Our Missouri Yard Before the Killing Frost

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I walked around our yard before the killing frost last week…to capture the colors of late fall. There is not much to do in the yard right now. I am following the ‘leave the leaves’ strategy. The winds swept away most of the leaves in the front yard but there are two drift areas in the back which may thin the grass. I don’t mind at all if that happens. I’ll plant black-eyed susans, cone flowers, golden rod, asters, bee balm, golden alexander, etc. I am inclined to let the pokeweed grow at will since I have seen mockingbirds eat the berries this fall.

There were still a few dandelions in bloom….and insects. The morning I walked around was in the 40s so the insects were not moving very fast.

Of course there was lots of color…including aromatic sumac, a young maple, our Kousa dogwood…as well as other plants that are probably not native.

The seeds of the chives are easily falling out of their husk. The pods on the crape myrtle will probably freeze before the can mature; the plants have died back to the ground every year we have lived in Missouri so far. The big buds on the rhododendron look great and will likely make it through the winter to bloom next spring.

Both the Eastern White Pine and Short Leaf Pines are doing well in our back yard – pokeweed growing underneath them. There is also a small Eastern Redcedar that has come up in my wildflower bed; I’m thinking about where to move it next spring…maybe to the area where I planted a button bush…which a squirrel promptly clipped to the ground.

My husband got the barn swallow nests removed from under our deck. We succeeded in not letting them build a nest on the brick of our house last summer…but they found a place on the deck supports and we didn’t notice soon enough.

Our maples in the front yard have lost their leaves. Our neighbor’s river birch has also lost its leaves and it looks like there is a squirrels nest in the tree. The oak in our neighbor’s yard (a pin oak) still has a lot of leaves but seemingly has dropped a lot as well; most of the leaves in our back yard are from that tree.

Even though the drought of the summer made the fall not as brilliantly colored, fall lingered lingered…and the transition to winter was worth noticing.

Ten Little Celebrations – November 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zooming – November 2024

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

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

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

Our Missouri Yard – November 2024

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We haven’t had any extremely cold weather yet. Some trees have lost their leaves but not the oaks. We already are well above the monthly average for rainfall so are recovering somewhat from the drought through the summer and fall…just as we are bracing for winter.

The violets are reduced in volume but still mostly green. They have been a great plant for extending the flower beds on the east side of our house into the yard (I have several feet of ‘grass’ that is so thick with violets that I haven’t mowed it for at least two months!).

I have an area that is full of pine needles and clippings (grass, boxwood, yew) that I will plant with hostas next spring – as soon as my established clumps of hostas begin to sprout and can be easily divided. The rhododendron looks great…lots of buds for next spring’s blooms. The grapevine that I’ve draped over the stubble of a crape myrtle is turning yellow. I’m not sure what I will do with it next year. I don’t want it growing into the rhododendron but there is not a lot of space where it can go otherwise.

The seeds are falling out of the chives. These plants were started a few years ago from seeds I got from my mother’s garden. There is an oak seedling growing in the lambs ear. The closest oak tree is a pin oak, but the squirrels might plant acorns from further afield. The parent of a maple seedling might be one of the maples in our front yard…although it is on the other side of the house from where this seedling is growing.

The spicebush that I bought and planted about a month ago is showing some fall color…hope it comes back in the spring.

It is obvious we haven’t had a hard freeze yet this year. There are ‘intimate landscapes’ with fall colors everywhere.

I am trying to ‘leave the leaves’ this year rather than mow them. There were two piles that had been created by the wind in my front yard so I gathered them up into the wheelbarrow to move to my compost spot where the hostas will go. Otherwise I am leaving the scattering of leaves on the yard. I might have to move some oak leaves that fall into our yard once our neighbor’s tree drops its leaves. Overall, the wind had done most of the ‘raking’ of leaves either away from my yard or into areas where they can stay.

The Virginia creeper on the west side of the house has already lost its leaves but the plants near our front door are spectacularly red.

The aromatic sumac has lots of buds. I hope it makes seed clusters next season.

