A Phone Gallery Full of Beauty

Sometimes I look through my camera gallery and am totally wowed that the world is this beautiful and all we have to do to witness it all is plant a native plant or hike in a prairie or walk down the road or open a window. I want to take you into our world for a moment. Is this your world too?

Elm Argid Sawfly larvae eating the leaf of an American Elm:

Gray Hairstreak butterfly nectaring on Rattlesnake Master:

Saddleback caterpillars dining on Patchouli. This is a houseplant we put on the porch for the summer and we learned saddlebacks eat many different kinds of plants including many ornamentals. I became aware of their presence by picking off dead leaves and getting stung. ha! It's not the worst sting I've ever had by any measure and we were so excited they hosted right on the porch. Our first couple of finds were years ago on beech tree trunks. 

Wetland vegetation at Ohio Bird Sanctuary. Add in knowledge of the beaver dam and you have a positively swoon worthy environment.

A sunny reservoir where we swam and soaked up the rays this summer and early fall, but also...

witnessed White-rumped Sandpipers co-mingling with a flock of Killdeer. Look at those last few sentences...astonishing! Wondrous! Jim McCormac's book, Birds of Ohio, is such a delightful reference for tidbits of natural history like this. Spending time during migration at big bodies of water offers a big sky and a big beach...both offering views of nonhuman (& human) beings living their lives. 

The beauty of prairie eliciting smiles, always. I'm glad to scroll my camera gallery and see smiles on our faces. Kamama Praire, Ohio: 

A shelter made from grass seeds and silk. Who might live here? How exquisite. 

Wavy-lined Emerald. That green! How we love that green. Host plants: aster, coneflower, goldenrod, ragweed and more. Resting on oak.

There were DOZENS of Tawny-edged Skippers on Blue Mistflower a few weeks ago in Highland County, OH. It was totally enchanting and also interesting to note their host plant are grasses. Native and non-native. 

Pennsylvania Leatherwings on Goldenrod. There were HUNDREDS. How important must these plants be to them?

We adore people working so hard to support other lives. This prairie patch is not only gorgeous, but was hopping with bumble bees in a place without many other wildflowers. The purple martins flew overhead in great numbers thanks to a carefully cared for nesting system provided for them. Biking to get here made it even better. Human powered.

Reminders of who lived before. Past, present and future are always comingled. We find relentless learning and observation to be the way of understanding and forward thinking & motion. 

This Figwort (always a favorite!) grows in a low spot roadside. Other plants tell the story of a fairly intact native plant community; one that is exciting and that should be respected and encouraged. The for sale sign and access driveway tell the tale of another way. Which will it be? At this point in time, humans get to decide. And to decide well, we must know. We must observe. We must learn. We must appreciate lives other than our own.

Choosing co-habitation with nonhuman life at our house, we live in a mixture of inside and outside, frequently with open windows and open doors. How else can we hear the whole world? Camping is a natural extension of our everyday life, but simpler. This time is precious to us; in fact it's probably quite likely essential given how we feel while doing so and for a time afterward. 

The hikes in big, big, big open spaces are different than much of our homeland, but they renew us and continue to become more crucial for renewal.

Sheyenne National Grassland: 

Badlands in North Dakota:

Red Velvet Ant (actually a wasp!) in all her magnificence.

Lichens making soil. 

Cactus seeds preparing to make more cacti.

Hope in people. Hope in non-profits. How grateful we are for you!

Hoary Vervain:

One moment I don't have a picture for, but that remains in the gallery of my mind is the unseen, but yipping coyote. I sat in my chair in Morrow County, OH watching the sky for diurnal migrating raptors and monarchs (with much success) and all of a sudden, about 20' away near a huge brush pile (hidden by tall native plants) came one series of yips. Only one series, but unmistakable. The smile spread huge on my face then and appears even now as I write. Steve and I share space with so many lives, with as much of the real world as can live here and I still cannot believe how many said yes to our invitation. Coyotes don't live long around here due to misinformed people, but she or he was there, right near me. I know they knew I was there and what they said I do not know. Maybe just a friendly hello because they know how very much they mean to me. 

What a gift to pay attention....and to feel LOVE.

Soundtracks:

Greta Van Fleet: Age of Man

Hozier: Take Me to Church

Vince Staples: Cotton

Bebe Stockwell & Wesley Schultz: Ant Farm

Kevin Morby: Badlands

Videos to wow you:

Bird Migration

Caterpillars (password: Milkweed)

Our YouTube Channel:

The Common Milkweed

Winter Happenings...

