It has been a while since I last posted because my messy life gets in the way of all plans and schemes. It has been a very nice spring, especially the last three or four weeks, and I have been trying very hard to accomplish something outside every day, even if it just to walk in the spring breeze on my restoration. There are a limited number of days that the combination of decent weather, decent health and the time and opportunity converge and those possibilities can collapse into an experience (that’s a metaphor from quantum theory, but I am not a physicist so it’s probably a bad one). Right now, thankfully, that may be four or five days per week, but that doesn’t mean next week or next month will provide the same opportunity. And while I am definitely making plans for future years, I have no illusions; it is my responsibility to live now, and not live in the future. Thus I have been out looking around, and these are are some of the things I have been seeing.

First, I need to return to the make-up of the restoration: zone 4 is being managed to control Canada thistle and has almost no wildflowers, so only 75 acres can still be called a prairie restoration. And only 50 acres has the full panoply of gathered seed spread, as Zone 1 received extra seed when the Day County Conservation District drill performed the original seeding and there was no room at the inn for added plants. The situation demanded that I go big on the restoration, but 100 acres is a lot to manage for one person, and mistakes will be made. Thus, most of the writing and the pictures I show are on half the restoration, particularly on Zone 3 on the map below. With that I will show some of the plants that I have been finding the last couple weeks.

The common thread on all these is that they are growing in Zone 3, where almost no seed was applied in the original CRP seeding. This means that almost everything I see was spread one of the innumerable times it seemed we were adding more seed, perhaps 5 or 6 times in areas. Some, like the blue eyed grass, the pussytoes and the white penstemon had only gathered seed tor a source. Others, like the silky aster, the prairie violet and the prairie smoke were a mixture of purchased and gathered seed.

The most gratifying discovery of the spring, however, was finding several blooming groundplums (Astragalus crassicarpus). There are three or four forb species which for some reason have an iconic status for me. One of those is groundplum, aka buffalo beans. I began eating buffalo beans over fifty years ago, after learning about them from my Polish grandmother. I have assiduously been gathering pods and in many cases manually tearing apart the dried pods to get seeds out. A little sandpaper for scarification and refrigeration for stratification. And then some Astragalus specific Rhizobia to help the legume with nitrogen fixation when they are spread finishes the process. I have not been that careful or diligent in preparing all the seed that I have gathered, but this was a labor of love. And damned if it didn’t work! I saw four or five this spring and I think it likely there will be many more visible next year. There are many challenges still occurring and more to come, but I will relish a success when I get one.

A preliminary count now shows 49 species identified in the restoration, and many more forb crowns still unidentified. I will wait until this fall, and then post a list of species found. Also, with the help of a young Brazilian entomologist/agronomist I now have the samples taken for the baseline measurements for a long term study on the ability of the restoration to sequester carbon. More on that in the future. Also in the future is the discussion on how to respond to the various problems I have in the restoration. Life is not all sunbeams and buffalo beans. For now, though I leave you with one final success, not due to any efforts of mine, but the vagaries of wind, weather or animals.

There are plenty of fringed puccoon in the pasture nearby, but I don’t remember being able to gather any seed, and I know that I didn’t buy any seed, so the seed for this plant seems to have wandered over on its own. This is a phenomena I hope to document for other species in the future.