As I begin this post, we have begun the month of August, so summer isn’t done yet, but here’s a little of the flavor of the year. The first picture is actually from 2024, when the old grain elevator, built about the time my father, Lester, was born in 1912 was dismantled. Note how clear and almost new the sidewalls look. That’s not an illusion of the light or photo editing. My grandfather at this point would have been about 45, with one of the largest and most prosperous farms in the county. When my nephew, Bryan, wandered around a couple years ago to see if there was any rustic wood to salvage he pulled a couple boards from the elevator to have a closer look. He went home, sanded the weathered surface, and his hunch that this was old growth cedar was confirmed. This was nothing like the “cedar chest cedar” you would buy now. This was dense hearty structural wood, in which you could see 50 growth rings in a single board. This wood was likely from a tree cut down in Oregon or Washington that was 6-7′ across, 150-200′ high, and 400-500 years old. Just as with redwoods, one reason that western red cedars can live for so long is the suite of chemicals it imbues in the wood to stave off insects and rot. My nephew got thousands of dollars of wood as judged by today’s prices, but there’s no way to put a price on the history of either the structure or the trees that went into the structure. They will become part of a new house he will have built in the Black Hills next year.

Bryan, who recently retired as a free-lance computer software consultant at the age of 58. laboriously removed the ring-shank nails (a style of nail put in to guarantee it would never come out), hauled the boards a trailer load at a time back to his present home in the Twin Cities, and is in the process of planing and sanding every board and larger dimension piece (mostly 2×6 supports). He will have earned every penny of value by the sweat of his brow. This seems a spectacular addition to everyone’s karma accounts: his, mine and maybe even my grandfathers’. It gives me the shivers to think that his (and maybe my) descendants will be sheltered by cedar hundreds of years old that had a 110 year long job of keeping the oats, barley and wheat that I shoveled out of trucks as a kid safe and dry. Very cool!!!! The last boards salvaged left the farm in July and this winter what is left (bin walls were cedar, but the rest of the wood was cheaper fir and even pine and was long past salvaging) will be pushed into a hole the renter will dig and be burned. And time marches on.

We now will begin the story of the summer. This year is a tale of two diametrically opposed patterns. A dry spell began about a year ago in early August and continued until about May 20. There were a couple fall rains, very little snow, and one measly inch of rain in April. Total precipitation during that period was perhaps 4-5″. Any plant that relied upon moisture from those 9 1/2 months, when normally there would be about 15″ of moisture was not in good shape. Native prairie plants that developed in this climate have developed several strategies for coping with dry spells, while trying to retain the ability to flourish when the rains finally come, but the general theme is “hunkering down”. In an earlier post I compared it to the business strategy of conserving working capital. Producing seed is metabolically and physiologically expensive. In essence, they are conservative with the resources they accumulate through photosynthesis, not wanting to waste them and then die. Below is an example of an old black samson (Echinacea angustifolia) plant that felt good enough to splurge with those resources to make eight seedheads in 2024, likely burning all the stored carbohydrates that it had made the past year or two. This year there were no blooms and no seed. The signal of the spring was to conserve resources and hope to make more carbohydrates to store for the future. Not every species can do this. Annuals and short lived perennials need to risk more to make seed; there is no other strategy. If you miss a year you are unlikely to get another chance to pass your genes on. However, many species are long lived enough that they can afford to be conservative. This has meant that for 25-30 spring growing species far fewer flowers were produced and there is very little seed to add to the seed bank or for us to gather.

Things changed dramatically in May. The rains began to fall, welcome and generous at first, and then excessive and onerous as time went on. I only keep a vague mental tally, but I think there has been close to 25” in the 11 weeks since the rain began. Four times we have received 3″ in a single rain. That 25″ is over a year’s worth of rain in 2 1/2 months. Why isn’t everything, like the black samson above, fixed up and blooming? Black samson blooms about July 1, by which time 10-12″ of rain had already fallen. It isn’t that easy, however. The “decision” to tell the meristimatic tissue (stem cells) to make reproductive structures is likely far in the past by late May. That seems to be the case with our friend the black samson, and was true for a group of other species. There was very little flowering and few seedheads of pasqueflower (Anemone patens), prairie smoke (Geum triflorum), textile onion (Allium textile), alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii), white penstemon (Penstemon albidus), breadroot scurfpea (Pediomelum esculentum), green milkweed (Asclepias viridiflora) and groundplum milkvetch (Astragalus crassicarpus). These were all species I wish to increase, and from which I hoped to gather seed, but I either ignored or gathered just a little to refresh my supply. For a while it appeared that I could take a year off of seed gathering. Not all plants initiate reproduction in April and May, however.