Hello dearest friends,

We've been traveling! We took our little Winnebago Itasca Spirit, Toyota out for a journey south to warmer lands...

and found tremendous beauty in northern Georgia...

and incredible concentrations of life in southern GA.

Our three cats traveled with us and found refuge in the sunshine...

our laps...

and the stillness of the camper. (Moving, not so much.)

The cold found us in southern GA and we had to make our way home anyway so we headed into deeper cold in northern Alabama to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. Tens of thousands of Sandhill Cranes, one Whooping Crane, thousands of waterfowl and overwintering songbirds made our quick stop not enough. We cannot wait to go back!

Now, we delight in the frost and ice of February in Ohio...

and more than cherish any sunshine that illumines our little patch called home.

The winter treasures we behold are more subtle than the spring and summer abundance we share, but with an observational eye, the beauty of warm days finds us in the healthy and strong cocoon of a polyphemus or luna moth overwintering on the native American Hazelnut we planted many moons ago. The winds have long since dropped this cocoon into the leaf litter below the plants reminding us daily why we don't clean up leaves. The diverse and abundant world of life in the leaf litter zone is more beautiful than we ever dreamed; truly the fodder for wonder.

We celebrated the joy of a 53 year old birthday boy swinging in the snow and smiling all the while.

And of course, we stratified the phenomenal native American Persimmon seeds we collected with grand hopes of great germination and strong root growth, which we will offer for sale next fall during their dormant period.

Two books we are currently devouring that we highly recommend if you want to help save the world or just add great enjoyment to your life:

Native Plant Agriculture Vol.1 by Indigenous Landscapes
Nature's Best Hope by Doug Tallamy

And finally, we are loving our dearest, oldest coon cat - Bounder. She is aging and life is shifting for her and we remember to hold our loves as tight as we can. Life isn't going any slower and for that incredible gift of clarity, we discern what is important and what isn't really, at all. Our mantra regarding much of life now is Good Enough and then we spend that "extra" time living and loving and embracing, gratefully and with reciprocity and joy.

Summer Happenings: Monarchs, Promethea Moths, Art, Family & Friends

It's summer and we love it! Overall, it's been a very cool summer so our winter squash and tomatoes are just sort of sitting in the garden waiting for heat. We will see how much food we get from them this year. We are making a high tunnel and lean-to greenhouse this fall to help with season extension in different ways so next year, we hope, will be easier. We will post here as we progress on these projects.

We are seeing lots of cool nature stuff though, including monarchs - finally! There are lots of little eggs on our milkweed, which is just so dang exciting. Remember the Monarch Tent from last year?

We aren't doing that this year to try and keep disease low, but continue to work to improve their habitat here and work with township officials to safeguard roadside milkweed. Sometimes a little pink flagging and a friendly ask can work magic.

Steve found a fabulous find on our Tulip Poplar - the super beautiful Promethea Moth caterpillar:

We've found 4 on the tree so far and are enjoying watching the leaves disappear knowing they are raising one of the magnificient silkmoths that continues to struggle. (Here's an older article on this topic.)

Want to see a 1.5 minute video on this sweet little tree of ours featuring these caterpillars? Click here.

In other nature news, I met on several occasions one of the huge, fabulous Fishing Spiders (Dolomedes tenebrosus) in our basement. This one lives primarily in wooded areas and ventures indoors fairly frequently. They eat most anything they can find and subdue.

A Clymene moth (Haploa clymene) was spotted on one of our Red Cedars we recently planted for a wind break. We saw dozens of these many years ago at Swamp Angel Nature Preserve in IN so it was fun to find one again. The caterpillars feed on Eupatorium species, oak, peach and willow and the land grows all those here.

Summer is also a great time for visiting with friends and we are so grateful to everyone who documents since we always manage to forget. We met up with our favorite Art Grange folks to spend the day exploring art (clay/fiber, willow) and nature at an open house in Roseville Ohio. If you are local, make sure you attend in the future...it's a beautiful and inspiring place.

Michelle and I were so charmed we started flying around like butterflies and birds!

The willow sculptures, fences, gates, baskets, etc. are so so cool. Steve is pondering this, of course.

We traveled to see family and friends; family and friends came to see us in Ohio. Life is good. Here's Jennifer's family:

Nope, we aren't twins...two years apart. Love this girl!

We continue to work our native plant nursery (thanks to everyone who has already helped spread these plants out into the world to work their magic!) and soak up all the goodness of life. The insect chorus happening now is one of our most favorite annual events. More soon. Take care everyone.