Sumac Chronicles.

An explosion of autumn color!

From what I’m told, and from evidence on the ridges around here and at a few of the nearby state parks, sumac is considered an invasive species. At Glacial Lakes and areas of Big Stone State Parks, the hills are rife with the reddish leaves and seed clusters, or drupes among scientists. For we laypeople, the clusters are more commonly called “bobs.”

All that color, from the bright reds and yellows of fall to the purplish bobs, attracts the eye of a photographer, especially this one. Recently at a visit to Glacial Lakes, the sumac in the late afternoon sun was reminiscent of a wild fire ravishing the hills of native grasses. A vivid bright red hugged the brown prairie grasses like a grandmother’s quilt in the low and late afternoon sun. Even around here, growing up the nearby hills along Big Stone Lake, patches of sumac are as common as deer and wild turkey. Sumac is found from the town of Ortonville all along the lower hillsides to Browns Valley, and are particularly prominent in the Bonanza area of Big Stone State Park.

The hills at Glacial Lakes State Park are rife with the fall color of sumac.

Taken while lying on my back, the red leaves look stark against the blue of the sky.

Along the highway spindly stalks rise from the ground, gnarly and poetically. Most common to Minnesota is the staghorn, which is rather appropriate considering the shapes of the trunks. The stalks reach skyward from the shorter outside plants to those quite tall in the midst of a cluster. The tallest can reach as high as 30 feet, although I doubt if I’ve seen them more than 12 feet in height. The huge leaves, spirally arranged and usually pinnately compound, bring a crimson to purple celebration to a prairie autumn, and come winter, the purplish bobs collect snow and hungry, overwintering birds.

In many parts of the country, sumac is sold as an ornamental. In areas of New England the plant is sold as a rival to the beauty of the larger maple species, bringing the same lush color to the autumn scene.

A study in contrast from the shaded sumac to those in the bright sun.

You may blame the birds, in part, for the invasiveness, for their droppings provide an instant fertility for the seeds. Once sprouted, though, sumac becomes entrenched, spreading by runner-roots or rhizomes. If you should wish to witness the richness of rhizome colonies, a visit to Glacial Lakes is the place to go … especially in the autumn.

A background of sumac and prairie grasses give this image almost a stained glass effect.

What I didn’t know is that in areas of the Mideast the bobs are ground into a spice or served in a tea. The spice, which is also sold by Penzy’s and other spice companies, has a tart, lemony taste. When I bought this up with Rebecca, she remembered that as a child in Vermont that they one time collected and ground the seeds. “It’s easier to just find a lemon,” she said, smiling at the memory.

Bobs against the brown of the Bonanza prairie grasses.

Perhaps she won’t be convinced to try it again here at Listening Stones Farm. “I remember it being hard to find seeds good enough to grind. I remember that there wasn’t a lot of good, solid seeds.”

A cluster of staghorn sumac near us in an earlier, early-morning fog shows off the gnarly, deer-antler like shapes.

All of which makes me want to revisit the writing of Euell Gibbons, who I met not long after he published his book, “Stalking the Wild Asparagus.” It would be interesting to see if Gibbons wrote about sumac, and if so, what his impression might have been.

Sumac shines in the early morning sun.

It’s highly doubtful we’ll get around to collecting some bobs for grinding into a spice. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to stalk the wild sumac  with my camera. Perhaps you’ll enjoy what I’ve captured so far.

In winter, the bobs provide food for deer and many bird species.

Call it a brief reprieve from the locomotive-like, gush of winds, for a soft breeze rustled the nearby prairie grasses as the “blood” moon rose into the darkened sky. Not far away our local “pack” of coyotes broke into their nightly prairie songs. I couldn’t help but smile. Having a gentle breeze in the relative warmth of the evening, along with the yips and howls of the coyotes, felt immensely meditative.

It’s too bad you can hear the prairie songs, and that I didn’t have a tripod or cooperation from the clouds overhead for the recent “blood” moon.

Oddly, my enjoyment of the prairie songs and the symphony of the wind isn’t shared by many. Yes, people speak of a deep hatred of the wind, and certainly the many letters of the settlers give historical credence to such feelings. Even madness, as it was called back then. As for the coyotes, I often hear such comments as “blood curdling” and “frightening” when we bring up our enjoyment of the coyote songs. “Perhaps you haven’t lost anything to them. No chickens or cats,” someone said the other night. It’s true. We haven’t.

