Winter Wonderland

Having received 14" of snow last week, we were a little dismayed at predictions for another 12-18" inches of snow, accompanied by strong winds, for the last 48 hours.  Yesterday we waited all day for the blizzard to begin, but temperatures hovering around 35 kept the worst from happening.  We got the strong winds, but most of the precipitation fell as light rain and acted to melt much of the snow that we already had.

Last night, as we went to bed, the temperatures dropped, the electricity flickered, and the weather decided to give us a small taste of what might have been.

So this morning we woke up to a winter wonderland again - about 5" of wet snow with a little underpinning of ice, plastered to the trees and shrubs, coating the ground beautifully and softly.

As I plodded out to follow our morning routine of checking for the paper, a track in the snow told of a bird's passage - presumably a pheasant from the size.  It looks like he half walked/half flew, leaving wing tip prints, but also dragging his tail and putting his feet down every 3 feet or so....

TJ, our 9 year old cat, isn't too excited about being out in the wet, cold white stuff, but loves hunting the birds through the window.  Here he is, several days ago, "talking" to them through the sliding glass door as big flocks of red-winged blackbirds and cowbirds chowed down on the bird seed I'd spread out for them.  Every once in a while, one would try to fly into the kitchen through the door, and TJ would jump 4 feet up in the air to greet it.  Several of those birds are still alive only because of the miracle of modern windows!

When we get this much snow, we've had to add a new task to our country lifestyle:  cleaning off the shade cloth over the kennels.  Greg literally had to shovel snow off the shade cloth because it was weighed down so heavily, sagging about 3 feet.  One side recovered its spring pretty well; the other side may have to be replaced this spring, despite his attempts at saving it.

It's an interesting start to the year:  an almost totally dry winter until late February, then 2 snowfalls giving us the snowiest February on record.  Feast or famine.  While hope springs eternally (especially in the springtime gardener's mind), concern and foreboding aren't too far behind, at least as far as weather is concerned.  This promises, once again, to be an interesting garden season.

Sad, but Tough, "Old" Bird

It's amazing how many mutations I've noticed over the last couple years.  I found the latest one this morning, in a small flock of red-winged blackbirds that was feeding out in the back yard.  I noticed a male that seemed to be carrying a long straw or something, so I got my binoculars out to take a closer look....

It wasn't a straw, it was the poor guy's beak.

To eat, he turns his head sideways and picks up the seeds with the side of his beak/mouth, since otherwise his beak gets in the way.

He was strong enough to get in brief flurries with another bird or two, but I have to wonder how long he'll survive.  I'm amazed he's made it this long...and this far!

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

After months of bemoaning the lack of precipitation we've been experiencing, I can finally write with excitement that we've got snow!!!  Lots and lots of snow!!!  About 12" of snow, actually, which is amazing for the Wichita, Kansas, area.  In fact, according to the Wichita Eagle, the last time this area saw a foot of snow was in 1971 - 42 years ago!

Precipitation of any sort tends to pull in more birds to my feeders than usual.  The cardinals are the most vivid, with their red feathers providing such a bright, warm contrast to the black and white winter world.  This big snow event, though, has my bird feeders being overrun by large flocks of red-winged blackbirds and cowbirds.  The former are welcome.  The latter are not, but I have not figured out a way to welcome the blackbirds while keeping out the cowbirds.   Somewhat surprisingly, the red-winged flocks are a mix of males and females;  I would have expected primarily males this early in the year.  All of these birds must have been wintering just south of here, since I rarely see more than 6-10 red-wings at a time on a "normal" day, and I hadn't seen any cowbirds yet this year.

Not surprisingly, my feeder regulars are being overwhelmed by all the short-timers.  Occasionally, though, an unusual "regular" shows up.  This pied cardinal came fairly often last year, but this is only the second time I've seen her this winter.  I'm glad to know she made it through the summer;  I wonder if she ever found a mate and produced any young?

