Field Trip Reconnoiter

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I’ve been busy working on the curriculum of the core training to be offered next fall by my local Missouri Master Naturalist chapter. One of the field trips we had added to the curriculum was unfamiliar to everyone….but had been one the places featured in a 2025 Ozark Public Television production called Wild Ozarks. Four of us participated in a reconnoiter trip to the place last week.

Wow! It is a great place for a field trip.

Easy to get to from Springfield

Springs and sinkholes

Remediated riverbank…and ash trees (dead or dying) replaced with other tree species

Tree cavities

Some invasives but not overwhelming

Road or mowed trail for hiking

Pawpaw patch

And much more!

I loved the handmade tree signs!

We modified the plan to divide the students into 4 groups rather than 3 (so 6-7 students/group) and the topics will be: forest ecology, geology (karst), tree identification (using dichotomous key), and nature journaling/nature observation.

I am looking forward to seeing the place in the fall….and observing the students discovering this special place.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 23, 2026

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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.

05/10/26 Poets.org Forever Plastics – A poem by Ronald Carson. He says “In this poem, I wanted plastics to speak in the first-person plural, tracing the path from postwar convenience to biological saturation, where the environment is no longer outside us but lodged within us.”

04/22/2026 The New York Times You Paid to Have Old Clothes Recycled. Here’s What That Really Means. - Collection services offer convenience, but most garments are shredded into low-grade stuffing or sent abroad to an uncertain fate. The most important thing, experts and environmental activists say, is to buy less in the first place. It’s easier to deal with clothes responsibly if there are fewer of them to begin with.

05/7/2026 Super Age Life Expectancy Gains Are Slowing. Your Choices Are More Important Than Ever - The future of longevity will most likely be shaped less by sweeping public health revolutions and more by targeted, personalized strategies: slowing biological aging, optimizing midlife health, and extending the years we remain active, engaged, and independent.

05/12/2026 Planetizen 16% of roads that received federal funds remain in poor condition - State DOTs are spending most of that money on highway expansions instead of repair and maintenance work. And "Because increasingly lax reporting standards conceal broken roads from public view, and DOTs routinely mis-categorize expensive expansion projects as simple 'maintenance' or lump them into a mysterious 'other' category, Transportation for America suspects the national highway network is actually even more drastically overbuilt than it appears on paper."

05/11/2026 I’m Plastic Free How to Reduce Microplastics Exposure: The Ultimate Guide & Checklist - This guide breaks down exactly how microplastics enter your system, and provides a practical, but very thorough, science-backed checklist to reduce your exposure across your home, diet, and daily habits.

05/12/2026 BBC 'Fatbergs' are taking over city sewers - scientists are fighting back - Reeking coagulations of grease and debris are clotting sewers around the world on a colossal scale. Cities are deploying new technologies to control this modern menace. New York City – where 40% of sewer backups are due to grease – spends around $18.8m annually degreasing and removing blockages from the sewers beneath its streets. 

5/12/2026 National Parks Traveler Musings About the Parks | Things I Worry About – A list from Kurt Rapanshek. He ends the post this way: “Without question, there are many, many things that are uplifting about exploring the National Park System. But if the Park Service truly is going to preserve these places and their natural resources for future generations, it really needs a lot more help from Congress and presidential administrations.”

5/11/2026 Smithsonian Magazine See 15 Stunning Images That Won the German Society for Nature Photography’s Annual Contest – Beautiful and thought-provoking images.

05/06/2026 YaleEnvironment360 Airborne Microplastics May Be Warming the Planet - Tiny particles of plastic amassing in the atmosphere may be intensifying warming. Darker bits of plastic are absorbing heat. And even though lighter particles are reflecting sunlight, with a cooling influence, in the aggregate microplastics are having a warming effect. The warming impact is tiny, far less than the impact of carbon dioxide emissions, and only a fraction of the impact of soot. The microplastic emissions produced globally each year have roughly the same warming effect as running 200 coal power plants for that year….but more study is needed

05/04/2026 CNN The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a plastic trash nightmare. It could also be part of a much bigger, hidden problem - The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a significant source of airborne microplastics and nanoplastics, but there are many other places where tiny plastic particles can be whipped up into the skies, including from landfills, roadside litter and car tires. Colored plastics, especially red, yellow, blue and black, absorbed around 75 times more light than pristine, non-pigmented plastics.

