Your Own, Safe, Natural Playground, or Creating Tomorrow's Nature Nostalgia

So, my last post was a nostalgic look at some of the ways I enjoyed the natural world as a child. Which was a fun romp for me, but maybe not so much fun for others. I think that "Guess you had to be there!" may be appropriate.

My point in thinking about those days, though, was to mentally move myself into thinking about how we can adapt the current reality to help today's kids have their own natural adventures.

So, let me start with today's current reality, as I understand it.

1. There is little free access to natural areas for most kids. If there are natural areas nearby, most parents are not comfortable with the kids being there unless there is a trustworthy adult along.

The photo below, actually of a local 5 year old high school "landscape," shows the current "classic" type of landscape available for kids to play in, complete with lots of well manicured lawn and a few young trees, carefully spaced far apart. There's absolutely no place for imaginary adventures nor are there even interesting things to observe.


2. Most families have both parents working to make ends meet. This cuts down significantly on the time that either parent can spend with their kids simply exploring outside, including going to those natural areas. This also means that no one has the time to fiddle extravagantly with a garden. Each weekend the yard care agenda is: mow, blow, and get back inside to the sports on TV as soon as possible.

3. Most yards are relatively barren...and boring: a lawn (see the photo above, because everyone has to have a lawn) which is kept mowed and treated with weed-control chemicals, so the neighbors won't get upset. If the kids are lucky, there's some sort of swing set or play equipment in the backyard. A tree or two is generally planted in the middle of the lawn, but it is pruned quite high up to allow easy mowing of the lawn underneath it. Any shrubs are usually foundation plantings, growing 3 feet or so from the foundation of the house. To add insult to injury, these foundation shrubs are often (prickly) evergreens so that the yard won't look "bare" in winter. Any insect seen, with a few exceptions such as ladybugs or monarch butterflies, is assumed to be a problem and becomes a reason to treat the lawn with insect-control chemicals.

So, given this trio of constraints, what can a parent do to encourage their child to interact with nature on his or her own? (Note: I am aware here that I am talking to/about people who own their own home, complete with a yard...or those who are lucky enough to rent a home where the landlord doesn't mind the tenants working in the yard, as long as they take care of it.)

Our society is what it is, so we need to accept that there are few natural areas where the kids can safely roam without our supervision. Nothing much an individual family can do about #1.

Economic realities are what they are as well, which means time constraints are what they are. BUT, there is a block of time already built in on a weekly basis for lawn mowing.... Could we do something a little different with part of that time? #2 has a small bit of possibility within it.

How we design and plant our yards, #3, has some distinct possibilities for individual change though. It doesn't take much to trigger a child's imagination. Here are a few basic ideas to transform your yard from boring to your own safe, natural playground.


How about converting one back corner of the yard to a shrub bed? The idea is to put in a couple big shrubs or small trees in a pattern that will create a central space, somewhat hidden, to become a secret fort or hideaway. Circles, if big enough, work well, but even 3 shrubs planted about 6-8' apart can be sufficient. I've seen this done very successfully here in Wichita with 'Little King' river birch, and I remember using cubbyholes in the landscape like this throughout my childhood. The trick is to trigger the child's sense of enclosure without completely screening them from Mom & Dad's watchful eyes. The photo above begins to capture the concept if you imagine finding a "secret space" between the big spireas and the side of the garage, although this bed was not designed with children in mind. (My dogs love that secret space, though!) Be careful not to choose prickly shrubs.


Plant a small tree or two (or even a big tree or two) on which you leave low branches, so that it becomes a climbing tree. Or plant a clump of trees to form a magic room. The redbud, pictured above, would be a great climbing tree if it were situated in a more child-friendly setting. Amur maples, too, can be encouraged to have open, child-friendly branching patterns. Black willows are good clambering trees, with fast growth and trunks that often become relatively horizontal with age. A standard apple tree is a classic climbing tree that also has flowers and fruit in season. (Just be sure, if there are junipers or redcedars around, to pick one resistant to cedar-apple rust.) Bradford pear, however, would not work well, as the branching pattern doesn't lend itself to climbing.

This clump of cottonwoods, if it were in a more private backyard setting, could provide hours of imagination-fueled play for kids.... And it's no more problem to mow around this group of trees than to mow around a single tree.


Make a small garden bed where you and your kids can plant a few vegetables and a few flowers. For starters, in this area you can....

...make a teepee of bamboo or straight dead branches, then grow pole beans on each leg of the teepee. If you leave one or two branches out on one side, this becomes a playhouse for the kids to use.

...plant sunflowers - big ones - that the kids can keep track of over the summer. Leave the flower heads on after they finish blooming. The seeds will develop (in cool geometric spacing) and goldfinch will come pick them clean over the winter.

...plant 4 o-clocks. These hardy, colorful flowers produce the coolest little seeds that look like small, black grenades.

Even more classic flower gardens can provide excitement for kids and adults alike. Here is a white lined sphinx moth nectaring at summer phlox blooms just 2 feet from our front porch. Watching a moth like this guy, it's hard to tell him apart from a hummingbird!


Hang birdfeeders and keep them filled with black oil sunflower seed during the winter. Be sure to put them somewhere they can be easily seen from the house, preferably from the kitchen table. Keep binoculars and a guidebook nearby so the kids can learn to look up birds for themselves as they get older, as well as learn to handle binoculars. There are basic 'Birder' binoculars available for about $30 from online sources, so you don't have to be too paranoid about the kids occasionally dropping them.


