Volunteering – March 2025

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Am I settling into my post-covid level of volunteering? I’m not sure. I’m still changing…I’m discovering that some of the activities at did pre-Covid are either not readily available here or I prefer different things.

I am enjoying the Friends of the Library used book volunteering once a month and then helping with the used book sales. Sometimes I can find used puzzles for my dad in the piles of donated books! On the downside, moving boxes of books is harder for me now; I am going to start loading books into boxes already on the stack rather than having to lift them after they are loaded!

The bulk of my volunteer time is as a Missouri Master Naturalist. There is a lot of variety in types of activities: chairing the programs committee (speakers for the monthly chapter meeting), volunteering with local stewardship non-profits like James River Basin Partnership, nature programs for elementary aged children (Cedar County Libraries) and citizen science (Feeder Watch). I am thinking a bit about the seasons of this type of volunteering. Feeder Watch is from October to April, for example. I am anticipating a few more nature programs this spring but the dominate volunteering over the summer might be the Butterfly House at the Springfield Botanical Garden that opens in mid-May. I’ve established a goal for myself to volunteer 250 hours in 2025 and, so far, that goal seems achievable!

Volunteering at a Watershed Festival

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I volunteered for a James River Basin Partnership Watershed Festival at a public school about 10 minutes from my house. There were about 250 5th graders that participated over a 4-hour period (fortunately we had a lunch break in the middle). For the first sessions we were in a classroom because it was quite cold outside, and the school grounds were muddy from recent rain/snow. In the afternoon we were in an outdoor classroom – out of the mud and enjoying the sunshine and warm enough temperatures. It was an exhilarating day!

A partner and I led a game from Project Wet called The Incredible Journey where every student becomes a drop a water and they move through the 9 stations (clouds, plants, animals, rivers, oceans, lakes, groundwater, soil, and glaciers) based on a role of a dice at each stop. With 25 students moving around the space, it sometimes appeared chaotic, but every session was a success. Some students/drops-of-water got stuck in the ocean…some alternated between clouds and other stations. A few spent significant time as plants! It was a fun activity…and hopefully a learning experience too.

As we packed up everything in the plastic bin at the end of the day – the dice taking up most of the space – I realized that it had been an exhausting day. In the flurry of activity during the sessions, it was easy to be so engaged with the students enjoying the game that it was easy to just keep going.

Missouri Trees

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The topic of the session at the two libraries in a nearby county was Missouri trees. Since it was the fourth (and last) event for our 3-person team of Missouri Master Naturalists, we managed to gracefully recover when one of us (the one bringing some small redcedar branches) had a tire emergency on the way to the first library. She managed to get there a few minutes before the children arrived, but we had already implemented a backup plan by cutting a few low branches from another tree! We were ready to go when the first 15 students (and 6 parents) arrived!

There were four activities:

Examining small branches of trees (river birch, redbud, maple, redcedar, shortleaf pine and eastern white pine). There were some extras that aren’t native to our area but are native to North America and that thrive planted in yards and gardens that we showed too (Southern Magnolia and Eastern Hemlock…the tiny cones on the hemlock fascinated the whole group).

Examining things left from last fall: glycerin and plastic sleeve preserved leaves, seed and seed pods, pine cones, and a white oak seedling.

Counting tree rings (everyone with their own tree cookie) along with some pictures that showed that the rings are not always neat concentric circles.

Looking forward to spring and the state tree – the Flowering Dogwood…with a pattern art project. The picture is of some samples I made beforehand, but the students did beautiful work on their pages…and were very focused (and quiet) while they worked.

The session was a great finally for our series!

Owl Pellets!

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The topic of the session at the two libraries in a nearby county was owls. Since it was the third event for our 3-person team of Missouri Master Naturalists, we were beginning to get better at it…although it was still hectic. This time we had a mounted owl and wing,

handouts,

a display on the wall showing the wingspan of various owls (click on the right image to see the list of owls by wing span), and

the equipment (tweezers, picks, plates, gloves, identification sheets, containers for bones) to dissect owl pellets).

And then the first group of children arrived at the library. There were 28 students and 12 parents. We had a short lecture that included listening to the sounds of the 8 owls of Missouri (4 year-round and 4 more in winter). One student had a Great Horned Owl near where they live. Then the fun began as we handed out equipment and foil wrapped pellets. The students thoroughly enjoyed teasing apart the pellets and finding bones – mostly rodents.

We packed up everything and left the room as we found it…and went to the second library…to set up a second time. It was disappointing that only 3 students came for that session. But we made the best of it and dissected pellets ourselves sitting across from the students.

These are the bones from my pellet!