The Ozark witch hazel is probably too small to bloom in January but hopefully it will in a few years. I found a small tree growing under the holly trees. The leaves are rough…maybe a hackberry? I am going to leave it be for now…just as I am all the redbud seedlings!

I still have work to do before it gets too cold: pulling/digging out Japanese honeysuckle primarily.

Garrison Springs Community Forest

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

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

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

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

Zooming – October 2024

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

Busiek State Forest and Wildlife Area

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Ten Little Celebrations – September 2024

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It seemed liked the heat of summer lingered into September this year…but we are already savoring a few cooler days and looking forward to fall foliage. There was plenty to celebrate this month:

Places to visit

Butterflies at Botanical Garden of the Ozarks (in Fayetteville). Celebrated finally seeing some of the larger butterflies although it was in Arkansas rather than at home.

A few hours at the Lovett Pinetum. The place is not a park…requires some coordination to visit. I visited as part of my Identifying Woody Plants class (Missouri State University) and celebrated the evergreens…but also the native plants that are growing in the unmanaged areas. There is also a lovely spring feed pond and then stream.

Japanese festival at the Springfield Botanical Gardens. Celebrating big drums and the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden full of people enjoying the fall day. We got ice matcha tea just before the booth was scheduled to close!

La Petite Prairie field trip. Celebrating the experience of walking through a prairie with grass almost as tall as me for the first time….and not getting bitten by anything (maybe because of my permethrin treated gaiters and hat…long sleeves and jeans).

Family ties

Finding puzzles for Dad. Finally…found a used books/puzzles sale that had some 300 piece puzzles. Celebrated and took them down to Dallas for my dad a few days later.

Around our yard

A cooler day. September had some hot days…but there are cooler ones where the high stays in the 70s to celebrate too.

Getting the yard mowed and the brush burning in the chiminea. I celebrated that I got so much yard work done on one of the cooler days…mowed the whole yard and burned a pile of brush that had accumulated during the summer.

Collecting pin oak acorns to sprout. Celebrating finding a video about sprouting acrons in water and starting the process with some carefully selected acorns from my neighbor’s tree that fell in my yard.

Planting pawpaw seeds. So many seeds from 2 pawpaws I got from an earlier master naturalist class! This time I stratified them before planting. I am celebrating that I got them in the ground…and hopefully will celebrate some of them coming up next spring/summer.

American Spikenard seeds turning red. Celebrating that the American Spikenard I planted a year ago has survived and is producing red seeds this September.

A Colorful Maple Leaf

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When I came out of my polling place (for the Missouri primary) earlier this month - I noticed a spot of color in one of the maple trees growing in an island of the parking lot. I took a closer look.

It was the only leaf on the tree that wasn’t green! Of course, in the fall the tree will be full of leaves that are brilliantly colored since so many of the trees here are varieties of red maples. I am savoring this spot of color and not yet having to worry about mowing my yard frequently enough to mulch the fallen leaves into the grass.

Dried hydrangeas

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My daughter let me cut the last three flowers on her Asian hydrangea bush last October (see post here). They lasted a long time in a vase on the windowsill in my office. About the time I headed to Texas in mid-November, I put the flowers into separate vases with no water to enable the flowers to dry.

When I returned home, the flowers were nicely dried with most of the petals still blue! I took some high key images of the best one – where the petals stayed relatively flat rather than wilting/curling.

This is a great way to prolong the flowers of fall into winter. I wonder how long the color will last….

Zooming (and Macro) – December 2023

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There was not as much time for photography this past month; I am combining macro (getting close) and zoomed (optical magnification) images in this post.

The macro images go first. The yellow cosmos were part of a small bouquet I cut and put in mini-vase for the middle of my parents’ breakfast table. They enjoyed the enlarged view that I showed them just after I photographed them. The leaves are probably the last new ones of the season on a rose bush that has been blooming next to their garage for over 30 years!

The leaves on a millet plant (came up under the bird feeder!) are interesting as they begin their end-of-season decline.

The zoomed images for December included some birds and plants at Josey Ranch, fall foliage, and zoomed images of glass orbs in yard art…the last flowers in the garden.

In the coming months – the stainless steel iris will be the highlight of the garden!