Throughout your yard, use as few insecticides and herbicides as possible. Let the white clover and henbit and dandelions grow in the (back) lawn. Then, with your kids, watch for butterflies and bees nectaring at the flowers. Examine a dandelion seed head up close for its beautiful design, then huff and puff and blow the seeds away on their little white umbrellas. Show your child how to make a necklace or a crown out of white clover blossoms.

Save a few plastic peanut butter jars that you've washed out and show your kids how to use them to hunt for caterpillars and grasshoppers and fireflies. (Just be sure to teach them "catch & release" habits.) Watching a grasshopper in the jar, they can see its jaws move side to side; with the firefly, they can see what the insect really looks like, then watch its abdomen glow right in front of them. If the kids catch a moth or a butterfly, they can see the long "tongue" rolled up like a New Year's Eve noisemaker...or, as in the photo of the great spangled fritillary below, looking like a straw stuck into a source of nectar or water.


The ideas are endless and, since it's your (safe) backyard, you can let the kids play with no more supervision than normal. While they play, they'll be learning without even realizing it. If you keep your eyes open, you'll be learning too!

Think globally, act locally. By creating little nature sanctuaries in our yards, we can help keep our neighborhoods and towns be healthier and happier...and our world a lot greener.

Young Explorers: Just Memories or Still a Reality?

Over the last several days, I've encountered a series of articles and quotes about children and nature. They've gotten me thinking about how I interacted with the natural world when I was a child....

My first conscious memory of enjoying the outdoors was when I was about 5. We lived in Alaska, where I distinctly remember picking blueberries by myself at the edge of the forest near the base housing complex. I also remember seeing bison and moose along the roads, and learning to shoot a bow and arrow...but the blueberry picking was an adventure, all by myself!

As I got a little older, my horizons broadened a bit and we also moved just outside of DC. In our typical Maryland suburban yard, I smile as I think of the young me making my own special place under the hanging branches of a sapling weeping birch that my parents had just planted. (There weren't enough branches to hide a bird, let alone a 9 year old, but it still felt special and secluded!)

During those same years, I actually spent most of my time playing down in the woods at the bottom of the hill we lived on. There was a creek running there, and on some days I looked for crayfish and tadpoles and minnows in the water, while on other days my imagination helped me become a pioneer explorer or a princess locked away in the (magic) holly grove. There were even a couple small islands in the creek that became enchanted hideaways. Holly, sassafras, huckleberries, tadpoles, toads and frogs, crayfish.... My play helped me learn a lot about the natural world too.

For several years during the middle of the summer, we drove to Flint, Michigan, where my father took over the practice of a friend of his for a month, while their family went on vacation. Their house backed up onto a large weedy field, and I would catch grasshoppers and fireflies and crickets and anything else I could get my hands on and/or jar around.

When I was 10, we moved again, this time to Massachusetts. Outdoor exploration continued, but we (my brother, our friends and I) added a new twist: there were a lot of toads in the area, so my friends and I would catch toads, keep them in the window wells, give them names, and "train" them to race in different track and field events in the sand box: long jump, high jump, distance race, sprint, etc. I kept elaborate records of which of my toads did the best in each event so that I could win more often, and we'd occasionally go on hunting expeditions to catch more toads.

I particularly remember overseeing my younger brother and his friend in overturning a big stump at the end of our driveway one day. Unbeknownst to us, there was a yellow jacket nest underneath it. I, being the overseer (and the oldest), ran away without getting stung. The others each got one or two stings apiece, which I consider an amazingly low number now, and toad hunting became spiced with a sense of danger after that.

Sometimes I went fishing off the dock in the little lake at the end of our street. Other times my best friend and I would sneak over to the nearby bait store and buy some candy, then walk down to the lake, sitting on a log along the path overlooking it while we ate our spoils and discussed what had happened at school that day.

It was about this time in my life that my Uncle Ted introduced me to My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell. I loved that book (and still do); here was somebody else who loved animals as much as I did! I dreamed of being able to capture animals and keep them in my room.

Right as I turned 12, we moved again. This time it was a real adventure: we moved to the Panama Canal Zone, driving through Mexico and Central America to get there, and my fantasies of a personal zoo got quite a workout. Shell collecting became my passion, along with beachcombing and exploring tidal pools. I never did catch any monkeys or owls, but I'd bring living creatures home from the beach and try to keep them alive in milk cartons cut out along one side, appropriately outfitted with salt water, sand and rocks. Somehow the animals always died, despite my best efforts. Still, I became deeply fascinated with crabs and hermit crabs, gastropods, cephalopods, and bivalves.

I still have my shell collection, safely packed away in 3 large moving boxes, with the shells themselves carefully organized by type and packed away in cigar boxes, stuffed with cotton to keep them from getting broken.

The outdoors was my playground throughout childhood and even into adolescence. I learned about the world around me, exercising my body, my mind, and my imagination. It was almost impossible to be bored...although I'm sure that I was gloriously dirty when I finally made it home many days.

Do any children still get this kind of freedom to learn about and explore the natural world any more? In our world of picture perfect lawns and neatly trimmed shrubs, is there anything for them to explore and learn from on their own? Was this sort of thing important to you, as a child?
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts...and your memories.

The Signs are Everywhere

Here is a link to a site put up by the Union of Concerned Scientists called the Climate Hot Map. It's an interactive map that allows you to click on locations throughout the world where scientific evidence shows that climate change is already occurring.

The site also provides information about solutions to minimize the impact of climate change, so it's not all gloom and doom.

