Frost Patterns

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On one of the mornings I had an early Physical Therapy appointment, the temperature was in the teens and sunny. When I parked, I noticed the car parked next to me had frost on all its non-vertical surfaces. I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures with my phone!

A little magnification made the variations in the crystals more visible. Some looked like feathers, others like brittle stars from the sea. In some places the crystals had become so dense that they became an aggregate. The sun was beginning to melt some of the crystals; I thought about why some areas were melting and others were not.

A few seconds of photography and I hurried into the building feeling grateful for the little bit of creative time – one of my favorite ways to start the day.

Valley Water Mill Park

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I finally managed to walk the trail around Valley Water Mill Lake just before Thanksgiving. It was my 3rd time at the park; the first time was with my Identifying Woody Plants class and the 2nd was on a very rainy day to learn about what kind of volunteers they needed. This 3rd time was on a dry but cloudy day in the 40s. Most of the fall color was gone but there was still plenty to see. I was a little rushed because my husband was using the hike for exercise while I wanted to slow down and take pictures!

The honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) pods were frequently on the trail….and it was easy to spot the trees with thorns!

The coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus) was still beautiful along the trail. The berries require some freeze-thaw cycles to become palatable to birds.

The other color in understory was burning bush (Euonymus alatus)– a non-native invasive that is popular in landscaping. I looked at the stems to be sure that is what it was….they have corky wings. There is also wintercreeper (Euonymus fortune) in the park. Both are very difficult to eradicate.

I was on the lookout for fungus too but was rushed enough to see only the most obvious. There was a cut end of a log that has shelf fungus around the outer edge…and some that looked a lot like meringue on another.

Most of the oak leaves were brown and crackly…an occasional one still colorful.

There were a lot of leaves on the ground. Most of the time the trail has been swept clear by the wind but there were drifts of leaves everywhere.

I photographed two exposed roots. One that was close to the trail and displaying the impact of being stepped on. The other looked more like the soil has been eroded from the base of the tree – maybe during a flood; the tree was not that far from the riverbank.

Next time I go to Valley Water Mill I want to plan to spend a bit longer….explore a bit more thoroughly!

Missouri Institute of Natural Science

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My daughter and I visited the Missouri Institute of Natural Science on Black Friday! Neither of us had been there before even though both of us had heard about it and were interested. We got there just after 11 and spent about 45 minutes looking at their exhibits and shop.

Their triceratops (name Henry) dominates the center of the largest space they have. It is part fossilized bones and part 3-D printed ‘bones’ to make a complete skeleton. Awesome!

There were some 3D printers to the side of the displays…it probably takes considerable time to create the pieces of a complete skeleton; there are pieces of a second dinosaur that they are printing and collecting under Henry.

A prehistoric fish was still in rock. I zoomed in for a closer view of the front fins.

Evidence of past eras of plants were also on display. Pinecones and dawn redwood!

A raptor (dinosaur…not modern bird) egg nest was in one of the cases.

And, of course, there were shark teeth…and modern shark jaws to compare. There were obviously sharks in the past that were much larger than any we have today!

Ammonites….the rock was donated and there no indication where it was found.

The display case of coprolites (dung that has been fossilized) was in a corner of one the museum bathrooms!

There was a case of trilobite fossils. I remember one of my teenage friends being keen to find them!

There is a display of lead mining equipment – part of the history of this part of Missouri.

It was worth the visit and I might take guests from out of town to the place (a good choice on a rainy day!).

There were more people arriving as we were leaving…we headed to lunch. The timing was great since by the time we finished our lunch there was a line out the door of the restaurant (the Black Friday shoppers had worked up an appetite).

Gardens Aglow 2024 (1)

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We walked through the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden’s Gardens Aglow the Monday before Thanksgiving. It was the member’s only night and we arrived just at it opened at 5. They were handing out mugs of hot chocolate! We were bundled up but feeling the chill of the first really cold days so the hot chocolate was appreciated.

There was still light in the sky but as we walked around the light displays it got fully dark. I missed last year’s show because I was in Dallas the whole time…so it was a treat to see it again. Every year it is a bit different.

I always enjoy the Japanese lanterns even though they are not draped in lights. My favorite this year was the one with newly fallen ginkgo leaves around its base.

Two big trees were probably my favorites: a rainbow tree and a bald cypress with spots shining upward into its branches.

It really is a great place to spend on hour of our evening. I will be volunteering on 2 nights in December…and we’ll probably go again to see it on another evening.

