Late Spring on the Tallgrass

Golden Alexander and Prairie Sage
(click on photo for a larger image)

It's June! Ah, but still spring...this is important to me. There is still so much to be done here at the Prairie Hill Farm Studio and I'm grateful that summer is still about 3 weeks away...speaking of the solstice of course.

Our native pasture has a degree of difference and evolution each year, but there are still the stalwart standbys that we can count on seeing each spring. A couple plants that seem to flourish and increase each season we burn portions of the pasture are the Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea) and the White or Prairie Sage (Artemisia ludoviciana). I'd never really put the two together in my mind but they've done it for me in one section of the east pasture; some Golden Alexander has wandered into a heavily vegetated area of sage and it really has an interesting, but subtle, visual relationship...nearly a mono tonal effect in some ways as the sage picks up color of surrounding vegetation, but also as a foil supporting backdrop.

Part of the thing that keeps my mind working visually are new experiences in nature, this case being the very prairie remnant I try hard to walk through each day. I find that without this mental exercise I become still in my expression...when this happens, things just don't feel right...the process and emotion needs feeding!

I've been on this road I chose for over half a century now...I have to be be visually creative, it's just something I must do and I doubt I could ever explain it. So I'm very grateful for the intermingling species on the tallgrass here, I'm grateful for the ever present scheme of things chlorophylled, feathered, furred, and scaled here...what fodder for the senses!

The sage is noted in journals as having been used by native Americans for medicinal and ceremonial uses and to repel insects...I wonder how it would work on Black Flies??? Those little buggers are still driving us crazy...the photo above was taken while wearing a bug hat; kinda hard seeing through the camera's viewfinder with bug netting in the way.

There's more awakening out there now, I'll have to go have another look!