While you're at it, you might check out the home site for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Check out who they are, what their mission is, how and when they formed, and so forth. It's long past time for all of us to start paying attention to who've we set to guard the henhouse and why they want to guard it...so to speak.

The Great Experiment

I want to blame the heat and drought this summer on global warming. But, in all good conscience, I can't. It's been this hot and dry here before. It will be again.

That said, it doesn't mean that global warming isn't occurring and that humans' release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere isn't a primary cause. But you can't look at the weather in any one location and conclude anything, one way or another. The concept is GLOBAL warming or CLIMATE change, not Kansas warming or weather change.

Naysayers point to local cold snaps and triumphantly screech, "See! There can't be any WARMING going on!" But that's no more valid than someone pointing to this summer's local heat and drought to prove that global warming is, indeed, occurring.

Can scientists predict exactly what's going to happen and when? No. The Earth is a very complex system that we, as humans, will probably never completely understand. Even powerful computers come up with different results, based on their programming and on the data fed into them.

As I understand it, though, there are some commonalities to all the models. The weather is going to become increasingly unpredictable compared to the recent historical record, swinging more wildly from highs to lows, tending towards drought or deluge, with little stable or moderate weather. Storms are predicted to be bigger. Droughts deeper. Floods more frequent. Some historically wet places will become dry. Some historically dry places may become wet. Ocean currents that have been stable for centuries may change course. Glaciers and ice caps will melt. Ocean levels will rise.

If the Gulf Stream ceases to flow (as some models have predicted), Europe will enter a deep freeze. Global warming will seem like The Big Freeze to folks there, if that occurs. This is GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE we're talking about, not local weather change.

Ice core samples from Greenland and other deep ice masses show that climate change, when it comes, is usually rapid. It's called "punctuated equilibrium": long periods of stability, interspersed with shot periods of rapid change.

Glaciers worldwide, as well as the polar ice caps, are melting. Now. Ice in the Arctic is at historic lows for this time of year...once again. The articles I've seen about this particular change tend to focus on the positive: better shipping channels to move goods around the world. The fabled "Northwest Passage" becoming reality. The polar bears, though, aren't having such a good time of it.

Do I have a crystal ball to predict the future? No. I just have probability based on trends from the past...and the current best understanding of about 95% of the scientific community. Those trends and that understanding tell me that we're performing a great big experiment on the only home we have...because it's too hard to voluntarily change our way of life.

So we'll wait until the Earth forces us to change it. And hope that we like what happens next.

A Mystery That's Likely to Remain Unsolved

For about a week, we had a distinctive mini-volcano in the garden by our front steps. It was roughly 1" tall, with a hole the diameter of a pencil in the middle of it, and somewhat sheltered by a seedling aster. Every time I walked by, I glanced at it, checking inside the hole for any sign of activity.

And one morning, on my way back from getting the paper, I was rewarded by seeing the tunnel blocked by the large head of an insect. As soon as it saw me, it backed down the tunnel, so I grabbed my camera and waited a few feet away.

Pretty soon I was rewarded by the insect emerging from its tunnel. I managed to capture its head, but by the time I tried to get a second shot of the entire insect as it emerged, it had flown rapidly away. I did not get enough of a look at it to know whether it was a bee or a wasp, or even what the body color was.


I went out several times during the day and waited, trying to see my mystery volcano builder again, but she eluded me completely.

While I was waiting, though, the Carolina wrens who've been nesting on the breezeway decided that I was intruding intolerably on their territory. You haven't truly been read a riot act until you've had a Carolina wren upset with you!

One of the parent wrens became particularly bold, moving from the Bradford pear in the garden to behind the pots on the breezeway to the top of wicker chair just 10' away from me. I couldn't resist capturing the scolding that I was getting on camera.


(As a side note: In capturing this bird on camera, I have to ask if anyone else thinks its beak is somewhat malformed? It seems too long to me, especially the lower mandible.)

Two days later, the breezeway and the garden were both quieter. The wrens appeared to have fledged their young, and the volcano hole had been carefully plugged, reducing the size of the exterior cone significantly. After the rain 2 nights ago, you can't even tell there was ever a mini-volcano there.

One of these days, I'm going to take down the clay wren nest to see if the babies actually made it. One evening about a week before this incident, I had found 2 half-feathered baby wrens, obviously still too young to be out of the nest, on the breezeway floor. It was one of those desperately hot days and I figured the babies had tried to get some cooler air at the entrance to the nest and they'd fallen out. I got a ladder, put them back into the nest, and hoped for the best. Since the parents continued to defend the breezeway for over a week and I did not find any baby wren bodies, I have great hopes that at least one of them survived to fledge at the proper time.

So I will probably get an answer to the wren question, but the identity of the volcano-building bee/wasp is likely to remain a mystery. I plan to post the photo on BugGuide, but with just the somewhat blurry photo of the insect's face, I have little hope that anyone will be able to help me. If I do get an answer, I'll be sure to share it!

Twelve-Spotted Skimmer Redux

A week or so ago, a female twelve-spotted skimmer (dragonfly) posed for a picture one morning while I was doing a walkabout. It took me a while to identify her because most of the photos I found were of male twelve-spotted skimmers and, in this species, there's a pretty significance difference between the two.

Yeah, yeah, I know.... There's a pretty big difference between males and females in general. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" "It takes a woman, all powdered and pink, to joyously clean out the drain in the sink." But dragonflies don't seem to have the trouble connecting that we humans do...

...even when their males and females look rather dissimilar. To refresh your memory, here is a female, again posing nicely for me.


