore my bug repellent gators and shirt…sprayed my jeans with OFF! above the gators. I decided to use my point and shoot camera (Canon Powershot SX730 HS) rather than my phone (iPhone 15 Pro Max) for most of the photos. The first picture I took was of the sign near the mowed area where some of us were able to park.

The hike was in the late afternoon – sunny, warm but not too hot, a little breeze. There was a lot more grass on Linden’s Prairie than Noah Brown’s prairie last week. There might have been some armadillo holes, but they were harder to see!

Our guide talked about two things that are not around anymore on the prairie: passenger pigeons and elk. There is good documentation that both were plentiful originally. There were enough passenger pigeons that there were market hunters for them; it’s hard to imagine that pigeons were food…until they were hunted to extinction.

The swaths of red color from the Royal catchfly won’t be for a few more weeks across this prairie but there were plenty of flowers to see among the grasses…some almost hidden until they were close at hand. We saw corn salad, yarrow, delphiniums/lockspur, coreopsis, golden alexander, phlox, hoary puccoon, wood betony/lousewort, goat’s rue/hoary pea, lead plant, and wild indigo. The grasses were too hard to photograph…I concentrated on the flowers.

There was some prairie vocabulary too: mima mounds (small mounds in an otherwise gently rolling prairie landscape) and motts (clumps of woody plants in a prairie).

My favorite flowers on this walk were the prairie roses…small plants, lots of buds, grasses waving higher over the pink flowers. One had to be almost stepping on them to see them!

Noah Brown’s Prairie

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I signed up for a guided tour offered by the Missouri Prairie Foundation of Noah Brown’s Prairie which is just to the east of Joplin MO. It is a prairie remnant with a reconstructed prairie adjacent to it. There were plenty of wildflowers to see in the hour and half we were there. Everything was wet from showers before we got there and for the first 15 minutes we were walking. Originally, I thought about writing this post as a wildflower id post…but when I looked at all my pictures I changed my mind….decided to just do a slideshow to give an idea of the ambiance of the prairie in May.

Of course, you can use the slideshow as an id challenge. Look for spiderwort, false dandelion, wood betony, Indian paintbrush (red, orange, and yellow), wild indigo (blue and yellow), prairie phlox, wild parsley, bastard toadflax, violets, rose, milkweed, shooting start (white and pink/purple), red sorrel….and of course lots of different kinds of grass.

There were 3 distinct areas that we walked through: the recently (last fall) burned area of the remnant prairie, the area that is due to be burned next fall, and the reconstructed area. The recently burned area was the easiest to walk through and had the most wildflowers. The area due to be burned next fall had a lot of thatch which made walking more challenging and not as many flowers. The reconstructed area is a work in progress. It had some non-native grasses and the only thing blooming was the red sorrel (non-native); it was somewhat difficult to walk through because it had dense clumps and then almost bare areas. The remnant prairie had micro-communities: some low areas that had standing water (vernal pools) and some mounds that had different plants than the surrounding areas.

I was very pleased to see the Indian paintbrushes up close since I noticed them blooming as I drove through Oklahoma last month….but didn’t find a convenient place to stop to see them better while I was driving.

Cedar Gap Conservation Area

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My daughter and I took an early spring hike at Cedar Gap Conservation Area near Seymour MO this week. It is about 45 minutes from where we live along good highway…to a 2-lane road that heads into the country side for less than a mile before it turns to a gravel road, and crosses some railroad tracks just before the small parking lot. The Cedar Gap Plateau is the second highest point in the State of Missouri! Three watersheds begin from the plateau: Gasconade River, Finley River, and Bryant Creek.

The trail is downhill to a stream – the headwaters of Bryant Creek. The trail is gravel that is sometimes large enough and loose enough that going downhill is considerably harder than going uphill!

We noticed some redbuds with buds developing but not open year. I stopped to photograph a small nest left from last season and some very green moss.   

It was not long. Before we heard trickling water! The water stairsteps down over rock ledges into pools…some clogged with leaves and others clear to the rock at the bottom of the stream. It has not been a wet winter or early spring so there was not a lot of water.

We saw a few wildflowers coming up through the leaves left from last fall.

I attempted to photograph some water striders. Their shadows show up more than the insects.

I walked a little further up to take a picture of overhang and realized that water was dribbling off the top…maybe evaporating before it reached the stream.

We hiked back up the trail the way we had come. The hike is a loop, but I wasn’t sure that we were half way around….and didn’t want a longer hike. I made stops on the way up (a steep trail) but felt surer footed than when we walked down. My last picture was of trees on top of the highest area…still like winter…but we know they will leaf out soon.

