Spring flowers and tree leaves came in slowly this year – I think because of the cool weather.

Now that summer temperatures are here, everything is moving faster – bugs, butterflies and flowers.

Blue-eyed Grass on the prairie points

Rue Anemone in the savannas and the woods

Wood Anemones on Maple Ridge

Marsh Marigolds and Red Osier stems

Hawthorn

Black Cherry

Hidden Oaks Point had more Hoary Puccoon blooming than we’ve ever seen.

More Hoary Puccoon on the point

This is on a north facing slope along the trail above the cabin.  Ten years ago I collected some Dutchman’s Breeches seed pods from a woods down the road from us, threw them down on this cool shady hillside, and forgot about them.  We walked by last week, and found many plants, most of them blooming!

Some animal made a home here – under and around the roots of a tree.  The Dutchman’s Breeches were growing and blooming all around the holes.

More of the Dutchman’s Breeches

This is another species that grows nearby, but I’ve never found it growing here naturally – Silky Prairie Clover.  I planted some seeds a few years ago, and yesterday we found it growing on the sandy part of the Knife Edge Point.

Dwarf Raspberry – in the shady woods on Maple Ridge

Lupines almost in bloom – I like the geometric shapes they make at this stage.

Lupine in full bloom

Now our biggest patch of Lupine is full of Blister Beetles so the flowers are almost gone.  These beetles emerge every year – they’re native – and eat first the Lupine flowers and seeds, and when those are finished, they move on to White Wild Indigo.  They never get quite all of the flowers – isolated clumps usually escape – and it doesn’t hurt the plants, it just means we don’t get many seeds.  Larvae of these beetles are parasites in nests of sweat bees.

Hobomok Skipper on Lupine

Mountain Blue-eyed Grass

Harebell

Balsam Ragwort

Canada Anemone

Wild Geranium

Indian Paintbrush

Butterflies are starting to congregate on our driveway again – one Gorgone Checkerspot with Northern Crescents.

Viceroy

Northern Cloudywing

Arctic Skipper

We started seeing Monarchs about a week ago – May 24.

I’ve been seeing some of the big moths at my lights…

Polyphemus

Modest Sphinx showing off its rosy underwings

And here are some small day-flying moths…

Eight-spotted Forester

Another view of the Eight-spotted Forester showing its fuzzy orange leggings.

Mournful Thyris – a mated pair.

We’re having fun taking bird photos.

Indigo Bunting

Northern Waterthrush

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Solitary Sandpiper

Yellow Warbler

A very wet Field Sparrow

Common Yellowthroat

Chestnut-sided Warbler

Here’s a bunch of tiny, newly hatched spiders – moving very fast…

and a gorgeous Eastern Milk Snake crossing our driveway

This is an Autumn Olive bush in bloom – only the second one I’ve found here, and the first time I’ve seen one blooming.  It’s pretty but very invasive, so I’ve cut and treated it so it won’t come back.

The Hidden Oaks Prairie bench – a good place to watch spring change to summer.

This was the way the month started.

Poor bluebirds – hard to get to their front door.

But they survived the cold snap, and now most of the nest boxes are occupied.

The crocuses bloomed near the old farmhouse.  I often miss them because they bloom so early – this photo was taken on March 31.

Folks around here call Pasqueflowers, crocuses.  It’s easy to see the similarities – similar blooming times, color, and flower shape – even though they’re not closely related.  Garden crocuses are in the Iris family, and were originally from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.   Pasqueflowers are in the Buttercup family.  The ones we have here are native to North America, but there’s a European Pasqueflower species that’s often planted in gardens.

We’ve found 4 clumps of Pasqueflower blooms this year.  This one had the most flowers.

A single Pasqueflower

The first Garter Snake of the year – on April 5.

Migrating birds are arriving – more every day.

Yellow-rumped Warbler bathing in the stream in the Glen

Swamp Sparrow – they prefer hunting for insects in the stream.

A nuthatch (year around resident) building a nest.

