First Day of Spring

Just for kicks and giggles, I went around the yard yesterday and took a few photos which I thought I'd share.  Nothing particularly exciting, but just a few quick peaks at how the garden was looking on the first official day of spring....

Most interestingly, the bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is blooming gorgeously this year.  It's really taken off in the last year or two, after a rather slow start. Bloodroot, a native that is one of the first wildflowers to bloom in the spring, gets its name from the blood red sap in its rhizomes.  Native Americans used this latexy sap as a face paint and to dye or color various different articles.  Bloodroot was also used medicinally.

Next to the bloodroot, I have a small group of heirloom purple crocuses being protected by an old egg basket.  This has become my favorite rabbit protection method for small plants.  Plus it lets me recycle and reuse old egg baskets (and thus justify my love of antiquing).

Not too far away was another group of purple crocuses showing WHY I use the egg basket over the heirloom crocuses.....

The cottontail(s) in my yard really love purple crocuses.  They'll eat other colors, but purple seems to be their favorite.  The "nibbling" almost destroyed those heirloom purple crocuses that I now protect so picturesquely.

Further down this same flower bed is a nice clump of daffodils in full bloom...facing AWAY from the house and the front of the bed.  It seems like this happens almost every year with this clump, but I'm darned if I know why.  I can't think of any reason why daffodil blooms would face one way or another on a regular basis.  It's not like the bloom faces the same direction the bulb points or something.....

Anyway, this year I decided to sneak around behind the bed to get a shot from the back.  They look much nicer from that angle.

In the "stump bed" (I've GOT to get a better name for that bed!) the Cloth of Gold heirloom crocuses were finished and the pasque flowers not blooming yet, but I got a good photo of the one of the "prairie pinecones", a local name for the seed pods of the Stemless Evening Primrose (Oenothera triloba).  They are really cool little features that add a fun textural touch to the winter garden.

Up front, the burn still looked pretty stark, although a few small sprigs of green are beginning to poke through.

From the front steps, however, the burn looks less overwhelming.  It forms an interesting contrast with the (uncut) front garden and the buffalo grass lawn, currently looking totally tan.

Looking at the front garden more specifically, by yesterday morning I had only cut back the very front little area in the bottom left of the photo below, where the bright yellow, Tete A Tete daffodils poke up in this photo.  I started seriously working on the garden cut back today, focusing on freeing other clumps of daffodils first, so we could enjoy their bloom if I got distracted from finishing my task. When I get done with the cut back, I'll post another photo for comparison.

I'll leave you with this pair of daffodil clumps....  First this small group of daffodils buried in last year's aster stems.  (I actually liberated this little clump this afternoon.)

And, finally, this nice group of Tete A Tete daffodils - one of my longtime favorite daffodil varieties.  They are so cute and tiny and early.  Perfect bellweathers signalling that spring has actually sprung!

A Beautiful Day for a Burn!

We interrupt the "Tolerating the Uglies" series to bring you this news flash:  Today was an absolutely perfect day for a prairie burn!

It is VERY dry here, so I was a little hesitant, but the conditions were so perfect that we held our breaths and went ahead with our plans.  The winds stayed under 10 mph and were fairly steady from the SW (as predicted), Greg had recruited a couple techs from his clinic, and (most crucial of all) it was a weekend day.  During Kansas springtimes, it's a rare occurrence to have good winds and weather, the free time to burn, AND help with burning all come together!

Greg had mowed the firebreak last weekend, so the only necessary prep this morning was to gather the rakes, shovels, water buckets, burlap sacks, and water packs, then to stretch out the hoses.  We called in the burn permit...and we were off!

We started the burn very slowly and relied on backfiring the entire time to keep things under control.  This kept the flames about 3' high and moving slowly, instead of the lightning fast and 10-15' tall they probably would have been if they had been moving with the wind.

Greg and Pat went along the north and west sides; Justin and I took the east and south sides.  Our job was to patrol the edge of the fire at the firebreak, making sure that the flames didn't move out into the mowed area very far, which would have risked the fire jumping over the firebreak and getting out of control.  The fire basically burned from northeast to southwest, directly into the wind.