My daughter and I enjoyed a Mexican food lunch in Seymour before we drove home.

My daughter and I enjoyed a Mexican food lunch in Seymour before we drove home. The grand finale of the trip: as we drove toward my daughter’s house in Springfield, we saw two bald eagles soaring overhead. Fortunately, we were stopped at a red light so we both were able to safely see them!

Winter Seed Sowing

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I assisted one of my fellow Missouri Master Naturalists with a program for her county’s libraries – planting seeds in plastic jugs for planting in gardens next spring. There were about 50 participants (plus parents) that participated across the two sessions. The set up included lots of plastic jugs (saved from distilled water purchased for humidifiers), soil, gloves, tarps to protect the carpet of the library meeting rooms, scissors, and seeds. I took pictures of the brief calm between set up and the chaos of everyone getting dirt and planting their seeds.  

The battery powered drill was used to make holes in the bottom of the jugs and marker holes to cut the top part almost off…leaving a 1-2 inch hinge. Most of the children were young enough that we recruited parents to make holes in the jugs.

Several of the older children mixed the soil with water in big buckets for everything else to use. We had native wildflower seeds but almost half the children chose to plant vegetables. An older lady chose to plant common milkweed in her jug…and she is going to plant the seedlings near some buckeyes in her yard in the spring.

Each hour-long session was a whirlwind of activity. We managed to contain the mess with the tarps on the floor, so cleanup was not bad. I was grateful that we had some extra help from some local Master Gardeners and the parents of the children jumped in to help too.

Our Missouri Yard – July 2024

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The wildest part of my yard is the wildflower garden I planted last summer.

In front of the wildflowers are some pumpkin vines, lambs ear, and fragrant sumac. Behind the wildflowers there is a rose bush that has died back to the roots during both winters we’ve lived in the house but has come back each year to form a low bush…blooming small red roses.

That area is always a good place to do some macro photography with my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I’ve noticed that the native plants tend to harbor more insects although most of them are quite small. We’re missing the big butterflies in our yard too.

When I mow the grass, I stop to photograph anything I find of interest…like the shell of a robin’s egg (was it taken by predator or did the young hatched and the parent clear the nest?) and a plant that grows reliably by our mailbox.

There are frequently mushrooms that come up on the area where a tree was cut down (and the stump ground up) before we moved to the house. This month there were at least 2 different kinds.

One of our pine trees is not old enough to produce cones…but the other one is prolific and I wince when I run over a cone with the lawn mower (they probably cause the blade to get dull faster). The cones look good with green needles – or grass – around them!

I still have a few areas of the yard that I have not mowed this year. In one area – violets have escaped from the flower bed and spilled out into the unmowed area. I mowed some of no-mow May area and the clippings are slowing/stopping grass from growing there and the violets are moving there too! I am getting other ideas on how to extend the flowerbeds in a way that results in less need to use the weed-eater…and overall less lawn….that remains compliant with the Home Owners Association of our neighborhood.

Wildcat Glades and Shoal Creek

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An hour into my last road trip to Dallas, I made a planned stop at Wildcat Glades and the Shoal Creek Conservation Education Center. It was shortly after 7 AM and a Monday so the center was not open but my purpose was to just explore the area little….see if it would be worth returning for hiking and photography. I walked around the native wildflower plantings in the Wildcat Glades Friends Group area and then drove around to the Wildcat boat ramp. I was there for about 20 minutes; it was obvious that it would be a great place to visit on summer mornings!

One of the buildings in the friends group area has a mural of wildflowers!

But this time of year, there are real flowers in bloom!

There was a luna moth sculpture in one of the beds.

There was a good-sized stand of milkweed with a monarch butterfly sculpture too. The morning was still cool enough that there wasn’t much insect activity.

There were bluebirds in one of the boxes. A bit of drama: there was a bird chasing a squirrel along a fence top; the squirrel paused…and the small bird rammed into its rump!

When I drove around to the boat launch, there were rabbits at the edge of the road (and on the road). They didn’t seem to be paying any attention at all to my car, so I took a few pictures and moved very slowly.

My husband is amenable to making a field trip to do some hiking and birding in the area so stay tuned for a blog post about a longer visit.

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.  

Irises and other Yard News – April 2024

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The irises, that were already growing in flower beds when we bought our house, are blooming profusely; the ones I transplanted last fall/winter will take another year to build up the energy to bloom. I was surprised that the most prolific bed this year grew very elongated stems that fell over as soon as they started to bloom; I didn’t remember them being so tall last year. The irised in another bed looks the same, but the stems are very short!