The picture below is of a small primrose, yellow sundrops, one of a suite of 20-25 xeric-adapted species that only grow in the less fertile environments where they have less competition. Many of those species grow early to beat the competition, but the sundrops is later, and just started blooming a couple weeks ago. There are many, and they seem to be making a lot of seed. I have never gathered it before as it is not easy to get much, and I have only found a couple plants in the restoration. This may be our opportunity.

Here’s another example, pale spiked lobelia (Lobelia spicata), This lobelia is a rhizomatous species, doing much of its reproduction clonally, without the need for seed. I’ve known about this patch for years, with a few blooming every 2-3 years. This year there are hundreds and hundreds blooming including on a nearby hill where I had never seen them. They are a delicate little plant, not looking as if they could compete in mesic soils with aggressive grasses. Obviously they do, probably in part due to spending some years building root reserves to the exclusion of flowers and seed. Even their seed is a small investment, with 900,000 to the ounce, The seeds are little more than dust that will blow in the wind in search of an opportunity. I may be able to gather far more this year than I have in the previous 5-7 years combined, and see if I can get them established in my restorations.

A final example of the year is stiff sunflower (Helianthus pauciflorus), a common wildflower of the area. Like the lobelia, stiff sunflower is rhizomatous, and, compared to many prairie species, widely adapted. It will grow in mesic soils, but also in my gravel hills. In most years there are blooms in the favorable growing areas and few or none across the hills. Below is a representative example of what many hills look like. Deer, cattle and other animals enjoy eating stiff sunflower heads (who doesn’t like to snack on sunflower seeds), but I will likely still have many to gather.

Finally. I have had the opportunity to host many people at our prairies this summer, including some of our advisory group, some relatives, a couple old friends and a new friend who is doing restoration work on land he owns in North Dakota. This all pales before my guest in the picture below. Lily turned 2 a couple weeks ago, the daughter of my younger daughter, Diane, and her husband, Ebi (short for Ebrahim). They live in the Twin Cities, a couple hundred miles east of here, and came out to visit a week ago. Lily fell asleep in her car seat on the way out to the prairies and was quite crabby to have her nap interrupted – until she got out to walk in the prairie. Lily was meant to live outside, and she was entranced with birds, butterflies, flowers and the vista of the land. A stated goal of ours is the preservation and continued management of our prairies for the benefit of our grandchildren’s grandchildren. That will likely only be relevant if each generation keeps a connection to the land. We have, and are continuing to do that with our daughters, and now we are starting to work with the next generation.

I’m about to turn 70, not that old, but with difficulties that could easily become debilitating or fatal. But I’m here now, dammit, still able to get around, and I got to show Lily the prairie, and earlier this summer, my older daughter’s kids, Agastya and Aashna. How can the universe allow such beauty as is evident in both the vista and the little girl? Why do we recognize such a thing? And why have I been allowed the incredible luck to share this with them? It’s hard to write much that carries my feelings here, both because those feelings are ineffable, and because I have tears in my eyes to think about it all. Yet I must keep steady and focused, because this is so important. I will not fail you, Lily, nor Agastya and Aashna. We will give you opportunities to see and learn and soak in the world, as we shepherd our little corner and find others to do the same after we can do no more. Then you can show your children and grandchildren what a prairie is, and what Linda and I have kept for you. I have been having issues with my back and shoulders, chronic problems begun by the cancer surgeries and the radiation that has allowed me these last 19 years of life. Yet when Lily looked up at me with a smile and outraised arms, there was no question of the result. I carried her the last couple hundred yards back to the car with joy only a grandparent can know. So far, I am as strong, as adaptable and as enduring as I have to be. And then tomorrow, we will see what more we can do.