When we were done, our privacy from the road was totally gone, but the black ashes will absorb the springtime rays of the sun and heat up the soil.  The nutrients in the ashes will fertilize the soil, too.  With some rain (hopefully coming on Wednesday), we should be seeing green sprouts and then lush growth before long!

Many, many thanks to Chris, Justin, and Pat for their help!

Bush Cicada: A 2+" Sign That I'm On the Right Track

According to the reading I've done, restoring prairie is very much an art.  In fact, it's as much or more of an art than it is a science.  For example, the steps you should take depend, first of all, on whether you are starting with a plowed field or an overgrazed pasture.  Even with that determined, the process is highly experimental.  After all, for over a century we've been far more concerned with breaking up prairie lands, to plant crops, than we've been concerned with restoring agricultural lands to prairie.

It's almost always easier to destroy something than it is to create it...or to re-create it.

Therefore, even the very first step of restoration was in doubt when I decided I wanted to try to return tallgrass prairie to our 10 acre "homestead", with its 5 acres of overgrazed pasture.  Should I plow up the existing vegetation and/or use Roundup to kill it all off before planting prairie seeds?  The seed I used would supposedly establish more readily that way.  Or should I try to overseed into the existing vegetation? 

I didn't see a lot of vegetation that was worth saving during that first summer we lived here.  The Back Five was filled with redcedars, western ragweed, Baldwin's ironweed, poverty grass, brome, green antelopehorn, and a little bit of yarrow - hardly an inspiring mix.  My instincts, however, told me that plowing it all up or applying Roundup would set the return of the prairie back a lot.

"Following my gut" (to quote Gibbs on NCIS), I started the next year with a spring burn.  I reasoned that it wouldn't hurt and it might help me see if there were other, more desirable, plants being hidden by their assertive neighbors.  It took us two tries, but we did get the Back Five burned that second spring.  Over the summer I watched it carefully to see what showed up.  Fresh growth took several weeks to begin emerging, as that spring turned out to be cold and dry, but eventually the temperatures started to rise and the rains to fall.

What a difference a burn makes!  Oh, there was still a lot of "garbage" vegetation, but I also found white prairie clover, a couple lead plants, wild alfalfa, dotted gayfeather, and (best of all) FIVE spring ladies' tresses.  There was no way that I was going to plow up or Roundup that 5 acres!

So I decided to overseed.  Over the last 5 years, I've scattered seed, usually in the mowed trails, and I've watched for more hidden gems to emerge from the seed bank in the soil.  As with most natural systems, progress has seemed slow.  Prairie plants put down roots first, significant leaves next, and flowers - the most visible sign that a plant has established - last of all.  It can takes years before a newly establishing perennial or grass plant blooms, which means that it can take years before you know that your seeding has been successful.  Overseeding is especially slow, since far fewer of the seeds will be able to outcompete the already established plants on the site.  Severe heat and drought over the last several years have further impeded any progress.  Finally, though, I feel like the prairie is beginning to peek out through the overgrazed pasture it's been hiding under....

The poverty grass has become a much smaller component of the flora in the last 7 years.  Whereas it used to be impossible to walk through the Back Five without getting many of its painful seeds in my socks, these days I have to search the area for a while to find any obvious stands of it.

There are swaths of tall dropseed now and well established patches of side-oats grama.   The dotted gayfeather has spread from a scant dozen plants in one, well confined area to dozens of plants, scattered in several large, beautiful patches throughout the Back Five.  Whorled milkweed has started to form graceful colonies from single plants that were easy to overlook at first.

Meadowlarks nest each summer.  I've seen a jackrabbit several times, and coyotes regularly leave signs that they, too, are enjoying the area.

Compass plants have shown up, as well.  While I scattered some seed four or five years ago, several of the first plants that I noticed, a year or two later, were already large enough that I suspect they were actually holdovers which had survived the many years of pasturage.   Now there are a couple dozen compass plants;  6 of them put up flower spikes this year.

