Botanical Garden of the Ozarks

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If I lived in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks would be one of my favorite places. Our membership at the Springfield Botanical Gardens got us in as reciprocal members.

Even before we went into the gardens, I saw several swallowtails on the plantings at the edge of the parking lot.

There was also a water feature near the entrance with water lilies.

I spotted a grasshopper that stayed still long enough for a portrait.

We heard the garden’s rooster crowing as we walked into the first garden area - a vegetable garden with a corn shaped fountain and red okra. I had never seen any okra that color previously. It is evidently edible like regular okra but also a colorful plant for the garden. The gardener that was working that morning told me it was her backup plant for things that did not fare as well in the high heat over this summer…and it looked great.

There was a children’s garden with one adult sized entrance and several child size ones with tile mosaic arches.

Just outside the children’s garden here was a train of couches for reading.

And then we came to the screened in butterfly house! Lots of opportunities for butterfly photography!

Continuing through the garden…I noticed some structures. My favorite was a pair of porch swings that were mostly in the shade; we sat for a bit, enjoying the swing, appreciating the little break before we made our way back to the entrance of the garden.

Springfield Botanical Garden – July 2022 (1)

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The Springfield Botanical Garden is already one of my favorite places to walk around….easily taking the place of Brookside Gardens in Maryland. We parked near the rose garden. The roses were looking a little challenged by the summer heat but there were plenty of summer flowers to enjoy: cone flowers, zinnias, sunflowers (to name a few).

The hosta garden is always a cool and damp oasis. We arrived before 8 AM….before the heat of the day. I enjoyed photographing the flowers and leaves with water droplets on them.

There was one caladium leaf that had a shape like butterfly wings!

The lilies were still blooming profusely (see the June post for earlier in their bloom period). I took very zoomed images to avoid spent blooms that are part of the scene this month. It seemed that mesh had been put around more of the beds…maybe deer have become a problem.

I hadn’t noticed the Osage orange tree near one of the pollinator gardens before. It is full of fruit now. It is an interesting tree….without an efficient means of propagation without human assistance. Its seed dispersal evidently was via extinct megafauna (giant ground sloth, mammoth, mastodon, etc.). But – it was widely used for fencing/wind breaks by settlers and has been planted in all 48 contiguous states of the US and in southeastern Canada. It is not a rare tree even though it could become so without continued attention.

Stay tuned…in a few days I’ll post about the animal life I noticed in the garden this month.

Painterly Flower Photographs

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A photography project in my home office: sitting on the other side of the office from the flowers and using the zoom on the camera to get magnified images of the flowers….varying light and magnification. Sometimes I rest the camera on my knee to hold it steady – fold out the view screen to compose the image. Sit back and enjoy the slide show; it will last a little over a minute before it loops back to the beginning.

The advantage of using the zoom is that the depth of field is enough to get the whole flower in focus; getting close…using a macro lens approach…would make it harder to get the focus I wanted. The higher the magnification the more ‘painterly’ they become; the focus softens. I like that the background often is flat or washes out….even the window screen is a pale gray grid. Capturing curves and textures of the petals is the priority.

There are three kinds of flowers: black-eyed susans, zinnias, cone flowers. They all came from the CSA over the past three weeks. Some of the petals are already beginning to dry and curl; the part under the petals of the zinnias starts out as shades green…then turns to shades of brown as the flowers age..

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Sewing Machine. I have put my 47-year-old sewing machine in the pile I am collecting to donate. It still has all the things it came with – even the instruction book. I used it a lot for about 15 years. For the first 10 of those years I made almost all my clothes. I even took some tailoring classes in 1983 – thinking I would make my suits for work. Then my career ramped up and required more time; I started buying my suits and making my blouses. By the time by daughter was born I was sewing infrequently. I’m not sure why it took me so long to let it go; it was an easy ‘declutter’ decision.

Blue Skies. The hazy skies are gone…but the temperature is still on the cool side. The forecast shows a warming trend…back up to the 80s.

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More Butterflies at the CSA

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There seemed to be even more butterflies at the Community Supported Agriculture cutting garden when I went to cut my flowers and stevia this week. I’d remembered to take my better camera so got some reasonably good pictures. I managed to identify all of them using the Maryland Butterflies web page when I looked at the images on my big monitor.

I’ve seen the Common Buckeye many times but they seemed to be a lot more of them in close proximity than I had seen before.

The Pink-edged Sulphur was a new one for me. I knew it was a ‘sulphur’ when it photographed it but didn’t see the edges clearly until it was on the big screen.

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The Red Admiral on the cone flower was one I don’t remember seeing before but it is evidently found through most of Maryland.

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I’d seen the Palamedes Swallowtails in previous year’s Wings of Fancy exhibits inside the conservatory. This was the first one I’ve seen in the wild. I realized it was a swallowtail when I photographed it and that it looked a little different than the dark morphs of tiger swallowtails that often are more common in this area.

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What a thrill to see three new-to-me butterflies this week!

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Car service. We took my husband’s car to the dealership for a gear shift button repair (it popped off!!!). It turned out to be a recall item and they had the replacement part. Now the service is up to date on the car as well. My car will get serviced next week. We haven’t been driving much this year….but the cars do have a maintenance schedule.

Yampa Valley Festival of the Cranes. I started making my way through the videos. They are well done. It is positive story as well because Northwest Colorado’s Greater Sandhill Cranes have gone from endangered to threatened (1993) to special concern (1998). I’d like to go to the festival held just before their fall migration south some year….see the young cranes leaving the nesting grounds. Some of them end up in Bosque del Apache where we’ve been twice to the festival in November (cancelled this year).

Fledgling chipping sparrow. This is the time for fledging chipping sparrows (probably second brood). There was one that was trying to come to the feeder while I was out with my morning caffeine. It couldn’t quite manage getting on the perch so would flutter down to the deck railing and an adult bird would bring some seed. Hopefully, it will become coordinated enough to get its own seed soon.

Brookside Gardens Zinnias

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Last Saturday was full of sunshine and the zinnias at Brookside Gardens were great reflections of the morning. I have fond memories of the zinnias my grandmother grew in her garden between rows of vegetables…when the fruit trees that she’d planted when she first moved to there too young to shade them out. I also grew zinnias in pots on my deck….until I got too busy with other things to water them consistently. They are popular flowers with butterflies and, sometimes, hummingbirds.

There were insects buzzing around the flowers while I was photographing them. I enjoyed the flowers on their own. There is something about the curve or their petals, the variety in their centers, and the vibrancy of their colors that always draws my attention. I used my zoom rather than getting close because I wanted the whole flower in focus….with the background very blurred. Enjoy the zinnias of summer!