I ended up cutting the long stems to bring indoors and enjoyed photographing them: macro shots with my iPhone 15 Pro Max and

And Canon Powershot SX70 HX high key shots (almost white background) and

Some warm glow shots of a group.

Of course, there other plants active in the yard. Hostas are growing well – both the original clumps and the ones I started this year by dividing some older clumps.

There are lots of dandelions in various stages of development. I tend to let them alone since the bees like the flowers and the roots are deeper than the grass root which helps hold the soil – particularly on slopes.

There are more violets that ever spilling out of flower beds and into the yard. There are some places that I have stopped mowing because the violets are so thick!

The irises I transplanted into the area where the pine tree was cut down last summer are growing vigorously. Maybe one or two will bloom this year although it won’t be great until next year. The lambs ear is growing well and should fill in more around the irises over time. The beautyberry does not have leaves yet but we’re still having some cool days/nights; hopefully it will leaf out in May.

I took some ‘art’ pictures of an iris bud and new rose leaves early in the month.

A lot is growing in the wildflower garden from last year. Some might be weeds…hard to tell until the plants start blooming.

Pokeweed is coming up everywhere. I am going to cut down plants that get above a certain size. I also plan to rake pine cones that are around one of pines toward the fence so that I won’t mow over them (they are a little tough for the lawn mower to cut!).

Overall – a great month in our yard. The rhododendron is full of buds…but not blooming yet…a lot more beauty coming in May.

Road Trip to Dallas – April 2024

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Last week I made a 2-day road trip down to Dallas to visit with my dad. It’s about 7 hours of driving in each direction. When I left my house in Missouri on the first day it was dark. Just as the horizon was beginning to brighten behind me, I saw a large bird fly over the interstate – higher than my car but not that far in front of me. I wondered if it was a barn owl although I didn’t get a good enoug look other than to realize the bird had a lot of white.

After my first rest stop the sun was up and more birds were moving about. I saw a large one fly across the highway…a little lower than was safe and then just above my car there was another of the same kind. It was a turkey! I was close enough to see the eye glinting.

I saw a great blue heron flying along or over the road twice…and a murmuration of smaller birds that spilt in two over the highway.

The highlight of the drive down was the rest stop on US 75 just after crossing from Oklahoma to Texas. The berm between the highway and the rest stop parking was full of wildflowers!

Closer to the building there were beds of wildflowers…including the Texas state flower: bluebonnets.

I enjoyed trying my new iPhone 15 Pro Max phone to take some macro pictures of some of the flowers.

Heading home the next day, I left the hotel about 6 AM and got to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge about 20 minutes after sunrise. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy and sprinkling so there was not a lot of bird activity, and the light was not great for photography.

The surprise of the morning came when I saw something on the road in my left peripheral vision as I moved slowly along Hagerman’s wildlife road…..as I turned to see it better I realized it was a hub cap. I got out of the car to see if it belonged to my car…and it did! It was the first time anything like that has happened to me in 55 years of driving! I put the hub cap in the car opting to not try to put it back on until I got home.

I saw two flocks of cattle egrets as I was driving back toward the highway from Hagerman.

As I drove through Oklahoma, I was driving thorough moving cloud shadows. They were moving in the same direction as I was, and I was moving faster than they were!

The drive was very routine until my route direction shifted from north to east. The wind buffeted the car and the big trucks on the interstate were even more impacted. The last 3 hours were exhausting – requiring both hands on the steering wheel and hyper awareness of the vehicles (particularly trucks) around me.

I made it home in a reasonable time but was very tired.

Fennessey Ranch

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Our last field trip at the Whooping Crane Festival began with another early morning because we had to drive to the place (taking the ferry to cross from the barrier island). We arrived just a few minutes before the gate at Fennessey Ranch was opened for our tour group (not the first in line but not the last either).

I took a few pictures in the soft morning light: prickly pear cactus with brambles and a bird house, the layered reflected color of sunrise with the moon, and then some mourning doves in a nearby tree just as the sunlight hit them.

We waited a bit for the trailers with haybales for seats to arrive; we would tour the ranch in the trailers pulled by a pickup truck.

A few minutes into the tour there was a song sparrow in sunlight surround by mossy limbs.

I found photography from the trailer even more difficult than the bus at King Ranch. We did see wild turkeys and a bobcat…..but I wasn’t able to get a good line of sight with my camera. The bobcat was very hard to spot until it moved!