We have one more session in our series for the library. They’ve been a learning experience for me as a volunteer. I am realizing that the volunteering I did in Maryland was skewed toward the actual event (rather than prep) because others had done the preparation and the audience from multiple schools rotated through experiencing the same program. It was easy to get very polished at presenting the program and the number of students reached was quite large. I’d like to find volunteer opportunities like that here in Missouri, but I am not sure they exist.

Winter Seed Sowing

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I assisted one of my fellow Missouri Master Naturalists with a program for her county’s libraries – planting seeds in plastic jugs for planting in gardens next spring. There were about 50 participants (plus parents) that participated across the two sessions. The set up included lots of plastic jugs (saved from distilled water purchased for humidifiers), soil, gloves, tarps to protect the carpet of the library meeting rooms, scissors, and seeds. I took pictures of the brief calm between set up and the chaos of everyone getting dirt and planting their seeds.  

The battery powered drill was used to make holes in the bottom of the jugs and marker holes to cut the top part almost off…leaving a 1-2 inch hinge. Most of the children were young enough that we recruited parents to make holes in the jugs.

Several of the older children mixed the soil with water in big buckets for everything else to use. We had native wildflower seeds but almost half the children chose to plant vegetables. An older lady chose to plant common milkweed in her jug…and she is going to plant the seedlings near some buckeyes in her yard in the spring.

Each hour-long session was a whirlwind of activity. We managed to contain the mess with the tarps on the floor, so cleanup was not bad. I was grateful that we had some extra help from some local Master Gardeners and the parents of the children jumped in to help too.

Ten Little Celebrations - January 2025

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January was a relatively quiet month after December…but still plenty to celebrate.

52 years of married life. Every year I marvel that it has been such a long time…and celebrate that it has been an easy accomplishment for us.

A snow day. Now that I am ‘post career’ there are not as many commitments that force me to leave home in inclement weather. It is easy to enjoy snow on the ground from at home! I particularly celebrate watching birds at our feeders on a snowy day…drinking hot chocolate.

Cranberries in oatmeal. I still have frozen cranberries in my freezer from November and December. They are a flavor and color to celebrate in an oatmeal breakfast!

Finding a speaker for the February Missouri Master Naturalist meeting. The person my predecessor as the program chairperson had arranged for February was going to be out of town on the day…so I had an immediate emergency. I celebrated when I found a person to do a talk on Missouri geology and the person originally scheduled for February will talk in March!

Home before the snow started. I can drive in snow but realize that it can be hazardous particularly in hilly areas – so I celebrated that I made it home before it started.

Aquarium at the Boardwalk in Branson. I celebrated a field trip that could be enjoyed on a very cold day.

Leftover baked chicken. An easy stir fry: a few vegetables cut up and chunks of leftover baked chicken – a celebration of flavors in a quick meal.

Shoveling snow…without my back hurting. I am celebrating the success of my physical therapy sessions. One of the success indicators came when I shoveled snow without pain!

Female downy woodpecker. For weeks we saw only a male downy woodpecker….so it was worth celebrating when a female showed up. Maybe they’ll stay in the area and have young this spring.

My daughter in 1st class. My daughter had an awful experience traveling in bad weather – cancelled flights, delays, luggage lost for a few days, getting to the hotel only to have the planned meeting moved to Zoom. We all celebrated when the airline got her luggage to her about 24 hours before she headed home and moved her to 1st class for the longest leg of her return flight. She enjoyed a big breakfast.

Volunteering – January 2025

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It has been a busy month for volunteering – all Missouri Master Naturalist but quite a variety.

Citizen science. Project Feeder Watch is something I do looking through a window of my home to my bird feeders for 2 hours per week (4 30-minute observation times). My husband does it with me and I record the maximum numbers of individuals we see of each species. It is a great way to enjoy the outdoors when the weather is too cold or wet for being outdoors! And 2 hours a week from November to April will add quite a few volunteer hours to my Missouri Master Naturalist total!

Educational presentations at Cedar County Libraries. The presentations themselves are only an hour each but there is a lot of preparation for them…and there is travel time for me (over an hour each way from where I live). I have enjoyed the interactions and am relieved that my partner is taking the lead on half of them. This is the biggest chunk of volunteer hours recently and we still have 2 to go in February – and I am leading the last of those sessions.

Program Chairperson for the master naturalist chapter (i.e. supporting administration of the chapter). The job requires snippets of time so far….but they do add up. I have presentations set for February and March….with many ideas at various stages of development for future programs. Some have been tentatively set for a particular month. I want to be 2-3 months ahead speakers that have committed to speak.