Yet, we are wondering if the mashed grasses along the chicken fence along the orchard was matted down by coyotes. Rebecca believes it is certainly some predator seeking entry into the chicken pen. She discovered the trodden grasses the other afternoon when three of her hens and a rooster were squawking madly while parading along the orchard fence. When she walked around the shed into the orchard to investigate, one by one the chickens turned to sprint with their feathery butts aloft, defying soft down, straight through the two fenced pens and into the coop instead of under their normally protective brier bushes. There was no hesitation.

“Everything loves chicken,” is how she explains the situation.

With our heavily insulated walls and new windows, and with our minds solidly geared toward the recent Meander, much of what happened outside in the prairie, coop and garden, along with the seemingly constant gush of the winds, have gone mostly unheeded.

Gull gliding in the morning sun.

Ah, the Meander. Our first day back was filled with exhaustion, although by mid-afternoon there was just enough healing to begin putting our house back into a livable order. The next day the two of us carried our large display panels from the house to the shed because of the strong crosswinds. Since, though a sense of normal has since settled in.

While my lunch warmed in the oven on Tuesday, I spent several wind-blown moments in an Adirondack chair on the deck soaking in a bit of sunshine and wind. This was when my neglect of the feathered friends was noticed. No suet. No nuts. No thistle seed for the finches. No sunflower seeds. No colorful flashes of birds flying in for a meal. All the little feeders were swinging like pendulums in the staunch wind.

Windblown grasses in a nearby prairie.

Over the rise, though, ducks and geese have not been daunted, and those squawks of the geese are as normal here as the sounds of the winds. Likewise with the hundreds of gulls gliding over. One afternoon, when winds whipped the treetops and created incredible yet invisible currents high above, dozens upon dozens of gulls glided past, and honestly, you can’t help but believe they were enjoying the ride. Frankly, it was more glide than ride. You could see a bit of wing adjustment up by the wetland, then whoosh, they’d glide by with considerable ease with nary a move.

Beyond the gulls and geese, on Wednesday Rebecca discovered yet another sign of autumn bird life. Seems she was in the chicken pen when a sudden alert was sounded by one of the roosters, immediately inspiring the layers to sprint for cover under those brier bushes. At first Rebecca didn’t know what to make of it, then noticed the shadow easing across the grass. Above her and her chickens, the tell tail white of an eagle showed as it slowly soared, somehow evading the forces of the strong, afternoon wind.

Gulls gliding in the wind.

For prairie lovers, this is a blessed time of year. Murmurations of blackbirds, and the flights of the birds are part of it. So is finding yourself in a stand of “dancing” big bluestem. No, it doesn’t have to be the “turkey track” grasses, for most of the prairie grasses are splendid this time of year. Brown, spindly stalks and wispy blades of the grasses are whipped by winds in ways the soaring birds cannot since they’re anchored deeply by their underground forest of roots. Most of the forbs have gone to dry seed heads, and many stand rigid against the same winds that cause neighboring grasses to shimmer and shine. The wind helps spread the seeds that replenish the prairie, all part of the life cycle of the prairie.

Turkey-track bluestem encountering a prairie wind.

Yes, we’ve had our share of wind of late. Big Stone Lake is riled into huge white caps more days than not. When we placed the signs out on the roads early last Friday morning before the Meander, both of us had to hold the signs in place until she was secured them to the rebar. The balloons we hanged lasted less than a minute before being destroyed.

Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed that moment of reprieve, along with the yips and howls of prairie lyrics sang by the coyotes. It is all part of prairie life, and you learn to enjoy all of it. Night and day the big winds have continued, roaring with vengeance. Wind is the thread of prairie fabrics, in the field and sky, and as so, you learn to adjust and accept. You must. As a powerful force of nature, it serves us a bit of evil among the goodness.

An email from the Granite Falls Arts Council today proclaimed that art is all around us this week. Indeed, it’s the annual Meander: Upper Minnesota River Art Crawl weekend, and for the first time we’re one of the studio stops. The brochure has us listed as Number 1, a designation cited for destination rather than documentation!

Yes, there is the proof! We were in the official brochure!

Over the past several months this has all been quite new and exciting. First was being accepted as one of the 45 artists to exhibit on the Meander, then came the various meetings where we mingled with many of the artists we’ve known over the years. However humbling, it was nice being considered a peer. Then the brochure arrived and there it was, officially, in brown and black …

These panels were designed to be self-standing and to hopefully give viewers an idea of how a framed print will look on their walls.

