Category: Latest From High Reaches

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Winter Mullein Rosettes

On a winter walk the side of the road is green with chicory, dandelion, dock and more stubbornly hugging the dirt. More noticeable are the winter mullein rosettes.

A number of plants called biennials spend a year growing, overwinter and bloom the next year. Mullein and thistles are some of them.

thistle winter rosette
Thistle rosettes are easy to know. The prickly leaves mark this one as a bull thistle.

Thistles

Bull thistle rosettes invaded the yards around the house a number of years ago. These are a biennial so the rosette appears first and the flowers the next year. We left a couple to see what the plants would be like.

Great shafts lined with thorns grew up reaching five or six feet tall. These had many branches and each branch was tipped with a pink hairy flower head.

These flowers are very popular. Hummingbirds drink nectar. Butterflies walk around on them sipping. Later a variety of birds including goldfinches, cardinals and sparrows eat the seeds.

Moth Mullein flowers
Moth mullein is a lovely wild flower. I let several grow and flower in my garden as well as in the yard. They do tend to come up in the hundreds the next year.

Winter Mullein Rosettes

Two mulleins invaded the front yard years ago. One is moth mullein with spikes of white flowers with purple hairy stamens. These usually get two feet tall, but can make three.

winter mullein rosette
Nothing else looks like a winter mullein rosette. The leaves can be darker green, but they are always fuzzy.

Common mullein rosettes have big, furry leaves looking like a bird nest on the ground. Unlike thistles that hug the ground, even under where the lawn mower reaches, mullein leaves stand up.

In the summer, tall stalks grow up five or six feet. Usually there is a single one with others appearing later as branches. Other times the stalks become elaborate candelabra. Yellow flowers open randomly along the stalks.

Herbal Tea

Nothing seems to be fond of the furry mullein leaves. However, they do make a nice herb tea. It has a slightly dusty, mild taste. A single leaf is good for two batches of tea for me. I usually toss in some mint leaves or calendula flowers with it.

The impressive flower spikes and wild tea are good reasons to let the mulleins grow.

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Watching the Birds

Cold weather and snow make for indoor days. We would rather be outside, but settle for watching the birds at the bird feeder.

That feeder was one of the first things we put up over thirty years ago. It has seen some changes over the years, but the bird crowd doesn’t mind as long as the sunflower seeds arrive every morning.

Watching the birds is fun with blue jays
When the blue jays move onto the bird feeder, they try to chase everyone else off. It doesn’t work well. Squirrels sneer at them.

The Feeder

The feeder is a simple affair. A metal tray is balanced on four t-posts with a wood rim to hold it in place. Four wood posts go up to hold a tin roof.

The tray holds a rectangular tray of sunflower seeds. An old pan without a handle holds water if the temperature is above freezing. A pottery bowl holds scratch feed. One corner has a wire cage with a suet cake in it.

cardinal watching the birds from the feeder
It’s late in the day. This cardinal has found the tray empty, but waits for it to refill as it must do magically if he only waits long enough. The magic is someone tromping out with more sunflower seeds.

These trays and dishes are collected at dark every evening and brought into the house. Night forays by raccoons and opossums are not welcome as they make a mess on the main feeder floor.

In the morning, the birds gather in neighboring trees and the feeder tray and roof to wait. Sometimes a squirrel comes early to check over the spilled seeds. The bird seed arrives shortly after dawn.

Squirrel on bird feeder
Squirrels on the bird feeder are annoying and little gluttons. This gray squirrel stays to one side so birds can come by on the other one. Some sit in the middle and chase off birds and squirrels alike.

Watching the Birds

Some birds are regulars all year, as the feeder is put out all year. Cardinals and morning doves are the main ones. The other visitors vary by the season.

Winter brings the titmice, chickadees, nuthatches and house finches. The others are more in evidence then too. Downy and red-bellied woodpeckers eat the suet. Blue jays attack the corn in the scratch feed. Doves like the milo.

red-bellied woodpecker facing morning dove
The red-bellied woodpeckers generally hop around the outside of the feeder until they get to the suet cake. Still, the morning dove finds him intimidating and tried to insist he go away.

