Last breath before school starts

I'm going to be back in school this fall, teaching a class on data analytics at Wheaton College. I'm in the midst of the last intense spurt of preparation - but today is Sunday and a good time to take a break and "smell the roses" ... or wildflowers, as the case may be.

The walk starts out in the living room. Yesterday we added a couch to our two love seats, which you can just see in the lower right corner. We had friends over for pizza last night and we had to point out the new couch to them later in the evening. It fit in so well that it seemed like it must have always been there, which is a good sign. Now all I need to do is finish hooking up the chimney on the new wood stove and we'll be ready to hunker down and enjoy the fall and winter.

The early sun gilding the living room.

Stepping out the front door, the steps down into the yard are flanked on both sides by natural prairie plants, as if standing at attention for review.

Each week or two the selection of blooming plants changes. If I knew them as well as Becky, I could probably use them instead of the calendar to mark the passage of summer.

The tulip poplar vies with an oak on the northwest of the house for the designation of "favorite tree". I think of it as the "resurrection tree". It was struck by disease many years ago and died. The following year I was going to cut the corpse down, but before I could get to that a new shoot came up from the stump ... and that shoot has turned into this beautiful specimen. I doesn't like Roundup and when Roundup is sprayed on the field across the road from us, the tree suffers a shock. (According to the local farmers, "Roundup doesn't drift" - rrrriiiiiight. We're hoping it will be hardy enough to be a survivor. 

Even the mushrooms that grow out of the mulch have a beauty of their own.a

This is the view from the guest parking leading up the curved path to the house. We especially love the grasses on either side of the path behind the milk cans. They look like a fog of grass seeds, waving in the breeze.

Milkweed pods. Milkweed is, well, a weed. But it happens to be the one plant that monarch butterflies prefer, so we rejoice over every one that we find.

Barns seem so timeless. The waning moon is in the upper left. I was up in the night briefly and the moon was so bright it cast shadows across the yard behind the house.

In April this view of the house showed a house on a rocky dirt hill. Now the grass is filling in and the young trees have leafed out. Next year it will look like the house has always been sitting on a grassy rise.

As the sun creeps over the meadows and fields it casts a golden sheen over everything. The land is so flat that the sky dominates the view.

The old Nettle Creek gently winds its way from west to east across the farm. Thanks to the good rains it continues to flow, though we're already past mid August. 

Here we look from the cement "bridge" west.

Even the silver maple north of the barn seems charming in the morning sun. Hostas outline the north side of the barn.

This picture is for Micah and Lucas, who spent hours playing here at the "west creek" crossing. It's so full of water that it looks almost like a little pond.

The natural grasses give way to Steve Larson's beans in the west field.

The ducks are out and around for the morning. We've been eager to see what mix of male and female we have. It looks like two drakes and five females. The big question for us is whether they will stay with us or migrate when winter comes. (Becky is hoping for "migrate". No need to feed 7 more mouths (bills?) through the winter, when they could join others of their kind and feed themselves in warmer climes.

As I near the end of my walk, I see two of my favorite girls, animatedly gazing out the front door and discussing what the first gardening projects should be in the coming year. Next year there will be new flowers to enjoy and care for.

Thursday I'm back in the classroom after about 10 years. It'll be good to be involved with students again.

Late August - our fourth month home!

It's hard to believe we've been back here on the farm four months already - a third of a year!  We've seen most of spring and summer and I wish we'd been keeping a list of all the major projects we've tackled and conquered.  I remember that August always brought a flood of garden produce and once again that has proven true.  I've canned 24 quarts of beans and 36 quarts of tomatoes.  The freezer is full of sweet corn and more is coming next week so that will have to be canned.  There are bowls of tomatoes, cukes, squash and peppers on the kitchen counter waiting for me to fit them into the menu and quickly before they are past their prime.  Kenji is trying out the many types of hot peppers we planted for him.  None of us share his passion for hot, hotter and hottest so he has no competition for them.  

When we had 2000 prairie plants put in around three sides of the house I had obviously not considered how much effort it would be to keep them watered and weeded!  But God graciously sent rains so the watering wasn't needed, although the flip side of that is that the regular rains caused all the weed seeds to sprout.  I've been weeding a section every few days and keeping slightly ahead of the weeds.  When those 2000 little sprouts were put in it was really difficult to imagine that they would take off and cover all the ground.  They were planted on June 10 and in just over two months they have done beautifully.  There are a few bare spots where certain varieties are trying to make up their minds about thriving.   The indigos aren't sure they like where we put them and the lupines gave up the ghost in protest.  But for the most part I've been overwhelmed at how many have taken off and how many are blooming even this first year.  I love the names of these plants - royal catchfly, rattlesnake master, Ohio spiderwort, prairie tickseed, prairie dropseed, little bluestem, wild geranium, wild petunia, Joe Pye weed, obedient plant, prairie clover, Culver's root and prairie milkweed.  Many I've never seen before so it's like having a living herbarium growing around the house.

Many people prefer the neat orderliness of a traditional garden so my personal dream won't appeal to everyone.  But I love the gentle chaos of prairie plants mixing and mingling, growing around and through each other.  The grasses wave so gracefully and there are literally dozens of butterflies flitting around the blossoms every day.  To me, it's beautiful.

Pathway to the front door, lined with grasses (prairie tickseed and dropseed - I can never keep straight which is which)

Mingled with rudbeckia (the yellow flowers) are asters (the shrubby plants) that are just starting to bloom - a sure sign summer is near its end!

