A BLUE AND WHITE GARDEN FOR SPRING Many years ago, when my children were young, we drove up to Door County to spend Memorial Day weekend. The weather was quite cool–the tourist season had not yet started. The peninsula was, however, exquisite; a beautiful time of year to visit. The cherry trees, for which the [...]
Tag Archives: Natural World
A Walk in the Woods
Come, gentle Spring! Ethereal Mildness! Come. James Thomson Spring seems to have finally arrived–at least for this week. March/April flowers just started to bloom the last weekend in April: Spring Beauty and Toothwort Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica) is common in woodlands. Clusters of tiny, pink striped, white petaled flowers form a bountiful [...]
SNOWFALL
The Snow-Storm Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet Delayed, all friends shut out, [...]
Baffling Experiences with Native Plants
Baffling Experiences with Native Plants I have good, mesic prairie soil on my property. My Sears bungalow was built in 1927 and the topsoil was saved and put back on the ground when the house was built, unlike nowadays. I should be able to grow any native plant that is found in nature in mesic [...]
FALLEN LEAVES–Part I
FALLEN LEAVES–Part I The City of Elgin spends $1000’s of dollars every year disposing leaves from private property. Is this necessary? Let’s not be so quick to have them hauled away. Fallen leaves can be beautiful. The ground was blanketed with wet leaves of every hue from livid crimson [...]
More on Asters and Grasses
More on Asters and Grasses I can’t help myself. All last week, whenever I would step outside my front door, whether to get the mail or pick up the newspaper, I would run back into the house for my camera and take more photographs of all the asters. Aromatic Aster and Prairie [...]
Roadsides
Their pervasive fragrance and gaudy color suggests an overdressed matron wearing too much cheap perfume, as these plants often become too much in the landscape. Dick Young Kane county Wild Plants & Natural Areas Roadsides Dick Young was referring to Dame’s Rocket (Hesperus matronalis) in bloom now along partially shaded roadsides, railroad [...]
May Apples
Valerie Blaine, Naturalist with the Kane County Forest Preserve, is Guest Writer again today. This article originally appeared in the Daily Herald, 4/4/2012 That’s not an umbrella, it’s a May-apple By Valerie Blaine If you’ve walked in the woods this week, you might think a beach party is about to begin. There are beach umbrellas [...]
Green Fire
Green Fire We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. Aldo Leopold Aldo Leopold bench made as part of an Eagle Scout project to place in Christ the Lord [...]
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Wild Ones: Northern Kane County Chapter
Let’s Keep our Rainwater Here.
March 28, 2013 • Categories: Pat's Comments, Rain, sustainable • by PatHill
LET’S KEEP OUR RAINWATER HERE WHAT FALLS IN ELGIN SHOULD STAY IN ELGIN When rain falls, two things can happen to it. It can infiltrate the soil and become an asset to local life, or it can run off and become a liability to life downstream. James M. Patchett & Gerould S. Wilhelm The Ecology [...]
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