80AcresOnline

We have a new species for the list, another bug (literally bug–a stinkbug found on a bush honeysuckle yesterday morning.)  There were lots of them, in fact: all adults, this time.  (You can tell by the wings folded onto the back.)

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Last night we got another three inches of rain.

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An introduction to some more of our “big” grasses, now flowering beautifully after the rain.   Two are climax tallgrasses, and one is (in my opinion) one of the most beautiful grasses in the country and deserves to be used more as a landscape accent.

Meet Lindheimer Muhly (Muhlenbergia Lindheimeri).  All the Muhlys are pretty grasses; some are more striking than others, but Lindheimer Muhly is the queen of the lot:

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I came home to find the creek running clear…

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For the past week, I’ve been in New York State, first visiting a friend in Oswego, with several walks through the woods at the Rice Creek Field Station, and then traveling by train down the Mohawk and the Hudson Rivers, and finally here in NYC, where I spent several hours yesterday at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

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Taking the train from Texas to the NE has let me watch autumn develop: just starting in Texas, more and more advanced as we went north, and here, in upstate NY, gorgeous with sugar maples, sumac, poison ivy (leaves the size of dessert plates), things with berries I don’t know, green moss and ferns, russet this and golden that.

I chatted with another prairie person in St. Louis at the Ninc conference and in Oswego visited Rice Creek Field Station and met the new director, whose previous work was in  Chihuahuan Desert ecology–and then walked the trails there.  Perfect.  She’s aware of research in Mexico on the effect of climate change and has promised to send me some references.

Meanwhile, I’m hearing reports from home of more rain and thus the creek may well still be running when I’m home again, a week from this Sunday.

Though we lost the two planted cypresses to the drought, and some of the water iris we’d planted in the “swamp”, this one survived and is now coming back up from the corm.

The water here is about an inch deep–this is an overflow/seep channel off the main creek; 8.5 inches didn’t put more than a flood pulse through it, but the final 1.5 inches left this wide shallow pool…and a brave little iris.

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Altogether, we’ve had 10 inches of rain since the big rain started.  Though it’s too late for some things, others have recovered well.

The yellow flowers are two-leaf senna, and the pink is the rose-oxalis that usually blooms in the early spring.

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We waited a bit too long to get the new big water tanks…two 2500 gallon jobs were delivered yesterday, in the rain:

The view from the door…they just don’t hold much water when lying on their sides.    And they block our view of the driveway…not to mention the driveway itself.  This week so far, starting Monday, we picked up another 1.3 inches.  Nice, slow, soaking rain.

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The water that didn’t run off soaked in; it’s amazing that in one week it’s turned so green.    The darker streak in the middle distance is the grass waterway when it rains and right now is just dry enough to walk on in regular shoes.

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