The beavers have been busy in the creek – upstream from our driveway.  This is a dam that’s been here for several years – it had a huge lake behind it last year, but this year the lake level is much lower.

A view of the lake looking downstream.  I think the big pile of sticks must be their food supply.

Here’s their newest dam – upstream from the original lake.  It’s formed a big new lake, with lots of small side streams feeding down into the creek.  We had a very wet walk!

Another view of the creek between the big dams showing a small dam.  We found the two large dams, and 3 smaller dams below the new lake.

We found a small island made of grass with one Marsh Marigold.

Sedge meadow – another part of the wetland with sedges (probably Carex stricta) just poking up out of their mounds of dead leaves.

Walking in the sedge meadows is an adventure.  The sedge mounds get taller every year, and the spaces between them are wet and muddy – sometimes with Marsh Marigolds.

Marsh Marigolds

I haven’t found Dutchman’s Breeches growing here naturally, but they do grow nearby.  I planted some here a few years ago on a cool, shady hillside, and they’re thriving.

Hoary Puccoon on a bluff prairie

An unusual Serviceberry – I’m not sure which species.

Wild Plums have a wonderful fragrance.  We get enveloped by clouds of scent as we take our walks.

Prairie Smoke

Bloodroot – we had a patch growing near the driveway that we thought had been killed by the spraying the road crew did last year, but some of the plants survived and even bloomed.

Pussytoes

Cuckoo Bee on Pussytoes blossom

Northern White Violet – a very early blooming species that’s common on many of our wooded hillsides

Prairie Blue-eyed Grass

Sweetgrass – one of the earliest blooming grasses

Devil’s Urn – a springtime fungus

American Lady – searching for Pussytoes to lay her eggs

Ruffed Grouse

Rue Anemone

Bird’s Foot Violet

Wood Anemone

A Red-headed Woodpecker has been visiting our feeders!  It’s reluctant to have its picture taken, so this is the only photo we have so far.    We’re hoping it will stay around.

We’re in the middle of a ‘discussion’ with the beavers about a new dam they’d like to build.  Their preferred spot is across the upstream entrance to the culvert that goes under our driveway.

We know from experience that a dam there will eventually wash out our driveway.  (We’ve looked into ‘beaver deceivers’ and other tricks, but none of them will work here.)  So every night the beavers build, and every day we pull the sticks out and float them downstream to a spot where they’ve had a dam in the past.    We were hoping they’d get the hint….

We’d been doing that for about a week when we discovered that the beavers have just been retrieving the same sticks from the pile we’ve been making, and dragging them up to build above the culvert again.  They’ve made a path along the edge of the creek to get around the rapids.

Here’s the place where they get back in the creek to float the sticks through the culvert to their dam.

It’s become an endless loop – keeping us all very busy.  Yesterday we took our stick pile apart and pulled it farther downstream.  So far they haven’t rebuilt – we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

Spring leaf colors

More springtime leaves

Willow Bend

Pine Point Bluff

At the beginning of the month, when it seemed like spring had come, we had cold nights, but warm days and a lot of melting snow.

On some days we got a little light spring snow

There were lots of misty mornings

Center Valley from Indian Grass Point – March 6 – only a little snow left on north-facing Maple Ridge

The deer were enjoying it – these two were resting in one of our trails

They were reluctant to leave but eventually we got too close.

On one of the warmest days we saw our first moth of the year – The Infant – on March 9.

Another Infant showing off its bright orange hind wings

Mourning Cloak a few days later – a butterfly that overwinters as an adult

Then….snow…

We woke up to 20 inches, and it was still snowing.

The final total was about 21 inches of heavy wet snow.

The birds were hungry – a big flock of Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds sat in the trees near the house, and ate food the other birds dropped under the feeders.

We were snowbound for a few days, and even when Mike got out to the road, getting through the pile the plows had made was a big project.

Blooming willows and Red Osier Dogwood along the creek

Finally the last of the snow melted away.

In spite of all the weather disruptions, migrating birds have been arriving…..

