Discovering the world around me.
It was about 2:00 a.m. The sky was clear, and the moon shone brightly, reflected by the pure white snow that covered everything. Shadows of the trees lay across the yard, and footprints of passersby advertised their presence. Clancy saw something in the yard and started barking. Bryan went to investigate. Two white-tailed deer stood, […]
Continue reading Antlers: White-Tailed Deer
Winter is setting in. The forecasters are suggesting highs of 3 degrees above zero. In the prairie garden, the stalks of flowers and grasses are dry and brittle. Seeds cling on to feed the birds and the mice and voles. The hard frost has killed off the mosquitoes, for which we are grateful. But what […]
Continue reading Winter Survival: Bees
Earlier this fall, a yellow garden spider set up housekeeping beneath the morning-sun-facing window of my study. She has vanished, and in her place for a while another species of spider called a spotted orb weaver chose that same location to build her orb webs. Apparently that location is good for catching insects. Our newest […]
Continue reading Spotted Orb Weaver
We didn’t have horses when I was growing up on the farm. The year I went to college, though, my younger sister got her first horse. I learned to ride over the next couple of summers, and really loved it. Life took me away from the farm and the horses though, and the opportunities to […]
Continue reading Power on the Prairie Part 2: Horses
About fifteen years ago, I went to a fundraiser and bought, for $10, a little cactus. It was an odd little thing, about six inches tall with a triangular stem and a weird head at the top. It looked like a deformed little tree with spines on it. I decided I didn’t like it much […]
Continue reading Living Sculpture: Dragon Bones
Often a well-chosen turn of phrase, or a name, can immediately conjure an image. These are the jewels that writers look for. And they’re the names that last through the centuries because of their aptness. And yet, as language changes, the name may be retained without the surrounding context to provide that image. Knowing where […]
Continue reading What’s in a Name?: Bouncing Bet AKA Soapwort
In the news here at the beginning of October, we’ve been hearing about the tiny flying, biting insects we call no-see-ums. Minute pirate bugs and biting midges have been flushed from the fields by the harvesters and are looking for a warm place to winter. They’re so small (1 to 3 millimeters long) that you […]
Continue reading Guess who: AI Identifying Insects
One day in late September, I heard a bird that was new to my soundscape. Its song reminded me of a scolding chatter followed by an upward-trending whistle. It’s not mating season, so this call undoubtedly meant something else. It was an Eastern bluebird on migration to somewhere warmer. It stayed for a day or […]
Continue reading Eastern Bluebird
When I was a little girl, I could still see some, and I absolutely loved the fireworks. We would go as a family to a park in my home town, sit in the grass, and watch that beautiful display of color. I’d go home happy, and in the next couple of days, I’d start itching—the […]
Continue reading Phantom or Real: Chiggers
On a sunny fall day, our prairie garden is calling all bees, flies, butterflies, wasps, beetles, and anybody else who wants some nectar and pollen for dinner. A bunch of brown-eyed susans (Rudbeckia triloba) vie for their share of pollinators by waving their flowers above the fray. They have come into their own now that […]
Continue reading Yellow is for Fall: Brown-Eyed Susan