Now comes crunch time. Sleep has become a luxury, and many unanticipated trips are being made picking up last minute pieces. Like this morning, when I awoke wide-eyed and staring at the ceiling. Those cards? What can I do about the cards? After a drink of water, I crawled back under the freshly washed sheets we were so happy to lay under last night and tried to sleep once again. Going back to sleep was fruitless.

Yes, we’re in the midst of the “Meander countdown.” Those cards! Reality hit pretty hard Sunday afternoon when I broke down the card packs to fold and place them into their respective categories and realized they were all at least ten to 15 percent darker than the proofs the company had originally mailed. Many were simply not usable, much too dark for putting on the rack. Three long and dark hours after crawling from bed, an early morning phone call was made to the printer, and, yes, they will reprint.

As the countdown slowly creeps toward the Friday opening I find myself falling back on the experiences of all those years in the publishing and ad agency business: Trying to minimize stress while by taking a deep breath and realizing that in the end things will be okay. “Hiccups!” they say.

Just a few of the canvas prints we have placed on the walls here at Listening Stones Farm for the Meander weekend.

Over the past several weeks tools have been worked overtime in cutting mats for the prints; sawing, gluing and sanding the cedar frames; designing and building display panels for the framed prints; hanging the canvas prints; and even constructing a homemade card display unit … which I hope to fill with usable cards. We have configured and reconfigured the layout of the rooms, and hopefully today or tomorrow we’ll start setting things up. Our goal is to confine our “showroom” to our dining and living rooms.

Even beyond the actual prep for the Meander, this has been an interesting personal journey. Ever since the Meander began a decade or so ago I’ve been a huge supporter by doing artist interviews and photographs for my country weekly, and over time I began to dream of being among the select few artists chosen. Thanks to Rebecca’s encouragement, along with our move to Big Stone County where there is some semblance of the native prairie pothole biome, my photography has moved into a new and hopefully a more “artistic” direction. Earlier in the spring I was asked to present at the Minnesota Master Naturalist’s convention where my subject explored the use of natural light in making nature images. My research took me back into a “rediscovery” of the works of Impressionist painter Claude Monet.

About 20 years ago I did a photo essay entitled, “If Monet Lived in the Prairie,” where I tried to mimic some of the French painter’s more iconic paintings to similar scenes I found in the prairie. Since the presentation my personal prairie work has become more “impressionistic,” if you will. In playing around in Photoshop I’ve discovered a technique to “soften” the images in ways you couldn’t in a darkroom. Other photographers have asked about the technique and have tried it with mixed results. Trying to simply soften an image without using traditional photography techniques is often a folly. These techniques may include, depending on the circumstances and subject matter, the focal length, selective focus, and ISO readings, not to mention the ambient physical aspects of wind, the quality of natural light and the use of the fore- and background color and texture. This is certainly beyond “point and shoot.”

Adding a softness to the image goes way beyond the “point and shoot” genre.

Since using this technique we’ve basically “turned over” my complete portfolio since my last hanging show in January; a technique some photographer and artist friends have suggested carries a personal “signature” or style. How will it play on the walls in the Meander? We’ll see.

Perhaps the saddest part of being on the tour is not being able to visit the other artists along the river valley. We have an incredibly talented, vast and rich artist’s community, and one much larger than the Meander itself since over the years several very talented individuals no longer display on the tour. This continues to be a strong tour even with the departures.

We must find room for this image made last week!

Yes, the feel is different on this side of the Meander. So much work goes into it, including contributing to the marketing displays along the way. Now, we’re just four days away. Gulp-time. Hopefully my printer cartridges will arrive along with the glass being cut for the last two frames, and of course, receiving those freshly printed replacement cards. We’ve yet to test the “Square” for our sales, and we have to set up the two rooms. Oh, and place the directional signs out on the highways. So much to do and so little time.

Come Friday the doors will open and hopefully some fine folks will find their way to Listening Stones Farm. By then we’ll have done all we can do. Rebecca will have some produce and eggs available, and my sister is bringing up several dozen of her great cookies. Me? I’m up on the wall! And the countdown continues!

A sense of nervousness has settled in here at Listening Stones Farm. This sense of affairs began shortly after our return from our trip north to Ely for our yearly break from routine. This “settling” has been by a series of degrees — literally. Our overnight weather report for Friday took it over the edge.