05/10/2026 Science Daily Antarctica is melting from below and scientists say it’s worse than expected - Deep beneath floating ice shelves, long channels carved into the ice appear to trap warmer ocean water, dramatically speeding up melting from below. Even regions of East Antarctica once considered relatively stable may be far more vulnerable than scientists realized. Researchers warn that current climate models may be missing this dangerous process entirely, meaning future sea level rise could be underestimated.

Our Missouri Yard – May 2026

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May was full of new growth in our yard.

In the front yard…the Kousa Dogwood bloomed…and began to fade. The Missouri Evening Primrose near the mailbox began to bloom. In the new native plant garden, the new plants (like the Ratttlesnake Master and Elderberry) began to thrive; there was a robin’s egg in the mulch under the maple there. The Virginia creeper was lush and green filling the spaces in the flower bed near the house and climbing over everything. There were some asters that came up in one bed on their own in spaces near some daylilies. In the side yard a clump of lambs ear and poke weed were in the same place as last year – not specifically planted but seemed to thrive in that spot.

The shade garden at the side of the house includes young pawpaws (one purchased from Ozark Soul last year, 2 from seeds of a pawpaw from the Roston Native Butterfly House, and 3 from seedling I bought from MDC). The American Spikenard presides over an expanse of violets (I’ve been harvesting the violet leaves to eat as leafy greens). The allium bulbs I planted the first fall we lived in the house bloomed in April and are forming seeds now. The hostas (not native) sometimes provide a contrast with nearby violets. The Eastern White Pine that makes the lower part of the shade garden may produce cones this year – if it does it will be the first time.

In the back yard….The Witch Hazel will probably grow rapidly this year; it did have a few blooms last winter but has no seed pods. The hollies are blooming (delighting bees). The garden where a pine once stood has lambs ear…some elderberries…and an oak seedling (squirrel planted); it will be interesting to see how it develops. The columbines along the fence have a few blooms but are fading….and the irises are done for the year. Some of dandelions seem huge and I wonder if they are a variety grown for greens; I will start to harvest them! The Fragrant Sumac that was the first native plant that I purchased is taking over a space near the patio; I need to keep the Japanese honey suckle away from it….otherwise let it do its thing!

May growth points to 2026 being a great year for my developing yard!

1st shift in the Butterfly House

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I volunteered for a morning shift in the Roston Native Butterfly House a few days after the training. It was a cool morning, and I took a few pictures along the sidewalk down to the house. The rain garden is a lot of green right now…but there are buds that will increase the number of colors. I always enjoy the duck sculpture.

The fritillaries are the most numerous in the house…but there are zebra and tiger swallowtails too. There was a giant swallowtail that looked quite battered that I didn’t get a picture of. The thistles were great favorites…lots of nectar there.

There were cecropia moths and cocoons…luna moth cocoons…red spotted purple caterpillars on the willow…pipevine swallowtail caterpillars on the pipevine…and tiger swallowtail eggs on the wafer ash and tulip poplar. It was a good start to the season and a great way to spend my Mother’s Day morning!

My husband was making his way to the Texas Star Party near Fort Davis - his car loaded with telescope and camping gear. One of the pictures he sent was of a butterfly similar … but not the same to butterflies we have in Missouri: a two-tailed swallowtail!

Butterfly House Training

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Volunteering at the Roston Native Butterfly House at the Springfield MO Botanical Gardens is my favorite volunteer gig from May-September. Last week was the final training….in the butterfly house itself.

The late afternoon was breezy and a little chilly when I arrived at the park. I wore a sweater. The gardens on the way to the butterfly house were looking good – trees leafed out…past the spring bulb flowers and waiting for the summer bloomers.

Inside the house there were tiny caterpillars to discover. I didn’t have equipment to attempt to photograph them….but I did make a map of the trees in the house. The photos are of the largest ones: tulip poplar (for tiger swallowtail caterpillars) and pawpaw (for zebra swallowtail caterpillars). The others are wafer ash, spicebush, black willow, and false indigo bush.

Some butterflies were brought in but not released to the house while we were there. They were not very active because of the temperature. There are enough flowers blooming for nectar – butterfly food. There were even some milkweed plants with buds that will be fragrant and full of nectar when they bloom.