Maybe next year we'll have time to sit in that glider!

Little bluestem beckons you up the path to the door

I love the clouds of grasses - God is simply LAVISH with his seeds!

The lower garden - shrubs and prairie plants mixed with a couple young oak trees.  Vegetable garden in the background.

Rudbeckia, such a cheery flower

Hot pink asters.  Won't they be calling the butterflies when they are all in bloom?!?

Joe Pye weed and little bluestem grass

Obedient plant

Royal catchfly - bright red is a rare color in prairie plants

Rattlesnake master getting ready to bloom against little bluestem.

Culver's Root.  There was a big bumblebee on it but he didn't want his photo taken.

Sedges enjoying the semi-shade on the west side of the house.

Ohio spiderwort

A little slice of botanical history

The prairie flowers are in full bloom right now.  We have about two acres of these purple, yellow and white beauties.  The warm season grasses including big bluestem, little bluestem, Indian grass, and switchgrass are pushing their way up through the midst of the flowers at this point in the summer, too.  In a few weeks the grasses will dominate, giving a beautiful fall show of color and texture.  These plants all have deep, deep roots (sometimes 8-16 feet deep) that allow the rain to penetrate the soil to replenish the aquifers.  This is in contrast to the 1/4" roots of our typical lawn grasses like Kentucky bluegrass.  On the lawn, a heavy rain will simply run off into ditches.  On prairie, it soaks right in.

This thick growth of the prairie grasses and flowers is the vegetation that made the incredibly rich soil here in the Midwest as it grew and decayed year after year, century after century, occasionally being burned off when lightning ignited dry grasses.  The burning returned many of the minerals to the soil and made them available to new growth and the thick layers of decay added rich, rich organic matter to the soil.  Here on the farm we have only a few of the wide variety of plants that once grew around here but even those few put on quite a show at this time of year.  Some people look at the untidy-ness of such fields and simply see a huge patch of weeds.  I look at it and see habitat for birds, insects, butterflies and small mammals, a rich source of seed to feed the birds through the long hard winter, nectar and pollen for my honeybees, and a reminder of what this area looked like 200 years ago, before it was populated.  It's a tiny patch of history, right in our backyard and it's alive with all kinds of critters.

Summer storm

One of the things that has most delighted our hearts about being back in the Midwest is the weather.  After almost nine years of endless sunshine and warm temperatures in a desert climate, I wondered how we would handle things like 95% humidity.  But the changeableness and variety bring a huge interest to life.

This morning we were standing in the garage before our workout, looking west out the big open door at the rain that had started.  Suddenly a bolt of lightning split the sky and hit the sheep barn.  We could feel the blast of air compressed from it and the noise was incredible.  We watched with bated breath to see if the barn started on fire but thankfully (and miraculously) it didn't.  When we ran out to check, it hadn't even killed the electricity out there!  The rain made it very humid so by the time we finished our workout with Kenji, we were drenched with sweat (some people pay to go to a sauna for that effect!).  The rainshower hadn't lasted long so Pete and I decided to go for our 5 mile bike ride, although the clouds were moving in again.  We watched the front move right over our heads like a ceiling as we rode.  The air changed from nearly still to a light breeze from the south to a stiff breeze from the west for the last stretch of our ride.  Then the sky cleared and we had blue skies and sunshine for most of the day.

This evening another big front rolled through and brought heavy, horizontal rain along with strong, gusty winds.  The temperature dropped ten degrees as it came through and when it had passed, we'd gotten about an inch of rain.  Towards sunset, the sky cleared once again and gave us a spectacular view to the west.  I went out and walked around the farm, gulping in the cool fresh air.  The prairie grasses and flowers were beaten down but I know by tomorrow they will be upright with their faces to the sun.  The sweet corn in the garden is nearly flat from the wind and the ground under the apple trees littered with little green apples blown right off the branches.  

The weather is never boring; although it brings a definite unpredictability to life, we glory in the variety.  Especially when we can retreat to the air conditioned house after working hard outdoors!  

Sunset panorama behind the prairie grasses and flowers

The moon is just a hazy smudge in the sky

First week of July

A warm and busy week on the farm.  Several heavy thundershowers moved through bringing much-needed rain.  Enjoyed a quick visit from Becca.  Celebrated the Fourth of July in a quiet way.  Most evenings bring spectacular sunsets.  Fireflies sparkle in the yard and light up the fields at night.  Picked the first beans and kale from the garden.  Fresh eggs from the hens for breakfast.  Vigorous workouts with Kenji three mornings a week.  Bike rides on the country roads on sunny mornings.  Times of fellowship with friends.  Studying Philippians with Anne and Kenji.  We're very thankful to God for this good season of life.

Herr und Frau Summselbrummsel

Sunset reflected in the eastern sky

The hives are thriving

No longer ducklings - all feathered out

Red-winged blackbird nest in the prairie grasses, woven around three thistle stems.

Peter Piper will soon be picking purple peppers

Bean season has begun - from now until frost I'll be picking beans by the basketful!

Rain barrels in place and filled with water from this week's storms

Second pair of rain barrels.

We robbed the bees of some bee balm from the prairie grasses.

Burr comb from one of the hives - beautiful white beeswax.

Ripe spelt, ready for harvest (in Big Rock, IL)

At Big Rock Library - I wish they were at the farm!