In the coming months – the stainless steel iris will be the highlight of the garden!

Fall Foliage in Carrollton

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The peak fall color in my parents Carrollton yard was in December this year….and seemed more vibrant than usual. The crape myrtle leaves turned red and stayed attached long enough to be noticed.

The pecan turned stayed green for a longer…then turned yellow. It sheds small branches of leaves rather than single leaves. I caught one small branch in the process of turning…the sun bringing out more colors than I had noticed previously.

The mulberry leaves turn yellow. They dominate in the collection of leaves that must be mowed/mulched into the yard.

The red oak in the front yard is indeed very red when the sun shines through the leaves.

Even the neighbor’s wisteria that is coming over the fence contributed fall color.

After last summer’s drought and high temperatures in this area, the trees have apparently recovered sufficiently to provide a magnificent fall display…before settling into winter.

Bringing Fall Foliage Indoors

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I found a small oak and a maple growing in my flowerbed…cut them since they can’t grow large there. They were colorful so I put them in a kombucha jar on one of my office tables and have been enjoying them for the past week or so.

The oak was the largest of the two small trees and the leaves were a variety of colors. It is probably a child of the oak in our neighbor’s yard – maybe planted in our flower bed by a squirrel.

The oaks in our neighborhood retain their leaves longer than many other trees nearby…so maybe this young one will last longer indoors too.

The red maple seedling made an interesting macro image from above! It is smaller and more delicate than the oak…but the topmost leaves continued to grow after I cut it!

The maples in our yard have already lost their leaves but the small one indoors is still photogenic!

Our Missouri Neighborhood – November 2023

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I am planning to do a lot more walks around my neighborhood – get some quality outdoor time/exercise…maybe even what the Garmin calls ‘intensity minutes’. I’ll take a small camera with me…just in case I spot anything interesting. My daughter called me just as I was heading out so I didn’t photograph the great blue heron that was in a sunny spot at the edge of the pond; I just watched until it flew away while I talked to her.

I did some power walking almost to the furthest bridge before I stopped to photograph some oak leaves that had caught in the grass at the edge of the pond. The tree still had quite a few leaves to drop!

The willow seems to still have mostly green leaves!

A little further along there was debris on the walk; looking closer I realized it was seeds rather than leaves!

Even though the temperature was only about 40 degrees. The sunshine must have made the bank warm enough for a turtle to leave the water.

After I got to the other end of the ponds, I noticed a lot of maple leaves had fallen in the drainage channel and the grass along the path.

A short length of sidewalk on my route was almost covered with pine needles. I enjoyed photographing some cones that had fallen as well.

There was a stump at one end of the row of pines that must have been cut several years ago – maybe before we moved to the neighborhood. The color of the pine needles stands out against the gray of the wood and the powdery green of lichen/moss.  

A big plus – I accumulated 29 intensity minutes!

Fall Foliage in our Yard

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The change in foliage started back in early October with the leaves of our red maple showing patches of red.

When I mowed our yard in late October, I noticed one of the bushes had red leaves, the red maple was beginning to shed its leaves, and the Virginia creeper in the flower bed had turned red. One side of our back yard had a dusting of river birch leaves from a neighbor’s tree.

The pokeweed berries were ripe – being eaten by birds!

While I was away in Texas, our Missouri neighborhood experienced a hard freeze.  I took a panorama image from my backyard toward the tennis courts and pond. The trees were very colorful.

The next day I walked around the yard for a closer look. The dogwood leaves looked brown….although they looked interesting enough backlit. The forsythia (in the foreground looking toward the tennis court) looked like the frost had surprised it – the leaves curled and limp.

Tender plants like pokeweed (lower right corner of the first image and the taller pants in the second) and hostas had wilted/collapsed with the cold. I’ve cut down the pokeweed in the most visible areas of the yard but left it in out-of-the-way places…will see if the birds continue to eat the berries.

At this point, the river birches have lost all their leaves. The maples are thinning fast; the ones in my front yard have lost more than half their leaves. The oaks are just beginning to shed their leaves. I think the early frost got all my crepe myrtles…hopefully not killing them back to the roots – which is what happened last winter. One of my pines shed old needles (already brown) after the cold snap and enlarged the circle of needles around it (must mean the tree is getting bigger).