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 30, 2024

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

How the Groundbreaking Suez Canal Forever Transformed the World’s Shipping Routes – The official opening ceremony was on November 17, 1869. It had taken 10 years to build on the path of an ancient canal and was called “the greatest service to the commerce of the world since the discovery of America.” The project was funded mostly by Western Europe.

'Jekyll and Hyde' leaders do lasting damage - When supervisors swing between good and bad behavior, they do even more damage to their employees than ones that are abusive all the time. And there are some indications that this kind of leadership could be contagious, with a leader's volatility fostering volatility in others

Scientists find a 35,000-year-old saber-toothed kitten in the Siberian permafrost - The cat was just three weeks old when it died, but its cause of death is unknown. The kitten still had its whiskers and claws attached when it was pulled out of the permafrost, and was covered in a coat of short, thick, soft, dark brown fur. Its hair was about 20 to 30 millimeters long. When looking at the mummified cub, scientists found some interesting differences between the kitten and a modern lion cub, particularly, in their paws: the saber-toothed kitten had wider paws, but no carpal pads — that's the wrist joint that's help modern day felines absorb shock.

Hatchling Alligators at the Fort Worth Nature Center – The Dallas/Fort Worth area is at the edge of American Alligator range…but the Nature Center has confirmed that it has a breeding population there. The Fort Worth Nature Center is 3,650 acres of mixed habitat, owned and operated by the City of Forth Worth; it is one of the largest city-owned nature centers in the US. There is an alligator research project ongoing there now that the breeding population has been discovered.

Sitting too long can harm heart health, even for active people - 10 hours or more of sedentary behavior per day is associated with heightened risk of heart failure and cardiovascular death. I am so glad that I decided years ago to use a Swopper chair (without a back…bouncing) at my computer desk….so I am moving most of the time that I am there!

Bone marrow in the skull plays a surprisingly important role in ageing - Studies in mice and humans showed that ageing results in skull bone-marrow expanding, and in mice this marrow was more resistant to inflammation and other hallmarks of ageing.

Glaciers Reveal When Volcanoes Are on Brink of Eruption - New research shows that glaciers near active volcanoes flow faster than other glaciers. The findings suggest it would be possible to predict volcanic eruptions by tracking the speed of glaciers.

Can we live on our planet without destroying it? - With eight billion people, we currently use a lot of the Earth's resources in ways that are likely unsustainable. Research shows that humanity can stay within the planetary boundaries. But it seems that there is little political will to do so. A depressing commentary on humanity.

Memories are not only in the brain - In the future, we will need to treat our body more like the brain -- for example, consider what our pancreas remembers about the pattern of our past meals to maintain healthy levels of blood glucose or consider what a cancer cell remembers about the pattern of chemotherapy.

Astronauts of the underworld: The scientists venturing into the deep, dark Earth - Hundreds of cave entrances are known on Earth, the Moon, even Mars. Many have never been explored.

Ten Little Celebrations – November 2024

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Our area finally is getting some rain. We have been celebrating the rainy days after being very dry for months. We got above the annual average rainfall for the month before mid-November. Of course – there was a lot more to celebrate during the month as well.

 Stems for bees in a bucket…and a small turtle. The yard and neighborhood are making the transition to winter…with lots of leaves flying and the tender leaves of the violets wilting. I celebrated starting a project with stems in a bucket (hopefully becoming a good place for native bees to nest) and seeing a small red-eared slider on a branch in our neighborhood pond.

Friends of the Library. I volunteered twice during the month – sorting/boxing used books at two libraries in the county where I live; the next sale is in the spring. Celebrating the opportunity to contribute to the book availability in my community!

Harris’s sparrow seen during our first FeederWatch observations. My husband and I saw a ‘new to us’ sparrow during our first FeederWatch session! It didn’t appear in subsequent weeks so perhaps it was migrating through. Springfield is on the edge of this sparrow’s winter range…well within the migration area.

Soft peppermints. Peppermint is my favorite winter candy flavor…and the soft ones have become my favorite this year – either eaten or dissolved in a cup of hot tea!

Brilliant red Virginia Creeper. I’ve let the Virginia Creeper become the ground cover of my front flowerbed…and celebrated its brilliant red color this month.

Valley Water Mill for a second day. Celebrating the discovery of a favorite outdoor place near Springfield.

McDaniel Park. The last field session of my Identifying Woody Plants class…celebrating a city park with lots of trees.