Which leads me to my latest promising sign of the return of the tallgrass prairie.  Last Thursday, on my latest walkabout, I photographed, among many other plants and animals, a large cicada making itself at home on the compass plant flower stalk above.  Large cicadas aren't unusual around here, so I almost didn't take this individual's photo, but having one so nicely posed on the compass plant stalk was a little different, so I spent the few extra electrons and minutes to record the image.

Over the weekend, I edited my photos and decided, somewhat on a whim, to send this image in to Bug Guide to see which cicada species this individual actually represented.  Some insects I seem to be able to identify without too much trouble.  Others, like cicadas, I have yet to learn enough about to reliably name.  Every other large cicada image I've sent in to Bug Guide has turned out to be Tibicen auriferus, the Plains Dog-Day Cicada, in one color variant or another.  This one didn't look like that, but I'd been fooled before.

This morning I received my answer from the Entomology Gods:  my large cicada is a Bush Cicada, Tibicen dorsatus. 

Why am I doing a happy dance?  Why does it matter to me which species of cicada this is?

Well, I'm probably over-reacting here, but on the Bug Guide information page about the Bush Cicada, it states, "A beautiful species that now exists in scattered isolates across much of its former range. Although listed as "secure" (i.e. "not threatened/endangered"), many populations, particularly those isolated in more developed areas, should be monitored and conserved."  I take that to mean that the species is on the decline, overall, and my little 5 acres of restoring prairie may be helping it to maintain a slightly healthier population.

Helping a potentially declining species to retain a healthier population is one of the big reasons why I garden, and definitely why I garden the way I do.   In a nutshell.  Or in a cicada cast, as the case may be.

Oh, my Bush Cicada?  Another common name for it is Splendid Prairie Cicada...and I think that's a perfectly splendid name.

What's the Point of Gardening? A Gardening Ethic for Our Times

Why do you garden?

If you're like me at all (and I suspect that many gardeners are), you probably have several reasons you garden - several passions that gardening feeds - several functions that gardening performs in your life....

I garden because it makes me feel good to see flowers blooming around my home.

I garden because it's a form of exercise that I enjoy and it gets me outside, in the fresh air.

I garden to increase our property value (I hope).

I garden to provide some good, chemical free food for us to enjoy.

I garden because plants and animals fascinate me in their infinite variety.

Most of all, though, I garden because it's my way of doing something very concrete, very local, and very specific to make the world healthier and more ALIVE.  I garden, and I garden the way I do, because it's my way of helping to heal the life force on our planet, which seems to be in serious danger from the increasing human assaults on it over the last 100 years or so.

"Okay, Cynth, " I can almost hear you sigh.  "What brought this up?  Can't we just look at pretty pictures and move on?"

Well, of course you can.  But I read something the other day that really got me thinking about my role as a gardener.  Ben Vogt of Nebraska, who blogs at The Deep Middle, posted a commentary that struck a deep chord with me:  "Is There Any Difference Between a Land Ethic and a Garden Ethic?"
Hmmm.  Is there?  Why DO I garden?  Why do most people garden?

Ben started his thought-provoking post by quoting bits and pieces from Aldo Leopold's wonderful statement about developing a land ethic, as written in A Sand County Almanac.  Leopold finished writing this small, but important, three part book in 1948, just before he died.  The book was published a year later.  I think the most concise statement of Leopold's land ethic is actually written in Leopold's own forward to this book, "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.  When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."  (My italics)

Filling the last 25 pages of A Sand County Almanac, the entirety of Leopold's "The Land Ethic" is certainly too long for me to quote here, but it's well worth reading...and rereading.  In it, he moves from showing how we humans have developed our ethical codes, first working on the relationships between individual humans and later developing codes such as the Golden Rule and democracy for how the individual relates to society as a whole and how society relates back to the individual.  Now, Leopold believed, it had become necessary to develop another layer to our ethical codes to govern how humans related to the land and to the plants and animals that shared it with them.  Otherwise, in Leopold's words, "There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man...."