Thinking ahead…I will probably trend toward citizen science volunteering with occasional outreach and educational presentations. This is a reversal from the volunteering I did in Maryland. I haven’t found an organization that has themed-hike leader volunteer opportunities like Howard County Conservancy did in Maryland. There is a butterfly house in Springfield that seems to need volunteers similar to Brookside Gardens did for their Wings of Fancy (pre-pandemic). That will be an outreach/educational type of volunteering I can do in the warmer months and I am looking forward to getting linked up to do that in the spring.

Missouri Giant Traveling Map

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Doing a program for 7-13 years old students with the 17 feet x 21 feet Missouri Giant Traveling Map at a nearby county library was a learning experience for me as a Master Naturalist (and my partners too). For one session we had 18 students and the other one 4. The groups were enthusiastic to be out and about after a snowstorm had kept them inside for a few days. They enjoyed taking their shoes off and walking around on the map…so much that they sometimes started sliding on the plastic a little too much.

That age group has had some great outdoor experiences in the state – but they don’t necessarily know where they went unless it is associated with a city. Fortunately - one of the fathers took off his shoes and stepped on the map to show his daughter where the river they had floated down was on the map.

The students also were able to look at rivers in Missouri that flow into the Mississippi River directly…ones that flow into the Missouri River and then the Mississippi…and those that flow south into Arkansas and the rivers there before eventually flowing into the Mississippi.

We noted the grayish areas on the map…where the terrain is very hilly…and other areas that were not. I suggested that they look at roadcuts when they are out and about in the state (that it is a safe thing to do since they are not driving!)…and notice that not all of the layers of rock are horizonal…and think about how the layers can become the way they are.

We have 3 more topics we are presenting in upcoming library sessions and we learned: to have a better idea of how many people we expect and be more assertive when some of the students are disruptive. We also realized that it was fortunate that our subsequent sessions are more hands-on active rather than simply walking around and looking. We’ll get better with each one!

2024 in Review: Travel and Classes

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2024 was a year we ramped up our travel and educational activities – almost to the pre-COVID levels. Both involve being out and about with groups of people….great opportunities to enjoy the place and engage social skills more frequently. Since we now live in the center of the country rather than the east coast, our travel has been via road trips rather than flying; we are not missing the hassle of airports and rental cars!

The travel included two birding festivals (Whooping Crane Festival and Festival of the Cranes) and a solar eclipse…and frequent trips (at least monthly) to Dallas for family visits.

There are accommodations my husband and I (4 years older than when we travelled pre-COVID) are developing for ourselves to ensure that we feel good when we travel:

  • stretch breaks every hour or so when we are driving

  • exercise regime that works in hotels to minimize aches and pains

  • eating almost the same as we do at home (big meal in the middle of the day, extra veggies for me)

  • keeping our sleep time on central time (if possible)

Both my husband and I have been doing online webinars for a long time. This last fall I re-started in-person classes with the Missouri Master Naturalist Training and a class at Missouri State University (Identifying Woody Plants). The master naturalist training was a path toward creating the level and type of volunteering I had enjoyed in Maryland; it lived up to my expectation of continuing the transition to ‘Missouri as home.’

The university class was the first time I had taken a university class since the 1980s and was something to savor because of that and the topic/professor/other students; I found that taking a university class without the pressure of needing a grade or hurrying off to my job was pleasantly different from any of my prior experience.

2024 was a year that saw us settled in our new home in Missouri and increasing both our travel and in-person classes activity. The travel will be sustained (or increased slightly in 2025). The in-person classes might be reduced since there is nothing equivalent to another master naturalist core training, but my volunteering in 2025 is likely to be significantly more than it was in 2024.

Different in 2025

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What am I anticipating being different in 2025?

It is a better thought process for me than making a list of resolutions…even though to make some of the ‘anticipations’ become reality it will take some intentional action on my part which might be very much like the focus a resolution can have. But I am noticing that what I have on my list this year are things that have been available in some form to me before; I am simply making the decision to follow through…and enjoy the ride.

Last year I enjoyed the Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training and in 2025 I am going to explore the opportunities associated with being an MMN. I’ll be organizing the monthly programs for the chapter and ramping up my volunteering. At the end of 2024 it appeared that 20 hours of volunteering per month would be feasible…and I might discover that I can do more during some months of the year.

My husband has pointed out that the local Audubon Society chapter has great field trips and we are already planning to go to 2 in early 2025….and more of those will probably become our norm.