Accumulating 40 Missouri Master Naturalist hours. The Missouri Master Naturalist training was over at the end of October which qualified me as an ‘intern’ until I accumulated 40 volunteer hours. I celebrated that I crossed that threshold by the end of November!

Seek app identification (the bug on the Rose of Sharon pods). The Seek app can be very helpful. I forgot to use it in the field (at McDaniel Park) but remembered when I got home…celebrated that I had a ‘good enough’ picture for the app to make a good identification: Hibiscus Scentless Plant Bug.

Thanksgiving. Celebrating the day….and the reminder of all that is positive for us right now….that being grateful is easy.

Zooming – November 2024

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The zooming images for November are mostly a celebration of fall in our area of Missouri. There are a few animals in the group that could have happened at other times – a robin bathing in a stream, a grackle at our feeder, and a small red-eared slider in our neighborhood pond.

Can you find the poison ivy seeds (hint…they are white), the glorious fall Virginia creeper, a chestnut husk, 4 kinds of oak, and a maple?

I enjoyed searching out little bits of nature to photograph…fill frame…using my camera to ‘see’ better than I do with just my eyes. My camera’s optics are the great enabler!

Thanksgiving

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I am thinking of Thanksgiving ahead of time – planning a quite holiday with family with activities planned before and after:

  • The holiday light display is open for Friends of the Garden the Monday before Thanksgiving…so we will enjoy our first walk through of the season unless the weather is wet. I missed seeing them at all in 2023 because I was in Dallas for the later part of the year.

  • I am not a black Friday shopper…but enjoy being outdoors (maybe working off some of the calories from the day before). Our November has been relatively mild…good hiking weather.

There is also plenty in my life to be thankful for right now:

  • My dad is comfortable at his assisted living home; my sisters and I are able to visit him frequently.

  • I have finished my Missouri Master Naturalist training, and the volunteering opportunities seem to be coming along as I expected. There is much to learn and do even during the winter.

  • The Identifying Woody Plants class at Missouri State is about over…and I thoroughly enjoyed the field trips – learned a lot about great outdoor places close to where I live.

  • Our home is snug – ready for winter…the sprinkler system winterized and the heating system checked.

  • Both cars are performing well. Both have been used for road trips recently. My husband and I both appreciate the driver’s aids on modern cars when we make longer drives.

  • The fall has been prolonged by the milder temperatures. The color might have been muted from less rain in the summer, but the length of the display made up for that.

  • Internet Archive is back online. I missed it a lot while it was down and realize how much I savor browsing through its digitized old books; many of them are not available otherwise.

Life is good….

Road Trip to Texas – November 2024

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My monthly 2-day road trip to Texas to visit my dad was sunny and full of fall sights. The temperatures were decidedly cool. On the first day, I noticed more hawks that usual on high branches of roadside trees – particularly in Oklahoma. Some of them were probably red-tails but some were obviously smaller. Going 70 miles an hour, I only get a quick glimpse (avoiding becoming a distracted driver).

I stopped at the Texas welcome center on US 75 after leaving Oklahoma to eat my lunch and enjoyed their native plant garden. The Turk’s cap was still blooming.

The American beautyberry has clumps of purple drupes but some that were on the top part of the clump looked burnt. I wondered if they got the most summer sun…and were damaged by many days of the high temperatures.

There was a small tree that had a lots of red berries. I managed to ID it: possumhaw (Ilex decidua). It is a native deciduous holly. It grows in Missouri and I might plant one in my yard…maybe replacing a non-native.

It was very windy the next day on my drive back to Missouri. I didn’t see hawks perching….but did see some soaring. One was flying low over a field near the highway --- obviously hunting.

The sun was going down by the time I got back to Missouri. The light from the setting sun gave the roadside trees and orange glow. It was a good scenic finale for the road trip.

Robert Edwin Peary’s Arctic

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Robert Edwin Peary’s Arctic explorations in the later 19th and early 20th centuries are documented in 6 books he published between 1898 and 1917. They are available on Internet Archive and worth browsing. They are all well-illustrated…attempting to show every aspect of Arctic exploration and Inuit life too. I’ve selected 2 sample images from each book…hopefully enough to encourage browsing the books for yourself!

Northward over the "great ice" : a narrative of life and work along the shores and upon the interior ice-cap of northern Greenland in the years 1886 and 1891-1897

13th Anniversary of my Blog

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This is the 13th anniversary of this blog space. It all started when I made the firm decision to retire and started a daily blog…a few months before my career formally ended. It was a way for me to guarantee a little bit of structure in what loomed as a time of my life without many external requirements on my time.