Aldo Leopold wrote in 1948 and presumably developed his ideas even earlier.  What would he say about the way we treat the land, and the plants and animals on it, now?  I'm rather glad he's not around to see what we've done and, even worse, what we're in the process of doing.

Because I am around to see what we've done and what we're currently doing, I try to treat our little 10 acres according to Leopold's Land Ethic, adopting this ethical code, to the best of my ability, as my gardening ethic.  I try to treat our land, with its associated plants and animals, with love and respect, thinking of it as a community that I belong to rather than as a resource to maximize.  Realizing that communities - like most complex things - are healthier when they have all of the parts that they should have, I am trying to reintroduce plants that have disappeared over the last 150 years while this parcel of land was being extensively and intensively farmed.  I'm hoping that, as the plants reestablish, many of the smaller animals will find their way back too.

My goal is to have as stable, as healthily functioning, a prairie community on our 10 acres as I possibly can.  Someday, perhaps, the plants and animals that remain on this tiny piece of land will serve as a source to move back out into the wider landscape as a whole, helping to heal it as well.

Towards the end of "The Land Ethic," Leopold talked about a schism among folks who work with and on the land - he called it a cleavage - that divided people into 2 camps which deeply affected their relationship to the land they worked with:

In all of these cleavages, we see repeated the same basic paradoxes:  man the conqueror versus man the biotic citizen;  science the sharpener of his sword versus science the searchlight on his universe; land the slave and servant versus land the collective organism.  Robinson's injunction to Tristram may well be applied, at this juncture, to Homo sapiens as a species in gelogical time:

Whether you will or not
You are a King, Tristram, for you are one
Of the time-tested few that leave the world,
When they are gone, not the same place it was.
Mark what you leave.

As a gardener, which cleavage do you belong to:  the conqueror or the citizen?  Is your garden your slave and servant or a community that you belong to?  When you are gone from your garden, what will you leave for the future?  What mark will you have made?

Visiting Nearby Grasslands - A Peek Into Other Places and Times

As I work to re-establish a reasonably functional prairie on our Back 5, one of my constant inner questions is, "What was here originally?"  It's hard to know, since years of use as a pasture, including significant overgrazing for at least the last few years, had removed most of the tastier plants from the existing plant palette and substituted weedier ones by the time we purchased the property.  In a region where tallgrass prairie is just beginning to morph into midgrass prairie, there were essentially no clumps of prairie grass at all in that Back 5 acres.  The primary forbs were green antelopehorn, western ragweed, Baldwin's ironweed, yarrow, and white sage - all plants that cattle don't care for, which tend to grow more strongly as their competition is munched away. 

So, to see what we're missing in our palette, I watch the ditches for vegetative clues (but our ditches have been denuded of perennials by the County road crews who, I am convinced, consider them to be their personal lawn spaces).  I look in pastures as we drive by.  And occasionally I'm lucky enough to be invited to walk through and explore nearby pastures.  That's when I get my best clues.

A fellow Sedgwick County Extension Master Gardener, Sid, extended one of those lucky invitations to me for last Friday morning.  So, of course, I went.  I explored his pasture last June, too, about 2 weeks earlier in the growing season than this year.  What would I see again?  Would I see anything new?

Sid and his wife live on land that was homesteaded by his ancestress - a legendary matriarch, a recent widow at the time she homesteaded, who built a house in the middle of a section of land so that each of her 4 sons would have a quarter section for themselves when they reached adulthood.   With the land being in the same family for generations now, there is a sense of continuity of ownership, an understanding of how the land has been utilized over the years, that is often lacking in land that has changed ownership many times.

One of the things Sid wanted to show me were the patches of black-eyed Susan he'd successfully created in his lawn simply by waiting last summer until the black-eyed Susan had set seed, then mowing in a pattern that concentrated the seed into the areas where he wanted it.

The patches were beautiful - and filled with pollinators when we examined the flowers up close.

