One of the extraordinary things a prairie reveals is the great color palette of nature. Now that we’re in July, and the heat of summer, the purples are abundant. A few treasures from my latest walk:
LeadplantBergamot-pick the flowers and top few inches of stem and leaf for tea.Purple Prairie Clover
Swamp Milkweed with bumblebee
Hoary VervainPrairie Blazing Star
These, you may have noticed, are growing in mulch, not the dense grasses that provide the structure of a tallgrass prairie. This was just my walk from my office to my car! They are newly planted around the parking lot at Indian Creek Nature Center. Everyone should be able to enjoy the natural beauty of a prairie, even if they aren’t up for a hike. The diverse flowers will attract butterflies and support native pollinators. The deep roots are drought tolerant. What more could you ask for in a landscaping plan?
The best place to be, in relationship to a labyrinth, is inside the labyrinth. The second best place to be is 400 feet above. While the labyrinth at Indian Creek Nature Center still has a few rough spots and won’t be officially open until September, the first mowing of the path has revealed the beauty of the design.
When I’m creating with the landscape, my top three criteria are usually local, organic, native. But I’ve been totally intrigued with the idea of adding kiwi vines to the yard. I repainted the windmill a few years back, only to have invasive hops run rampant over it. Hardy kiwis (Actinidia arguta) are native to China and Siberia, and produce lovely (I hope) little fuzzless kiwis. After doing enough research to determine that, having never actually tried a hardy kiwi, I completely lacked the knowledge to figure what varieties I really wanted, I opted to go with a variety pack from Stark Bro’s.
It included two Anna Hardy Kiwi’s, a male pollinator partner for them, and an Issai Hardy Kiwi. The Issai self pollinates. The plants are beautiful, and I managed to get them in the ground, mulched, and deer-fenced within a day of them arriving. They probably won’t produce fruit, even with the best of care, until 2019 or 2020. But it will good to see something with potential growing in the next few years, versus the hops.
The bees are here, the bees are here! Last year, I spent no time in the hives, received no honey from the bees, and went into the winter with no bees. It wasn’t a lack of productivity on the bees part, just a lack of assistance on mine. The hives became overpopulated, the bees swarmed, and swarmed, and swarmed again too late to remain viable through the winter.
Like most other inbred domesticated animals, apis mellifera usually need a certain amount of care and management to be successful. With Amazing Space finished, and a partner to help me in the apiary, they should get more attention this year and we will see what the top bar hives can really do. Top bar hives require less (in this case, no) chemical input, but like most organic systems, that translates to greater time in the field physically working with them. We will need to move frames around and remove comb throughout the season.
It is naturally shaping up to be a good bee season. It has been warm, so there is a profusion of blossoms full of both nectar and pollen.The apple trees and lilac bushes are in full bloom. The dandelions, bluebells, and wild violets are creating a fusion of blue and yellow. The warm days will allow the bees to fly more and feed easily, and the colony will build up quickly.
I designed and built my first labyrinth before I learned what a seed labyrinth was, and before I learned how to draw a seven circuit labyrinth. The double spiral reflected the natural form of the ubiquitous land snail shells and the duality of nature. It was loved by the community, but in 2016 we mowed it down to lay out Amazing Space. While the site is still there (the area was peripheral to the project), the tallgrass prairie has been allowed to regrow. It is time to create a new labyrinth.
The first Labyrinth I designed, in 2012.
When a friend recommended the new labyrinth be a Baltic design, I balked a bit. I had no idea what a Baltic pattern was. I had spent a lot of time designing the double spiral, and replicating it would have been easy. But I’m also quite curious, and after doing a bit of research I was convinced and excited.
The Baltic labyrinth, while technically being unicursal, does offer choices. Which means a visitor can walk directly to the meditative center, follow the labyrinth path to the center, or follow the labyrinth path to the center and then back again. This provides three different lengths, and three different experiences.
The layout of the Baltic Labyrinth
There are a number of labyrinths in the area, but none of them are a Baltic design. This gives the labyrinth community something special. I love creating things, so the idea of learning a new pattern, and laying it out, seemed like fun. I am extremely grateful for circular graph paper.
To celebrate Earth Day, Alliant Energy volunteers laid out the new Prairie Labyrinth. The field of flags denotes where I need to mow. Within a month, the path should be established enough that they can be removed.
I was staring out the kitchen window, looking at the jonquil patch beside the garden, and realized the jonquils, about to burst into flower, really need to be divided to continue thriving.
Not that this is the best time of year to be dividing things, but I decided they would like nice in the orchard, which just last year was a mess of multiflora rose, garlic mustard, and honeysuckle. The apple trees are still so small, it looks a bit stark. Nitro and I went down to the orchard, and decided that yes, the jonquils would look lovely, but I should rally plant some iris first as a backdrop, as the iris grow taller. My inspection also revealed that the deer have finally discovered the tasty apple buds. On a mature tree the deer are not a problem. But if there are only a dozen buds on the tree in the first place, the deer can eat the whole thing. Apples will stump-sprout, but as they are all grafts…the fruit will not be tasty.
My work cut out for me, I went out to a field by a former farmstead, where the feral iris are thriving in a myriad of colors amidst the brome grass and occasional big bluestem, and dug two up two five-gallon buckets of rhizomes. Once they were all cleaned up they yielded 70 plants.
Rhizomes, separated and ready for planting.
Into the ground they went, and then, just as the rain was starting, I fenced the trees. Definitely not good enough to be a permanent deer barrier-I supplemented my metal fencing with previously cut thorny debris, including multiflora rose and black locust branches. But it will save the trees for a little while longer. Here we are, two weeks later, and I realized the jonquils…still haven’t been divided. A project that will just have to wait until fall, which they will prefer anyway.
I was both honored and humbled to receive the Stormwater and Urban Watershed Development of the Year Award at the 2017 Iowa Water Conference on behalf of Indian Creek Nature Center.
What exactly, does net zero water mean, besides spending countless hours with a civil engineer on site design?
It means that the building and site were designed so that a) every drop of water that falls on the site, stays on the site, and b) throughout our operation, we use less water than falls on the site, over the course of the year.
A combination of native plantings (which don’t require watering), ponds, raingardens, and bioswales contain the water on-site. What was more difficult to predict was how much water we would consume, versus rainfall.
Four months into documentation, and we are doing well.