Work had dominated so much of my time – way more than my college education during the first decade of my career…more than my daughter’s 1st 20 years in decades 1.5-3.5 of my career. My husband has been a constant through it all  - both of us putting considerable time into our careers. Mine ended without a glide path (intentional on my part)….his was a glide that finally ended a few years after my retirement. We both were aware of developing new ways to fill our days with a mix of activities that we chose – sometimes very different from things we did while our careers were active.

Writing a daily blog has had a positive impact on furthering my artistic side…and sometimes spurring me to action.

Previous anniversary posts: 12th anniversary, 11th anniversary, 10th anniversary, 9th anniversary

Ritter Springs Park

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Another fall foliage outing we enjoyed a week or so ago….

Ritter Springs Park is north of Springfield. We took a scenic route to get there and then hiked to the lake and back. I was with my husband and daughter who were intent on hiking rather than photography….so I didn’t take many pictures.

There were lots of oaks and hickories…hackberries…sweet gum. I picked up several cones from the Norway Spruce that was near the parking lot; they will make a fourth type of pinecone in my tree educational trunk!

The water level at the lake was low but still flowing out into the stream below the dam. There were dead leaves in the shallow water beginning to decay…lots of food for the macroinvertebrates in the water.

I read on the park’s web page that there is a summer camp there. I wondered how they handled the campers when thunderstorms come though since there is only a pavilion (not a building).  Otherwise, the place has a lot to offer for a summer camp.

Valley Water Mill Park

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The MSU Identifying Woody Plants class went to Valley Water Mill Park last week. It is northeast of Springfield MO and includes a variety of habitats: upland forest, bottomland forest, wetland, glade, prairie, savanna, and lake/stream. It’s a place I will want to visit again.

We saw a lot of trees we had seen before and some new ones too. The fall is changing the way we go about identifying the woody plants we’d seen before.

The bald cypresses are losing their needles…and there were trees at this park with knees (the previous ones were growing in locations where they did not produce knees). The knees make them easy to ID.

The buttonbush had lost its leaves, but the round seed heads make it easy enough to ID.

There were lots of sycamore leaves on the ground…many were huge and, sometimes, still green.

A Wahoo was obvious but our teacher said there was aphid damage too which is frustrating.

Poison ivy berries…new-to-me…good to know.

Black cherry bark – of a young tree and an older tree.

Some new species:

A bittersweet – no leaves but lots of fruit.

A chestnut – ID from the bur alone down to genus.

Japanese honeysuckle. This is one I recognize easily but I hadn’t noticed the seeds before.

Coralberry. This might be one I add to my yard someday – although I don’t know where yet.

Black haw or cherry-leafed viburnum is even more likely to find its way into my yard. It might make a good planting in the bowl left from a tree in my front yard that was removed before we bought the house.  It is a shrub that does well in shade so it might work to fill in between the two maples and provide flowers in the spring and fall/winter food for wildlife.

The lake was low even though there had been about an inch of rain the previous night. The area has been in drought for so long that it is going to take time to replenish the water level. There was evidence of beaver (many of the trees have wire cages around their base for protection.

Valley Water Mill Park might become one of my favorite places in the Springfield area.  My husband and I will probably make a ‘field trip’ there and walk the whole loop around the lake. I also filled out the form to volunteer for their education/outreach programs.

Garrison Springs Community Forest

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There were still some leaves on the trees when we visited Garrison Springs Community Forest in Ozark, Missouri last month. It is a newly opened natural area snuggled into the developed area of Ozark. The vegetation makes it feel much further out; the ‘noise’ of the place is only the gurgle of water from 3 springs and the sounds of birds singing and leaves moving in the breeze.

Our area had gotten very little rain the past few months, but the springs still were flowing, and robins were bathing along with the newly fallen leaves.

A daddy long legs (harvestman) crossed our path as we headed back to the car. We stopped to get a picture.

This place is small but not that far from where we live…a place to visit again for a quick nature fix…and to see the improvements as they happen in the next few years.

Zooming – October 2024

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All the pictures in the slideshow were taken in the Springfield Missouri area: my home, the Missouri State campus, Lake Springfield, Busiek State Forest…the majority were during Missouri Master Naturalist or Identifying Wood Plants class field trips! October was a great month for being outdoors. Enjoy the slideshow of zoomed images!