As Rebecca said, “Thirty-four is too close for comfort.”

With 75 tomato plants in her lower garden, plus the raised beds and tall green arches of produce she has out there, she is creating strategy while rationalizing her anticipated losses. Perhaps “our losses” would be more accurate, although there is both a sense of ownership and privacy involved in her near acre of produce farming. Those tomatoes are in the heart of the freeze zone since they’re located in perhaps the lowest level of our garden and yard — a location, she informs me, that makes it quite difficult to protect.

Rebecca’s low-lying tomato garden on the right side of the picture is particularly vulnerable because of its location.

The signs of this transition from summer to fall have been evident since we returned from up north. On Monday morning, our last day of warmth, my labor included working on frames for my Meander photographs. Many trips were made between the house and the workshop. Whenever I entered the workshop I was accosted by any number of swallows, as has been the custom all summer long. Later that afternoon as we shared our daily glass of wine on the deck, Rebecca spoke of her observation, “Well, the swallows are gone.”

“Can’t be. They were all over me all morning.”

“Listen. Look around. Do you see or hear them?” Indeed, while the prairie was still buzzing with dragonflies there wasn’t a single swallow in sight. None on the rooftop awnings of the workshop. None on the clothesline. The air was empty of the acrobatic fliers.

In the distant rise of the prairie we noted the short flights of ducks from one wetland to another. Yes, the ducks are coming through, and the geese are now gathering. Murmurations of blackbirds are beginning to fill the treetops in the grove. At night, as the sun sets and the coolness sets in, coyotes begin their night songs nearby, offering voice to the musical concert provided by the slight wind music from the chimes scattered around the trees in the yard. All of this nature is alluring and alive and you feel blessed to be a part of it.

Yellowheaded blackbirds by the hundreds gathered along Highway 75 near Bellingham.

Earlier this week was the rising of the harvest moon. I ran for my camera and was able to make a fun image of the last of the yellow flowers in the prairie. Yes, our prairie that was bursting with yellow just a few weeks ago, as it has all summer, is now mostly a dull green turning brown. We anticipate with pleasure the brownish beauty of a more mature prairie, which we see in patches around us, where the winds that make music with my chimes provides a dance for the Indian grasses and spindly bluestem. While the wind gives the prairie grasses a freedom to dance, those same grasses give face for the winds. And, yes, the browns are beginning to dominate those prairie patches. Bluestem is now in turkey-track stage, and the other native grasses shimmer in the glow light of autumn.

Bluestem in a prairie wind this week near Hermann.

While there are no survivors of the original prairie pothole biome, my imagination is often taxed in trying to visualize an actual prairie. For years I’ve stared at horizons and tried, trying to replace the sea of corn with bluestem, to visualize those seas of grasses so spoken of; of bluestem so thick it could wear away the toes of the boots of horseback riders seems impossible to imagine. I’ve tried imagining murmurations of blackbirds so thick in coolish September afternoons that they blackened the skies, sometimes completely shielding the sun … if you can believe reports of ancient storytellers, both from the letters of settlers and the passed along stories of the native elders. These are among the images I just can’t seem to pull off. Far easier to picture, though, are the long wingspan of V’s from the geese flying high overhead, often at different strata. These are all pieces of a grand puzzle, though many with the edges worn and the hooking circles of the pieces torn.

The prairie is no more. More than 99 percent of it is gone, and more remnants are plowed as glacial rocks are pried from the soil with heavy construction equipment. The last field of glacial litter between Correll and Appleton was being scraped clean last week, a vivid image that needs no imagination. Nor is the continued mining of the topsoil of the former prairie that took nearly 12,000 years to form and less than 200 years of plowing, from the first settlers through the evolving of industrialized farming, to mine. Poor tillage practices and even greed prevents a protection of the soils from blowing in those eight or so months of bareness, or of trickling away with the seasonal rains as more and more acres of yellowish clay peak through where thick layers of topsoil once laid. Farmers are no different in this mindset than other “miners” of the earth’s resources, all part of a world-wide population reeking with indifference.

Whether we speak of cropland or the reservoirs of fossil remnants we boast as endless beds of fuel, we seem intent in using up all of the earth we can. It is an interesting concept that we can use up the resources of the earth and still survive, and when the time comes, and it will, the silence will be deafening — like our barn the afternoon the swallows left.