 I did get some good shots of two crested caracaras high in a tree. Were they a mating pair? The birds tend to be solitary except with their mate and offspring. Since I was almost under the birds…I took a picture of the talons.

There were a few wildflowers blooming.

One of the places we stopped included some sandhill cranes in the distance. There were feral hogs near them, and the birds flew off when the hogs got too close. The ranch does sponsor hunts of feral hogs…hopefully lowering their numbers.

The ranch has nine linear miles of river frontage on the Mission River. We stopped at a place where there is a blind and feeder. Only cardinals came to the feeder the morning we were there.

I opted to photograph more wildflowers and a post emerging from the water with what looks like barnacles (I forgot to ask if the river was tidal).

I also looked at the bank on the opposite side…lots of vegetation to the river’s edge in most places although there were places where cattle probably came down to the river. The bank on our side of the river was much steeper. It would be interesting to see the flood model for the ranch.

The Fennessy ranch field trip was a good winding down for our festival attendance. I learned that hayrides on trailers behind pickups over bumpy roads are hard on my back…probably won’t do that again. We headed toward home.  I was looking forward to Czech pastries in West, Texas on the second morning of the road trip back to Missouri.

Shaw Nature Reserve (2)

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Continuing the images from our hike at Shaw Nature Reserve…

At the Brush Creek Trail’s crossing of its namesake creek – the creek was dry. I took pictures from both directions from the bridge. In one direction the banks have vegetation all the way down to the edge of where the water would flow. In the other direction there is undercutting of the bank and some areas where vegetation has lost its hold. I wonder how long the tree growing above the undercut will survive.

Native hibiscuses were still blooming. I realized that I like to photograph the buds and unfurling flowers rather than the open flowers!

There were orange and yellow flowered jewel-weed a little different from the ones I saw in Maryland that were usually solid orange.

There were some signs of fall already – sumac with some red leaves, red poison ivy?, and a tree in the forest that stood out with its red foliage.

Enjoy the best of the rest!

When we returned to the car, I realized that it had acquired a coating of fine white dust on our drive around the (white gravel) loop…and it contrasted with the redder dust from Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge! I put my camera away and we headed over to the Fall Wildflower Market.

Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge – August 2023 (2)

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Continuing the early morning at Hagerman….

Sometimes the birds move about in a kind of ballet on the roost pond before they fly away to spend their day elsewhere. In this instance – the dance includes two great blue herons in the middle and three great egrets a little to the right. Other birds on the pond are either oblivious or looking on.

I took pictures of a heron catching a fish and realized, when I looked at the pictures on my large monitor at home, that there were wood ducks in the background!

There aren’t as many plants in bloom right now…I fixated on one type I saw as I headed back to the visitor center area.

A pair of Dickcissels flew into the top of some vegetation near the road. I enjoyed taking portraits of them.

I took some portraits of a great blue heron and great egret backlit in the morning sun that hav a very different look than the roost pond. The water has a metallic look…the birds almost silhouettes. They were the finale to this Hagerman visit.

Our Missouri Yard – August 2023

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The Crape Myrtles that died to the ground last winter are all out and blooming in our yard. We have 4 (plus 1 or 2 others that have come up from seeds away from the parent plant). They attract insects….and hummingbirds!

There is a stand of Virginia Creeper than I periodically pull off the brick walls…but let continue to drape across the rock of the front flowerbed between the Crape Myrtles.

The Japanese Maple in the corner near our front door is happier than it was last summer; we are a little above normal for rainfall this year whereas last summer we were painfully dry.

There are mushrooms that come up frequently in our front yard where a large tree was cut down several years before we bought the house. Based on the number of mushrooms…there must still be quite a lot of decomposition happening.

There are seed pods on our Kousa Dogwood; unlike last year when the tree struggled to maintain its leaves.

Some plants seem to be robust no matter what. I am encouraging Lamb’s Ear wherever it comes up. One place that has done well was a hole in the turf where a small lamb’s ear appeared last spring; I have been mowing around it and it appears very robust at this point. I dug up a plant that was not in acceptable place and replanted it to fill a corner between the fence and the house. It is growing…slowly.

In the back yard my small ‘meadow’ where I planted wildflower seeds last spring is doing well and the flowers are producing seeds for next year. The leafy green plant in the foreground is pokeweed; I like the way it provides a frame to the meadow.

We generally leave the wasp/hornets’ nests alone unless they are in a place where we might get stung. I found this one on our steppingstones between our patio and yard; it is probably an old nest that fell from wherever it was attached during recent storms.

