{"id":469,"date":"2009-10-19T18:41:10","date_gmt":"2009-10-20T00:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=469"},"modified":"2009-10-19T18:41:10","modified_gmt":"2009-10-20T00:41:10","slug":"running-water-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=469","title":{"rendered":"Running Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came home to find the creek running clear…<\/p>\n

\"creek-deer-crossing311\"This is a gravelly ford we call Deer Crossing because the deer really do use it a lot.\u00a0\u00a0 It made a lovely sound today, gurgling and chuckling over the gravel.<\/p>\n

A lot of dragonflies and damselflies were hanging around the water; this bluet had lost out in a scuffle to mate with a female and took a rest on this twig over the water:<\/p>\n

\"bluet-over-creek309\"<\/p>\n

When we first got the place, we always went into the woods about halfway from the north fence to the south, to a pocket prairie full of native plants we called the Entrance Meadow.\u00a0 All this summer it was brown, but now it’s very green:<\/p>\n

\"entrance-meadow325\"<\/p>\n

The main grasses here are a mix of little bluestem, Indiangrass, and sideoats grama.\u00a0\u00a0 The native forbs include liatris (gayfeather),\u00a0 prairie brazoria, pitcher sage, Illinois basketflower,\u00a0 and brown-eyed Susan.\u00a0 Plus others I can’t recall at the moment.<\/p>\n

Some of the liatris looked very odd this year, because of the combination of two years of drought, a summer of extreme heat, and then a lot of rain all at once in late September and on into October.\u00a0 Usually you see spikes of this color, but this year a lot of the plants produced “puffballs” after the original spike’s tip had died:<\/p>\n

\"liatris-flowers300\"<\/p>\n

In the south creek woods, where there’s a sort of seep\/overflow “swamp,” Turk’s cap bloomed vigorously after the hot summer.\u00a0 It was planted at the foot of a bald cypress that, despite several years of good health, died in the drought.<\/p>\n

\"turks-cap326\"<\/p>\n

And here’s the lower swamp, almost full.\u00a0 Before the drought, we had enticed quite a few water iris to grow around the low end, and they’d spread…but now you can see just a few.<\/p>\n

\"lower-swamp328\"<\/p>\n

The water runs out the far end, at the property line, though it moves slowly, as just a trickle comes in from above, when not flooding.<\/p>\n

Running water…a delight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came home to find the creek running clear…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,6],"tags":[13,53,70],"class_list":["post-469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-water","tag-beauty","tag-natural-water","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":476,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions\/476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}