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

Traditions

Well friends, hi! It's that time of year again where I write and I can hardly believe it...it's a strange life we live if you think about it too much, isn't it? 

That's when I find joy in showing up on a wildlife cam like this. United with another human. Sharing love. Sharing time outdoors.

In the same spot, but at a different time, this buck found the staghorn sumac and made his presence known with significant scent marks.

Others came to read the message.

We smelled them too, but we don't communicate the same way and cannot understand what he said. We know part of it is to mark territory or alert others of his presence, but might their be more?

Before the land became covered in white we savored a mild end of fall. Frogs found our lamp lit windows and dined on moths attracted to the brightness.

We explored with friends and found incredible caterpillars. 

Checkered-fringe Prominent:

Spiny Oak Slug:

Oval-leaved Ladies' Tresses made herself known at Persimmon South: 

Our traditions are minimal or so I believed until I thought through our days, our weeks, our months. Some folks could definitely pass off our activities as habits, but given that we are repeating human patterns, we will call them traditions.

Musclewood seeds (good cardinal food we learned this year):

As I thought through this year, not in a nostalgic way, but in a practical, logging type of way, I realized our traditions are mostly defined by plants and by sunlight and all who depend on them. Shortening daylight correlates with seed gathering and dormant planting so that is what we did.

Persimmon Pilgrimaging is a bonafide annual tradition and the 2025 late fall exploration took us on the road headed southwest from Ohio towards Missouri for multiple quests.

Hunting swamp chestnut oaks for a friend was first on the agenda. Little bits of information and plant discovery (or not) is exciting! The thrill of the chase is real!

Though we didn't find the trees where he wanted us to look, we did find a monster at Big Oak Tree State Park in Missouri.

As we look for plants we don't know as well, we learn to look for certain clues. Like the way Quercus michauxii has distinctive flared scales on the acorn cap. 

Our second quest was the FOREST grown, not open grown, state champion American persimmon tree in MO. The height was draw dropping and the fruit SO VERY delicious. This tree is in decline, but there are sprouts coming up everywhere around the mama that are getting mowed; we think it's time to let them grow.

Magnificent!

We also found many wild grown American persimmon trees in Tennessee and Missouri and as wild trees do, they exhibited so much interesting variability. 

The bark is always a give away. Chunky, dark, blocks. This boy scrounged around the ground like a mad man after gold. Definitely a man after my heart!

With the abundance of acorns and American persimmons, we decided to try a new tradition I read about long ago: persimmon ash cakes. How to do it, I couldn't remember fully, but I remembered enough so we gave it ago. We mashed persimmons and chopped white oak acorns as best we could with a tiny knife:

formed patties and put them in the ashes first:

then moved them to the coals and let them roast. Our first attempt ended up burnt, but you can bet we will try again next year with a little more knowledge than this year. 

We are grateful for the traditions in our lives, for noticing what happens daily in the nonhuman world, for always witnessing this is a shared planet, not just with other Homo sapiens, but with the estimated 8.7 million other species on Earth. The very end of November brought us into contact with:

Jumping Bush Cricket (male) on our porch:

Orange-banded Checkered Beetle on the Kamelands Trail in the Highlands Nature Sanctuary:

Red Flat Bark Beetle on the Jungle Brook Trail at Malabar State Park: 

Wheel Bug on the north side of our garage: 

Wheel Bug laid to rest in the leaves...

The last of the big migratory flocks of turkey vultures:

And before the wild December snows of Morrow County, Ohio...into the presence of beautiful autumnal forest.

As the snow fell and blanketed the Earth, we said so long to our insect friends and to easy tread on trail and embraced the next season of 2025. What else can we do, but be here now?

Alvin said ok:

Luke said no way:

Minnie Pearl said I don't care:

Happy (almost) Winter Solstice! What a joy to say! I do believe this is our most favorite day of the year - we made it to the darkest day and we are only brighter from here. Bring back the light! Take care friends. Please let us know your traditions.  

Soundtracks:

Samantha Crain - When We Remain

Alabama Shakes - This Feeling

Ketch Secor: Catch Me If You Can

Rabbitology - The Bog Bodies

Van Morrison - Stretching Out

Austin and The Syd Experience - Mass Destruction

Molly Tuttle - Everything Burns