Next we went out into the pasture.  Many of the plants were ones I'd seen last year:  Junegrass, blue wild indigo (with all the leaves eaten off this summer), cream wild indigo, a single bloom of catclaw sensitive briar, purple poppy mallow, yarrow, spiderwort, leadplant.....

This year I noticed a few more plants blooming, too, that I hadn't noticed last year.  For example, the plant pictured above is woolly verbena (Verbena stricta) growing along the trail that the cattle use most frequently.  Woolly verbena has deep roots and is very drought tolerant, but it's bitter tasting, so the cattle don't eat it and it tends to increase in pastures.

I also noticed both white and purple prairie clovers, Dalea candida and Dalea purpurea.

Sid pointed out narrow-leafed milkweed (Asclepias stenophylla), ...

where I was lucky enough to catch a milkweed longhorn (Tetraopes sp.) and a longhorned grasshopper nymph hanging out together.  Do you see the grasshopper nymph almost mirroring the position of the milkweed beetle, a few inches up and to the left?

Another blossom that caught my eye on Friday was the tall, pink spike of tickclover (Desmodium sp.).  Not realizing that there were 4 possible species to be found in our area of Kansas, I didn't look at either the blooms or the leaves very closely.  I'll have to return to identify this species more accurately, although I strongly suspect it's Illinois tickclover (Desmodium illinoense).

I also saw a little, annual, yellow flax (Linum sulcatum), that I've seen in our Back 5 once or twice over the years, and prairie petunia, a.k.a. fringe-leaf ruellia, (Ruellia humilis).  The latter has become one of my favorites as I've watched it bloom over and over again, rather hidden down in the grass, not complaining despite extreme heat and crushing drought.  I'd love to get some prairie petunia started in my flower beds, but I haven't been able to collect seed pods or to transplant successfully so far.

Most fun of all, this year the sand plums (Prunus angustifolia) were sporting a bumper crop of fruit, which was well into ripening.   Sid picked a couple handfuls and we enjoyed a delicious taste of the prairie to go along with our visual feast.

On the way back to the cool of the lawn chairs sitting in the breezy shade, I glimpsed a carpet of golden yellow shining through the trees.  When I asked about it, Sid responded that it was "just that weed", from which description I recognized plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), a pretty annual that grows primarily in ditches and crop fields around here.  As we walked, I noticed a single, straggly plant of it along the path we were following.


I mentioned that I loved plains coreopsis, but that I didn't have much of it growing on our property.  Sid was surprised by that, since it is so common in "wild areas" around here, but actually I wasn't surprised at all.  Plains coreopsis is an annual or very short-lived perennial and, as such, is basically an early successional plant.  We don't have much bare ground on our property where it might take root.

As I started to talk about plant succession, it occurred to me that many gardeners aren't very familiar with the concept of succession, and it's a concept that I find VERY useful in understanding plant behavior in the garden.  This post is long enough...but succession sounds like a great topic for a post in the near future!  I doubt you'll ever look at weeds the same way, once you learn about this interesting concept.

Wavy Leaf Thistle - A Welcome Prairie Native

Say "thistle" and the automatic response is to think "aggressive, obnoxious weed" and "How fast can I get rid of it?"  Wavy leaf thistle (Cirsium undulatum), though, is the reasonable cousin in a family of assertive rapscallions.  With its gray-green foliage, short height, and less heavily armed leaves and stems, it's definitely a kinder, gentler thistle.  It's also not as likely to take over the landscape as many of its relatives are, a distinct advantage when thinking about including it in a garden or in a restoring prairie.

Luckily, the basal rosettes of wavy leaf thistle are not easy to confuse with other thistles.  The gray green color and wavy leaf edges are a straightforward "tell", so the plant is easy to identify, even in very early spring.

I like the color and texture of the leaves of wavy leaf thistle, but my favorite part of the plant is the bloom.

Not only is it a beautiful, clear, light purple that looks for all the world like a purple powder puff in a rough, green handle, but these flowers are like magnets to insects.  Even as I was focusing in on this blossom for a second shot, I noticed a hint of orange - a sulfur butterfly had landed on the backside, not more than a couple feet away from me, while I was taking the first photograph.