Gardeners tend to be optimistic every spring;  I find this snow is finally refilling my springs of optimism - and just in time for the spring planting season to begin!  It's hard to imagine a more welcome winter weather event.

Water, Stitching the World Together

On one of my regular walkabouts recently, I noticed ice crystals that seemed rather picturesque....

After catching a couple different photos of the crystals, I found myself mulling over the importance of water, stitching our world together. 

Here in south central Kansas, we're well into what appears to be the third year of a serious drought, combined with much higher than "normal" temperature patterns.  Even for a prairie, we're dry.  I sure don't take water for granted like I used to.

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve

Years ago - sometimes it seems like it was in another life - I worked with and for the Kansas Audubon Council.  One of our projects at the time was trying to get the Z-Bar Ranch, as it was known then, into federal protection as a national park.  Through the work of many dedicated people and organizations, with the Kansas office of The Nature Conservancy serving as a key link, that dream came to life - and the American people now have under their protection the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.

The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve has the Z-Bar Ranch, originally known as the Spring Hill Ranch, as its core.  Located near Strong City, Kansas, the Spring Hill Ranch was settled by a wealthy cattleman and his family in the late 1870's and early 1880's.  Stephen Jones built a literal mansion out of native Flint Hills limestone, situated on the side of a hill above the main road into Strong City.

To go along with his mansion, he built a huge limestone barn, a limestone outhouse (a 3 holer!), a limestone ice house, a limestone chicken coop, a limestone curing house and a limestone carriage house.  And 30 miles of limestone "fence."

A little to the north of his ranch headquarters, he donated land for a school house...and a limestone school house was built.

All of these beautiful limestone buildings still stand today.  For decades, they intrigued travelers along Highway 177, which runs directly in front of the ranch house, but very few were privileged to see the insides of any of the buildings, even though they were rarely owner occupied after about 1900.

Now travelers are privileged enough to be able to explore both the buildings AND the surrounding prairie through a collaboration between  the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy.  There are self guided tours of the buildings, wonderful nature trails of various lengths, bus tours of the "back country" during the summer and fall, and events held throughout the year.  There is a newly built interpretive center, too, which is due to get its permanent exhibits sometime this spring.  For now, they show a 10 minute film about the preserve and the tallgrass prairie, have bathrooms, a gift shop, and a very helpful park ranger to answer questions or give you guidance.

While our son Sean was home from Boston for Christmas, we decided to go up and check it out.  Neither Sean nor Greg had ever been there, although we'd all driven by it many times traveling between Wichita and points north and east. Plus, while December temperatures that are regularly in the 60's make me nervous about global warming, I have to admit that a bright blue day with a high of 64 degrees F. was extremely pleasant for exploring the prairie!

Here Sean and I are posing for the camera on the old road bed, with the mansion behind us on the hill.

The old road bed in front of Spring Hill Ranch is extremely obvious from some angles and almost invisible from others.  Here you can see the path of the old road to Strong City, running next to the new highway, with an old American elm (Ulmus americana) arching over it.

That old elm just fascinated me!  Such a huge, majestic tree!  And out on the prairie - thriving!

The site selected by Stephen Jones for Spring Hill Ranch was rather unusual in that it had a good spring located on top of a hill - hence the name, Spring Hill Ranch.  Rather oddly, then, the vegetable garden was located on top of the hill where it would be easy to water during dry times.  With the suppression of fire around the ranch buildings, a cedar grove has established on top of Spring Hill also.

The Southwind Trail starts by this vegetable garden, goes through the cedar grove, and meanders the pasture to the north of the ranch buildings, with a spur going up to the limestone schoolhouse.  This is a pleasant, relatively level trail that is just right for an easy stroll.  As we left the cedar grove, this pair of cedars, with the small series of steps between them, felt like a gateway into the open prairie.