I worried about the bluebirds, but they survived that cold week and now they’re calling everywhere.

Another bluebird.

In the last few days we’ve seen Brown Creepers

and Eastern Phoebes.

The first Pasqueflower – March 25

And another on March 30

American Hazelnut – male and female blossoms.  The male blossoms are in a catkin; the females are the tiny red styles at the tips of the buds.  The female blossoms are so tiny that I often miss seeing them.

Scarlet Cup Fungus

An odd fungus that I’ve never seen before – Dead Man’s Fingers.  It grows on decaying wood.

Aspen catkins

Pat’s Prairie

The snow melts first on hilltops and south facing hillsides, and last in the narrow parts of the valleys and north facing slopes.

Knife Edge Point

Looking south from Hidden Oaks Point

It’s a treat to be able to walk up to the tops of the hills – we can’t do that when the snow is deep.

The snow stayed on Buffalo Ridge longer than we expected.

As the snow melts it exposes tunnels that were made by small mammals traveling under the snow.

A shed antler

This is one of several kinds of galls found on goldenrod.  They’re sometimes called Apple Galls or Ball Galls because of their shape.   They’re easy to spot in winter.  The insect that triggers the plant to make this gall is a small fly.  I’ve never seen the fly, so I’ve collected several of the galls and I’m hoping a fly will emerge from one of them this spring.

Chickadees and Downy Woodpeckers often poke through the galls to get at the tasty larvae inside.

I planted the last of my seeds – throwing them out in places where we cleared brush last fall.  3 Finger Valley looks much different with snow.

Our regular winter walk is the driveway – along Center Valley and through the wetland.

Sunrise through the pines

Frost on plants along the creek

Our aufeis formed again this winter, along the stream in the Glen.  The surface ice melts on warm days, but the frozen part still spreads out much wider than the actual stream bed.

Frost and galls on a willow

A willowy part of the wetland

Willow Bend has lost many of its huge old willows to beavers.  Now the beavers have started work on the Silver Maple in the foreground.

Sunrise

Bluebirds and Robins have returned, and yesterday it felt like spring.  But today it’s cold and more snow is on its way.

This was taken New Year’s Day – looking forward into the new year.

We had a few weeks of icy driveway.  It made walking a little more complicated, even with cleats on our boots.  There’s a tiny sun-dog on the left side of the tree, straight in line with the sun.

I did a few small seeding projects before it got too cold.

I planted seeds around Hidden Oaks Point – where we’ve done clearing work in the last few years.  I threw seeds on top of the snow around and under the edges of these trees – last fall’s clearing project

and on the part of the point we cleared in 2024.

and around the edges of Badger Point.

This is a stream that flows down to join the creek.

The creek looks very frosty right now, especially in the mornings, with hoarfrost on all the nearby plants.

Hoarfrost at -26 degrees

Northern lights were expected on a few nights, but it was so cold that I didn’t spend much time outside looking for them.   They were there – hiding behind our hill – but this is the best view I got.

Here are a few of our favorite sunrises…

The sun sets behind a hill and later than we usually walk, so we don’t see it as often.  Here’s one that lit up the whole sky.

Our aufeis is forming again.  Normally this is a tiny stream – only about a foot wide.

A rabbit has been living under our porch.  Before the snow came it spent its days sitting in the tiny prairie between the porch and the living room windows.  We haven’t seen it much since it snowed – hopefully it has a warm cozy place to shelter.

The hundreds of little balls on our willow branches are Willow Pinecone Galls – made by a small fly called a Gall Midge.

Here’s a close up of one of the galls.   The midge larva will stay inside the gall all winter and then emerge as an adult in the spring.  Galls are made by the plant in response to damage by the fly.  Gall-making insects are usually particular about which host plants they use, and the host plants make a particular kind of gall for each species of insect.  So the species of insect can be identified by observing the gall.

These galls look like Christmas ornaments.

This is a gall made by a different species of midge on a different species of willow.