Note her classy yellow racing stripe along the abdomen, the diagonal yellow beauty stripes along the sides of her thorax, the 12 crisp, dark brown spots evenly spaced out along her wings.

So who's this guy, "all powdered and blue"? It's the male twelve-spotted skimmer. Same diagonal yellow thorax stripes, same 12 crisp, dark brown wing spots, but now the abdomen is powdery blue and there are 8 matching bluish-white, rather cloudy spots added to the wings.


These were 2 of the 5 or more twelve-spotted skimmers I saw Wednesday morning (again, before the rain) at the back edge of the back 5, hunting around the mulberry tree. I can only hope that they eat grasshoppers!

Where these guys are finding water to emerge from is beyond me, but I'm glad that they are. I'm trying out different rain dances to encourage enough rain so that they have places to lay their eggs this year, too. A summer like this makes me keenly aware of the fragility of life: a month, maybe two, to find your partner, mate, and lay your eggs (in water) before you die. And if there's no water? You die anyway...and the next generation dies with you. It does us good to remember that farmers and ranchers aren't the only ones that this drought is spectacularly hard on.

In the Eye of the Beholder....

On Wednesday morning, I took this quick snapshot of an ornate box turtle I saw in the cedar grove. The storms didn't come until that night, so it was still desperately dry. When conditions are that difficult, I do my best not to disturb my local land-mates any more than I have to, so I didn't pick this guy up or move in too close...and, at the time I took the photo, I couldn't tell whether this was a male or female, except that the red flush on the front leg made me strongly suspect that it was a male.


Imagine my delight when I downloaded the photos and saw this gorgeous red eye staring up at me! Definitely a male. He looks pretty fearsome, doesn't he?!

On Monday morning, I'd snapped a quick pair of photos of a different ornate box turtle out under the mulberry tree in the Back 5. They are not the best shots, but I was following my "don't disturb more than necessary" philosophy that day, too. I think this is a female, although I can't tell for sure since her head is pretty well hidden. What really struck me, though, was how differently the camera saw her shell patterns in the light of the sun and in the light of a passing shadow. I hadn't realized before how truly concealing the ornate box turtles' shell patterns are in sunlit grass. (The turtle didn't move at all between the two photos; only the lighting changed.)


The other fun realization these photographs have given me is that I can simply take pictures of each ornate box turtle I see on my perambulations and have a pretty good idea, eventually, of how many different individuals are living on our property. The shell patterns are distinctly and uniquely individual - so I won't even need to number them by crudely carving or painting in fingernail polish on their shells, as I've seen done in the past. Photography is great...and digital photography is even better!

Discovering a "New" Tree Species

I have lived in Kansas, off and on, for many years. I know there is a wide variety of exotic species of trees that have been brought in for landscaping; some of those species have escaped into the wild where they might throw me for a loop. But I truly thought that I basically knew most of the native tree species...or at least knew OF them.

So I was amazed a year or so ago when I realized that there was a species of hackberry that grew in Kansas that I was simply unaware of. This doubly surprised me when I realized that I had seen this tree over and over and over again, but just hadn't recognized it as different from the normal hackberry of the area, Celtis occidentalis. I was triply surprised to realize that this species was growing on our little 10 acres, along with its relatives, hackberry and sugarberry (Celtis laevigata).

This "new discovery" of mine is the dwarf hackberry, Celtis tenuifolia. Here is a photo of one of the largest and most luxurious ones on our property, taken on June 22, before the worst of the heat and drought had taken hold. It doesn't look much different than this now.

I often see examples of this species in fence rows, where birds have kindly deposited the seeds along with a quick burst of fertilizer. I'd always assumed the specimens I was seeing were regular hackberries that were simply stunted because of where they happened to be growing.

Somehow I've overlooked the descriptions of this species in guidebooks, simply because I've never heard of it and therefore didn't expect to find it. It's certainly NOT an imposing giant of a tree, or a graceful form of a tree, or a conspicuously fruiting tree, or even a beautifully flowering tree. It's a gnarled, stunted, half-dead-looking survivor of a tree - it often looks like it should have given up a hundred times over but has held on despite everything the Plains' climate can throw at it.


There is nothing luxurious about this tree at all. It grows very slowly, almost seeming not to grow at all from year to year. Its leaves look chronically dusty, moth-eaten and malnourished. Its twigs and branches are short and look knotted or contorted. But the dwarf hackberry survives and, in its own way, it thrives. As it does, it provides food and shelter for the birds...and the occasional moment of humility to an amateur naturalist, who's learning how little she really knows as she learns more and more each day.

The Same...But Different

Another walkabout with the boys this morning. Again the camera came with us. Again it's hot and dry and sunny today. We walked the same trail. Nothing seems to have changed from yesterday. And we saw lots of the same things....but it's as if different animals chose to let me get close to them today.

This time as we started out, I noticed the "A is for Abbott" logo that had formed itself in the draw sometime in the last couple of weeks. (Actually I noticed it yesterday, but ignored it because I was too busy looking at other things.) To my knowledge, this arrangement of windfall happened spontaneously, but it makes me smile when I pass by it.

About halfway around the Back 5, I saw this dragonfly perched on a bare branch. I stopped and took a photo from about 10' away, then inched forward and took another, inched forward again and took another.... By the time I was done, she had let me get about 4' away from her without flying. When she did finally spook, she came back almost immediately and let me take a couple more shots. Before I could try to go even closer, though, the dogs came over to see what I was doing. Needless to say, hanging around to let 2 German shepherds investigate her wasn't high on her priority list for the day.