In the shrubs to the right of the "gateway", several bright orange clusters of berries caught my attention - American bittersweet (Celastrus scandens)!  Although this attractive vine is native here in Kansas, I haven't seen it growing in the wild for a long time.  I suspect that most of it, at least along the roadways, has been killed by overcollecting for Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations.

Just beyond the "gateway," if you look to the north, you can see the old limestone schoolhouse on the next hilltop....

Sean and Greg decided to go up to the schoolhouse, while I stayed on the main loop of the trail and photographed a few shrubs and wildflower seed heads.

I could ramble on for a long, long time about all the interesting and beautiful things we saw...but I won't.  Instead I will recommend one last treat that we discovered in the downtown Strong City.  Having not had any official lunch and having explored the buildings, the visitor's center, the Southwind Trail, the schoolhouse, and the Bottomland Nature Trail, we were rather dry and hungry when we left the Preserve.  Sean had seen a restaurant in Strong City whose name appealed to him, so we pulled in to check it out....

Ad Astra was wonderful!  We were expecting to just get a coke and a snack, then go home to eat, but an enjoyable atmosphere of brick and stone walls with a gorgeous tin ceiling, as well as a gourmet sandwich and entree menu, enticed us to have dinner here.

A delicious bison burger with a side of black bean chili called to Sean,...

while I fell for a Reuben sandwich with homemade potato chips and a homemade pickle, and Greg had a fantastic looking (and tasting) ham and cheese creation with a broccoli salad side.  Boulevard and Ad Astra ales were on tap, so we were able to quench our thirst too!  Last of all we decided to splurge on dessert:  a decadent peanut butter and chocolate cheesecake slice for Greg, a rich peppermint and chocolate cheese cake slice for Sean, and a delicious creme brulee for me.  All worth the stop, just on their own!

All in all, a most excellent adventure!  If you've never checked out the Tallgrass Prairie Nature Preserve and you live somewhere within a couple hours, I'd say it would make both a nice trip for yourself and a great place to share with visitors.  If you're driving through Kansas sometime, I'd highly recommend checking it out for a unique and memorable experience.  It's one of the only places left where you can truly experience the American tallgrass prairie in its vastness and openness.  Just don't forget to refresh yourself at Ad Astra (or in nearby downtown Cottonwood Falls) when you're done!

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.

Like Leaves on The Grass....

One of the things I enjoy most about being outside, walking or gardening, is how my mind is free to spin and make connections.  This morning I had one of those "Aha!" moments.


What if human lives are like leaves on a tree?  Each leaf is born, new and fresh and perfect.

Over time, the leaves grow to maturity, making food for the tree as they convert sunlight to the sugars that the tree needs to grow.

Along the way, the leaves experience problems.  Drought shrivels them a bit around the edges.  Insects gnaw holes in their pristine surfaces.  Diseases may kill off part of a leaf - or may even kill off entire groups of leaves.  Stormy winds pull some leaves off before their time.  Hail shreds other leaves, especially those on the outer and upper levels of the tree's canopy.

Eventually most of the leaves are simply worn out.  It's the end of their life span.  The tree withdraws the life force from within them, they turn colors,...

...and they drop from where they've lived high up in the air, down onto the ground.

There they will join with a myriad of other dead leaves...

...and slowly decompose, turning into fertile soil that enriches the ground where the tree, of which they were once a living part, grows stronger each year.

No two leaves are ever exactly the same, yet all of them are more alike than different.  All the leaves on a single tree are part of the same living organism, even though they each seem separate from each other.  No leaf can - or should - live forever, yet the life of the tree goes on for a long time...and the life of the forest of trees goes on even longer.


This analogy soothes me.  It gives me a concrete understanding on which to pin philosophical concepts such as "we are all one" and "there is life after death," as well as biological concepts such as aging and the inevitability of death.  To every thing, there is a season....

There's Always Something New

With the wind howling and fall progressing apace, despite the temperatures hovering in the high 80's/low 90's the last several days, I almost didn't take my camera with me when I walked the boys this morning.  After all, the flowers are basically all done, right?  What else would there be to photograph?

