I need to add captions and descriptions to the rest of the pics, but this Spiranthes sp was neat to see coming up!Briar and Paula in safety hunter orange. False garlic with tiny moths. Paula caught a Little Brown Skink!The skink did not want to stay for a visit. A prairie verbena!Armadillo!!! Briar ready, but actual briar vines kept her from following it far. First Lomatium of the day. Briar helped by putting her nose by it. Arnoglossum sp! LeavesBigger Arnoglossum species leaves!The lovely valley we walked around. Had some damp spots. Milkweed! Probably Asclepias verticillata??Echinacea probably angustifolia? Leaf and last year’s seed head. Thanks for laying down in the mud puddle, BRIAR.Nostoc algae and scale lichens!Paula found this great potter wasp nest!Eventually found a big patch of Lomatium blooming. Some Lomatium in light shade. Some Lomatium almost done blooming. Some Lomatium out in the sun. Another prairie verbena. A puccoon just opening!
A beautiful flower on this groundplum milkvetch! Thanks to Abby for confirming identification. Paula found last year’s seed pods. Their little seeds are so cute.
Liverworts near the parking area!Briar is always blinking when she gets her picture taken. We saw some very green fine stuff covering the Sandy loam. Some obvious moss nearby. Then the green stuff with moss capsules! When I got home I saw Mom’s blog post from today. The very fine green coating appears to be the protonema life stage of the moss! Thanks Mom! Guess ‘tis the season. Dog eyes open this time. A big cluster of dead ants. No idea why. A mystery plant on the edge of the path cut. The leftover seed heads of the mystery plant. A second smaller individual of this mysterious plant. The habitat of the mysterious plant. Paula spotted this gorgeous greenbriar leaf!Briar leaps from the water. It was warm out!Bounce bounce bounce! miraculously she wasn’t muddy. Good clean water. Enjoying some last smells before we head home. The Chef made Hoppin’ John for dinner. The green is chard from our garden, frozen from a previous season. The black eyed peas were from the farm share. Paula made cornbread from scratch.
Yesterday, 12/31, I finally glued on the rain barrel cap holders that the Chef 3D printed for me! I used epoxy after cleaning both surfaces with ethanol. Paula got solar powered outdoor lights for Christmas and has used them to make the path to the compost visible! Edit: thanks to Mom for inquiring if we can turn the lights out. Yes we can! It’s important not to pollute the dark with more light than we use at any given moment. I am hoping these tiny seedlings are the annual bluets that sometimes grow in this part of the yard. Keeping an eye on them. A tinier potential annual bluet seedling next to the comparatively large wild geraniums. These two pictures were 12/31/2022. 12/28/2022, the Ratibida columnifera rosettes survived the big cold!Two Verbena halei rosettes also exist and made it!Finally, and very thrilling, two potential Penstemon oklahomensis seedlings! They don’t appear to be hairy leaves like some other common seedling volunteers. Stay tuned. Shackleton enjoyed a leashed walk in the same excellent 12/28 weather. Jeanne kindly sent us some Salaginella riddellii- Riddell’s Spike-Moss. We put the biggest chunk in the rainbow garden (in green of course) on 12/25. We put a smaller piece of the spike moss in the cactus planter. 12/25 was so nice we also moved some volunteers. This is the big root of a poke berry! We moved those along the back fence where another pokeberry lives. We also moved several ampelopsis from random spots in the yard to along the south fence trellis. A blackjack oak acorn with a sprout on it! We planted this exciting find (12/24) into a pot on 12/25. Fingers crossed for a spring sprout. Judy gave us an adorable toad house! I have placed it near the veggie beds. Please come eat our earwigs, toad friends. 12/24 checking the pot containing Sedum nutallii from Jeanne. The sedums seem to have made it along with Verbena rosettes (V. Halei??) and other intriguing volunteers. Going somewhere! Wow!! Happy briar in the car. On 12/24 we visited the lake at Lexington WMA. This seasonal creek was frozen solid! The lake was too. Briar wears her hunter orange. After the deep freeze, only the top tips of the recently transplanted rosemary got frozen. They were pressed down by the sheets. But the sheets protected the rest of the plant!
The greens are doing well. Seedlings are in the raised bed but I’m not sure what they are. Hoping for field violets?The apple trees still are mostly green but one pear tree is turning. The three pictures below of leaves turning yellow and orange are from the one pear tree in front. Later we walked the dog at Saxon park. Lots of rabbit’s tobacco sprouting.
Marigolds are done. Photo by Paula. Winecup rosettes are fine for the winter! Photo also by Paula. We went to look at Saxon park. It was fun. Then we went home. Having dog thoughts in the backyard. CatctusTom kha (Thai coconut chicken soup). Has garden lemongrass in it. Lemongrass is not frost hardy so Paula divided the stems to keep a few indoors over the winter, and froze a bunch of stems to use.