… Spring is here, and the birds are returning from their winter homes. Some birds fly through the Chicago area to their nesting habitats up … Hang the bag securely on a tree branch where a bird can perch and pluck pieces of material from the bag. Wall art or condo furnishings? Hang your bag outside and watch for birds! Watch the …
Type: Blog
… When my mother first moved from England to Chicago in the late 1950s, she’d never heard of a prairie. In England, a … “I love the changing palette of the prairie, changing not only daily but with the seasons and from year to year.” The Dixon Prairie is a recreated prairie. “The soils and the hydrology … Parts of the mesic prairie and bur oak savanna were developed with prairie soil "rescued" from development projects. One of O’Shaughnessy’s favorite times in the prairie is the early …
Type: Blog
… getting interested in oaks, started collecting oaks for my house, and the obsession grew from there,” he said. The outdoors has always been a part of his life, from growing up in Kentucky close to water and woods, to his years as a Marine. His transition … Douglas said. “There are about 500 species that grow all over the world. You can have anything from a very small shrub to large trees that can be thousands of years old.” Among his first …
Type: Blog
… a hand lens, knife, and a flat-bottomed basket that prevents any mushrooms I’ve collected from scrunching together. I like to wrap my finds in wax paper or wax paper bags. Paper bags can … green-spored lepiota [Chlorphyllum molybdites] is the most common.) We can tell chanterelles from jack-o-lanterns when we turn them over and look at the underside of the cap: chanterelles … gills like a grocery store mushroom. Chanterelles are also getting a closer look from the scientific community. Until fairly recently, we assumed that the chanterelles growing …
Type: Blog
… addition . On the surface (literally), it’s a lovely bike/pedestrian trail that slopes down from Green Bay Road, skirting the north edge of Turnbull Woods and linking up to the outer road … the Highland Park Moraine is also a mini-section of the Eastern Subcontinental Divide: water from the Highland Park Moraine drains toward Lake Michigan (Great Lakes watershed) on the east … smoothly paved, and appropriately inclined. It’s convenient for pedestrians heading to and from the Braeside Metra train station. It’s family-friendly for strollers and toddlers, and …
Type: Blog
… two decades, Garden volunteers have played a critical role in helping remove garlic mustard from the McDonald Woods. When we began the ecological restoration project in the Barbara Brown … dump truck loads just to begin making a dent in the population. After buckthorn was removed from the Barbara Brown Nature Reserve, garlic mustard plants completely dominated the understory … is having a significant negative effect on garlic mustard (see woodsandprairie.blogspot.com ). Observers have reported an almost complete absence of garlic mustard in areas that are …
Type: Blog
… are. There is a turtle species for just about every kind of wetland environment that exists, from sea turtles to bog turtles to river cooters and pond sliders. There are approximately 17 … one of the first signs of spring. Soon after the ice melts on our lakes, turtles begin moving from the bottom of the lakes where they spent the winter hibernating. During the dark days of … laying). They also use some fascinating chemistry, part of which involves dissolving calcium from their shells to help neutralize toxic acids that would be fatal under normal circumstances. …
Type: Blog
… I am suggesting that we unofficially call 2015 “Lep Year”—“lep” being short for Lepidoptera (from the Latin “scaly wing”), the order of insects that includes butterflies and moths. It has … The very large moths in the family Saturniidae (silkworms and royal moths) emerge either from the soil, in the case of the Imperial moth, or from one of the familiar large cocoons you can find attached to a twig, like those of the …
Type: Blog
… a small stand of dead American elm trees, I began to lift the loose remaining bark away from one of the trees to see if any spiders were present. As I gently pulled the bark away from the trunk, a tiny black hand reached up over the top edge of the bark. It quickly became … erratically, or drop out of the air as though they had been struck with a stupefying charm from Harry Potter’s wand. These moths have evolved defensive tactics to help them avoid being …
Type: Blog
… can do that. It is possible that in nature, the coating protects the seeds on their journey from the mother plant through the hostile environment of a hungry animal’s gut and on to wherever … pulp. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and poke a few holes in the top. Here are the seeds from three medium-sized tomatoes, sitting by the window on the back porch, waiting to ferment. … need this kind of abuse to germinate? The only way to find out is to experiment. Collect seeds from some ripe tomatoes—two or three tomatoes will do. Ferment half of the batch using the …
Type: Blog