I managed to miss the early blooms of the thistles this summer, but obviously there were still a few around when I went tromping through the Back Five yesterday afternoon.  The most popular single bloom was this one which, for some reason, had attracted 2 sulfur butterflies and a triple-decker array of flowerloving longhorn beetles.  Its nectar must have been particularly sweet!

Sometimes it didn't seem to be the nectar that attracted insects to the blossoms.  On this blossom, a bumblebee and two beetles almost seemed to be resting in the shade of the purple pom-pom.

Even when definitely past their prime, the fading wavy leaf thistle blooms seem to attract more than the normal number of insects.  The sulfur butterflies still found them attractive, as did a moth on this bloom.

Here a bumblebee seemed to be nectaring, while a grasshopper nymph watched.

And a flowerloving longhorn beetle still thought this over-the-hill bloom was worth feeding on, as well.

I'm sure that, if I had looked a little longer or a little harder, I could have found many more insects enjoying these showy flowers.

So have I put any wavy leaf thistles into my flower beds?  No, actually I haven't.  In fact, I didn't even think of doing it until I started writing this paragraph!  But now I'm thinking that I ought to give them a try.  The bloom color would echo the lavender of wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) nicely, while the leaves would both give a different form in the garden mix and, at the same time, echo the color of the large, gray-green leaves of the giant coneflower (Rudbeckia maxima).    When I do try them, I'll let you know how it works out.  After all, I wouldn't try this with just any old thistle!

Monarch Waystations: Planning for Monarchs

Last night, at Dyck Arboretum in Hesston, KS,  I had the privilege of attending a talk given by Chip Taylor, of KU's Monarch Watch program.  Dr. Taylor is an insect ecologist and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.  He began the Monarch Watch program in 1992.  Monarch Watch is an outreach educational and research program designed to use citizen scientists to learn about and aid monarch butterflies.

It turns out that almost all of the monarchs in the central and eastern portions of North America migrate each fall to one small area in central Mexico's mountains to overwinter.  (The actual site was only discovered by scientists in the mid 1970's.)  There the monarchs cluster on trees at higher elevations, where the temperatures are traditionally cool enough to let them almost hibernate, reducing their need to feed.  In essence, they doze away the winter, then return north in the spring to lay eggs and repopulate our summer meadows and gardens.   

At that important overwintering site, scientists are able to estimate the monarch population simply by measuring the acreage that their dense clusters cover.  Since Monarch Watch began, the highest wintering population was in 1996/1997.  That winter, the butterflies covered almost 21 hectares (over 51.5 acres).  This winter (2012/3) the area covered by wintering monarchs was the lowest yet seen:  1.19 hectares (a little less than 3 acres).

There are lots of reasons for this decline, but a major cause has been the decrease in milkweeds available as larval food for monarchs.  This decrease in milkweeds has occurred primarily because of increased use of herbicides - in crop fields, pastures and along roadsides. 

As gardeners, this is where we can make a difference.  Monarch Watch is encouraging all interested parties to develop Monarch Waystations - gardens specifically geared to provide habitat to help monarchs produce more caterpillars as well as to provide them with good nectar sources to fuel their southward migration in the fall.

What would a Monarch Waystation entail?  Area-appropriate milkweeds (there are over 70 species in the U.S.), fall blooms for nectar sources, and NO INSECTICIDES.  (Insecticide will kill the monarch caterpillars, as well as the adult butterfly.)  Spots for puddling and other niceties can be added, of course, but the primary focus is on larval food (milkweeds), fall nectar sources, and freedom from pesticides.

This seems like such a simple thing to do - so I'm going to do it, and encourage others to do the same.  As I learn more, I'll share my journey here on Gaia Garden...and I hope that others who are interested in helping monarchs maintain a stable population will do the same.

Patchwork Prairie

Several years ago now, I asked for suggestions on what to name our little piece of property.  I got a few suggestions, but none of them seemed right.  The ideas I was coming up with didn't fit either.  So I let the concept brew for a while longer and eventually a name suggested itself.

