80AcresOnline

Significant rain in July is uncommon, and we picked up inches and inches–after the very dry spring and early summer, this was a relief to us and to everything that lives on the place.

Switchgrass head-high in July

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Near Meadow: Claspleaf Coneflower and Lemon Horsemint

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Because of time constraints (working on copy edits for new book) and weather, the brief walk on the land Saturday didn’t produce any usable bird pictures and I didn’t see any snakes or lizards, but I did see wildlife, large and small:

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We’re already drying up, though much is still green and flowers are still blooming…the long-range forecast is for a “mild drought.”   Last summer, in the worst of the drought, we reworked the backyard water feature (which had become overgrown with water irises, among other things.)   We started it before we had the 80 acres, designing it for wildlife use from the beginning, with sunny, shady, quiet, and fast-moving sections of varying depths and shapes.   In the extreme drought that ended last fall, it was crucial to our wildlife, because neither of the small guzzlers out on the 80 acres was big enough to sustain a good population of amphibians or odonates.

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Engelmann’s Daisy, one of the old native prairie plants that cattle love to eat.   We’re trying to get it established again–so far, in a protected location:

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The end of a drought brings amazing flower displays–both in variety and in number.   Here are a few of our beauties, up close:

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Along the fencerows and in the creek bottoms at this time of year, you’ll see sudden puffs of white on shrubs that range from waist high up to about 15 feet.  The first white-flowering shrubs–with discrete “powderpuff” flowers–are Rusty Blackhaw Viburnum, Viburnum rufidulum, a native here which is being destroyed by development.  That’s because developers and land managers think of anything but large oaks as “brush” to be cleared away.

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It’s not fully open yet, but we count “first bluebonnet” from the first “bonnets” being open, so this counts.  You can see one not as far along in the background.

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The thicketing plums in full bloom–this thicket began with a few stems of plum stuck in the ground.

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The earliest native plum is a thicketing bush plum that’s spread in what we laughingly call  the orchard.   First bloom opened yesterday;  this morning I found these, with many more to come.

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