Harvest moon over our prairie now seems like a harbinger of the change in weather.

That is a decided winter for future times. As we scurry for blankets — how can we cover 75 low-lying tomato plants? — to protect what we can, the approaching autumn will not be ignored. A frost is imminent. We in that transition of autumn toward winter, and with much of the canning and freezing of Rebecca’s garden done, we hang on to what is left as best we can. We’ve had a lovely growing season, and some of our work is unbeatable — our smoked eggplant and tomato sauce is about as perfect a testament to the summer season as you can find. The apples are about ready for harvest and sacks of walnuts are hanging in the shed. We work hard, just as the squirrels around the grove are doing, preserving the last of what we can for the months ahead.

This transition into autumn is interesting, and becomes more so each day. We look toward the rest we know is coming. In some ways it can’t come soon enough. In other ways, we want to put this transition off as long as we possibly can.

Just a few feet away … just past the wireless internet connections and my hot-shot photo printer, and the window, of course … stand tall spheres of pinkish hollyhocks. That they’re there is nothing short of poetic injustice.

Last year I was accused of mowing these very same plants at grass height. In all honesty, my goal was to protect the plant next to them, the delightfully pungent horseradish. Those funny shaped leaves of what I since have learned was that of hollyhock rather than pigweed were left unmowed this spring and summer, and now they’re in full, strident bloom just outside my office window.

Poetic injustice? You see, I have this reputation of being a hollyhock hater. My mowing them down, as I did in my former backyard, only added to the reputation. That these were planted right outside the office window is seemingly just that, a poetic injustice even if this claim of hollyhock hatred is a mite unfair in my humble estimation. There is a story, as you might have guessed.

Buzzing hummingbirds are frequent visitors, a buzz that attracts the ear as much as the swaths of pink in the prairie breezes catch the eye.

It starts with my former neighbor, a well meaning elderly woman who tried fostering her will and hollyhocks on others. This nose-against-the-window woman initially garnered our rapt attention when she, with the help of her long-suffering husband, tore into our asparagus with a spade to plant raspberries in their place. This was on our property, mind you, and without our permission. “I just wondered if you noticed that we dug out those horrible weeds and planted raspberries,” she said to me one sunny Saturday morning.

“I noticed. Those weren’t weeds,” I responded, reining in my anger … quite successfully I must add, “those were our asparagus.”

“There are so many things you can make with raspberries,” came her smiling retort without a hint of either hearing nor remorse.

Raspberries aside, we went to great expense and labor to plant a native prairie garden in our backyard. Our intent was twofold. One to reduce the use of a gas-sucking lawnmower, and two, to bring to life an entire biome of plants her generation had successfully denuded from the prairie. Oh, it became a beautiful garden. At the base were little and giant bluestem, Indian grass and side-oat grama. Inserted throughout were native forbs that included different varieties of coneflowers, wild onion, blazingstar and scores of other native flowers, blended in design for a summer-long show by Sally Finzel, of Morning Sky Nursery near Morris.

For those unfamiliar with prairie gardens, most are at best a three year project to enjoy that first full year of prairie ambiance. Year one is spent in preparation by controlling weeds through either chemical or mechanical means. Mechanical is more touchy, for when you rid the space of one species you disturb and give growth to the latent seeds of another. Year two is in the planting, and we planted expensive plugs we bought from the nursery. With luck, that third year is when the grasses and forbs are mature enough to actually resemble a patch of native prairie. This is when you can finally sit back in a hammock and enjoy the wind-blown grasses and sprinklings of color, along with all the birds and pollinators the patch attracts.

We always welcome pollinators to the farm, even on hollyhocks.

So, what does all of this have to do with hollyhocks? That third year in the lower corner we noticed what appeared to be a rather strange looking plant. Broad, light green three-fingered leaves began poking up through the grasses. It didn’t take long to recognize that these leaves were quite similar … actually, the leaves matched perfectly … to a wide swath of hollyhocks planted on the bank of the adjacent Hawk Creek. Along the backyards of all three households, and was such a source of joy for our meddling neighbor lady.

No matter how much digging I did with a spade, nor “painting” with the horrid Roundup herbicide, there was no ridding my patch of prairie of the hollyhocks where she admittedly dumped the seeds the previous late summer or fall. “Why,” I asked, “would you do that?”