I've identified my patient poser: she's a female 12-spotted skimmer, Libellula pulchella. The name, not surprisingly, comes from the 12 brown spots on the wings. Males, interestingly, have a series of cloudy white spots in between the brown spots that both sexes share and their abdomen gets covered with a waxy white coloration as they age. They almost look like a different dragonfly.


The skimmer was perched on a bare branch that is probably her hunting post. I don't know if dragonflies take grasshoppers but I'm hopeful, because close by her stakeout is a mulberry tree that has provided a great deal of fruit for birds and other critters this summer. Now, however, the grasshoppers have stripped the tree almost clean, even of leaves.

As I walked this morning, I ended up taking pictures of plants that grasshoppers had basically stripped but that I hadn't noticed before: mulberry, compass plant, Jerusalem artichokes, peony, cottonwood saplings...even the cattails were loaded with, and being eaten by, grasshoppers! It's impressive, actually. I showed a picture of the top of an 8' tall althea yesterday; today I chose to show a compass plant leaf. I actually took a photo of this same plant yesterday, from a bit farther away, and I could swear that the grasshoppers have visibly eaten away at it in less than 24 hours. Compass plant leaves are very rough and leathery - about as appetizing as eating prickly cardboard, I'd think - so it's surprising to see them enjoyed by grasshoppers this thoroughly.

As I got ready to go back inside, I stopped in the front yard to move a hose. Looking at a nearby green ash, I noticed a green cicada (Tibicen superbus) on the trunk, so I stepped under the canopy to photograph it. As I did with the dragonfly, I started from a fair distance away and moved in slowly. Again, my subject was mesmerized by my slow approach and posed patiently. With the "black shades" across the face between the eyes, this species reminds me of Geordie on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

On one of my last shots of the cicada, a velvet ant busily inserted herself into the picture before I noticed. She didn't pause, but scurried up the trunk, searching the tree for ??? She moved fast and it was hard to focus on her, but I watched her for several minutes. She walked up the trunk to the first branch, walked briskly out along the upper surface for the entire length of that branch, didn't find what she was looking for, came back to a junction in the branch, checked out out the fork not taken, still wasn't happy, came back to the trunk, chose the next branch, and kept going. I got sidetracked taking another photo or two and lost her in the canopy before too long, so I never did see if her search was successful or not.

Velvet ants are actually wingless female wasps and they will sting viciously if handled, despite their warm, fuzzy appearance. The males are winged, generally less hairy than their mates, and look like typical wasps. Apparently most velvet ants parasitize other wasps, including mud daubers, so maybe this female was looking for a wasp to paralyze and bring back to her nest. A couple years ago I noticed a velvet ant (different species) constructing a burrow in bare dirt in my garden, so I assume they provision their young with paralyzed prey in underground cells like the cicada killers do.

Each time I venture beyond the air conditioning these days, I'm beginning to feel pulled to take my camera outside with me. Who knows what I'll see next!

Morning Walkabout

The boys and I went on an early morning walkabout today and, despite the drought, I decided to take my camera along. There wasn't anything particularly unusual or earth-shattering, but I still managed to document a bit of what we experienced....


It's been warm enough that I can't count on getting good bug shots either in the early morning or the late evening. However, shortly after we set out, this bush cicada posed prettily for me. Bush cicadas are among the largest of the cicada species in Kansas and prefer open country to trees. Most cicadas in this group are considered annual, but each individual actually lives for 2-3 years below ground as a nymph before emerging and molting into the adult, winged form.


Without a blind (and with 2 large, rambunctious German shepherds frolicking around me), it's hard to get close to birds on my walks, but I managed to get a shot this morning where you can at least identify this lark sparrow...if you squint and look hard enough! This bird is one of a family of lark sparrows raised in our back 5 acres this spring. In the spring, the parents stayed behind while the rest of the migration wave moved on. Eventually we saw the fledglings learning to fly and now the little family group flies confidently between our back acreage and the horse pasture next door.

Moving around to the front yard, this is what the combination of heat, drought and grasshoppers have done to my althea (Rose-of-Sharon) along the driveway. They are officially sticks, with grasshoppers adorning their branches instead of leaves. If you look closely, you can even see areas where the grasshoppers have begun stripping away the bark. Altheas are tough plants, so I'm trusting that these shrubs will survive even this assault, but if the drought goes on a lot longer, I may get proven wrong.


Passing by my pecan tree, I caught this grasshopper pair in an amorous moment - highlighting EXACTLY why I'm letting the black blister beetles go to town on my tomato plants this year.


In fact, I'm counting on this fat female to lay a bunch of eggs and take out some of the progeny of that romantic couple!

Even in the heat and drought, life goes on.

Fighting the Odds

The courtyard lawn looked rough last fall - full of weeds, patchy, generally yucky. So Greg just decided to nuke it all and start fresh this year.

With our trip to England and Norway in September, we missed our opportunity to plant fescue last fall.

Between the weather and my trip to San Antonio this spring, we missed our opportunity to plant fescue this spring.

So when I saw the sale on Prestige buffalo grass at High Country Gardens this June, I decided that I ought to take advantage of it. Buffalo grass has to be established in the heat of the summer. Once established, it requires almost no watering or mowing. It's native here. This is a greener-than-usual strain of it. And it was on sale. It seemed like all the signals were saying "Go for it!" So I did.

