Sorting Used Books

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I sorted used books for Friends of the Library at two of our county libraries this month.

The first library was not one I had been in before and the sorting was done in a small windowless room lined with shelves --- table in the middle with bins underneath --- a narrow walk space around the table. The door is left open; otherwise, it would be very claustrophobic. There was one bag of donated books that was in bad shape (water damage, detached covers, a musty smell); most of those went into the recycling bin. The other volunteer and I quickly sorted everything and boxed up over 10 boxes to go into storage for the next book sale. It was a good experience but not the place I want to do book sorting very often.

The second library was one that is close to where I live and one I had worked in before. The room is without windows but is large…plenty of room to move around and the boxes of books are kept in the middle of the room.

There aren’t as many puzzles being donated these days so I didn’t find any while I was sorting to buy from the library for my dad’s assisted living home.

Milestones

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Last week marked two ‘milestones’ in my Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) volunteering:

My tree educational trunk capstone project (part of the MMN training) is finished (or at least at a good stopping place). I had intended to leave it at the Springfield Missouri Department of Conservation for storage…and I savored the fall foliage from my car when I got there. The fall has lingered this year without a hard frost to hurry the end. By the end of the morning, I was taking the trunk home along with some additional educational materials since there is a plan to use the trunk for outreach sessions in January and maybe the Osage orange would be dry enough to add to it by then. I’m still thinking about it as ‘finished.’

I also started a new project: creating a collection of soft pith stems in a bucket (suggestion from Wild Bee Lab Facebook Page). I’ll check it periodically to see if any bees use the stems for nests. My initial collection includes pokeweed, forsythia, bush honeysuckle, and goldenrod. Yes – some are non-native but if the bees use them, I’ll be even more vigorous in getting rid of the non-natives around my yard and doing this with the stems rather than burning them in my chiminea.

McDaniel Park

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The last field trip of the Identifying Woody Plants class was to McDaniel Park – a convenient commute from the campus. It had a lot of invasive plants (Japanese honeysuckle, Winter creeper, Bush honeysuckle, White Mulberries) but some native species too --- lots of good review. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my bridge camera so only had my phone for photography.

One of the review trees was Osage orange – Maclura pomifera – Moraceae. None of the trees had fruit under them. Had it been picked up or were they all male trees?

A new species was Rose of Sharon - Hibiscus syriacus – Malvaceae.  I was as fascinated by the insects on the seed pods (Hibiscus Scentless Plant bugs?)as I was the plant. This is a plant I am familiar with…not native but widely planted. The seeds are hairy!

The River birch - Betula nigra - Betulaceae is an easy one to id from the bark and catkins.

Did you know that poison ivy seeds are white? It was something I learned this semester…not sure why I had never noticed before.

Arcuately veined and opposite fall leaves of a silky dogwood – Cornus obliqua – Cornaceae.

And the variability of Sassafras leaves – Sassafras albidum – Lauraceae. For some reason, I got stuck years ago on ‘mitten’ leaves but the leaves are not always like that!

Our teacher collected seeds and twigs for the lab next week and that included Winged sumac – Rhus copallinum – Anacardiaceae.  I am intrigued that it is used to make tea. We previously saw smooth sumac but there were no seeds on those plants.

I couldn’t resist taking some pictures of fall foliage and a recently cut tree trunk (the tree was around 50 years old).

The field trip was a pleasant fall afternoon – a good finale. I am realizing I that  will miss the weekly classes and am solidifying my plan for the spring semester.

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.

First Frost and a Comet

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The first frost at our house was on 10/16; the low was 29 degrees, but ice crystals only formed on part of our yard…and I went out shortly after sunrise to capture the event. Some of the crystals seemed to outline the leaves (and their holes) while other leaves seemed to be more thoroughly dusted. There were no crystals on taller plants.

The freezing temperature did not last long enough to wilt vegetation. The violets outside my window are still mostly green…with a few yellow leaves. The maples still have most of their leaves. Our area has not had much rain recently so we are anticipating that the fall color might not be as vibrant as usual.

On another outdoors note…we have been viewing Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas (A3) from our front sidewalk!

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.

Dallas and Back – October

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I made my monthly trek to Dallas and back late last week. It was a cold morning as I left Missouri…getting away well before 6 and my nav system routing be around a nighttime road closure before I even made it to the highway! It was almost sunrise by the time I made my first rest stop. The color in the sky changed even in the short time I was in the building getting a protein shake for breakfast.

The color was mostly faded when I stopped the second time although it was still within the hour after sunrise.

The drive was uneventful although it seems like there is more active construction on some parts of my route than a month ago. Perhaps they are trying to reach a milestone before winter weather or maybe previous work had been hampered by very high temperatures in southern Oklahoma and Texas.

