Heartland Safari

Pea-size, snow-white, pearl-shaped flowers bloom in profusion atop wild quinine in the Owl Acres Prairie Garden.

Tonic, Anyone?: Wild Quinine

Updated August 16, 2026

I have a glass of tonic water to slake my thirst on a hot and muggy summer day. It has that bitterness that I like. The bitterness comes from its signature ingredient—quinine. Quinine, historically, was used by the indigenous tribes of Ecuador and Peru as an antimalarial long before the Spanish and the Jesuits invaded […]

Plants

Great Blue Heron in flight, viewed from below against a cloudless blue sky. Blue-grey soaring bird with wingspan much longer than its body length. Long slender legs trail behind and neck curved into an “S” shape bears its head with a long, sharp bill. The Heron carries a long twig for nesting material. (Note how many times “long” is used in this description. It’s the right word for this bird.)

Magic Dust: Great Blue Heron

Updated August 7, 2026

Early of a summer morning, I hear the rather unlovely squawk of a bird flying overhead. It beats its wings slowly as it cruises over the fields. Its legs trail behind as though forgotten, and its neck is scrunched into an S shape against its chest. It sounds like a great blue heron, but I […]

Birds

Take your pick. A sweat bee on a dandelion. Genus unknown, Species unknown. But go out in your yard right now, and there they’ll all bee.

Salty Summer: Sweat Bees

Updated July 16, 2026

On a hot summer day, I feel something land on the inside of my elbow. My initial reaction is to slap it away. It objects to this treatment, though and promptly stings me. The sting is acutely painful although it fades fairly quickly. I can’t see it to identify it, but the familiar sting tells […]

Insects and Spiders

What’s as uniform, or as boring, or as soft and luxurious underfoot, as Kentucky Bluegrass? Not much else to say, is there?

Grass Part 3: Kentucky Bluegrass

Updated July 16, 2026

The third type of grass on Owl Acres is Kentucky Bluegrass (Poa pratensis). It is by far the most prevalent, filling all of the meadow area on Owl Acres with its short thick carpet. It’s the grass we all know and love in our yards, lawns, golf courses, parks and everywhere else we want a […]

Plants

Tawny, chevron-shaped panicles of orchard grass fill the frame of this close up image. The distinctive shape of the seed heads is the easiest way to identify this soft, fine-bladed forage species.

Grass, Part 2: Orchard Grass

Updated July 16, 2026

Orchard grass, (Dactylis glomerata) is another species of grass found on Owl Acres. It can grow up to four feet tall. On Owl Acres it grows at the edges of fence rows and has to be trimmed around the house and other obstacles. It’s called cat grass because cats like to chew it, and it’s […]

Plants

To join America’s 250th Birthday Party, Heartland Safari presents this image of a Yellow Billed Cuckoo. The pen and ink drawing was made around 250 years ago by Ann Lee. We invite you to follow the link above and read more about the young lady whose work has time-traveled a quarter of a millennium to grace today’s post.

Late to the Party: Yellow-Billed Cuckoo

Updated July 8, 2026

A few days into summer, around 6:30, I woke to a bird piping repeatedly outside my window. We hadn’t heard this bird before. It sang a greeting in a series of uniform piping calls. Perhaps it was looking for a mate, or perhaps he was just calling hello on his way to the forests farther […]

Birds

Loose collections of seeds lean out from the top of a long stem of grass. Smooth Brome Grass stands in front of a barn-red outbuilding on Owl Acres. This is one of the main forage grasses on the place.

Grass Part 1: Smooth Brome Grass

Updated July 5, 2026

Grass. How ordinary, unremarkable, and everywhere! Owl Acres has about four acres of grass. Now that the mower is fixed, it gets mowed every week or two. Bryan sets the mower high in an effort to avoid mowing the snakes that live deep in the grass. But the grass itself—what do we know about it? […]

Plants

A 100-year-old steam traction engine is belted up to a separator threshing oats. The old Minneapolis worked on a farm nearby to Owl Acres in the early and mid-20th century. Owned today by the Jasper County Historical Museum, it appears annually in parades and shows in central Iowa.

Power on the Prairie Part 3: Steam

Updated June 29, 2026

When Jesse Reeves bought his 160 acres of virgin prairie, there was a lot of work to do. In the 1850s and 1860s, farmers used the strong, slow-moving oxen to drag the plows through the virgin prairie, to pull stumps and move rocks in order to clear the land for farming. Once the really heavy […]

History

A tangle of species forms a thicket on Owl Acres. Visible are American Black Cherry, White Mulberry, Amur Honeysuckle and a few leaves of American Elm, growing tightly together in competition for sunlight, nutrients and room to grow. The cherry has a head start, but the Mulberry is aggressively invasive. We’ll eventually have to put an end to it by cutting everything out to give something else a chance. (Homo sapiens is also visible crouching amid the thick foliage.)

Community Center: Wild Black Cherry

Updated June 22, 2026

A wild black cherry tree crouches in a thicket on Owl Acres, reaching out its arms to the birds. The cherry tree shares its space with an American elm, a mulberry, and a tangle of honeysuckle. The cherry tree is decades old, with two main branches rising from a common trunk. It was probably mowed […]

Trees

Snow white, 6-petaled flowers with yellow centers smile up from the green jumble of species that make the yard of Owl Acres. Star-of-Bethlehem, Bird’s Milk or any of several other names, the inch-wide blooms were among the first to appear in mid-May.

Legends shining in the grass: Star-of-Bethlehem or Bird’s milk

Updated June 17, 2026

Along the edges of our prairie garden, we noticed some tiny, pure white star-shaped flowers. They were only a few inches high, and stood out against the green of the emerging grass. The flowers have a variety of names. Some describe the flower’s setting—summer snowflake, star flower, grass lily, or snow drop. others describe what […]

Plants