I also found some cocoons hanging from the willows – well camouflaged because of all the galls around them.  This was an old Polyphemus cocoon – probably from last year.  It had a hole in the top where the adult had emerged.

I found another Polyphemus cocoon with a live pupa inside.  It’s in a cage on my porch now – hopefully an adult will emerge in the spring.

After the first big snow, Mike drove the tractor with the snowblower up the hill and cleared some of our paths.  It was nice to be able to walk up there and see the snow covered prairies.

Indian Grass Point – looking down into the valley.  The tree is one of our ‘bonsai oaks’ – closely trimmed every winter by the deer.

The path through Buffalo Ridge Prairie

The Narrows Prairie

But most of our walks have been on the driveway because it’s easier to keep cleared.

Morning sky over the wetland

Buds on the Silver Maple near the creek are starting to swell, even this early in the winter.

They look like they’re just about ready to open, but spring is still several months away.

Most of the color these days is in the sky.  We see more sunrises than sunsets, because we see them on our morning walks.

Silver Maple with sunrise

Another sunrise

Sunset over the Knife Edge Prairie

More sunset clouds

I’m working on one partly outdoor – project: cleaning, organizing and planting seeds in some of our prairie and wetland areas.  I’m over-seeding places that have been planted before, so I don’t have to worry about how evenly I spread the seeds – which makes the project much easier.  This is one of the wetland areas after planting.

Mourning Doves in their favorite tree – a Box Elder near the birdfeeders

We only got about 7 inches of snow in this latest storm, but it’s sticking to all the trees and covering our paths.

Snowy woods

Stream running down to the creek

Pine Point

Sun after the storm

The prairies are getting their winter colors.

Hidden Oaks Savanna

The southeast facing side of Hidden Oaks Point – with aspen sprouts creeping in

Afternoon sun through the leaves

The last butterfly of the season – an Eastern Comma.  It’s headed into shelter for the winter – tucked in a brush pile or inside a crack in wood or bark.

There have been flocks of Eastern Bluebirds migrating through, heading toward warmer weather and more bugs.

Northern migrants have arrived to spend the winter.  American Tree Sparrows…

…and Golden Eagles.

A Northern Shrike – the first one we’ve seen for more than a year.

Our most exciting bird visitor has been an immature Red-headed Woodpecker that’s been here for the last few weeks.  We first saw it on November 4 and it was still here on November 28.  The red feathers on its head are just starting to come in.

Our fall project turned into several different large projects.

Mike spent a few weeks cutting and treating honeysuckle bushes and buckthorn along the western side of 3 Finger Valley.  This part of the valley had large honeysuckles growing all along the edge.   Honeysuckle leaves stay green late into the fall, so it’s a good time to find and cut them.

after cutting honeysuckles

with honeysuckles

This shows a jungle of honeysuckle and prickly ash that had grown up in the middle of one of the valley fingers.  It took Mike several days to cut and remove this one tangle.

After clearing

Honeysuckle tangle

Another part of the project was clearing a section of Hidden Oaks Point.  We cleared the southeast facing side over several years – from about 2015 to 2017.  But we’d never tackled the southwest facing side.

This shows the way that side has changed since 2002.   For a long time it was thick woods – oaks mixed with Box Elder, Prickly Ash, and sumac, with invasive honeysuckle and buckthorn filling in between the trees.   This month we cut and treated the invasives, and cleared out the smaller trees.  Mike cleared the huge sumac grove that was covering the end of the point.  There’s still more opening up to do, but it will have to wait until next year.

11/2025

10/2025

7/2006

9/2002

A closer view, showing just the part we worked on this fall.  Now the honeysuckle and the giant sumac ‘trees’ are gone.

11/28/2025

10/30/2025

An even closer look…. a group of Wild Plums was struggling to survive among all the invasives.

11/28/25

11/2/25

I took this photo part way through the project.  When we arrived each morning, the hillside was still in shadow.  But as we worked, the sun rose above the far side of the valley and shone through the trees.

Aurora and stars – November 12

This opossum was nosing around in the path just in front of us.  I was so intent that it didn’t notice us until we were very close – then it quickly scrambled up a tree near the path.