I am enjoying my fall yard!

Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge – November 2023

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I left Carrollton on the day the shift was made from daylight to standard time; it was easy to reach Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge just after sunrise; it was a hazy morning. There were already other birders driving the wildlife loop – some with the same strategy I use: photography through a car window!

One of the first birds I saw was a great blue heron that flew into a large pond and was immediately on the move – probably looking for breakfast.

I saw a group of snow geese at the edge of the pond with water reflecting the sunrise colors behind them. Note that some of the geese are smaller (i.e. Ross’s Goose). There were blue morphs of the snow geese mixed in as well.

A grebe appeared with some pintails.

Mallards are always around. The trees and shoreline vegetation were definitely showing their fall colors. And then the sun popped above the horizon.

American coots are back at the refuge.

The most numerous birds were red winged blackbirds. They were enjoying the abundant seeds (sunflowers mostly) and rose up in murmuration at any little disturbance. Sometimes the group landed on the road for a few seconds but then quickly flew away to another stand of vegetation with seeds or to trees. They seemed oblivious to a hawk in one tree they picked. The group was a mixture of males and females.

A disorderly V of cormorants (I think) flew by.

I got out of my car once to look over the shoreline vegetation to see if I could spot a group of pelicans in one of the larger ponds but didn’t see any…the vegetation was worth a few photographs.

Another group of snow geese/Ross’s geese was grazing in a grassy area. I did a series of images…with one of the geese stretching its wings. The geese were vocalizing…gentle noises that probably reassure all of them that things are OK with the world.

In summary – some of the birds that will overwinter at Hagerman have arrived but there should be even more arriving.

Springfield Botanical Gardens – October 2023

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A quick walk around the Springfield Botanical Gardens on a sunny fall day – full of photographic opportunities.

I always like the hens and chicks near the Botanical Center. I like the green and red/pink colors…the texture of the plants growing close together. I wondered which plants were the ‘hens.’

There were a few trees in fall color, but most were still green.

The hosta garden waterfall was sunny…and the begonia beside it added a pop of color.

Sometimes the veins of leaves remind me of Zentangle patterns.

There was a female Monarch Butterly on some butterfly weed still blooming in the butterfly garden. It was a larger insect…one that would be migrating south to Mexico.

I saw a black swallowtail in the butterfly garden as well but it flew away before I could photograph it. There were bees and skippers everywhere there were blooming plants – but these photos were taken in the Master Gardeners area.

I took several pictures of hibiscus – probably close to the end of the season for them. This magenta one appealed to me because of the color, the freshness of the petals, and the angle of the flower from my vantage point. Even the shadow of the central part of the flower in the midday sun is appealing.

While many of the flowers are fading fast, there were some that seemed to be in full bloom – the last hoorah of a productive growing season.

Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden – October 2023

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The weather for our Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden visit last week was near perfect: sunny, just under 70 degrees, a little breeze. I photographed every Japanese lantern I noticed!

Fall is just beginning. One of the bald cypress trees was ahead of the others…and the dogwoods always are part of the ‘early’ changers. The water as backdrop or mirror is a big part of the draw for photography in this garden.

There were two cairns left behind by other visitors – one of pinecones and other of small rocks.  Most of the plantings are trees and bushes but there are a few perennials near the entrance.

They are already preparing the garden for Gardens Aglow that will begin on November 24th. The bridge in this picture will be brilliant red during the event! I am already planning to see the garden multiple times during the holidays.

Zooming – October 2023

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The optics of my camera allow me to capture images that are better than I can see with my eyes – flowers, insects, birds, cave formations and seed pods that fill the frame…driftwood isolated from the noise of other things around it….sculpture, glass, and fall gourds specially arranged….sunrises and a sunset….the beauty of a fall morning. Every picture is a memory moment – a visual that also serves as a reminder of a place and mood and relationship with the people that experienced it with me. The places were mostly close to home in southwest Missouri (art museum, meadow, caverns) but also St. Louis and along the route between home and Carrollton TX.