I missed the part of the training that was held in the Botanical Center (since I went straight to the butterfly house) but it was evidently the same as last year. The procedures for opening and closing were reviewed in the house…and tips for handling various situations. Even though the way we sign up for shifts is new…the skills I learned volunteering last season and in previous butterfly houses are still pertinent.

Lake Springfield Boathouse Garden

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Volunteering to maintain the Lake Springfield Boathouse Garden is a new type of volunteering for me! So far it has been all about pulling weeds and taking out debris from last season. The goal is to get the garden on the lake side of the boathouse iv prime shape for early summer pictures (the place is popular for weddings). The plants are mostly native, so they grow well if left alone. There are stone paths through the sloped garden to make it easier to reach weeds among the plants we want to thrive.

All the volunteers come with gloves and a bucket…maybe some hand tools. The bucket is for holding what we are taking away from the garden area that gets dumped in a natural area nearby to decay.

The crew of Master Naturalists meets on the same day every week and works for a couple of hours or more. At this point I am still new to the tasks but learning fast; hopefully part of the learning will be figuring out how to do it in a way that my back does not hurt!

Sustaining Elder Care/Road Trip to Texas – May 2026

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I made my monthly trek to Texas to see my dad last week. I made the usual stop at the Texas Welcome Center on US75 to eat my salad lunch and note the changes in the native plant garden near the building. The bluebonnets have lots of seed pods forming – with a few blooms remaining. The Texas Mountain Laurel was also producing pods.

An hour later…I found my dad in the activity room with a lot of other residents. It was ice cream sandwich day! He was soundly asleep! I decided that I would wake him up for the treat since ice cream has always been his favorite dessert. He enjoyed it --- but made no attempt to feed himself. Afterward we walked outside. I guided the walker since he can no longer see well enough to stay on the sidewalk. He moved very slowly but did make it around the courtyard and back to his room without stopping for a rest….and then he wanted to go back to sleep in his chair.

The next morning, I arrived after he ate breakfast. He was asleep in the chair! I noticed that he hadn’t taken his medications, so I woke him up for that. He managed to take them with a little assistance and then agreed to go for a walk. He had more difficulty getting up from the chair than he did in April. We walked indoors since the morning was wet and cool outside. He managed a normal walk, but when we got back to his room he wanted to go to sleep. He seemed to listen when he was awake but the only clear comments he made were about not being able to see.

My sisters are noticing his decline as well. We’re trying to keep him moving on his own (with his walker)…but we all are aware that it might not be possible for much longer.

Daughter’s April Yard

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I am enjoying my daughter’s yard through her occasional pictures and when I am at her house. Early in April, she sent me pictures of the plants in her garden by the driveway. She was uncertain if the second one (not blooming) was a weed or something they had planted.

The small red buckeye we had seen in her yard last summer was up and had one cluster of blooms.

Later in the month the young tree had grown more than a foot and had two bloom clusters. Hopefully the hummingbirds are finding the flowers.

The bloom stalks were visible in two yuccas. Penstemons, azaleas, clematis, and yellow wild indigo were already blooming.

Several plants in the shady part of the yard (including oak leaf hydrangea and American spikenard were looking good too.

Her house was built in the 50s so many of her trees are quite large – particularly an oak, a river birch, and an Eastern Hemlock. Her yard has more shade than mine…and she is slowly adding more natives to the mix of perennials in the few sunny places.  

Our Missouri Yard – April 2026

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A lot was happening in my yard in April – beyond the planting of the native plants in my front flowerbed.

Early in the month was the maximum bloom time for dandelions, violets, fragrant sumac and daffodils.

A week or so later the crested iris and columbine were blooming.

The Kousa dogwood (Asian) and false shamrock Oxalis trangularis (South American) were also blooming.

The irises bloomed in several places in the yard. I cut some of them and enjoyed creating some macro images.

The Missouri evening primrose near my mailbox that was planted last spring is growing well – but not yet blooming. Once it starts it will probably have a lot of flowers.

The Virginia Creeper is looking good as the groundcover in my front flower bed.