Patchwork Prairie.

It's not a fancy name...but, then, this isn't a fancy piece of property.  The name fits on many levels and, most importantly, it comes naturally as I think about our land.  So Patchwork Prairie it is.

So what do I think about our property?  Why does the concept of "patchwork" seems to fit so perfectly?

First of all, prairies themselves are patchworks of many plants:  a clump of this, a spread of that, a few individuals stitching things together throughout, another large swath of something else over here.   Different patches appear during different seasons.  It's a crazy quilt design where some pieces intermingle with others and it all changes from year to year.  To give you examples, right now, on the back 5 acres (Back Five) that we are working to restore from highly overgrazed pasture to reasonable prairie, I have large swaths of tall dropseed (Sporobolus compositus) developing.  I didn't notice any tall dropseed at all in our Back Five until the second year we were here; now it's a major component of our grassland.  In the photo below, the tall dropseed is occurring in the two lighter gold sweeps that run from one side of this photo to the other.

There are almost a dozen patches, ranging from large to small, of dotted gayfeather (Liatris punctata).  The first summer, I noticed fewer than a dozen gayfeathers in one single, small area.  Presumably, all of the current patches have either spread from those original plants or the plants in each of them were simply too stunted to bloom for the first several years.

Heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides), the small, white flowers in the photo below, and silver bluestem (Bothriochloa laguroides subsp. torreyana), the grasses with the soft, fluffy seedheads in the same photo, are found throughout the Back Five, stitching all of the recovering prairie together.

An increasing number of compass plants (Silphium laciniatum) are beginning to appear scattered throughout the Back Five, acting as another "stitcher."  I found my first ones about 3 years ago, and have now counted over 2 dozen individuals.  The photo to the left shows one of only 3 compass plants that were mature enough to bloom this year.


Another stitcher, this time one that's declining as the grassland recovers, is the annual threeawn grass (Aristida sp.) that was so prevalent 6 years ago - I can walk the paths and not get a single awn in my socks these days, which is a major change from when we started.  The whitish grass, leaning over the mowed path, is a threeawn plant that I found this morning.

There are large, diffuse patches of white prairieclover (Dalea candida) in the spring

and I've even noticed a few small patches of whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) developing.

On the other hand, another milkweed known as green antelopehorn (Aslcepias viridis) is dispersed everywhere during the spring, but is nowhere to be seen at this time of year.

It's not just the recovering prairie that's a patchwork on our 10 acres.  The entire property is, itself, a patchwork quilt:  the house and lawn (moving towards buffalo grass, Buchloe dactyloides) with flower beds form one major patch with smaller areas forming patterns within it.  Other patches include the courtyard; the vegetable garden; the lagoon area; the Draw; the Cedar Grove; the front tallgrass areas; and the Back Five, the recovering pasture/prairie. Within each of these patches are smaller patterns:  aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) in the flower beds, rows of eastern redcedars (Juniperus virginiana) forming hedges at the edges, different vegetables in each of the raised vegetable garden beds, a large area of prairie wild rose (Rosa arkansana) in the Cedar Grove, panicled aster (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum) in the draw, pokeberry (Phytolacca americana) along the edges of the draw and up near the house.  Paths stitch the patchwork areas together.


Finally, patchwork is a perfect historical term for modern human life on the prairies too.  European and other settlers had a tradition of using even small scraps of cloth from wornout clothing or from other leftover material.  The women would gather these scraps and sew them together to make warm, artistically beautiful and intricate quilts:  patchwork quilts.  The settlements themselves formed a patchwork on the prairie of different cultures from around the world.  And, of course, the farms soon created patches in the landscape - eventually forming a quilt that almost completely replaced the original prairie with agricultural fields.

Patchwork Prairie.  It's the right name for now, and we'll be working to increase the richness of our crazy quilt of a property for as long as we are its stewards.  The pattern is set.  Our success will be measured in the future.