Squirrels come too. Gray squirrels are sometimes good visitors by sitting at one end of the sunflowers allowing the birds to eat at the other end. Some gray and all red or fox squirrels hog the tray.

Arguing with the squirrels is pointless. It’s easier to let them nibble up what they want and leave. Then the tray can be refilled for the birds and we can get back to watching the birds for the afternoon.

More about feeding the birds is in “Exploring the Ozark Hills“.

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Getting Garden Seeds

My favorite wish books are arriving: the seed catalogs. The pictures are gorgeous. The varieties are tempting. In a month I will be getting garden seeds.

After drooling over the seed catalogs, it’s time to settle down into some serious garden planning. Getting garden seeds shouldn’t mean a pile of unopened packets sitting in the seed box for years.

Getting Seeds catalogs
Although Pinetree and Baker’s Creek are the main two companies I order from now, I have ordered from Shumway, Gurney’s, Jung’s and Johnny’s among others.

Serious Garden Planning

I do have a fair sized garden. However, it is finite. Mature plants take up space and don’t do well crammed in making both growing and harvesting difficult.

Every year I start with a garden diagram and a list of must grows. These are penciled into various beds. Leftover spots can be filled in with other plants.

My garden diagram needed before getting seeds
The main garden is roughly 50 feet square with the front section 16 feet square. This is not really accurate or entirely to scale. This does not matter as the only purpose is to let me decide what will be planted where.

Before going wild with the order form, there is another consideration: What will be done with the crop? Why purchase and grow a crop no one will eat?

My garden is in the Ozarks. Growing conditions aren’t the same as other places. Plants get hit with heat, humidity, flood and drought. Lots of vegetables don’t do well under these conditions.

Wild consumers are another consideration for me. Although we love eating sweet corn, I never grow it. The raccoons move in and demolish the crop and I refuse to camp out in the patch with a gun every night until it is picked.

Maturation time is important too. Tomatoes taking over three months to mature a crop are not on my list. Cabbage and other cole crops must mature before the weather gets too hot in summer or too cold in late fall.

Back to the Catalogs

Once the planning is done, it’s time for getting garden seeds picked out and ordered. My orders go in the first week of January as those leek and cabbage seeds need to be started by February.

My spring garden is a going concern already with garlic and onions. The cabbage (Savoy preferably) and leeks go into the garden in March. I have almost three months to get ready.

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Sweat Shirt Time for Goats

Ozark winters have gotten erratic and mostly warmer. However, the cold decided to visit for Thanksgiving. Shivering goats made it sweat shirt time.

Animals do put on extra winter undercoats. Nubians don’t do so as much as they are descended from tropic goats. When it gets cold and stays cold, they huddle together and shiver.

Being Cold

Some people don’t seem to mind winter cold. I am not one of them. When it gets cold, I huddle near the fire and/or wrap up in a blanket. Triple layers help when I go to the barn.

My Nubian goats can’t enjoy a hot wood stove. If they are cold, I get less milk. When they stay cold, they can get sick and have a harder time recovering.

Up North

In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan winter brings temperatures below zero and deep snow. People wear wool to keep warm.

We bought old wool blankets at the thrift store, cut them in half and tied them on our goats. They weren’t thrilled, but they were warm locked in their barn. The blankets stayed on.

Nubian doe High Reaches Lydia in her winter wear
Sweat shirts may not be Nubian doe Lydia’s favorite wear, but it does keep her a little warmer during winter cold spells.

In the Ozarks

The temperature has plunged below zero here for a night or two. One winter brought foot deep snow. But these are not the usual winter weather routine.

We tried tying blankets on the goats to warm them up. They decided the blankets were itchy. The baling twine was too tight. The blankets landed in heaps on the floor and trampled.

Sweat Shirt Time

The goats still got cold. People wear sweat shirts to get warm. Why couldn’t the goats?

So now, when winter cold moves in and the goats begin shivering, it’s sweat shirt time. My herd sports a variety of colors, stops shivering and finds them comfortable enough to keep on until the weather warms up again.

Learn about goats while solving puzzles in “Goat Games“.

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Winter Seeds

Wildflowers are gone. Most trees are bare. Is there anything to see on a nature walk? Perhaps winter seeds can provide a guessing game.

