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Prairie Dock Series in the Breeze with Grasses and Shadows

For a blog about sitting in the woods, I tend to spend a lot of time in prairies; and lately, as I’ve mentioned, I have been spending a lot of my free out-and-about time at Wolf Road Prairie. Again, this is a great place to visit and a window into the landscape of Illinois and the Midwest in general before..well, before. There’s only a fraction of a percent (1/100th of 1%) of original prairie left in Illinois, and the health and density of biodiversity of this site is quite startling. It’s almost a little disorienting I find with the great variety of plant species of all shapes and sizes, the colors, and then the constant movement of it all in even the slightest breeze. This near perpetual motion also poses a challenge to the picture taking. The density and variety of textures are what I’ve been more attracted to lately than the colors, though the colors are nice too. As I was flipping through some of these pictures, there were some that I liked more than others, but then I kinda felt that, taken altogether, they portrayed some semblance of this constant shifting of the landscape which has become a significant aspect of my developing relationship with this area.

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The Love of Tallgrass Prairie (iowanaturalist.wordpress.com)

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Spitbug Bubbles & Thorns

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A beautiful day to be out and about..vernal ponds loaded and teeming with frogs, some a red winged blackbird, tree swallows..though still not a lot of green. But the light has changed, it’s warm in the sun, and the woods are definitely waking.

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This guy almost got sat on.

Fall is here…and I’m slathered in deadlines…

For the few of you who are actively following, here are some pictures from my favorite spot by Salt Creek Woods. I’ve been going out regularly, and I have a number of pictures and thoughts that I need to share, but all my time is being eaten by some other commitments. I hope you like the images…it was a cloudy day, with storms in the forecast; I sat in the middle of this field for about an hour waiting to get stormed on – seemed like somethin’ to do. In the end, the deluge didn’t ensue until I was already heading back to the car. ah, the car…always back to the automobile. So, it wasn’t nearly as cool as it could of been, as I had some romantic notion of sitting in the middle of a field and gettin’ whooped on by the wind and rain.

ah well, there’s always spring.

And winter is sure to be interesting.

More soon…