Well, I had barely crossed the draw when I saw this young sapling and was glad that I had brought my camera with me....

See that little knot of "debris" near the trunk, a couple of feet above the ground?  It's a small birds' nest.

As I've mentioned before, I never go looking for bird nests during the summer, since I feel like I lead predators to their nests when I find them.  I've actually become rather superstitious about this and generally won't even photograph a nest if I stumble upon it accidentally.  This morning, with the leaves dropping off this young hackberry sapling (Celtis occidentalis), a nest had been revealed that had, presumably, been there all summer long - not 15' off the trail and about 2' off the ground.  Despite having obviously walked by this nest numerous times in the last few months, I'd never noticed it or even noted that there was probably a nest somewhere in area...until now.

Even at this point, with all the leaves gone, the nest isn't sticking out like a sore thumb.  I have no idea what kind of birds built it or whether or not they were successful in their nesting attempt, but I certainly have my hopes.

As I walked back to the trail from taking the closeup photo of the nest, I noticed this hollow stem sticking up out of the drying grasses....

Looking around, I noticed more hollow stems, then realized that these were old stalks of wild lettuce, Lactuca sp.  I've never paid much attention to wild lettuce, assuming that it was an introduced weed and, as such, not of much use to wildlife.  Well, when I looked Lactuca up at Kansas Wildflowers & Grasses, I realized that there were 3 species listed, 2 of which were actually native.  I know that I have the non-native species (Lactuca serriola or prickly lettuce) on the property, but I don't know if these stalks are from that species or from one of the native species - I've never checked to see if I have the native ones or not, simply lumping all "wild lettuce" plants I've seen into the thought category of "non-native 'weed'." 

This is what one of the" freshest" of the wild lettuce plants in the area looks like right now - pretty much dead already - and there are stalks in all stages in between this one and the old, gray ones.  I'll have to wait until next summer to check about whether the native species grow on our property or not.

So why do I care?  Because, as the holes in these stalks insinuate, something has been living in these stalks and utilizing their innards for food and/or cover.  And some of the most common animals to utilize the inside of hollow stems are the native bees, aka native pollinators!  So even this very common plant that I had previously dismissed as basically useless turns out to have an important role in a healthy ecosystem.

In fact, as I read a bit more about the wild lettuces, they are actually rather interesting plants.  Native Americans used them for several medicinal purposes, including as a poultice for poison ivy rashes.  Wild turkey and deer will eat the leaves, even the prickly leaves of the non-native prickly lettuce. 

Sometimes I feel like I need a "Jethro slap" to the head! 

Despite finding these several new-to-me discoveries in the Cedar Grove, I wasn't in the mood to walk the Back Five this morning, so I walked around the front tallgrass area instead.  I haven't walked the front much at all this summer.
 

For only about the second time this year, I noticed that the cattails in the swampy area along the north part of the draw appear to be gone, at least for now.  Here is a photo of this area as it currently appears.  There is not a cattail to be found, but the giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida) and annual sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) grew to enormous heights over the summer and a few panicled asters (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum) moved into the foreground.  It should be great winter habitat for the small birds.

I ended up this morning's walk out front by the driveway where I finally took a couple photos of the healthy young Maximilian sunflowers (Helianthus maximiliani) that Melanie of There's No Place Like Home shared with me this spring.  I am just tickled pink - they not only survived, which was amazing given that they are planted in a "wild" area of the property and thus didn't get any extra water, but they thrived!  Even though the blooms are reaching their end, I still saw numerous insects feeding at them, including 3 different kinds of skippers that were kind enough to stick around long enough for me to photograph them.  The most photogenic combination of skipper and sunflower is below:

So my lesson for the day?  Be sure to take my camera with me when I walk, no matter how unexciting the day seems, because there's always something new if I keep my eyes open.