Karen Keninger, Author at Heartland Safari

Karen is dwarfed by a tall field thistle, which was allowed to grow in the prairie garden this year because the flowers are gorgeous and it’s a heavy nectar producer.

Ouch!: Thistles

Updated August 8, 2023

Throughout the winter, we kept the bird feeder full of seed. We had a seed mix for the larger birds and another for the finch feeder. The finch mix was said to be niger thistle seed. So when thistly plants promising yellow flowers popped up at the base of the bird feeder, our first guess […]

Plants

Fat, worm-like tardigrade with 8 stubby legs, imaged with an electron microscope.

Soil Part 3: Microfauna

Updated August 3, 2023

On a human scale, we think of the size of creatures populating the earth as ranging from gnats to whales. The ecosystem in the soil has a comparable scale, with creatures ranging from the tiniest virus to large digging mammals. Scientists divide them into groups depending on their size—micro (tiny), meso (middle-sized), or macro, the […]

Soil

Slender green insect with triangular head and heavy forelegs stands head down on the side of a red farm building. Praying mantis sub adult nymph, wings are not yet present.

A Siren Call: Praying Mantis

Updated July 31, 2023

She sits on a leaf near the ground and flexes her abdomen, exposing her pheromone glands. A football field away, he catches her siren call and flies to meet her. He is cautious, approaching from the front, wiggling his abdomen, showing off his prowess. They come together, and while he’s lost in ecstasy, she may, […]

Insects and Spiders

Photo through a microscope of Trebouxia, a single-celled green alga. Circles filled with green chlorophyll, floating in a blue field. Found everywhere, trebouxia is a major photo synthesizer in the soil, in water and as a symbiont with fungus in lichens.

Soil Part 2: Microorganisms

Updated July 27, 2023

In my last biology class, many years ago, I learned that there were two kingdoms of living things—plants and animals. Oh how wrong that thinking was. Life is so much richer than just plants and animals. Today scientists divide living things into three domains—archaea, bacteria, and eucarya–and then things get complicated. Eucarya (multicelled organisms) divide […]

Soil

Close up of head and face of a cricket. Shiny black, large compound eyes, segmented antennae attached between eyes, leather-like texture of head plate.

Garden Champion: Field Cricket

Updated July 24, 2023

In the garden space outside my study window, a little brown cricket has been singing his heart out, wishing, hoping, begging, for the ladies to hear him. At the same time, he’s warning his brothers to stay away. This is his turf. He will sing for the rest of his life, chirping that oh-so-familiar song […]

Insects and Spiders

Mourning dove the way Iowans usually see them, sitting on an overhead wire, out by the road. Gray-tawny bird with slender, slightly curved beak.

Sad and Soothing: Mourning Doves

Updated July 20, 2023

I’m sitting in my study with the windows open, listening to my favorite bird singing his love song. This bird is probably the first bird I ever was able to identify by sound because of its signature song—a low coo followed by a high note and two or three low coos. I found his song […]

Birds

A spade has turned a scoop of dirt next to a cornfield

Soil Part 1: Dirt

Updated July 17, 2023

It’s easy to look around at all the life on Owl Acres—the trees, the birds, the rabbits and moles, the deer, the grass, the flowers, and everything else–and think “wow, what abundance, what mystery, what wonders.” It’s a little more challenging for me to remember that there’s an entire universe on a different scale right […]

Soil

Lamb’s Quarters by the house, after mowing and growing and mowing and growing all season .

Greens, Anyone? Lamb’s Quarters

Updated November 23, 2025

There’s a space on Owl Acres shaped like a piece of pie between the garage and the study. Years ago I planted it in a wildly disorganized garden. It had day lilies, iris, tall individual lilies, yellow coneflowers, black-eyed susans, purple coneflowers, some hostas and anything anybody gave me to plant. This garden has been […]

Plants

Light green, bulbous insect with tiny head, black eyes, and rakish, black-tipped antennae swept back over its head, sits on a green leaf surface. Soybean Aphid

Homeric Life Story: Soybean Aphids

Updated July 10, 2023

One morning in mid-July, I was having coffee on the screened-in deck, enjoying the beautiful summer day when a loud single-engine airplane swooped over my house. It sounded way too close for comfort. It zoomed around the soybean fields that surround Owl Acres, coming and going, making several passes over the fields before flying away. […]

Insects and Spiders

A rural mailbox surrounded by flower stalks topped with lacy umbels of tiny, white flowers. Queen Anne's Lace.

Queen or Killer: Queen Anne’s Lace

Updated July 6, 2023

One summer day, I took some letters down to the mailbox to be mailed. The mailbox sits on the edge of the ditch on the far side of the road. Around it grasses and weeds had grown up thick and healthy. I put the flag up to alert the rural mail carrier that there was […]

Plants