One of the Red Squirrels in Walnut Woods – working on a walnut.

Knife Edge Prairie

Afternoon sun on the Knife Edge Point

After the snow….our huge Black Oak on Indian Grass Point

Indian Grass Point

Pine Point and the creek

In spite of winter’s arrival, we found one small sign of spring – a few early flowers on a willow.

A winter sunrise

The Cabin Road – from the last day of September when the landscape was still very green

Path to the Knife Edge in mid-October – with more colors in the leaves.

Indian Grass in Buffalo Ridge Prairie with Round-headed Bushclover

Song Sparrow on Canada Goldenrod

The Narrows Prairie

Evening light in Center Valley

My  favorite name for this plant is Tinker’s Weed.  It has many other names including Wild Coffee, Fever-wort and Late horse Gentian.

Deer watching us walk by.

Hidden Oaks Savanna

Aromatic Aster is still blooming in Buffalo Ridge Prairie.  This photo was taken a few weeks ago, but I checked yesterday, and that plant still has flowers.

Now there are Butterfly Milkweed seeds mixed in with the aster flowers.

Field Thistle flowers also bloom late into the fall, and they attract late bumble bees.  These are Common Eastern Bumble Bees – several males and a new queen that’s mating with one of the males.  I think there also may be a honeybee below the mated bumble bee pair.

Until a few days ago we were still seeing butterflies.  Most were Sulphurs – like this Clouded Sulphur blending in with the fall colors of Common Agrimony.

Painted Lady – one of the few I’ve seen this year.

Sometimes when I scan through old photos I find scenes that I’d forgotten.  I didn’t remember all the birches that had been taking over the prairies on Indian Grass Point.  Over the years we’ve cut and removed most of the birches.

October 2025

October 2010

Here’s another old photo from Twisted Oak Savanna – just after I’d girdled the aspen trees that were taking over the savanna.   After the aspens died we cut and removed them, and cleared out the brush that had grown up around the trees.

Oct 2025

May 2005

More bird photos – including some migrants heading south.

Hermit Thrush

Fox Sparrow

Field Sparrow

Red-tailed Hawk

The camera we’re using for the birds also has a setting for taking moon pictures.  Here’s our best one so far.

The eastern part of the Knife Edge Prairie still has big sections that are overgrown with aspen sprouts, honeysuckle, buckthorn, sumac and Gray Dogwood.  I spent a few weeks cutting and treating brush and got a good sized section done.

October 17

October 8

The last big project of the year is always our ‘Fall Project’.  This year it’s in two parts – two sections of 3 Finger Valley.  The first part is cutting the buckthorn and honeysuckle that’s grown up in the western finger of the Valley.  We’ve been ignoring that area for years, so the shrubs have grown into trees.  Mike is working on clearing the trees.

I’m working on the edge, which is the bottom edge of Badger Point.  Badger Point has prairie and savanna areas that we plan to work on someday.  This shows the end of Badger Point after I’d already cleared most of the invasives from that edge.

Here’s the way the edge looked before removing the invasives.

And afterwards.  There’s still one more big buckthorn left to cut in this section.

Mike moving some of my piles

This is the other side of that valley – the bottom end of Hidden Oaks Point.  The second part of the Fall Project is to clear the invasives and the smaller trees on this side of the point.   Then the whole bottom of Hidden Oaks Point will be savanna.

Looking south down 3 Finger Valley with the morning light shining in.

Buffalo Ridge Prairie

Clouds over Buffalo Ridge

Cooler temperatures bring misty mornings to the wetland.

Willows in the wetland

Morning light at the creek

Hidden Oaks Point

Sunset clouds over Center Valley

Cat’s Paw Prairie

The monarchs have been busy migrating.  We’ve seen more on our afternoon walks than in the past few years – several days we’ve counted more than 100.   We’re hoping that’s a sign of a good sized population, and that most of them will make it to Mexico.