And the grass came. All 27 flats of 70 plugs apiece came. Those of you who are friends on Facebook suffered through our planting of it (as far as it went). Planting entailed bending over (or kneeling, or sitting on my butt on the ground) in full sun, digging a hole, filling it with water, loosening up the roots of the plug, planting it, watering it again, and repeating....900+ times. That means we got about half of the plugs put in before we gave up and just started trying to keep it all alive.

Full summer is one thing. THIS summer is something else. But we're slowly seeing some progress. After 3 weeks now, the grass plugs we planted seem to have taken hold. They are beginning to grow and send out a few runners. They stay healthy green longer and require watering less often. I know there are a few plugs on the periphery that we'll have to replace, but the majority look like they're going to make it. It's our main success story in the garden for the summer. It may not be much - but I'll take it!

Quiet Elegance with 6 Legs

If ever a moth could be considered classy, I have to admit that this guy would be in the running. He (she?) is an Achemon Sphinx (Eumorpha achemon) that I discovered hiding in my Ficus on the front porch the other day. Phlox are among the flowers they prefer for nectaring; so I assume it had been sampling mine and got tired enough to hole up for the day.

Look at the cool way the color shading on the rear margin of the front wing makes it look curled up, like a dried up leaf. (That seems pretty appropriate for this summer!) The hind wings have a great deal of pink on them, but I didn't want to disturb this one to try to get it to strut its stuff for the camera.

Before you get too irritated - I, too, had to look this moth up to identify it. I learned (not surprisingly) that Achemon sphinx is in the same family as the tomato hornworm, but that the larva of this moth feeds on Virginia creeper, grape, and other closely related vines, rather than on tomatoes. It is relatively rare to see the caterpillar, but apparently it looks very much like a typical hornworm, except that it loses its horn as it matures and develops a big eye spot on its hind end instead.

Now that I know they should be there, I'm going to be on the lookout for the caterpillars on the grape vines and Virginia creeper around the yard. I'd like to get a look at that eyespot in person! Meanwhile, I've learned about another fellow Earthling sharing our space. That's always a good thing.

Summer Time...But the Living Ain't Easy

This is truly a long, hot summer. Today was the second time we've reached 111 in the last few weeks. We haven't had a really good rain in months. In fact, we feel lucky if we get enough rain to wash the dust off the leaves. The cracks in the soil are inches wide and gaping. Even my native perennials and grasses are struggling and I've resorted to deep watering a few to nurse them through the summer.


Farther away from the house, the prairie we're trying to restore is struggling too. It greened up nicely after the burn this spring and looked good until about a month ago, but now it's parched. The grasses should be almost up to the dogs' backs, but they are barely ankle height. The deer skull was almost completely hidden by vegetation in mid June; now it's almost as fully exposed as it was after the burn.

I saw a piece on TV a week or two ago asking for suggestions on how to visually show heat. It's hard. A picture of someone sweating? ...or of a dog panting? ...of a plant wilting? Somehow none of them can begin to convey the angst of the sapping heat and drought that has got us in its grip.

Grasshoppers seem to be doing phenomenally well, though, at least in my yard. And blister beetles. I've decided to nurse my tomato plants along just enough to keep the adult blister beetles fed, hoping that they'll lay lots of eggs and produce lots of baby blister beetles to eat all the gazillion grasshopper eggs we're going to have. (Every blister beetle eats about 21-27 grasshopper eggs as it grows to maturity. Doesn't that sound wonderful?!) With this heat, there's no way I'm going to get any tomatoes anyway, so at least the plants are providing us with some benefit!


The prairie is showing its severe side. I think often of what this sort of weather must have been like for the poor pioneers trying to keep themselves fed and watered without any of our modern conveniences. I feel grateful for our well and for our air conditioning every day. I know that this, too, shall pass, but some days I get a little shaky, wondering what would happen if it didn't...

Discoveries after the Burn

It's been a good day - I've discovered a few things and, most importantly, learned something new.

I've been walking the burned area almost every day since we burned it, just open to whatever I might see. Here's what it looked like this morning....


You can see how quickly the grasses are coming up. It's only been 8 days since we burned and there was absolutely no green visible after the burn. You can also see last summer's path meandering through the burned area.

I mentioned a couple days ago that within a few days I was also able to see our paths from 2 summers ago, as well as the network of prairie vole trails. Here's a photo, taken while standing in the fire break, of last year's path (going off to the left from the firebreak) intercepted by the prior summer's path coming in from the right. If you look closely, you can see a fair number of prairie vole trails as well.


In the next photo, you can see a network of prairie vole trails and a mound that's greener than the surrounding area. That mound is the prairie vole colony itself. I believe that the mound is greener than the surrounding area because of extra nutrients brought up from the subsoil as the voles excavate their tunnels. Prairie vole "fertilization" in the area may play a role as well. Beyond the mound is another trace of our path from 2 summers ago.


As I walked our path a couple days ago, I found this prickly pear cactus immediately adjacent to the mowed area...yet I hadn't had a clue it was there until after the burn! That doesn't say good things about my observation skills, I guess, especially since I knew there was a prickly pear somewhere in the area - I'd seen it after our original burn.




Most interestingly, near two of the coyote digs I found wasp nest combs that can only be from yellowjacket colonies. The photo to the left shows a close-up of one of the charred combs; the one below shows the same comb in the bottom left corner and the colony it presumably was dug out of in the top right corner. So now I'm questioning whether the coyotes were digging for voles...or whether they were digging for yellowjacket nests. It's an interesting mystery to ponder (and do a bit of internet research on).



As I said, it's been an interesting and successful day already!

