Discovering the world around me.
I heard the name curly dock often when I was growing up in the shadow of WMT radio. WMT was the Cedar Rapids radio station that my dad listened to whenever he was in the house. On summer days, He would come in from the field at noon for dinner. He would turn on the […]
Continue reading Curly Dock
Birds are often named for their call. One infrequent visitor to Owl Acres this summer called his name in the morning chorus. He sang a buzzy “dick dick” followed by “seesle.” We call him a dickcissel. He has several other calls and songs, but this is the one we know him by. The dickcissel (Spiza […]
Continue reading Dickcissel
Have you ever seen a four-leaf clover growing wild? If so, you are considered one of the lucky ones. You are one out of 10,000 folks. That doesn’t count the four- and five-leaf clover plants you can buy with their genetic modifications. Are we trying to create our own luck here? In the natural setting, […]
Continue reading Lucky Shamrock: White Clover
Red clover, (Trifolium pratense), those sweet-smelling perennials that grow on Owl Acres, offer something more than their pretty flowers to the landscape. They offer nitrogen. Nitrogen is one of the crucial building blocks of life. Living things use it to build DNA, RNA, amino acids, and most living tissue. Nitrogen Is all around us in […]
Continue reading Not just a pretty face: Red Clover
Throughout the spring and summer of this year, I have taken a few minutes each morning to explore the soundscape. With the help of the Merlin Bird ID app, I capture the voices of whatever birds happen to be singing or chattering at the time. Since the first day of spring, and periodically thereafter, we […]
Continue reading Out of Place?: Carolina Wren
Lettuce, in my experience, comes in heads, wrapped in plastic from the grocery store. Or maybe in bags with a few other veggies. But here’s another kind of lettuce. It’s six feet tall and has a spray of pretty blue flowers at the top. It’s growing up in the shade right next to a walnut […]
Continue reading Salad Greens: Woodland Lettuce
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 […]
Continue reading Tonic, Anyone?: Wild Quinine
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 […]
Continue reading Magic Dust: Great Blue Heron
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 […]
Continue reading Salty Summer: Sweat Bees
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 […]
Continue reading Grass Part 3: Kentucky Bluegrass