Elephant Foot Seeds
Elephant foot sends up flower stalks almost two feet. The pink flowers are interesting to look at. Then winter comes. The stalks turn dry and brown, but are recognizable.

What Is This?

A bare stalk sticks up with a crown of pointy seeds on the top. There are no leaves or flowers to give a clue to which flowers produced these seeds.

Thinking back, I know what this is. There were big leaves and pink flowers with petals like fingers in little boats on top of stems.

This is elephant’s foot in winter. There are lots of these stalks so there might be lots of plants next year.

Buckbrush or coral berry fruits
Buckbrush spreads underground. It’s flowers are small bells. Then the red berries show up. These are supposed to be good wild bird fruits. They are not considered edible by people, just something colorful to see in early winter.

Looking For Clues to Winter Seeds

One good clue is remembering what flowers I saw in this place last summer. This narrows the list of possibles a lot as spring ephemerals and plants not found here are eliminated.

Leaves might be a clue. Sometimes a few green ones are left. Usually there are some dead, brown ones. It takes care to uncurl a dry leaf.

The shape of the seed head is another clue. Monarda flowers leave behind a ball with pockets where the seeds were. These are called beebalm and horsemint commonly.

Fruit is another clue. The persimmon trees often have a few persimmons still hanging on. These are shriveled and dry, but definitely persimmons.

Buckbrush has long stems lined with clusters of red berries. These dry and shrivel and turn dark after a time. I read that lots of birds like them, but I think they are a last choice on the menu.

Tall Goldenrod seed head
Tall goldenrod seed heads look like little, fuzzy hats perched on top of brown stems.

Why Bother?

Cold winter walks can be more about exercise than looking at plants. The faster the walk, the sooner the return to warmth.

Overwintering bees and caterpillars or pupae value these winter seeds and stalks. They hide inside them or under those fallen leaves to survive the cold. That’s fine for them.

For me, I like having an idea where to look for various wildflowers next year. Those winter seeds give me clues.

There is much to look at during an Ozark winter. Some of it is in “Exploring the Ozark Hills“.

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Rooster Regime Change

Mr. Smarty has ruled my chicken flock for several years. He is a big Columbian Wyandotte. Three Easter Egger upstarts moved into the hen house and one dreamed of a rooster regime change.

An Accidental Rooster

I normally order pullet chicks every spring. About four years ago the order was for some Columbian Wyandotte pullets.

The chicks arrived and grew up. Only one chick was not the expected pullet. He was a self assured rooster that loved showing off giving him his name.

My big rooster was getting old, so Mr. Smarty escaped the freezer. The next year my old rooster died and he took over. None of the hens were impressed.

Defiant even after rooster regime change
Columbian Wyandotte roosters are big, 8 to 10 pounds, with a rose comb. Mr. Smarty now runs from the other four roosters and holds court below the garden.

This Year’s Mistakes

Sexing baby chicks is not easy. Mistakes are made and Cackle Hatchery does warn that one out of ten pullets may be a rooster.

However, out of the ten ordered and one extra Easter Egger pullets for this year, three were roosters. They are pretty things and I decided to keep one. Both big roosters were four years old which is getting old for a chicken.

One was going to be dinner. Another was going with some pullets to a neighbor’s hen house. Except Easter Eggers are small for meat and the neighbors never picked up their chickens.

Easter Egger rooster Rusty enjoys the rooster regime change
Easter Egger roosters are slim, maybe 5 pounds, with a rose comb and cheek puffs. Rusty had help defeating Mr. Smarty. Another Easter Egger rooster, Herald, joined in.

Rooster Regime Change

The rooster scheduled for dinner had dreams. He was head of the pullets and longed to extend his reign to the hen house. Mr. Smarty was challenged.

It took several days to wear the big rooster down, but he finally abdicated. The new rooster called Rusty has taken over.

Mr. Smarty is taking the rooster regime change hard. He was in charge for so long and now he is bottom rooster. It will take time, but he will adjust as other roosters have in the past.

Chickens are a 4-H project for Hazel in “Mistaken Promises“.