I planted two more native plants near the end of the month: a red buckeye that I got from a Master Naturalist friend to replace the one that froze (and was killed) a few weeks before) and a smooth sumac that I picked up as a give away from a table at the Earth Day Music Festival in Springfield.

The American spikenard that I see from my office window is on its third season and is almost as tall as me. It dies back to ground level in the winter (i.e. it is not a woody plant) but the roots get more substantial as time goes by and it has been bigger every year I’ve had it.

I’m pleased with the way the yard is shaping up for 2026!

Penn-Sylvania Prairie

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The last Sunday in April was a great day to visit Missouri Prairie Foundation’s Penn-Sylvania Prairie – the temperature was comfortable and wildflowers were blooming. A fellow Missouri Master Naturalist led the hike, another person used Seek to record what we were seeing, and my daughter did the driving…I simply enjoyed the hike and took pictures! Before we started our hike we all took precautions for ticks. I got one on me – when I took a picture of the sign! – but brushed it off quickly and didn’t find any more on subsequent tick checks.

The list for the day included:

  • Canadian Lousewort Pedicularis canadensis

  • Prairie Blue-eyed Grass Sisyrinchium campestre

  • Bastard Toadflax Comandra umbellata

  • Small skullcap Scutellaria parvula

  • Eastern Shooting Star Primula meadia

  • Carolina Rose Rosa Carolina

  • Sampson’s Snakeroot Orbexilum pedunculatum

  • Ohio Spiderwort Tradescantia ohiesis

  • Cowpoison Nothoscordum bivalve

  • Mead’s Sedge Carex meadii

  • Prairie Phlox Plox pilosa

  • Pale-spiked lobelia Lobelia spicata

  • Painted-cup Paintbrush Castilleja coccinea

  • Goat’s Rue Tephrosia virginiana

  • Pail Beardtongue Penstemon pallidus

  • Common Yarrow Achillea mallefolium

  • Green Antelopehorns Asclepias viridis

  • Violet Woodsorrel Oxalis violacea

  • Cream wild indigo Baptista bracteate

  • Golden Alexander Ziza aurea

  • Leadplant (not blooming yet) Amorpha canescens

  • Rattlesnake master (not blooming yet) Eryngium yuccifolium

  • Smooth sumac (not blooming yet) Rhus glabra

Most of the pictures were of plants…although I did manage one butterfly – probably an American Painted Lady. We saw larger bubble bees (maybe queens since it is the season for them to be flying) and some black swallowtails and grasshoppers. There were a few smaller bees/wasps that we photographed on plants.

I used two different cameras: 1) my phone (iPhone 15 Pro Max with Bluetooth shutter remote) for when I could easily get close to the plant. The flowers that were blooming were low so I frequently opted to use my other camera to avoid being brushed by vegetation (tick perches).   

2) my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX 70 HS) has good zoom capabilities so I could stand up to photograph rather than being down in the vegetation.

After we left the prairie, we continued along gravel roads to check on a Killdeer nest that had been seen at the edge of the road. It was still there and the bird stuck with her nest while we took some photos.

After lunch at the Hanger Kafe we headed home from our field trip.

eBotanical Prints – April 2026

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Twenty more books were added to my botanical print eBook collection in April – all are available for browsing on Internet Archive.   16 of the books are a continuation of the Carnivorous Plant Newsletters; there are 4 volumes per year so this month includes 2004 to 2008; I’ll continue browsing this periodical in May.

My list of eBotanical Prints books now totals 3,343 eBooks I’ve browsed over the years. The whole list can be accessed here.

Click on any sample image from April’s 20 books below to get an enlarged version…and the title hyperlink in the list below the image mosaic to view the entire volume where there are a lot more botanical illustrations to browse.

Enjoy the April 2026 eBotanical Prints!

