July Only Comes Once a Year...

 

Red-headed Woodpecker - photograph - ©Bruce A. Morrison

Of course it does!  I guess I'm trying to be metaphorical...or maybe melancholy?  Even I don't know.  Maybe getting older has me thinking about things too much.  I was so used to saying to myself things like "I've got to try and see those next July."  Or maybe "We really should take that trip to (fill in the blank) next summer.  I'm not quite there yet but so many things are now out of my reach - they were great ideas but now no longer in the cards.  Especially things like that long hike or trek I always thought would be great to do...even some places I've long had permission to walk with my camera are beginning to be out of the question any more.  If you haven't reached that place in your life, it is sobering when they confront you, and you realize fully, I shouldn't have kept putting it off.  That is "life".

 

 

Lately, when I'm up to it, I have been trying very hard to take each moment and have fun with it.  When I was younger, I was busy with things that seemed important.  Now I know so much of it wasn't.  And now, everything is (important).

 

Female Eastern Bluebird - photograph - ©Bruce A. Morrison

 

We have had such a fun year with nature here on our little postage stamp sized acreage.  Every day I try and watch and catch things before they pass. 

 

Cottontail Rabbit...rabbits make Georgie crazy! - photograph - ©Bruce A. Morrison

Echinacea angustifolia in our pasture - photograph - ©Bruce A. Morrison

Pearly Crescentspot (Phyciodes tharos) - photograph - ©Bruce A. Morrison

Asclepias tuberosa in the pasture here - photograph - ©Bruce A. Morrison

 

 

Now I haven't caught everything with the camera or easel of course...it's just not possible.  But what I miss stays with us in other ways - the Yellow-billed Cuckoo which calls from high in the grove, we know its there as it sings for us each day.  Then there's the Eastern Wood Pewee that we also hear each day; we do see it "fly catching" from the lower branches around the yard, but often we only hear it talk to us.  

The morning chorus has been amazing.  I used to try and record it with audio equipment in past years...maybe succeeded in a small way but could never do it justice!  Always first seems to be the Robins, then the Catbirds and Mourning Doves, then the Chipping Sparrows and the Orioles and Meadowlarks and Dickcissels, House Wrens, and so many others...sleeping with the windows open is a blessing!

We have noticed those missing this year...we no longer hear the night time calling of Sedge Wrens, and this year no juvenile Great Horned Owls or summer Redtailed Hawks.  Although the Great Blue Herons returned to the Waterman Creek rookery this spring - they abandoned the rookery in June and none raised their young here.

Not every year is the same..some things change, and not always as we'd wish.  Although we still have our ash trees here in the acreage and in the valley out front - there are farmsteads only a 5 minute trip from us that are losing all of theirs as I speak.  We are not far behind. 

But I will try and take in and enjoy in any way I can what is given to us each day as it happens...each day is a gift!  There is so much to see and do and July only comes once a year.

Be good to one another out there - we truly need each other.

Hot Enough For Ya!!??

 Eastern Bluebird on Common Mullein
(photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison)

Its been a warm one for sure and the faucet has been constricted a bit too.  And here we are in July already...geeze - mid July!  This is getting way out of hand; I know I'm easily distracted (Squirrel!!!!!!!!!) but give me a break!  This was once a weekly blog and now its almost quarterly!

We have been keeping busy around the acreage...the gardens are all doing extremely well thanks always to the Mrs. - Georgie runs a tight ship and works really hard at it too...been too much water hauling with the low rain this summer but its going well for her. 

Georgie and I started the early summer with a huge brome problem in the pasture where they laid a septic field in June of 2019...I mean huge!  Although there were some "survivors" in the disturbed part of the pasture, it actually turned into nearly solid brome.  Ugh.  

I started weed whacking it bit by bit and hauling our "hay", but it looked like a better method should be found.  Georgie started cutting it out - at the base of every clump - literally...I think it took maybe 2 weeks of every morning to get it done...I'm sure we could have made a nice big bale out of that mess!  Then I went through and treated clump stumps...its going to be a process - trying to get new things to survive in chest high brome is problematic to say the least.

Heliopsis helianthoides getting to be a real pasture/ditch bully here!
(photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison)

Other parts of the native pasture are doing well and other parts have issues too...just takes a lot of monitoring.  Interestingly one of the problem plant (forbs) this year is decidedly Heliosis helianthoides or False Sunflower...it has now completely filled the south ditch and has 30% of the north - spilling over into the north pasture!  Particularly bad in the NE triangle of that pasture.  I have spent a few days earlier in late spring chopping their bases and hauling them out but now can't even see where I'd done even that much!  This stuff is very hard to pull...a 2 year plant will "NOT" pull no matter how hard you try...its better to just suck it up and bend over (harder now than it ever used to be!) and cut it with a knife or pruning shear - this will take more effort on my part or things will turn a direction I don't even want to think about.

Wow the studio finally got a facelift!  Georgie was getting tired of having to paint the old siding - it would not hold paint, no matter the brand or cost...never did.  Plus the old used door was not very efficient - even took a picture this past winter of a snow drift inside the studio, yes "really".  So now I have a new door and siding, plus the contractor (Thanks Jeff Halverson!!!) even building wrapped the sides again and clad the wood window frames in aluminum so they don't have to be painted again either!  I'm spoiled.