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Garden Fences and Gates

As stated in “For Love of Goats” “Fabulous fences are a fallacy fervently foisted on foolish farmers.” The same is true for garden fences and gates.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
Goats are notorious for escaping fences. This is one of the tongue twisting topics in this book of tongue twisters, homonyms, alliteration, short fiction and memoir about goats.

My garden fence started as a way to keep chickens and wildlife out of the garden. This does work for chickens, as long as I remember to close the gates. Wildlife finds this as a minor barrier quickly circumvented or climbed.

PVC Gate Update

I wrote many years ago about constructing garden gates out of PVC pipe. The wood gates disintegrated in a couple of years with the moist Ozark weather. PVC pipe lasts a long time.

At the time, I had never worked with PVC pipe and this did affect the outcome. The other factor was putting the gates together out under the trees on somewhat level land.

Today the gates are still operational. They don’t hang straight because the gate posts lean (Another problem to tackle another day.) However they do not need replacing and do keep the chickens out of the garden.

There is one gate that needs repair. The garden gates have a mid pipe to strengthen them. The top and bottom are about two feet from it.

The chick yard gate is much taller and I put in only the one brace. When I snugged it up tight, the brace broke loose and needs regluing. When I replace this gate, I will use two braces as well as straightening he gate post.

garden fences and gates
Wooden gates need replacing every other year. PVC gates are harder to construct and put wire on, but they last for years. Mine have some dirt on them and the green blush of algae here and there, but they still work well.

Garden Fences

Most of my garden fence is two by four welded wire. This works for chickens, but not for rabbits. I saw a rabbit hop through the fence. Chicken wire is getting added to the bottom of the garden fences and gates now.

This fix might work for rabbits. Woodchucks, raccoons and opossums just climb over. I suppose it is possible to fence these animals out too. My garden fences and gates will keep me using livetraps when necessary.

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Golden Ginkgo Tree

Years ago we acquired some ginkgo seeds from Missouri Botanical Garden and grew them. One of those seedlings is now a tall tree and this fall is a golden ginkgo tree.

Meeting Ginkgoes

I very much remember the first ginkgo tree that caught my attention. It was a huge tree standing next to the cemetery where Benjamin Franklin is buried. This was summer and it was dropping fruit all over the sidewalk.

Since ginkgoes are related to pines, fleshy fruits are unusual. The problem was the smell. It was as though every dog in Philadelphia had come here to leave their piles.

golden ginkgo tree leaf
Usually people think of pine type trees as having needles. Ginkgoes are different with their flat, deciduous leaves. The central notch is there because of the vein pattern. This leaf hasn’t fully turned yellow yet and shows the typical pattern of color changing on the edges spreading to the center common to all deciduous leaves.

Maidenhair Trees

Where does this name come from? I don’t know. It does reflect the leaf shape. This is a fan because the main vein splits in two, each of these splits in two and so on to fill the leaf.

A native Ozark fern has similar leaves. It’s called the maidenhair fern. I find it in moist ravines.

Maidenhair Fern
From above the leaflet shape shows well as well as the circular arrangement of the fronds. All of these sit on a single stem one to two feet tall. The ferns grow in clumps in moist ravines.

The tree itself was once – during the time of the dinosaurs – one of several species. Only this one species is left and was found on temple grounds in China. The Chinese roast and eat the seeds.

Because the trees are pollution resistant, they were once popular in cities. The fruit was not a problem as ginkgoes have male and female trees. Only the females produce fruit, so cities took care to only plant males.

golden ginkgo tree
I rushed the picture so the tree isn’t fully yellow yet. Frost will cause the leaves to fall and this tree rarely turns before frost. It has gone on to full yellow and the other two trees are now yellow as well.

Home Trees

There are three ginkgo trees in our back yard. All were grown from seed and we have no idea if they are male or female. Perhaps we will find out in a few more years as the trees are almost old enough to bloom. That starts at around thirty years old.

In the meantime we admire their lovely shapes and leaves. Most years these three never turn color in the fall, staying green until killing frost strips their leaves. This year the oldest one is a beautiful golden ginkgo tree. Another is thinking about it.

We are just enjoying the late, lovely fall colors.