Alpen-Flora für Touristen und Pflanzenfreunde * Hoffman, Julius; Friese, Hermann * sample image * 1904

Ocean flowers and their teachings * Howard, Mary Matilda * sample image * 1846

Algae and corallines of the bay & harbor of New York * Durant Charles Ferson * sample image * 1850

A popular history of British seaweeds : comprising their structure, fructification, specific characters, arrangement, and general distribution, with notices of some of the fresh-water algæ * Landsborough, David * sample image * 1857

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.33:no.2 (2004)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2004

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.33:no.3 (2004)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2004

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.33:no.4 (2004)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2004

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.34:no.1 (2005)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2005

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.34:no.2 (2005)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2005

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.34:no.3 (2005)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2005

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.34:no.4 (2005)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2005

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.35:no.1 (2006)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2006

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.35:no.2 (2006)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2006

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.35:no.3 (2006)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2006

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.35:no.4 (2006)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2006

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.36:no.1 (2007)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2007

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.36:no.2 (2007)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2007

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.36:no.3 (2007)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2007

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.36:no.4 (2007)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2007

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.37:no.1 (2008)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2008

Zooming – April 2026

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April was a mix of temperature extremes with some plants thriving – others not faring so well. By the end of the month, it was obvious that the majority were going to be OK. I enjoyed my yard in April as I planted almost 40 new native plants (the bulk in a new garden); I photographed older plants as I added the new ones. I released 10 luna moths that emerged from last summer’s cohort; the temperature swings might have been challenging for them but I opted to release them within 24-48 hours after they emerged since their adult life span is so short. There is one picture from my Texas trip…3 from a visit to Powell Gardens.

Rhododendron Blooms

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The big rhododendron bush just outside my office window is in full bloom. I love to take pictures when there are still some buds….and other flowers fully open. I like the luminescence of the flowers, and the pollen sometimes looks like gold. It is probably a cultivar of the rhododendron native to North America….but not to Missouri.

I am wondering if the bloom time this year will be prolonged by the recent cold days when the flowers probably simply slow or stop opening. The beautiful flowers seem to fade quickly.

I cut some stems near the bottom of the plant to bring inside since the bush is encroaching on the stone path in front of it. The blooms fit nicely in a largish wine glass on my windowsill.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 25, 2026

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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.

4/9/2026 Yale 360 A More Troubling Picture of Sea Level Rise Is Coming into View - Sea levels are much higher than we thought. Real-world oceans are making a mockery of flood-risk forecasts based on crude global modeling. And to make matters worse, coastal lands almost everywhere are subsiding faster than anyone realized — often many times faster than the seas are rising. 

4/10/2026 BBC The air throughout our homes is infused with microplastics. But there are things you can do to breathe less of them - Scientists believe the majority of our exposure to microplastics happens when we're indoors. To solve the microplastic pollution crisis will take a lot more than changes within the home – there are plenty of broader sustainability concerns too. If moving to replace synthetic fibers in your home with natural fibers, for instance, there's also the greater water and land use from organic cotton use to think about. Or if choosing to ventilate your home more to usher away microplastics, that pollution is only being pushed outdoors. Short of systemic change and a global reduction from the 460 million tons of plastic made each year, there's only so much individuals can do. 

4/9/2026 National Parks Traveler Deer Test Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease at Catoctin Mountain Park – We enjoyed Catoctin when we lived in Maryland….I’m sad that the deer there and in nearby parks have tested positive for CWD.

4/08/2026 Smithsonian Magazine See the 2,000-Year-Old Ancient Roman Cargo from an Accidental Shipwreck Discovered at the Bottom of a Lake in Switzerland - Roughly 2,000 years ago, an ancient Roman ship sailed across a large lake in what is now Switzerland, transporting supplies ranging from olive oil to chariot wheels. For some unknown reason, the vessel scattered its cargo across the lakebed. The cargo is in good condition, but researchers are concerned it may become damaged or destroyed by erosion, boat anchors, vandals and looters. As a precautionary measure, they decided to bring the most vulnerable pieces up from the depths.

4/10 2026 Artnet How a Hopi Potter Named Nampeyo Became a 19th-Century Art Star - Born in 1859 in the village of Hano, a Tewa village on First Mesa, in modern-day Arizona, Nampeyo (1859–1942) is believed to have learned the art of pottery making from her paternal grandmother. By the 1870s, Nampeyo was selling her works at trading posts throughout the region. Nampeyo’s legacy is a complex one, shaped by ancestry, archaeology, and the shifting trade systems of the still-expanding United States as it entered the 20th century.