I initiated some Missouri geology themed day trips in December (1st one was to the Joplin History and Mineral Museum and Grand Falls) and want to do more in 2025. We’re planning to go to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in February for birding….but there will be geology there too (it in the part of the state that was glaciated)! Maybe I will make a day trip to the Ed Clark Museum of Missouri Geology in Rolla in January. I’ve always wanted to take a basic geology class but never could fit it into my schedule back when I was in college…so I am registering for one during the 2025 spring semester at Missouri State University; maybe they will have a field trip or two.

I hope I can finally renew my friendship with a childhood friend (we’ve been exchanging Christmas cards for years but haven’t seen each other since we were in our teens). We have been communicating via text over the past year but then events in our families made it challenging to reconnect in person. Maybe it will happen in 2025.

The physical therapy I am getting now is beginning to yield positive results and I am anticipating that a lot of the activities I want to do are going to be easier for me physically…so I am very motivated to do what they tell me and continue a routine of exercises that will sustain the improvement.

I am looking forward to the differences from 2024 that I am anticipating!

2024 in Review – Life Events

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This is the first post reviewing what happened to me in 2024; I’m starting with the big events.

2024 included a bigger-than-usual event…perhaps even a pivot point in my life: my mother died. We had shared our lives for over 70 years; no one else can fill the gap completely. The months leading up to her death (hospitalization, moving to assisted living, rallying, COVID-19) and the immediate aftermath (the funeral, selling my parents’ house, finalizing her financial affairs, comforting my father) are still fresh in my memory. I’m not completely sure that the pivot is complete even now. My relationship with my siblings (3 sisters) is still changing.

All the other events of 2024 are not as life changing:

Taking the Identifying Wood Plants class at Missouri State University and the Missouri Master Naturalist training were an important step back to pre-COVID times. Both have prompted an uptick in volunteering and discovering ‘favorite places’ close to home.

Attending a funeral for my cousin. She was more than a decade younger than me, and we had not seen each other frequently in recent years. It happened not that long after my mother’s death and the sadness was quite different…for a life that ended early.

I made many short trips (day trips, one or two nights away from home) with my daughter. Sometimes with my husband along too. There are so many new places to explore when one moves to a new part of the country. We have been here in Missouri for 2.5 years and there still seems a lot to see for the first time within the ‘short trip’ range.

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.

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….

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.

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 9

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The last session of the Missouri Master Naturalist Training was one lecture followed by graduation and ice cream cake!

The lecture was on invasives. Most of the invasive plants I was familiar with (from Maryland)…except for Sericea Lespedeza which is a warm-season, perennial legume. It is something that was introduced intentionally then escaped and is now widespread – outcompeting native plants. Frustratingly – its seeds are still being sold and attempts to stop that at the state level have failed.

There were some trunk sections of young ash trees killed by Emerald Ash Borer. The widespread death of ashes in Missouri is happening now…just as it did in Maryland several years ago.

The good (so far) news on the invasive insect front is that Missouri does not have Spotted Lanternfly…although it is probably only a matter of time since the insect is in Illinois and Kentucky.

Graduation included a magnetic name badge and a certificate (and some goodies that included milkweed seeds). I splurged and had 2 pieces of ice cream cake!

I am going to miss the rigor of the class but am relaxing a bit – savoring my Identifying Woody Plants class at the university that continues into December!

Ten Little Celebrations – October 2024

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The temperatures were more pleasant in October….I enjoyed the outdoor field trips and classes a lot more.

Pleasant temperature to walk around the Missouri campus during class. We were outdoors longer but it was easy compared to short hikes around campus in August and September!

Field trip to a healthy stream and woodland. Celebrating the water quality and the native species (not overcome by invasives)!

Cut down a Japanese barberry and burned most of it. Celebrated one more non-native (that is sometimes invasive) being gone from my yard.

Geology field trip plans. I celebrated that enough of my Missouri Master Naturalist classmates and chapter are interested in geology field trips to make them a likely late fall/early winter activity.

Getting seeds planted. I got buckeye, Hopi sunflower, common milkweed, and persimmon seeds during the second week of October….and celebrated when I got them planted. Some must go through the cold temps of winter to sprout in the spring.

Volunteering at a fair for homeschoolers…talking about Monarch butterflies. I celebrated by first gig as a Missouri Master Naturalist…and that my iPad-based slideshow of Monarch butterfly pictures was well received.

Owl Pellet. I vaguely remember that I had dissected an owl pellet in some previous training…but I celebrated that I did a more thorough job this time… and found a complete rodent skull…and the backbone…lots of ribs.

First solo Missouri Master Naturalist volunteer gig. I celebrated that the two days spent doing an after-school program with a local school for gift students was positive for them…and for me!

