Heartland Safari

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

The Owl Acres Black Walnut tree sculpture stands in the foreground of a chaotic, un-mowed yard of grasses and weeds. A portion of the barn red, white-trimmed house is on the right. In the middle background is the bird feeder, surrounded by plants sprouted from seeds kicked out by the birds. Siberian Elm yard trees and the east face of the woods form background for this little world of May green in Iowa.

Exuberant Life: No-Mow-May

Updated June 8, 2026

Standing in the yard near the birdfeeder, I am surrounded by jubilant life. That life is expressed in knee-high grasses and forbs. They have sprung up during May. They took their chances to sprout and grow and flower and, in some cases, to go to seed already. In most years, these residents of our yard […]

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Tyrant in the Trees: Eastern Kingbird

Updated June 1, 2026

An eastern kingbird (Tyrannus Tyrannus) arrived on Owl Acres in late April and he, or another just like him, is still here, singing his complex, buzzy song in the dawn chorus. He spent the winter in the treetops of the Amazon, gorging on fruit and a few insects. When it comes time to mate, though, […]

Birds

Just out the window is Karen’s Study Garden. It sports a chaotic mess of species (might call them weeds). The charm of this little plot is that each spring, a different plant finds its ideal conditions and becomes profuse. This year, the star of this unscripted show is Field Pennycress. Next year it will be something else and we don’t have any idea what it will be.

Old Weed or New Crop: Field Pennycress

Updated May 24, 2026

In mid-April, I noticed an unfamiliar plant growing in the garden outside my study window. Its name, I discovered, was field pennycress (Thlaspi arvense). It is a member of the mustard family and is generally considered a weed, but, who knew, it is getting a new reputation in some places. It may become a crop […]

Plants

Karen’s Ostrich Ferns growing along the north side of the house on Owl Acres. Because of its location, this image can only be captured from mid spring to mid fall when the morning sun is far enough into the northern sky to shine directly onto these shade tolerant plants.

Landscaping Success: Ostrich Ferns

Updated May 17, 2026

About 20 years ago my friend Lisa gave me some starter ostrich ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris, also known as fiddlehead fern or shuttlecock fern). I planted them on the north side of the house. They have survived the dogs and the rabbits, and are growing in lush patches filling in between the air conditioner and the […]

Plants

Iowa’s State Flower is a ditchweed. Flat, open pink flower with five petals and yellow center, it blooms on a stout shrub by a dusty roadside. Wild Prairie Rose is a hardy native, adapted to its sometimes-harsh habitat. Even though the virgin prairie is long gone, the area near the gravel road mimics the wild rose’s preferred conditions, and the plant flourishes here.

Mothers

Updated May 7, 2026

Mothers are everywhere and come in all shapes and sizes, but the work they do is similar no matter who or what they are. Let’s take a look at some of the mothers that live on Owl Acres and the work that they do for their young. Mothers have to select the place where their […]

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