C2020 F3 (Comet NEOWISE)

(photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison)

Its comet month in July - C2020 F3 (Comet NEOWISE) has become visible to the unaided eye, both in the morning and in the evening...but only after dark.  It took me three tries to finally find it and get a shot (above).  My first mistake was thinking that 4:45 a.m. was early enough to get up and see it...wrong.  My second mistake was go out at 9:30 p.m. and see it...wrong again!   Ugh, frustrating.  But then I found some more specific times relating to viewing the comet...it just needed to be earlier or later...depending on the time of day of course. 

I finally found NEOWISE out back here after 10:15 p.m., but I had to first spot it with the aid of binoculars...I'd never have found it without them.  It's just too dim yet.  The above picture was taken with my 200-500mm lens with a 1.4 converter attached, which gave me 700mm at F8.  Now F8 is not fast by any stretch of the imagination but ramping up my ISO (ASA to old timers like me) to 3200 gave me the image above with a 1.6 second exposure.

If you're interested in seeing NEOWISE I'd recommend going out before 4:00 a.m. or after 10:15 p.m.  It is getting brighter but I'd still recommend using binoculars to "find" it first then you can see it without if you like. (Its much more interesting magnified of course).  In the a.m. look to the left of where the sun will rise (NE)...you'll see Venus rising at around the same time in the east - that is bright!  NEOWISE will be dimmer so it'll take some looking first.  In the p.m. look right of where the sun set that evening...in the NW.  You can use the pan of the Big Dipper as a guide...follow down and to the right and it will get you in the right vicinity...again use binoculars to help locate it first.  I believe its brightest (closest approach to the earth) is around the 24th of July, but there's no telling if it will hold out that long...comets are unpredictable.

Monarch on Compass Plant (Silphium laciniatum)

(photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison)

We are having a nice number of Monarchs here this summer...hardly a day goes by that I don't see Monarchs in "tandem" flight, and we're seeing good numbers of caterpillars as well.  But many other insects seem absent or at least in much lower numbers.  I judge this by what I encounter when I'm pulling weeds...I'm just not disrupting or bumping into things like I normally would have during other summers past.  But we have been having nice numbers of Lightning Bugs (Fire Flies to some) each night...if you look closely at the lower left corner of the photo above you'll see a Lightning bug resting under the forming blossom head.

In the meantime I'm taking much of the summer off...was out pulling brome in the pasture this morning and will likely be out this afternoon with the shears cutting out elms on the north pasture...elms and mulberries mostly...maybe a few locusts.  But if the sun comes out from behind our current overcast, I may call that off too - its been beastly hot this summer!!!  And dry - here any way!

Everyone stay safe out there and be kind to others please.  See you down the road this summer!!!

 

 

Again, Some of My Favorite Things...

 "Compass Plant (Silphium laciniatum)" - oil painting - © Bruce A. Morrison

 As I mentioned in my last blog, I've been thinking and focusing on prairie forbs (wildflowers) and grasses a lot lately.  One of these forbs is found in our native pasture, while the other is not, but is "local" to our area.

This time I've been working in oils and I'm trying to keep these close to "life size", so the painting are small (both 5X7").

The first painting is of a Compass Plant (Silphium laciniatum) bloom.  There are many of these plants in our pasture and they are quite the iconic Tallgrass Prairie plant - being anywhere up to 6-7 feet tall!  They also have quite a sturdy stock,  lasting through the winter.  To give you an idea of how sturdy these are, once the snow was out this spring Georgie and I found several of these stocks were used by the local bucks as "rubs" for their antlers!  (Even found a shed out there!)  Its amazing to me that White-tail bucks are using these on their antlers.

 "Michigan Lily (Lilium michiganense)" - oil painting - © Bruce A. Morrison

The next painting is of a Michigan Lily (Lilium michiganense) blossom and I actually did a very small drawing of this same plant a few years back I believe the original color pencil was something like a 1.5X2" miniature drawing.  I went for a life size painting from that tiny sketch.

I used to call these Turk's Cap Lilies but that was not proper as that is an entirely different Lily (although similar in looks).  This is a local native Lily, not found in our pasture though...it requires more of a moist mesic environment than our mostly gravel/well drained soil can provide.  I do believe that another local native Lily would have done just fine in our pasture - the Prairie Lily...sometimes referred to as the Wood Lily (Lilium philadelphicum)...I've found them in both moist and dry soils near our acreage.

We just burned about 1/3 of our pasture a week and a half back, and will be burning another 30% in the next weeks if possible...part of our prairie pasture maintenance; this year leaving 40% for the invertebrates and possible other critters like small reptiles and even amphibians.  We've rotated burning for many years now and its always been our hope we're allowing leeway for species needing a break.  But the paddocks burned are always a showcase for flowering plants and produce great crops of seed - very fun to experience!

Its always nice to have something like the prairie to look forward to each year - giving me some of my favorite things!