Whataburger. Sometimes I just want to splurge. On the way back from my Dallas trip, I stopped for a Whataburger…celebrated that it tasted just as I remembered - although I won’t do it very often.

Successfully completed my Missouri Master Naturalist training. Hurray! I am celebrating what I learned and that I now have more time to volunteer!

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.

Field Trip to Springfield Wastewater Treatment and Landfill

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The last field trip on the Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training schedule was to the Springfield Wastewater Treatment Plant and Landfill.

The wastewater treatment plant that we toured was the smaller of the two that handle Springfield’s sewage. I was surprised that the smell of the place was not as bad as I expected. Maybe it was not as bad because it was a cool morning, but I expect that it primarily was because of the improvements in technology since I last toured a plant over 50 years ago! Now they have a lot more filters and blowers. There are challenges of materials that shouldn’t be in sewage – small items that get flushed (including wipes) that are still solid when then get to the plant and those are taken out early. There are anaerobic and aerobic basins where microbes do the work of cleaning the water. Sometimes there are enough oils that they must be put back through the process. Once the sludge is taken out, the water is clear and the microbes remaining are killed using UV light before the water leaves the plant for the river; the water released from the plant is about the same water quality as the river and there is monitoring to make sure that is true.   

The landfill is uphill from the wastewater plant; the landfill is a high hill so there are great views of the countryside around it.

It was a learning experience…I took notes. The landfill is 1200 acres of land with 213 acres active (i.e. there is plenty of buffer between the landfill and neighboring properties). We learned about the landfill’s construction that protects groundwater; the liner under each cell of the landfill is 5 foot thick: compressed aggregates, felt, plastic, leachate pipe (to drain of liquids) surrounded by river gravel, and finally felt. Each cell of the landfill is 5-10 acres. The leachate pipes are connected to a sewage line that takes the fluid down the hill to the wastewater treatment plant. The temperature in the landfill is 100-120 degrees and that is monitored via wells that are extended as pile gets higher. There are 16 ground water wells near the landfill that are checked every 6 months. They have increased the number of gas wells from 97 to 148; at present the methane is flared because it is not clean enough to put into natural gas pipelines (and it evidently is expensive to get it clean enough). The landfill had been projected to last 100 years when was expanded to 213 active acres but then the pandemic happened, and the projection is now 50 years (we are sending a lot more to the landfill since the pandemic). The city is more actively trying to divert yard waste away from the landfill and promote composting of food scrapes/waste.

The landfill layers quickly become anaerobic because of the heaps of trash piled and compacted. There is a lot of plastic that does no decompose easily even in aerobic conditions and even things that would decompose in aerobic conditions don’t in anerobic. These hills of trash are going to be where they are built for a very long time.

I am thinking about what further changes I will make after this experience. My family tends to have more recycle than trash. The change for me might be that I take more of my recycle to the recycling center rather than doing my curbside bin. Evidently there are lots of things that can happen during mixed stream recycle processing that can result in materials to the landfill.

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 7

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The 7th week of Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training included one evening class and my first solo volunteer gig.

The class lectures were on

  • Forest Ecology and Management

  • Pondering the Pond as a Wildlife Habitat

Forest Ecology and Management was done by a Missouri Department of Conservation Educator; I would like to have the charts since he went through them very quickly! The last segment of the lecture was hands-on…passing out small branches from the tree to everyone and then using the dichotomous key in the back of the Fifty Common Trees of Missouri booklet to id it….a red maple. I photographed my branch’s buds, branches and leaf imperfections!

Pondering the Pond as a Wildlife Habitat was done by a person that has been a MMN for over a decade…and done a lot of videography at a pond in a hayfield (i.e. not used by cattle…with adequate vegetation around its edge). Her Youtube Channel – Nature in Motion is something I will be viewing over the next month! She showed over 100 species in 17 minutes of her talk…fast paced…prompted me to think later about the richness in the intersection of science and art.

The volunteer experience was an after-school event at a local school for gifted students…15-20 minutes sessions with two groups of about 12 students each…on two days. My theme was getting outdoors in the fall and looking at some things that could be found.

My table was set up with items to look at: pinecones (3 different kinds), acorns (3 different kinds), Osage orange fruit, black walnuts (in a bag complete with emerging caterpillars), goldenrod (in flower and seeds), magnolia pod, maple branches, and a holly branch.

It also included a hands-on experience with pressed leaves/small branches. Each student made observations about their leaf (color on both sides, holes, insect eggs, shape)…and then compared it to other leaves at their table. The leaves were mostly oak or maple although there were some that were unique (river birch, magnolia, oak leaf hydrangea, boxwood).

The time past very quickly!

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.