Queen Anne's Lace

It is hard to tell in this picture but our Queen Anne's Lace is going to bloom soon. That would be those weeds with white flowers that you see in unmown ditches along the road. Smells a bit like carrots. You may be wondering why I am excited about a weed finally flowering in our yard. We plan our flower garden so that it will provide the food & habitat of each stage in the life of the wildlife we want to see more of. We have tried transplanting this flower many times with no success. Last fall my son suggested harvesting seed heads, so we did. We planted them this spring, but I was beginning to think we had planted them too late. Then today we saw our first stalk. Hopefully there will be plenty of time still for the seed heads to form. If not we will harvest more this fall and scatter them before the first frost. Later.

Garden

This is our first tomato! We actually got two cherry tomatoes off of the plant that the tomato horn worm destroyed, but I am not counting them. I have decided that while I really like fresh veggies, I don't care for all of the work a garden takes. So this year I planted a few tomatoes & several pepper plants in pots that I scattered around the flower gardens. The tomatoes are doing fair, but the peppers are really struggling. They would probably all be doing better if I could remember to water them once in a while. I will take what ever we get though. It beats getting up at 6 to go to the farmers market. Later.

Amorphophallus titanium

We got to see, and smell, a corpse flower! My son has wanted to do that since he first heard about them years ago. We figured it was something that would probably never happen. I did not know that the U of I had been growing this one since 2001. I am not sure if it was because this is the first time it has bloomed, but it did not really smell that bad. My wife told me that she heard that David Attenborough was the first to call it a "corpse" flower. Evidently he did not want to say "giant misshapened phallus", even in latin. If you ever get the chance to see one, go for it. Do not let the fear of the smell stop you. Later.

Fossil hunting

We finally got to go to the Middle Fork Forest Preserve in Pennfield a couple of weeks ago. We have been several times before, but this time we explored the Middle Fork River. It was wonderful. The kids swam, caught crawdads, chased minnows, and tracked a clam. I was told that the path along the river has been in use for close to 10,000 years. It is a path that went from where we were to the Paxton area. I had hoped we would find some fossils or geodes, but no such luck. Not that any of us looked very hard. The trip did get me more interested in rock hounding though. It turns out that hunting for fossils is really frowned upon these days. I think this is really sad. I understand the need to protect major historical sites and our public lands, but what about the awe and wonder of finding something so amazing as a fossil or geode. It is not the same when you look at some collection locked
behind glass. I guess the answer is to do no damage & don't get caught. Later.