I visited with my dad and then headed to the hotel to relax…recover from getting up a little earlier than usual and driving for almost 7 hours.

The next morning, I was up and ready for a breakfast at the hotel at 6:30 then arrived to visit my dad shortly after 8 AM. We took a walk around the block. The weather was coolish (he wore a quilted vest over his long-sleeved shirt) and the sun was bright. Some of the houses had fall/Halloween decorations. The bald cypress trees I had noticed last time I walked with him were beginning to lose their needles. They will be ‘bald’ soon!

I was on the road heading home shortly after 10. The drive between the assisted living residence in Dallas and the border between Texas and Oklahoma is the most stressful part of the route – the speed limit is 70 mph for most of the way and people are trying to go that fast and beyond even when the traffic is too heavy to allow that safely.

I got home by about 5:30 and my husband informed me that we might be about to see the aurora after it got dark. We went out about 8…and there it was…faint but definitely some color in the Missouri sky!

Zooming – September 2024

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Lots of photography done since my last Zooming post. There was travel to Arkansas and Texas…and then the classes (Missouri Master Naturalist and Identifying Woody Plants at a local university). I’ve used all three of my cameras this month: Canon Powershot SX70 HS (bridge), Canon Powershot SX730 HS (point and shot) and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

September has been a busy month, and I am still trying to settle into the higher level of activity away from home! Enjoy the slide show for September 2024….

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 3

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Week 3 of my Missouri Master Naturalist Training included my first Springfield Plateau Chapter monthly meeting. There is not an equivalent to it in Maryland, so it was a new experience. The first part of the evening was networking over a potluck light dinner. I met a Master Naturalist that teaches high school biology and got some tips on my capstone project that is part of the training.

Then there was a lecture on prairie reconstruction/restoration on private land that started in the mid-1980s. The target was established by a land survey done in 1835 that noted the types and sizes of trees at ½ mile intervals. Most of the area around Springfield tended toward savannah (prairie with some trees). Most of the trees noted in the survey were oaks and hickories. There are 385 plant species now growing on the reconstructed prairie…that has a Floristic Quality Assessment score of 4.2 which compares favorably with other restored/reconstructed prairies in the area. But maybe the greatest joy is from seeing red-headed woodpeckers returned to some of the snags!

There was a short break before the business meeting (more networking). I learned a lot about the chapter from the business meeting…the committee reports were enlightening and I talked with 3 of the committee leads after the meeting. I already have my first Missouri Master Naturalist volunteer gig scheduled…and have ideas on the committees most relevant to the type of volunteering I want to do. There are hours to support the chapter too that I need to think about since that type of volunteer hours is not something I did in Maryland.

Lake Springfield – August 2024

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We set out to the Clay Henshaw Memorial Access on Lake Springfield since we had not viewed the lake from that perspective before. It was a little too late in the morning for birding, but I took a few pictures of flowers growing in the area.

There was a large (lotus?) leaf on the water surface that had interesting patterns of green in the deteriorating leaf that curled upward at the edges.

The sun was very bright, and we could feel the temperature rising.

We headed over to the boathouse…. which is our favorite place on the lake. The area around the building is full of native plants created by the area Master Naturalists…some with seed pods already.

As we started toward the meadow, I noticed that that the purple martins have already left. There were a few birds near the feeders…and the moon was visible in the nearly clear sky.

I took pictures of dragonflies that landed on the paved path or in the grass long enough for me to photograph. Most of them didn’t…they were on the prowl for breakfast.

The thistles were attracting skippers, but I didn’t see larger butterflies feeding in the meadow.

The sunny meadow had a lot of tall vegetation…not as colorful as earlier in the season. Many of the meadow plants are producing seed now. The goldenrod has not started blooming yet.

As we got to the far side of the meadow, a bird flew into a tree. I got several reasonably good pictures: a Great Crested Flycatcher!

There are two trenches made by storm runoff in that area…and both are dry right now. It’s been a dry August here.

We turned around and made our way back to the car…pleased with our morning activity before the heat of the day became overwhelming.

Through my Office Window

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My office is my favorite room in my home. There is a garden area I can see through a window while I am at my computer. It has several garden ornaments, and is crowded with violets and iris leaves….and a spikenard in bloom. The yard beyond is sprinkled with fallen river birch leaves that are yellow. It’s a great place to watch robins searching for worms.

The area is shady for most of the day – from the river birch in the morning and from the house in the afternoon. There is a short time when the sun shines on the stainless-steel iris. I am documenting the blooms of the spikenard as well.

The windowsill of that same window can also be a platform for high key type photographs. This one of a dried black-eyed susan has the silhouette of the river birch in the background.