4/11/2026 Science Daily Unusual airborne toxin detected in the U.S. for the first time - Scientists searching for air pollution clues stumbled onto something unexpected: toxic MCCPs drifting through the air for the first time in the Western Hemisphere. Although these pollutants have previously been detected in places like Antarctica and Asia, scientists had struggled to measure them in the air over the Western Hemisphere until this study. These chemicals are commonly used in industrial processes, including metalworking fluids and the production of PVC and textiles. They frequently appear in wastewater and can end up in biosolid fertilizer, also called sewage sludge, which is produced during wastewater treatment. The researchers believe the MCCPs they detected in Oklahoma likely originated from nearby fields where this type of fertilizer had been applied.

4/8/2026 My Modert Met Winners of the Scottish Nature Photography Awards 2025 Celebrate Scotland’s Wild Beauty - The winning photos span 10 primary categories, including Environmental, Natural Abstract, Scottish Botanical, and Scottish Wildlife Portrait, among others. I appreciated the beauty among so many other blog posts that were somber….depressing.

4/3/2026 NWF Blog How to Grow More - Conservation outreach professionals are tasked with the challenge of not only clearly explaining conservation programs but also personally connecting with farmers. This combination of technical skills and personal communication skills is rare, since the skills are seldom taught in school and professional development opportunities are uncommon or unsupported.

4/3/2026 The Conversation Toxic dust from California’s shrinking Salton Sea is harming children’s lung growth - As the lake shrinks, wind blowing across the exposed lake bed kicks up toxic dust left by years of agriculture chemicals and metals washing into the lake. That dust makes its way into the lungs of the children of the Imperial Valley. The study began to show that higher levels of dust exposure, especially among those children living closer to the sea, are linked to poorer lung function, as well as reductions in children’s lung growth over time. Reduced lung function increases the risk for chronic respiratory disease, such as COPD, or more frequent respiratory infections, such as pneumonia, as adults.

3/19/2026 Mongabay Should potentially harmful chemicals be appraised by class, not one at a time? - Some scientists and health advocates are pushing for a “Six Classes” framework that evaluates entire groups of chemicals, or chemically related subgroups, together, flagging them for scrutiny before harm is documented rather than after. The framework targets six broad categories of chemicals that share many common traits: PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), flame retardants, phthalates and bisphenols, antimicrobials, certain solvents, and certain metals.

Life Magazine in 1947

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Internet Archive has digitized versions of many Life Magazines. I have been browsing through them – slowly since there was an issue for each week. As I looked at the issues from 1947, I noticed the aftereffects of World War II – helping veterans, technology transitioning to civilian use (DDT, lipstick, atomic energy), hunger/wreckage/suffering in Europe and Japan, Farmers and factory worker were better off than they were before the war.

 (Click on any of the sample images below to see a larger version and the links to see the whole magazine online.)

Life Magazine 1947-01-06, Niblets Mexicorn advertisement

Life Magazine 1947-01-13, Paraplegic’s home made to order

Life Magazine 1947-01-20, Farm lottery for veterans

Life Magazine 1947-01-27, 44 seat airliner takes off with 13 passengers

Life Magazine 1947-02-03, New factory a model for civilian production

Life Magazine 1947-02-10, Mexican’s carrying loads to market

Life Magazine 1947-02-17, Ice fog at Ladd Field near Fairbanks

Life Magazine 1947-02-24, Bridge in Washington collapses in gasoline fire

Life Magazine 1947-03-03, Trying to save Whooping cranes

Life Magazine 1947-03-10, Cathedral of Caen and surrounding rubble

Life Magazine 1947-03-17, Cars stranded at crossroads by Canadian snowstorm

Life Magazine 1947-03-24, Beyond the arctic circle

Life Magazine 1947-03-31, Moon over Manhattan

Life Magazine 1947-04-07, Harvest art

Life Magazine 1947-04-14, Triple eruption in Iceland

Life Magazine 1947-04-21, Henry Ford dies

Life Magazine 1947-04-28, Texas City blows up and burns (town on Galveston Bay)

Life Magazine 1947-05-05, Normandie scrapped

Life Magazine 1947-05-12, Dorothy Shaver, President of Lord & Tayler

Life Magazine 1947-05-19, Diesel locomotives

Life Magazine 1947-05-26, Patched pants

Life Magazine 1947-06-02, Truman Capote at 22

Life Magazine 1947-06-09, Mount Athabasca

Life Magazine 1947-06-16, Santa Fe System Lines in the west

Life Magazine 1947-06-23, Adams House

Life Magazine 1947-06-30, The Maya

Life Magazine 1947-07-07, Nebraska’s soil and sons

Life Magazine 1947-07-14, Painter’s summer in New England

Life Magazine 1947-07-21, German worker making tires….gaunt from lack of food

Life Magazine 1947-07-28, Elizabet and Philip growing up

Life Magazine 1947-08-04, Penicillin (Rexall drugs advertisement)

Life Magazine 1947-08-11, Bikini atomic bomb test

Life Magazine 1947-08-18, Harvesting machine patterns in Washington wheat fields

Life Magazine 1947-08-25, German widow grows food in rubble of her house

Life Magazine 1947-09-01, Keloids of a Hiroshima survivor

Life Magazine 1947-09-08, Havasu Falls of the Grand Canyon

Life Magazine 1947-09-15, Hybrid corn

Life Magazine 1947-09-22, Thoreau’s Walden

Life Magazine 1947-09-29, Hurricane that impact Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana

Life Magazine 1947-10-06, Moscow celebrates 800th birthday

Life Magazine 1947-10-13, Bongo the Bear from Disney

Life Magazine 1947-10-20, Lipstick – a big US industry

Life Magazine 1947-10-27, DDT used to fight cholera outbreak in Cairo

Life Magazine 1947-11-03, Bar Harbor burns

Life Magazine 1947-11-10, In spite of inflation, more Americans are better off than in ’39 (particularly farmers and factory workers)

Life Magazine 1947-11-17, Hughes’ flying boat (Spruce Goose)

Life Magazine 1947-11-24, Chinese flood land to stop Communist advance

Life Magazine 1947-12-01, Princess Elizabeth and Philip wedding

Life Magazine 1947-12-08, Biggest telescope (at the time) atop Palomar Mountain

Life Magazine 1947-12-15, Gadgets – post war inventions

Life Magazine 1947-12-22, Christmas Art

Life Magazine 1947-12-29, Eistein and Oppenheimer

Slime Mold in the Oak Mulch

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I started my native plant garden last fall with a thick layer of wood chips – primarily oak from my daughter’s tree trimmers. I’ve only recently planted into it. When planting, I observed that while the surface looked dry, it was moist just below the surface. There were some areas of crust on the surface that I wondered about. Then the yellow splotches of slime mold appeared after a rain…..and a few days later dried out and became crusts like I had seen earlier.

It’s good to have natural cycles playing out in my yard…and molds are part that often go unnoticed. My goal now is to observe frequently….enjoy the garden’s evolution.

Sustaining Elder Care/Road Trip to Texas – April 2026

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I made my monthly trip to see my dad in Lewisville TX a week ago. It was a pleasant sunny day for the drive down. I bought a salad at my last stop in Oklahoma and ate it at the Texas Welcome Center on US 75. The temperature was perfect to park in the shade, roll down the window and eat my salad. There were still bluebonnet blooming and other flowers had appeared as well – I took pictures as I walked around a little after lunch.

My dad was sleeping when I arrived…but he woke up after about 20 minutes, and I was able to convince in to take a walk around the courtyard. He can’t see very well so I keep a hand on the walker to set the direction but let him set the pace. He seems to move slower than he did prior to last month’s hospitalization, but he still enjoys being outside. We sat in the shade on the patio for a while afterward.

Once I got him back to his room, he seemed exhausted, so I left to meet one of sisters. She is cleaning out her mother-in-law’s house (she moved into an assisted living apartment). I got there a little before my sister and enjoyed seeing the large trees in the front yard; one was an oak (progeny in the flowerbed) but its trunk was not nearly as large as the ones in Maryland and Missouri; the heat stress in Texas probably causes them to grow differently. I got some botanical artwork my sister’s mother-in-law had done years ago; I got several different sunflowers that will look good in my office.

Some of my plastic reduction strategies worked better than usual this trip. My tin with stainless forks worked well for my lunch salad the first day and my breakfast the next morning. I put the used forks in the ice chest so that I could easily put them in the dishwasher when I got home. Coffee filters (left over from when I switched from a coffee maker to an electric kettle (glass and stainless) work well to hold microwave popcorn for my evening snack. A Pyrex bowl that had carrots and celery in the ice chest on the way down was emptied the first evening and then used to hold my breakfast the next morning – avoiding a Styrofoam plate.