Four days after the burn. 1/10" rain on the evening of the second day.

Becker, Blue and I just got back from our morning walk. Now that some of the ash overlay has blown off or been watered in, I can see many more vole trails. I can even see our mowed paths from two years ago! It's almost a bit frightening how long and how easily the prairie remembers our influence....

I'm already seeing a few spikes of green grass pushing up. While it stirs my winter-tired, spring-hungry heart to see them, I'm trying to keep my joy within bounds - it's probably brome, a cool season, non-native grass, that I'm seeing!

The burn seems to have attracted two species of birds to it, in particular. I saw 5 or 6 flickers foraging, as well as several killdeer. Found a couple flicker breast feathers on the ground, too. I'm not sure what that was all about, as I saw no signs of a body nearby. Maybe a squabble over some particularly tasty tidbit two birds had found at the same time.

Mama bluebird had a beak-full of dried grasses, perched in the top of an osage orange, so they've found some sort of nesting site already. Which reminds me that I need to get the new nesting boxes up.

On a related note, as I walked through the draw with the boys, I saw both hawks sitting side by side in the big cottonwood in our neighbor's pasture. One is much spookier than the other and flew off almost as soon as I saw them, but the other stayed put through our entire walk. I think that may be the female, as it seems a little larger than the other one. I hope so. Any day now, I hope to see her sitting solidly in the nest, keeping eggs warm!

After the Burn is Over, After the Flames are Gone....

(You can sing the title to the tune of "After the Dance Is Over, After the Music's Done....")

Sunday, the day after we did the burn in the back 5 acres, I took The Boys for a walk and looked it over a little more closely. It's always fun to see what's revealed after a fire....


For the past week or so, there's been an elusive deer skull taunting the dogs as we walked out back. I first saw it in the neighbor's field when Becker and Blue just HAD to go over there to inspect it. There was a companion leg associated with it, which was almost more fascinating to the dogs than the skull. Perhaps that because the skull was covered with soil and looked like it had been partially buried. Both looked pretty "ripe", like they'd been aged quite thoroughly.

The next day when we walked, the skull and leg were magically in OUR field, about 50' from where they'd been lying the day before. There they stayed for 2 more days, then magically they moved again. This time the skull went south and the leg went east, instead of staying together. My dogs faithfully found them each time they moved. (I'm attributing this "magic movement" to coyotes, of course.) I don't mind if my local coyotes want to munch on decayed deer flesh, but I'm really not too keen on my dogs doing so; therefore, this daily deer skull hunt had really begun to get on my nerves.

After the burn, the deer skull stood out boldly. The leg was much less visible. I'm curious to see what happens to them now that they've been "purified" by fire, so I'm continuing to just let them be.


Another sight that I always look forward to seeing after a fire are the prairie vole colonies and their associated runways.


I don't know why these fascinate me so much - maybe because it reminds me of playing with Matchbox cars during childhood! The little roads run from vole town to vole town and I can just imagine the self important little beasts scurrying back and forth, visiting their neighbors, gossiping about the good vegetation finds they've made recently.

This winter I've noticed fairly large holes turning up occasionally in the back 5. A couple have been as big as 18" X 12" and up to 12" deep.


At first I thought that some animal must be beginning to dig itself a burrow, but they never got deepened after the first time I saw them. Finally I decided it was coyotes (again), digging out the prairie vole colonies for a late night snack.

Boy, do those scars show up boldly against the burn. (The cell phone in the hole is to give you a sense of scale.)


Greg wants to fill in the coyote digs because he (correctly) notes that they will be real ankle-turners otherwise. While I know he's right, there's the curious part of me that wants to watch them and see how they change over the upcoming months and years. What's going to grow on the mounds of soil thrown up? Will the holes fill back in by themselves? Will they become used by some other animal in some other way? (Maybe I'll leave just one or two...and flag them, so we don't injure ourselves....)

Do I get upset about all of these disruptions to my slowly thickening grasses and wildflowers? Heck, no. The prairie vole colonies bring water and air down into the soil...and probably a fair amount of vegetation and fertilizer too. Other animals, from insects to other mammals to snakes, will utilize the vole tunnels for shelter. The coyote digs provide a small area of open soil for seeds to colonize, where new plants can gain a foothold. It's all part of the natural prairie cycle, and I love seeing it play itself out in my big back yard.

Burn, Baby, Burn!

Maintaining or restoring a prairie requires burning it periodically. Prairies evolved with fire, and nothing refreshes and nourishes a prairie like the occasional burn.

That said, it's been 3 years since we burned the back 5 acres, so we knew that it would be a good thing to burn at least part of it this spring. The first time we burned it, we burned the entire thing, but this time we wanted to leave part of it unburned to make sure that we left some of the insect life undisturbed. Prairies are mosaics of habitat; burning different areas during different years helps increase the diversity of plant and animal life within any given acreage.

Last time we burned, we didn't get the burn accomplished until early April. Some of the early wildflowers were up and blooming by that time, so the burn set them back for the year. In general, the later you burn in the spring, the more you will encourage the (warm season) grasses at the expense of wildflowers. Conversely, the earlier you burn, the more you will encourage wildflower growth. This time, I wanted to give the wildflowers the best start that I could, so we decided to burn as early as possible. That turned out to be yesterday.

Watching the weather obsessively all week, Saturday morning looked very promising for several reasons. The winds were supposed to average about 6 mph all day, with a little increase to 9 mph around noon. (Around here, for safety reasons, the powers-that-be require you to burn when the winds are between 5 and 15 mph - a potentially difficult window to hit in the perennially windy prairies.) The skies were due to be clear...and Greg would be home to lead the burn crew.