There was a mushroom that was growing in some mulch that I thought was a flower at first because the cap had split to look like petals. I took a picture from above and below.

There is always something to see in our yard!

Zooming – July 2023

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The photographic opportunities bulged with the addition of a trip to St. Louis along with the monthly trip to Texas…. local walk abouts in our yard and neighborhood…the Lake Springfield boathouse too. They all added up to a lot of zoomed images taken with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS). I enjoyed choosing which ones to include in this month’s post!

Yard Work – July 2023

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July has been a busy month yard work. The hotter weather and failure of a zone in our sprinkler system (which we didn’t notice immediately) resulted in less mowing…but other jobs more than made up for time savings.

My irises did not have a lot of blooms last spring, so I checked one of the beds and discovered that it was so clogged with rhizomes that they were no longer covered with soil. I dug up a huge mass…broke the rhizomes apart and planted them in the mound of dirt where the pine tree used to be. That meant extra watering of the mound. I also transplanted some lambs ear to the mound. The location is sunnier that the previous place the irises were and I am hoping for more blooms next spring. The downside is – I won’t see them from my office window. I also have more iris beds that I haven’t checked yet.

I also decided to round the corners of my back yard so that it would be easier to mow. I dug up lambs ear that had come up in the yard for two corners that already did not have much grass and put landscaping fabric down in a third. After the grass dies under the landscaping cloth, I’ll transplant iris rhizomes to that corner.

A local farmers market had hens and chicks (small so I guess they were chicks). I bought 2…cleared away rock and landscaping cloth in my front flowerbed and hope they will create a new texture for the bed. They might even grow on the top of the rocks!

My wildflower garden is doing well for the first year. I am watering it frequently along with the miniature pumpkin plant that I planted nearby. So far – there are 5 miniature pumpkins on the vine!

Our most robust pine has become my place for larger items I pull from other beds. The pine needles and opportunistic plants growing there add to the contrasts.

Overall – a good month for the yard. I am slowly but surely making the adjustments I want!

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!

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!

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 8, 2023

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Air Pollution Causes 1 In 6 Human Deaths – Deaths from modern pollution risk factors, which are the unintended consequence of industrialization and urbanization, have risen by 7% since 2015 and by over 66% since 2000. Unfortunately, little real progress against pollution can be identified overall, particularly in the low-income and middle-income countries, where pollution is most severe. It is increasingly clear that pollution is a planetary threat, and that its drivers, its dispersion, and its effects on health transcend local boundaries and demand a global response.

Opioids no more effective than placebo for acute back and neck pain – The study was done in Australia but, hopefully, will lead to stepping away from opioids for back/neck pain. How many became addicted to opioids via doctors writing prescriptions trying to relieve their patient’s back pain?

Antimicrobial Resistance: The Silent Pandemic – The first accounts of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurred 2 years after Alexander Fleming warned about it in his 1945 Nobel speech. AMR is now responsible for nearly 700,000 deaths worldwide each year, and it is projected to kill 10 million per year by 2050.

Early Women Were Hunters, Not Just Gatherers – My favorite statement from the article: “Grandmas were the best hunters in the village.”

Overdose deaths involving street xylazine surged years earlier than reported – Drug death data is gathered and analyzed slowly…not so long ago, it appeared that illicit xylazine use was still largely concentrated in the mid-Atlantic states and the Northeast….but it is not showing up in street samples all across the US and surging in the South and West. US drug deaths hit a new record last year with roughly 110,000 fatal overdoses nationwide from fentanyl and increasingly complex street drug cocktails.

U.S. Wind and Solar Overtake Coal for the First Time - In the first five months of 2023, wind and solar produced 252 terawatt-hours, while coal produced 249 terawatt-hours, according to preliminary government figures. The decline in coal is happening faster than anyone anticipated.

Largest-ever atlas of normal breast cells brings unprecedented insights into mammary biology – 12 major cell types, 58 biological states…differences based on ethnicity, age, and the menopause status of healthy women.

Why our voices change with age – Lots of reasons the sounds we make can change. One habit suggested from the article that I am considering: “Singing or reading out loud daily can give the vocal cords sufficient exercise to slow their decline.”

Cedar Breaks Wildflower Festival Starts Friday – Hmmm…maybe I should look for wildflower festivals (along with birding) when I plan our vacations.

Meltwater is hydro-fracking Greenland’s ice sheet through millions of hairline cracks – destabilizing its internal structure - Earth’s remaining ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are far more vulnerable to climate warming than models predict, and that the ice sheets may be destabilizing from inside. Recent studies have shown that: