Latest From The Blog

The spring peepers (pseudacris crucifer) are singing again. It is a sure sign of spring. I heard them late in the evening from the old flooded basement of the broken down community center. The leftover basement collects water in the spring from melting snow and rain....

I stopped yesterday at one of my favorite rest stops on 35W north of the Twin Cities, but south of Duluth. Behind the garage I have seen thousands of white trillium in previous years. But I was too early this year. Instead I found little white and violet colored May...

When I was growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, we never saw wild turkeys (Mileagris gallapavo). Now we see them along the road in northern Wisconsin, in my son’s backyard in Roseville, MN and strolling across my daughter’s front yard in West Virginia. Wild turkeys must...

In the beautiful garden that my daughter tends in her backyard, an unusual “bee” was pollinating a daffodil. I rarely see bees attracted to daffodils, but this was a very large pollinator. Looking carefully at the picture she had snapped, we could see that this was...

Those old piles of leaves are hiding treasures. They look like trash to those of us who have been taught to clean up around the edges of our yards. But hidden in those leaves are lots of little animals that need protection for just a few more weeks. Soft wet leaves...

This past week the American Society of Botanical Artists held their online spring conference. It was a pleasure to sit comfortably in my living room and watch very talented botanical artists from many different parts of the world talk about their painting processes....

Here in West Virginia we now have daffodils blooming in our gardens and along walking paths, like messengers of spring. Whew! Finally spring seems to have broken through the cold and the snow of a particularly cold February.Where there are daffodils, there are other...

Our Lenten Roses (Helleborus sp.) are now above ground and promising pink and white blooms soon. This is one of the confusingly named flowers. This flower was called a Lenten Rose because it blooms during Lent in the Christian calendar in Europe. This hellebore is not...

It’s that time of year again. Goldenrod is everywhere along the roads, in the fields, popping up in gardens. It is a great pollinator plant. Butterflies and bees use goldenrod as a source of late summer pollen so they can spend the winter with full stomachs. When I...

I have some blue cranesbill geraniums which spread aggressively in my garden and even in with the weeds. These are not the red double geraniums sold in all the flower stores. These are cranesbill geraniums (Geranium maculatum “Rosanne”). The native wild geraniums...

As we walk along we see little blobs of bubbly foam on a stem here and there. Often referred to as frog spit or snake spit, whose spit is this? It doesn’t come from either a frog or a snake. It is the house of a little bug nymph. And, yes, there really is a group of...

Two days ago I was walking with my golden doodle along a woodland trail we use every day, and much to my delight a little white fringed orchid (Platanthera lacera) had popped up. I was amazed that I had not seen it the day before. It was suddenly there next to my...

Now that we have had several days of hot summer weather, we are seeing the numbers and variety of butterflies increase. There are many little ones like this little Least Skipper (Ancyloxypha numitor). Which likes to lay its eggs on grasses. In the north it favors...

This week we have been planning to put up a new sign placed next to the slough in Herbster to tell people about this beautiful and unusual place. This slough is really also a bog. Leading into Lake Superior, it is a kind of backwater where small streams feed into...

You remember what Lepidoptera are, right? They’re the butterflies and moths that engage us in their beauty and feed most of the baby songbirds of the world with their caterpillars. A few months ago we talked about Spicebushes, Pawpaw trees and Bladder nut trees all...

A little black bear disappeared quickly into the forest next to the trail where I was walking to my garden. Goldilocks would have been distressed, as he wasn’t away from home long enough to visit the bears’ and taste his porridge. Besides, I think he was checking out...

One cold rainy morning recently in northern Wisconsin I was walking along a familiar road and found 2 wet butterflies on the ground. When I returned and identified them, I realized that they were both migrating-type butterflies. One of them, the Monarch, is easily...

When my dog, Poppy, and I started our walk this morning, there were 3 or 4 ravens squawking across the road. We went over to see what the commotion was about, and they flew away. Like a lot of birds, wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) lay their eggs on the ground....