I was also able to find several Master Gardener friends willing to help us out: Sid, Ron, and Linda. Sid has burned his family land many times; Ron and Linda were new to the process but excited to learn about it, as they are restoring tall grasses to their property as well.

Greg and I prepared ahead of time. Greg had mowed the firebreaks several weeks ago. Early yesterday morning, we placed buckets of water with burlap sacks and towels scattered around the burn site, plus took out the rakes and flat shovels that we had gathered. Sid brought a sprayer for water, which we filled up and took with us, along with a couple other sprayers of our own. I highly recommend the sprayers!


By the time we had all gathered at 9 a.m., had a little caffeine and sugar fix from coffee and donuts, and then walked out to the back 5, the wind was steadily blowing at 11 mph with occasional gusts to 13 mph. Although the wind was pushing the upper limits of safety, the direction was perfect for this plot of ground, so we went ahead and started the burn. The photo above is of the section we chose to burn, right before we set the initial (backburn) fire.

To keep the fire under control, we set the backfire and slowly expanded it. (A backfire, for those who aren't familiar with burning, is a fire set at the edge of the burn parcel which is farthest from the direction the wind is blowing out of. This means that the fire has to burn against the wind to move, keeping it much slower and smaller than if it were moving with the wind. As the backfire burns, it creates a wider and wider firebreak along that edge.) With the wind shifting between the north, northeast and full east, we were very careful to backburn a large area before beginning to set the faster, scarier head fires that travel with the wind.


It was a challenge. I was SO glad that we had all 5 of us working, as the gusts were enough to push the fire into the closely mowed windbreaks and we had to stop those creeping flames before they crossed over into non-target areas. Once we got the backburn accomplished, though, it became much easier and faster. The second photo, above, shows the backfire, moving slowly against the wind. If you look really closely, you can see Sid to the left of the right-hand redcedar, keeping an eye on that edge of the burn. Overall, the burn took about 2 1/2 hours - slow, but a good, clean burn that did not cross the mowed firebreaks to make us test our backup firebreaks (the wheat field to the west and the overgrazed pasture to the south).


Here are 4 of the 5 prairie fire folks: Linda, Ron, Sid and Greg. We were tired and sooty but satisfied, with the grassland burned safely and well.

We're due to get rain tonight, then temperatures are predicted to be up into the 70's by the end of the week. I'm looking forward to a rapidly greening grassland and the first real chance to see if any of the overseeding that I've been doing is producing increased plant diversity.

Thanks again to Sid, Ron and Linda!!!

Etch-a-Sketch in Snow

Sometimes it's hard to see grasses - even prairie grasses - as particularly important to wildlife. About 2 weeks ago, though, we got 9" of snow. I didn't get outside until a day or two later, but meanwhile the weather had stayed quite cold, preserving the telltale white blanket nicely.

I saw all kinds of tracks as I walked: coyote tracks, pheasant tracks, cat tracks, dog tracks, rabbit tracks. The photo above is of "tweety bird" tracks - sparrows? cardinals? goldfinch? - and it shows how carefully the bird(s) were hunting around the clumps of grass sticking up through the snow. If you look carefully, you can even see the wingprints of a bird as it was taking off, in the foreground, just left of center. The tracks create a record that even I, a rank novice at reading tracks, could understand. Sort of an Etch-a-Sketch in snow!

Exploring the Aftermath of the Storm

Pristine snow just doesn't seem to happen in our yard. Two German shepherds take that on as their special project.

After two days of short or nonexistent walks, Becker and Blue were raring to go this morning. So I bundled up - even digging out a wool scarf to try to protect my face a bit - and off we went. I plodded. Becker alertly trotted. Blue galloped and twirled and raced and tossed his muzzle in the snow and begged Becker to play and galloped and twirled some more.

I think Blue would have been happy to stay out there all day.

In the Cedar Grove, it was interesting to see how each tuft of grass had created its own snowdrift, leaving the field looking rather like a collection of sand dunes seen from the sky.

Shortly after we entered the Back 5, I started to noticed the arcs in the snow, inscribed by the grasses and other plants as the wind moved them ceaselessly back and forth. There were long, gentle arcs from the tall grasses; short, fine arcs from the short grasses; complex parallel arcs from forbs; and occasionally there were combinations of all of the above.

Seeds remaining on the sideoats grama and other short grasses stood out boldly against the white.

I flushed a meadowlark sheltering in a bunch of grass. It was cold enough that he waited until I was about 5' away before he lost his nerve. If I'd known he was there, I wouldn't have disturbed him. The dogs flushed two more as we walked, and all of them let us get much closer than they normally would have.

Along the far edge of the Back 5, the western most point of our property, the drifts were deep enough that I couldn't see our mowed path anymore. I shortcut through the unmowed grasses to avoid them, the snow coming up midcalf. The drifts were easily 2-3' deep. According to the gauge on our back deck, we only received 3" of snow, but those grasses managed to catch the snow blowing off the wheat field to our west. The farmer's loss is my land's gain.

A flock of snow geese flew overhead - the first I've seen this year.

And watching the 3rd meadowlark, after the dogs had flushed it from its resting place, I managed to give myself a brief case of snow blindness. I guess that's what you'd call it. For a while I saw orange streaks across my vision...that faded to peach...and eventually to yellow. Finally I didn't notice them at all. By then I was back inside the house, immensely thankful for modern technology and the gentle warmth of central heating.