80AcresOnline

The upstream part of the dry woods swale, with water seeping through the grass on both sides.   This area produces the best water quality, as most of the water has seeped through both rock and soil. Read the rest of this entry »

At the end an hour slogging around a very wet, running-water-wet field as the sun gets low, you might wonder why you didn’t go back before now.  Then you look down and there it is…the first one this spring.  The sheer audacity of it–that determined stem, those leaves reaching for sunlight, and then that fragile, pale pink flower.

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We’d had some sprinkles, but the first real rain came Thursday & Friday, about two inches, and set the secondary drainage flowing across the near meadow again.  Creek was up and a little turbid, but the flow in the grass was crystal clear.   Today, I finally photographed a common (supposedly) species of butterfly around here, which I’d never been able to catch in the lens.

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Every day brings changes to the land–the seasonal changes being among the most obvious–but from year to year we see changes–both desired and undesired–as a result of what we, our neighbors, and the weather do.

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Two years of drought followed by heavy rains in a warm fall has produced bursts of spring flowering and some spring butterflies even as it’s produced sudden fall color…a very odd combination.

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We have no permanent natural water on the place.   But when it does rain, we have a variety of temporary water sources, from the actual creek to the various overflow channels (some of concern because of erosion; others now pretty much “tamed.”)

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Last night we got another three inches of rain.

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An introduction to some more of our “big” grasses, now flowering beautifully after the rain.   Two are climax tallgrasses, and one is (in my opinion) one of the most beautiful grasses in the country and deserves to be used more as a landscape accent.

Meet Lindheimer Muhly (Muhlenbergia Lindheimeri).  All the Muhlys are pretty grasses; some are more striking than others, but Lindheimer Muhly is the queen of the lot:

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I came home to find the creek running clear…

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And I’m not there to photograph anything!    I’m in St. Louis, while the Muscle on the place (husband and son) are home building a fence in the rain.

So I had email that the creek was running a little, with the first inch of rain after I left, and yesterday they had a downpour of 1.2 inches in 20 minutes.   Today it rained more, and the water level in the hand-dug well near the barn is within 5 feet of the surface.

And I’m not there.   But in a few more weeks I will be and you can bet I’ll be out there seeing what comes up.