On the other side of the room, the glass paneled door looks out onto the patio under the deck and I can photograph barn swallows that congregate on the light fixtures and the ceiling fan blades before leaving all at once for their next stop.

The 4 windows of my office make it almost a garden room.

August in our Neighborhood

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It was a mostly cloudy morning when I took a walk around our neighborhood last weekend. I noticed that the stonecrop near our front porch was ready to bloom and the seeds had formed on a redbud tree near the entrance path to the ponds.

A willow hangs over the inflow channel to the ponds…shading the area and making a fringe of green almost down to the water.

The native plants that had been in pots several weeks ago when I walked around the neighborhood last have been planted around the shore of the largest pond and there was a stick near one of them with an Eastern Amberwing dragonfly sitting still long enough to be photographed.

A little further along two small red-eared slider turtles were soaking in the warmth of the morning.

I always enjoy photographing magnolia flowers. The season is far enough along for the tree to have some seed pods forming too.

Last time I walked around the neighborhood there was a bullfrog sitting in the shallows of the larger pond. This time, there was one in the shallows of the smaller one. Based on the coloring…it was not the same frog! Both times, the frog seemed very focused on the pond…paid no attention to me walking around to get another perspective.

The fungus on the old stump along my route back home, has changed significantly. There appear to be 5 or 6 different kinds!

Cicada Time

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I’ve been hearing annual cicadas in the hot late afternoon and evenings recently in my neighborhood. There are not a lot of them…but they are loud. Sometimes there seem to be conversations between several insects rather than a burr of almost continuous sound from a lot of them. I haven’t seen very many and it seems like they are not as numerous here in Missouri as they were where I lived in Maryland.

Last weekend when I was cutting the grass at the edges of flower beds and around trees, I noticed a cicada on a day lily leaf; it wasn’t singing and I remembered that sometimes the insects are sedentary when it is cooler and early in the day. It was still there with I came back with my phone to take pictures.

I am not spraying my yard with any chemicals so I hope the cicadas lay eggs here and my yard will host more cicadas in the coming years. They are one of the insects I associate with the summers of my childhood!

A Walk in our Neighborhood

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It has been so hot recently, that I try to get any outdoor activities done as early as possible. Walks at 7 AM are good even if the humidity is high enough to make mid-70s temperatures feel sticky. I take along my camera – in case I spot something I want to photograph. On one recent morning I paused for photography several times:

The morning light on the base of some pine trees on my route to the ponds made the pine needles look almost orange. I liked the contrast with the white rock and the green of some volunteer plant near the base of a pine.

There were galls on some leaves that had fallen on the path – probably some insect larvae. I took pictures of them and then looked up in the tree and saw leaves still on the tree that had them too.

There were pots of native water plants in the water near the inflow to the main pond. I wondered when they would get planted in the shallow water at the edge of the pond.

Further along there was a bullfrog sitting in some shallow water.  I took several pictures from different angles.

There was an ‘arrangement’ of debris in some water on the path. The colors and shapes appealed to me.

There is an old stump near the street on my path back to my house that I often notice. This time it had 3 different kinds of fungus!

Overall – a good walk for exercise…and photography!

Missouri Master Naturalist Orientation

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I went to an orientation session about becoming a Missouri Master Naturalist last week. The meeting was held at the Springfield-Greene County Botanical Center (the building in the Botanical Gardens). I spent a few minutes photographing some flowers (one with a bumblebee) in the Master Gardeners area before I went into the building.

The session was an overview of the process to become a Missouri Master Naturalist and then an informal time to talk to people that were already Missouri Master Naturalists. It was a learning experience….confirmed my decision to start the training and participate as soon as I can in volunteer opportunities. I’ve already noticed some differences between the way Maryland and Missouri implemented their Master Naturalist program…but the idea at the core is same and there are a lot of commonalities in the types of training and volunteering – which is the motivation for me! I’m excited to get started in September. It is the same type feeling I had toward the end of summer during my school years.

Wildcat Glades

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My husband and I visited Wildcat Glades one morning last week. He did not feel up to hiking, so we did some photography near the Nature Group buildings. There were several varieties of sunflowers. I did some macro photography with my phone (iPhone 14 Pro max); my favorites are the landscape oriented one and the flower with a petal across its center…a shy sunflower.

I also took some others with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) since I couldn’t get close enough to them with the phone

The Queen Ann’s Lace was in a grassy area…so the bridge camera’s zoom was used for those one too.

There was a small water feature that was almost surrounded by taller vegetation.

There were several birds (Eastern bluebird, House Finches, Eastern Phoebe) that I photographed although the cloudy day was not great for bird photography. We’ll have to visit on a sunny day next time.