The season is warm enough now that I am realizing that I need to put my cosmetics in the ice chest since the suitcase stays in the care when I am visiting my father. It avoids melted or separated products. It takes as much room as food stuff.

I saw my dad just after he finished breakfast in the morning and he was keen to go for a walk. It was a little cooler, so we did a walk that was part inside and part outside…and he was a little tired by the time we were back in his room. It wasn’t long before an aide came to give him a shower…so I headed toward home about 30 minutes earlier than I had planned.

I got to the diner I wanted to try in McAlester OK about noon. It probably will be the place I will stop on my way home from now on. I was glad I had a good lunch since the middle of the drive was full of rain which made it a bit more challenging; the road in the small towns often has curbs but no drains so water accumulates quickly. I had expected rain closer to home but it cleared off for the last couple of hours. Still – I just wanted to relax when I got home.

Macro Photography – Springtime

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There are so many plants making moves in the springtime….which makes for a lot of macro photography subjects. These are all from my yard!

The short-leaf pine has dropped some cones and the cycle is beginning again in the tree.

The Ozark Witch Hazel is leafing out and its stems are growing rapidly.

Dandelions and henbits are blooming. I was surprised that I didn’t see any insects around the plants; perhaps the wind was too strong for them? Neither plant is native but they have deep roots that hold the soil and I usually see a lot of insects visiting the dandelion flowers.

There is a Chinese mantis case from last year on a plant in my yard. I’ll keep an eye on it – hoping to see some tiny mantises emerge.

A spiderweb caught a seed!

The Japanese Barberry is blooming. I am going to cut down my two bushes again since I really do not want the plant in my yard. There is a small one in the flower bed that has come up from seed. They are invasive and have thorns – nothing to like about them.

There were some insects on the last daffodil flower.

The lambs ear is coming up from everywhere it was last year. I like the tint of green…and velvety texture.

Finally – the violets are blooming. The plants started out as small clumps of leaves; then the leaves get bigger and the flowers open. I am harvesting some for greens (think salad and stir-fry), but the plants recover quickly. They are a great native plant for the shady parts of my yard.

Planting Native Plants in the Front Yard

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I waited a day or so to plant the young plants – when the nighttime temperatures would not be dipping into the 30s again. I planted into the oak mulch that I had put down last fall. As I made the hole for the first plant, I noticed that the surface was dry but underneath for very moist. There were worms and small grubs and white fungus hyphae. The new plants are going to love it. Of course, this also means that plants I don’t want there were going to love it too….I will need to recognize and pull as they appear!

I planted 8 plants on the first day:

Wild Blue Indigo Baptisia australis and Cream wild indigo Baptista bracteate

Rattlesnake master Eryngium yuccifolium and Golden ragwort Packera aurea

Missouri Evening Primrose Oenothera macrocarpa and Nodding Onion Allium cernuum

Yarrow Achillea millefolium and Little Bluestem Schizachyrium scoparium

The Soapweed yucca Yucca glauca was planted the following day in a bed where I had to remove rocks and landscaping cloth. The bed is not covered by our sprinkler system and some of the plants previously there had not done well with the dry conditions.

Now that this first round of plants is in the ground, I am in monitoring mode….to water if it doesn’t rain enough and to pull weeds. I am expecting some elderberry seedlings that I will add to the front garden….and some pawpaw seedlings that will join one I planted last year in my back yard (completing the pawpaw patch).

Luna Moths

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I’m not sure why I decided to check the luna moth cocoons I had put in my John Deere room last fall. I was surprised and excited to see 6 moths in the cage! They hadn’t been out long since there were males and females…none mating.

I knew that there were some moths that hadn’t emerged last fall, but I wasn’t sure how many would make it through the winter months. I released the first 6 at dusk on the evening they emerged last week. They seemed reluctant to leave my finger although when I tried to release them on my red maple they crawled onto the branches; red maple is a food plant for the caterpillars. Two more emerged the next day and I waited until the frost warning was over before releasing them.

The red maple is barely leafing out. I hope that if the moths lay eggs there we be sufficient leaves by the time the caterpillars emerge.