Category Archives: Outdoors
Almost spring
Last fall, I planted bulbs in the front planter and a small patch of the back garden. I drew a map so I’d know what they were when they started to grow, and I know I put it someplace clever … Continue reading
Parks
My parents visited several weeks ago, so we went to see the prairie at Meadowbrook Park , the prairie grove at Busey Woods, and Kickapoo State Park. The latter, a former strip mine, is slated to close on Nov. 30 … Continue reading
Flowers – Meadowbrook Park
Sunday I went to Meadowbrook Park in Urbana, which has a patch of restored prairie. The prairie is larger than you might think given the line of trees; it extends quite a bit off the left of the picture. More … Continue reading
Weekly Summary July 1
Yesterday I did my first volunteer stint at the park, which mostly consisted of more detailed training. Watered the butterfly garden, made hummingbird food and filled feeders, fed the fish and turtles and frogs, sent visitors with questions to the … Continue reading
Park Volunteering, Revising
Elizabeth Bear remarks: It’s harder to revise old text to anything like not sucking than just to write new less sucky text from scratch. It’s like the suck gets ossified in. Thursday I had my volunteer interview at the park … Continue reading
Wildflowers – April 22
Only a month late, here are the photos I took on a wildflower hike in Highbanks Metropark in late April. The fun part about posting these so long after I took them was re-identifying all the plants, although I remembered … Continue reading
Spotted
Monday I went plant monitoring, looking for puccoon again. Unlike last time, it was a highly successful trip: over 1,000 plants in three hours. Also saw a bluebird, a red-headed woodpecker, and an oriole. Heard lots of orioles, too. I … Continue reading
Puccoon
This morning I went plant monitoring for the first time this year, looking for puccoon (or perhaps puccoon). We found a whole bunch at one spot that wasn’t on our map, but the places we were supposed to be looking … Continue reading
Lack of hawkweed
Plant monitoring: We were looking for hawkweed and didn’t see any. On a brighter note, we returned to the spot where we’d seen one prairie thimbleweed plant so the naturalist could GPS it, and found a patch of at least … Continue reading
Park
I’d secretly hoped that it would be pouring rain this morning, so that plant monitoring would be canceled. Unfortunately, it’s a lovely clear day, if hot and humid. Also unfortunately, when I got to the park after only five hours … Continue reading