One insect was still for long enough for me to go into macro mode again!

Our Missouri Neighborhood – July 2024

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There is always something to see in walks around the ponds in our neighborhood…bits of nature thriving even in an area dominated my manicured yards: a dandelion puff (hurray for some deep rooted plants in the turf), a fat robin (there must be plenty of worms here), clover in bloom (making nitrogen available to other plants), and magnolia flowers (the bee had just flown away).

There are always turtles in the pond. One on the bank looked like he was waving at me!

I stop at the bridge to look at the sheet of water flowing into the first pond – runoff from rain or sprinkler systems running too long. I look for ripples and collections of debris to photograph. The feather caught my attention first….then the leaves and green clippings…a background of algae.

The large redbud near the pond was damaged by a storm a year ago. There is new growth from the large branch that had to be removed. I like the way the new leaves start out reddish…turn a light green…they will get even deeper green as they age.

Most of the fish I see in the ponds are small and gray or brown…but there is at least one monster koi (about 2 feet). Hopefully if someone catches it, they will not return it to the pond!

Finally – a fresh feather on the path that had been sprinkled by a neighbor’s automatic sprinkler system!

Green Heron in the Neighborhood

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The forecast said the day was going to be very hot and humid…so I was out taking my daily walk at 7 AM. As I neared the first pond – a bird flew out of the shallows and land at the other end of the pond. I managed to use the zoom on my camera to see what it was: a green heron. It was standing up tall making it a little easier to spot. It is surprising how well their coloring blends into the environment.

They are occasional visitors to our neighborhood ponds. There is not enough habitat here for them to be residents. This time the bird was looking for breakfast. It stalked down through the grass to the edge of the pond – eventually sitting   at the edge of the water. The morning light was excellent for photography.

A grackle flew down nearby for a drink.

I was walking slowly closer to the heron…although across the pond from its location. The grackle startled it enough for it to move along the bank and then up into the grass again….before it flew away.

Macro Photography – June 2024

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My yard is full of subjects for macro photography this time of year.

The wildflower garden is in its second season and is very lush after the spring rains…both flowers and insects abound.

The area in our front yard that once hosted a large tree (before we moved here) now has mushrooms after almost every rain. It is surprising how quickly they can develop and then degrade to black goo.

One of the daylilies I planted last under the red maple is blooming this year. Hopefully the plant will propagate to surround the trunk. There are enough buds to appreciate this year from a photographic standpoint.

I’ve let the Virginia Creeper that came up in the front flowerbed cascade over the castle rocks. Mowing the lawn contains it once it is in the grass. I like the foliage now and it will look great in the fall when it turns red.

I’ve found several eggs in the grass and always try a photograph. This one was white. The cracks in the shell around the edges and inside appealed to me. The grass offers a sense of scale.

I took pictures of two small branches blown off by an overnight storm – making a macro image of the part that interested me the most.

The plant by the mailbox is full of buds. Another plant of the same type is near the house, but its buds always get eaten and there are holes in the leaves!

The two ‘hens’ that I bought last year at a farmers’ market have more and more chicks. There were only 3 chicks at the beginning of the season. I count more than 30 chicks in this image when I look at it on a bigger monitor!

I enjoy ‘filling the frame’ with magnified images from my yard!

Picking Blueberries

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Last week’s ‘new to me’ activity was picking blueberries. I’ve picked strawberries before, but not blueberries. A quick search got me to the UPickFarmsUSA site and I quickly found a farm close to me – Ozark Mountain Orchard…followed the links to their website and Facebook page. My daughter and I made plans and then headed out the next morning while the temperature was still in the 70s. It had rained the night before, but the sun was shining and the forecast had the day warming up fast. The check-in area was well-organized with buckets lined with plastic bags and belts to attach the buckets around your waist so both hands were free to pick berries. The rows to pick were marked with turquoise noodles.

The goal was to pick berries that were ripe (i.e. blue) but not squishy. I did more one-hand picking because of that. The stems on the ripe berries were very easy to pick…so if there was a ripe clump, it was worthwhile to use two hands so none of them dislodged onto the ground rather than a hand. I didn’t make it down to the end of my row before I was hot and tired. My daughter agreed. We headed up the hill to the check-in area to weight our bags and discovered we had both picked about 4 pounds of berries!

We put our bags in an ice chest I had brought….and relaxed with some blueberry lemonade before heading home. When I got home, I immediately rinsed and froze more than half my berries to use in smoothies!

I already have plans for next season – starting earlier in the season (when we went it was probably past the mid-point of the season) and going twice to load up my freezer with blueberries even more! Maybe my sister would be interested in bringing her grandson along --- a great ‘field trip.’