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Changing Colors

Nothing stays the same one day to the next. They may be similar, but never exactly the same. It shows a lot with changing colors.

Winter

Hills are gray all winter. Bare branches are gray. The sky is often gray.

On clear days the sky is a deep blue. The pastures are a rusty tan. Occasional pines are dark green with the red cedars a gray green. Mosses and lichens glow green on the trees and ground.

One day the air seems lighter, warmer. The sun rises higher and stays a little longer each day. Then the changing colors start.

Spring

At first the green is only on the forest floor and in the pastures. Then the spring ephemerals start emerging. Blues, pinks, whites erupt under the still bare gray trees.

From my barn door I watch the hillside beyond the pastures. One day it is still gray. The next there is a delicate hint of green.

As the spring ephemerals finish blooming and set seed, the hillsides turn spring green with new leaves. Other plants grow up hiding the fading ephemerals and add color to the forest floor.

Summer

Changing colors in the sky reflect the change in the seasons. The sky is now a lighter shade of blue. The clouds have white tops and puffy shapes.

On the hillsides the green has deepened to a mature green. Even there the greens vary from one kind of tree to another ranging from Kelly green to dark green.

Flowers are changing colors too. They now tend more to the white and yellow flowers on taller plants.

Sugar Maple changing colors
Although sugar maples are native trees, this one was planted in the front yard before we moved here. Bald Faced Hornets built a nest in it one year as I found out the hard way. Orchard orioles nested in it another year. This year it was late changing into fall colors.

Fall

It is fall now in the Ozarks. The hillside I watch is turning orange slowly as frost is late this year. Flowers are again mostly the blues, but darker than in the spring.

Many people love the changing colors of fall. They are pretty, but I know they are fleeting. Soon the hillside will again be gray under gray skies leaving me counting the days to spring.

See how colors change through the Ozark year in “Exploring the Ozark Hills“

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Remembering Wild Flowers

Killing frost is looming over the Ozarks. Already plants are preparing for winter. I am looking through my pictures remembering wild flowers I saw over the summer.

This has been a tough year so I didn’t get to go walking as much as I would like. Most of the flowers I saw were familiar ones. Some were not new, but were incomplete for my Dent County Flora.

remembering wild flowers like Jacob's Ladder
Jacob’s Ladder is an early spring ephemeral. It likes moist, shady spots. Some years it is numerous. This year I only came across this one plant.

Big Reason

I joined the Missouri Native Plant Society years ago. They take part in the citizen science listings on iNaturalist (www.inaturalist.org). Now and again I post pictures of flowers on the site.

Identification of the flowers can be difficult. Since this site has many people checking over the pictures and identifying the flowers, I find it helpful. There are those flowers the site has trouble with namely asters, goldenrods and sunflowers. I do too.

Asclepias tuberosa or Butterfly Weed
Roadsides light up in the Ozarks when the butterfly weed starts blooming. It ranges in color from yellow to red, even bicolor, but is usually bright orange. It is a milkweed and loved by many insects including butterflies. You can find out lots more in “Missouri’s Milkweeds, Milkvines and Pipevines” by Dr. Richard Rintz.

Another Reason

Since I do work on the Dent County Flora from time to time, I need to have my wild flower pictures. Although many are still on my computer, backup is important.

There have been years when my picture stash for one year has been over a gigabyte. (One year was over 3!) I don’t want that much sitting on my computer. They are copied onto flash drives.

Royal Catchfly flowers
The brilliant red of Royal Catchfly flowers along the road do catch the eye. The long, green calyxes have hairs with sticky goo on them so small insects like flies get stuck on them.

Personal Reason

I enjoy remembering wild flowers I’ve seen and photographed over the summer. As winter cold moves in, I can look back to bask in the summer sun.

Sorting through the pictures and preparing them to post on iNaturalist, I identify the old friends and try to name the new ones. There are many I didn’t take pictures of because I have so many of them already. Now I wish I had as one or two more wouldn’t hurt.

And I find the ones that complete sets for my Flora. Over the winter these will fill out more pages and help me make out a list to search for in the spring.

There is more about the wild flowers of the Ozarks in Exploring the Ozark Hills.