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 8

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Week 7 of Missouri Master Naturalist consisted of two sessions: a lecture on Fungi that was part of the monthly chapter meeting and two lectures in our regular class: Snakes of Missouri and Endangered Species and Conservation. I took notes during all three! I particularly enjoyed the photographs in the fungi lecture, the snake experiences from a place we had visited for a field trip, and the example used for talking about endangered species (freshwater mussels). I still have a lot of materials from the Missouri Department of Conservation that were on the handout table to browse through from the regular class: salamanders, snakes, mushrooms, lizards, crayfish, toads and frogs, caves and karst, Missouri fishes.

During week 8, I also took action to learn more about Missouri geology on my own since it is not a topic that was covered in the training….starting with two books: Roadside Geology of Missouri by Charles G. Spencer and Geology of Missouri State Parks by Max W. Reams and Carol A. Reams. The second book is the most current – copyrighted in 2022; about 25% of the books is an overview of Missouri geology and then there are sections for state parks by physiographic region. I’ll start with the state parks since it seems safer than stopping at road cuts…although I might keep the Roadside Geology in the car for when my husband is driving, and I can observe as we are on the road.

Next week is graduation week! The time has flown by. I have an evaluation form that I am completing this weekend.

Busiek State Forest and Wildlife Area

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A sunny fall day…the Identifying Woody Plants Class spent a couple of hours at Busiek State Forest and Wildlife Area – adding 9 more woody plants to our list and seeing others that were already on the list and we practised our ID skills for them; there are now 78 woody plants that we should recognize and be able to supply the common name, family, and scientific name!

We encountered an Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera) – a tree we’d seen in previous classes - that had leaves that hadn’t fallen before the first hard frost. All of us began to realize how changed identification was going to be without leaves on the trees!

The first new one was Box Elder (Acer negundo) – the only maple with compound leaves. ID is helped by its green branches.

The second new tree was Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) – still with leaves and one I had seen recently in a Missouri Master Naturalist field trip. The picture I took was of a male but there were female trees with red fruit that we saw at Busiek.

 American Sycamores (Platanus occidentalis) were growing along the dry creek bed…another tree that we reviewed. The very large leaves were still mostly on the tree.

The third new tree was the Carolina willow (Salix caroliniana)…also growing close the dry creek bed. Its leaves are a little bigger that the Black Willow’s…and the stipules tend to stay on rather than falling off. It still had leaves…everyone realized it was a willow of some kind.

I couldn’t resist taking some pictures from the dried creek bed. The fall color is a bit muted this year because it has been so dry here. I noticed some wasp apartments on one of the bridge support columns.

Another review tree – the honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthus) – and I finally got some pictures of thorns. I also picked up a seed pod to put in the tree educational trunk I am creating for Missouri Master Naturalist.

The fourth new tree was the Chinkapin oak (Quercus meuhlenbergii). I didn’t get any good pictures of it!

The same was true of the fifth new plant – a vine: Greenbrier (Smilax). Supposedly it might be something that will be easier to see and ID in the winter because the stems stay green….and the thorns would be on the vine too – to mistaking it for a grape (Vitis).

Smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) was the sixth addition for the day. The plants did not have the distinctive seed heads because they tend to get cut down frequently so that they don’t take over the area where they are growing.

Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) was our seventh new plant. The fruits looked beautiful, but no one was willing to try them quite yet. I am glad I have planted some in my yard and hope to enjoy them at perfect ripeness in the future.

The eighth new plant was a native woody grass/bamboo: giant cane (Arundinaria gigantea).

The ninth (and last) new plant for the day was an Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides). Most of the leaves were gone…but the one we looked at was a huge tree with deeply grooved bark and buds ready to go for next spring.

It was a good walk and a transition point for the way we will begin to identify trees by characteristics other than their leaves.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 19, 2024

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Antarctic 'greening' at dramatic rate - Vegetation cover across the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than tenfold over the last four decades… fundamental changes to the biology and landscape of this iconic and vulnerable region.

Is cleaning with baking soda better for the environment? – Maybe not…and it might not be very good at some types of cleaning either.

Meet Milagra, a Rare Condor Rescued as an Egg and Newly Released Back into the Wild – A success at Arizona’s Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.

Landslides, Thousands Of Downed Trees, Undercut Roads Along Blue Ridge Parkway – Lots of repairs for the National Park Service after Hurricane Helene. Some damage is severe enough (i.e. more than just clearing mudslides and debris) that it will take time to repair. The fall foliage will come and go.