Monarch resting on Prickly Ash

At the beginning of the month the monarchs’ favorite nectaring flowers were purple: native thistles and Blazing Star.

Monarch on Field Thistle

For a few weeks in the middle of the month they switched to yellow – especially Showy Goldenrod.

Now they’re back to purple – New England Aster and some late Blazing Stars.

Our most fun project this month has been experimenting with a new camera – a Nikon CoolPix P950.  It has an extra long zoom, so it’s especially good for photos of birds and butterflies.  We haven’t taken many bird photos before, so experimenting with that has been fun.

We sit on our bird watching bench in the glen and try to photograph the birds that come in to bathe in the stream.  The more enthusiastically they bathe, the more disheveled their feathers get.

Black-throated Green Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

We’ve been lucky to see others sitting still enough in the trees to get a photo.

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Northern Flicker

Cedar Waxwing

Our biggest work project was cutting and treating tree sprouts along the road that runs through the south end of our property.  The highway folks cut the trees in their right-of-way last winter, to keep them from falling onto the road.  But since the stumps weren’t treated, they sprouted and grew into a brushy tangle.  This month the county decided to spray the whole roadside, killing everything except the grass.  We asked if, instead, we could do it ourselves – cutting and treating just the tree sprouts, so we’d preserve the native bushes and flowers.   We have half a mile of roadside, and the hill down from the woods to the road is steep, so it’s been a challenge.

Here’s the steepest part of the slope with some of the cut tree sprouts.

A lower slope here, with a section that we worked on in the foreground, and a section that’s not done yet beyond it.

We also cut and mowed some of the willows that are taking over parts of our wetland.  The beavers usually keep the willows under control, but since they’ve moved farther upstream, the willows are growing up into dense thickets.

We tried both cutting and mowing, and decided that mowing is faster and easier.  We imagine the tractor as a giant, very efficient beaver.

Prairie grasses are turning color, and fall flowers – especially asters and gentians – are blooming.

Buffalo Ridge Prairie with Indian Grass

Smooth Aster

Showy Goldenrod, Sky Blue Asters, and Indian Grass

Round-headed Bush Clover

Stiff Gentian

Showy Goldenrod and Stiff Gentian

Bottle Gentian with a mix of newer and older blossoms

Northern Hawkweed seed heads

Bumble bee on Purple Giant Hyssop

Orange and Clouded Sulfur butterflies are fluttering everywhere right now – especially on New England Asters.

Orange Sulfur on New England Aster

Sulfurs rest with their wings closed, so it’s difficult to photograph the top side of their wings which is the best way to tell which species they are.  This one with the partly open wings is an Orange Sulfur.

Clouded Sulfur and bumble bee on Showy Goldenrod

And a few more butterflies….

Painted Lady – the only one I’ve seen this year.

American Lady

Variegated Fritillary – the first one I’ve seen in a long time.  They’re not very common here.

Once in a while butterflies come to my moth lights.  This one is a Northern Crescent.

Wetland flowers

Grass of Parnassus

Grass of Parnassus

Blue Lobelia

Fringed Gentian

Fringed Gentian

Morning clouds over the wetland

The Maze Meadow is full of flowers this year – its second summer after we planted wetland seeds.  The flowers are mostly Blue Vervain, Oxeye, and Black-eyed Susan.

Sawtooth Sunflowers

I walked up onto Sumac Prairie several times looking for Northern Flower Moths.  I didn’t find any this year, but the prairie is looking good – and especially beautiful in the early morning.

Showy Goldenrod in the Knife Edge Prairie

Silky Asters and Sumac on Hidden Oaks Point

View from the Knife Edge Point

Late afternoon sun along the Cabin Trail

Late summer savanna

Walnut Woods

We found a Rusty-patched Bumble bee – the first time we’ve seen one here.  A male – on July 31 – our first federally endangered species.

Showing off his rusty patch – on Culver’s Root

Since we cut and removed invasive honeysuckle bushes from 3 Finger Valley last year, it looks much better.