In Search of Microbes That Weave Colors into Moroccan Carpets - A scientist’s quest for microbes that produce purple pigments led to the vibrant world of natural dyes for women in the Atlas Mountain region of Morocco creating sought after traditional woven carpets…it’s a great intersection of biology and traditional artistry! The findings are compiled into a 48-page open-source guidebook, also translated into English, which described their project, introduced microbial dyeing, and catalogued recipes for plant dyes.

Dementia diagnostic markers change with time of day - Biomarker levels (p-tau217) were at their lowest in the morning when participants woke and highest in the evening.

Great Lakes Water Quality Project Seeks to Restore Coastal Vegetation - Returning certain croplands to perennial vegetation to reduce runoff and limit erosion.

'A warmer, sicker world': Mosquitoes carrying deadly diseases are on an unstoppable march across the US - West Nile virus, Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), malaria and dengue…The mosquitoes that carry these diseases are thriving in a warming world.

Extinct Volcanoes Could Be Source of Key Metals Needed for Clean Tech - Rare-earths lurking under extinct volcanoes may be easier to extract. The iron-rich magma that formed some extinct volcanoes would be up to 100 times more efficient at concentrating rare-earths than the magma found in active volcanoes today. By one estimate, demand for rare-earths is set to grow fivefold by the end of this decade so finding them closer to home could contribute to more rapid conversion to clean technologies.

See Newly Discovered Nazca Drawings That Depict Llamas, Human Sacrifices and More - With the help of artificial intelligence, researchers have found hundreds of ancient artworks carved into the pebbled ground of Peru’s Nazca Desert in 6 months compared to 430 found between 1927 up to before the use of AI.

Missouri Master Naturalist Field Trip (2)

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Continuing the blog about the Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) field trip taken last weekend…

My second rotation was nature journalling. I made a Mindmap on the page of my journal during the intro – and decided to do some leave rubbings first. I had brought a stool for the session (a lesson learned from last time when I stood the whole time…and wore myself out). I quickly discovered that the journal book did not have a hard enough cover to support rubbings. I managed to use my phone to provide a more sold surface for the notebook and did 4 rubbings. I found some leaves with galls and other spots…decided to so some macro photography with my phone. I couldn’t resist documenting what the inside of a spicebush seed looked like.

I walked around taking a few pictures of the surroundings…remembering to look up! All the while I was making notes in the journal about what I was thinking as I took pictures.

Then I noticed a shed with moss and leaves on the top. I took some pictures of it…remembering the concept of intimate landscapes from a book read years ago and decided to so some of that kind of photography.

The black walnuts in various forms of blackness were an obvious subject. I took several different black walnut ‘landscapes.’ The one I liked the most was an empty husk in the moss with a violet and some brown leaves….did a squirrel take the nut? The second favorite was a group of plants that formed an arch…with red fruits. It looked like a good start for a fairy house.

The last rotation was at the stream to look for macro invertebrates. It was my first time in my river boots since we moved to Missouri…they didn’t leak but I need to practice walking in them!

The water was very low and that made it harder to effectively use the seines although we did find a lot of water pennies. The other group found a couple of small hellgrammites…but the big find was right at the end: a dragonfly larva that looked like a leaf! What a great finale for our field trip activities.

Missouri Master Naturalist Field Trip (1)

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Last weekend was probably the best of the Missouri Master Naturalist training field trips. The location was a privately own mixed forest, old fields, a cemetery and a creek: a place with history and almost 30 years of restoration work. It was a scenic drive of about 20 miles from my house…quickly going to 2 lane road…then a road without a center stripe….and then a single lane gravel round with some low vegetation in the center which I heard brushing on the bottom of my car.  

There were three rotations with lunch between the second and third ones. The day started out cool but was close to 80 by the time we ended so I was pleased to do the walking rotation first. It was focused on native trees and plants…and fungi.

There were lots of black walnuts on the ground….and looking up…it was easy to see which tree was producing them since there were still nuts on the trees.

As we walked along the road – there were several fungi to see on rotting logs.

There were familiar leaves and bark….and heart shaped leaves of wild ginger. The leaves on the ground were brown but there was color in the leaves still on the trees.

The millstone from the old mill (broken into two pieces) was near the entrance to the cemetery…brought there when it was found in the creek. Both areas are reminders of the history of the place as much as a place along the creek we were told about over lunch where many arrowheads had been found (a place there they were made over many hundreds of years before Europeans arrived).

Our guide for fungi had brought some other specimens found elsewhere to share with us since the drought had reduced what we would see otherwise on our walk.

The hour past very quickly and we headed back to our next rotation which was journaling…I’ll post about that tomorrow.