The bottom of the valley is a planted prairie – planted in the winter of 2001/2002 – but since it’s deep in a narrow valley and doesn’t get much sun, the prairie plants have a hard time.   But this year Field Thistles and Purple Giant Hyssop are blooming and attracting lots of butterflies.

Giant Swallowtails on Field Thistle – I think this is a female nectaring, with two males following her who are interested in mating.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail – a yellow female – on Field Thistle

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail – a black female.  You can see the dark tiger stripes where light shines through the wings.  Also on Field Thistle.

We have a big patch of Purple Prairie Clover outside our front door, and when it blooms, it’s full of insects.

I spent a lot of time outside with my camera, trying to get photos of them.

Bumble Bees

Tricolored Bumble Bee

Goldenrod Soldier Beetle

Susanna’s Cellophane Bee

Masked Bee

Jagged Ambush Bug

Northeastern Hammertail – a Robber Fly  (Thanks to Mike Reese for the ID.)

Migrating birds are flying south now – every day there are fewer calls, and fewer wings in the trees.

Henslow’s Sparrow on a stalk of Rough Blazing Star

Field Sparrow on White Wild Indigo

These are Cliff Swallows, lined up on the powerlines.  They nest under a small bridge on our neighbor’s land, but they fly over our land to hunt insects and to perch on the wires.

Monarchs have started their migration to Mexico.  We had one day when we counted 78 on our afternoon walk, but most days we’ve seen only a few.  Right now they’re mostly nectaring on purple flowers: Blazing Star and native thistles.

on Rough Blazing Star

on Field Thistle

Viceroy

Bumble Bees are everywhere this year.  This is – I think – a Brownbelted Bumble Bee – on Field Thistle.

Common Roadside Skipper on Hoary Vervain

An American Lady caterpillar.  The caterpillars eat the green surfaces of Pussytoes leaves.  If you look closely at patches of Pussytoes, you can often find the nests the tiny caterpillars make for themselves out of leaves and silk.  This link shows what an American Lady looks like as an adult.

Most of the Jewelweed we have is the orange flowered species – also called Spotted Touch-me-not.  It grows in wet places and in damp, shady woods.

But in a few places we have the yellow flowered species – Yellow Jewelweed, or Pale Touch-me-not.  It seems happy in slightly drier spots.

The reason for the ‘Touch-me-not’ name is that if you touch the ripe seed pods, they pop open and their seeds shoot out in all directions.

My current project is cutting and treating aspen sprouts in the Narrows Prairie.  This prairie has always had an aspen problem – as soon as our prairie plants started coming up, we realized that thousands of aspen sprouts were coming up too.   Mike mows the prairie every year at the end of the summer which keeps the sprouts from growing into trees, but the the next spring they all come back.

For the last several years I’ve been trying an experiment to see if I can find a longer term solution.  I picked out an area along our walking path where I cut and treat each stem with herbicide.  It’s slow work, but so far it seems to be helping.  The areas I’ve cleared of aspen have stayed mostly aspen free.

This shows the area I’ve worked on – the wide strip along the left side of the path.  To the left of that strip are thick aspen patches that I haven’t gotten to yet.

This is one of the aspen patches I’ve been working on in the last few days.

This is what a newly cleared patch looks like – slightly trampled, but lots of flowers and no aspen.

I often find interesting things hidden down under the aspen.

Lily-leaved Twayblade is a small native orchid.  When I found it, it had bloomed and gone to seed.  It was an odd plant to find here.  The field was a crop field for at least 30 years, then planted with prairie seeds in 2004 – not with any orchid seeds, as far as I know.  And most orchids need particular soil fungi to partner with.  I’m amazed a seed found its way here, and then found what it needed to grow.

Snowberry Clearwing – a sphinx moth caterpillar on an invasive honeysuckle

White Gentian is blooming now – I like watching bumble bees visiting gentian flowers.

Buffalo Ridge Prairie – with end-of-summer yellow flowers

Big View Prairie – with Western Sunflower and Whorled Milkweed

Evening light in Center Valley