“Hollyhocks are so pretty. They’ll look good and add color to your new garden!” she exclaimed, holding her folded hands over her bossom. It was obvious she didn’t understand, and would stomp off to her house when I went to attack the spindly devils.

It was in the midst of ridding my prairie garden of the hollyhocks when my relationship began with Rebecca, so it’s easy to see why I would have earned this sort of reputation. Hollyhocks were weeds in that prairie setting, and there was just no way of ridding them. In that “ribbing,” though, we have had some fun. Her mother sent us a pack of hollyhock seeds where she wrote in fine penmanship, “No Mow Hollyhocks!” Rebecca has “sneaked” in plantings around the outbuildings here on the farm and quite possibly had a hand in those just outside the office window. She has certainly chided me by noting that mine is the only real view of them. Poetic justice? Hardly!

She is also prone to drop in some historical tidbits such as that in the distant past hollyhocks were planted next to outhouses so visitors could say, “Oh, my! What beautiful hollyhocks you have!” before ambling off toward personal moments of relief. No one would follow along as they might for a garden tour, for “hollyhock” was “universal code” of excusing oneself for a toilet break.

The female oriole was a surprise visitor to the hollyhock.

You might say my resolve is eroding just a bit. As many friends and neighbors say when the story of my hollyhock hatred is told, “But, they’re my favorite flower. They’re so beautiful.” One even reminisced about using the big blossoms to make skirts for her play dolls as a little girl on her Iowa farm. I’ll begrudgingly admit they can be pretty … in their place, and that a prairie garden is not that place.

Outside my office window those air swaths of pink frequently catch my eye when the prairie breezes blow, and I can hear the hum of the hummingbirds that come for a poke. Bees, which are somewhat of a rarity around here, buzz around the blossoms. And, a female oriole surprisingly plopped herself onto the hollyhocks one morning this week, and indeed, all three made an appearance over a ten minute stretch. That, in itself, was pretty special, so, yes, my resolve is eroding … despite this poetic injustice!

Today was one of significance on our Listening Stones Farm. While vacuuming the upstairs bath this morning I happened to look out the window to find a half dozen barn swallows clinging to the roof. At first I didn’t recognize that these were the chicks, if that’s what they’re called. Then the parents came flying in with full cheeks to feed the chicks, which appeared to have been pushed from their nests and were clinging onto the shingles for dear life.

Three swallow chicks await dinner.

If you’ve watched little kids on the rim of a pool on their first day of swimming lessons, then you have a reasonable idea of the roof top situation. Ever once in a while, one of the chicks would push off for a short flight, circling around between the distant elm, clothesline, and back to the rooftop where the landing was less than poetic. You might describe it as more awkward than that of a crash landing. Yes, the chicks were getting their first flying lessons.

Another if: If you’ve watched swallows fly, then you know they are acrobatic, athletic and poetic in flight. Same for this most recent generation as they swept through the air with such incredible ease. You could sense the weakness, though, as they would launch themselves into the air and make a couple of circular swoops before coming back to the relative safety of the roof, sometimes actually tumbling in landing. It was frankly a little too humbling to be funny, although had I taken a short video with my cell phone and posted it on Facebook, I’m sure people would have found humor. What happens on the rooftop, however, stays on the rooftop!

Someone is hungry!

Later this evening when Rebecca and I took our standard evening wine on the deck after our work and before going inside to prepare dinner, some of the little ones were perched precariously on the clothesline, preening and awaiting meals. After watching for several moments I came in for the camera. Sure enough one of the parent swallows swept in, braked incredibly and instantly, passed food from beak to beak, then with such beautiful and intricate wing control, swooped off toward the prairie for more insects.

What a fascinating evening. Watching swallows fly is a favored pastime here on the farm. Yes, they dirty the barn and we’ll find droppings on our sheets hanging to dry on the one, yet they more than make up for their messiness with the mesmerizing latent lyrics they write on the prairie sky.

In an instant, with deft wing control, the swallow stops in midair, feeds the young, then as quickly, flies off.

One of the entertaining rituals happens after letting the cats outside, when the swallows dive bomb the cats as they cross the lawn. Our little hunter, Olive, can’t resist the occasional yet deadly serious flip and leap at the diving birds. So far she has come up completely empty. On the other hand, Silver just is too cool to be bothered. As the birds swoop in he just saunters along as if nothing is happening, seemingly in a world all his own.

Last year he wasn’t so calm. Same with Olive, who would simply try find safety in the grass as the swallows came in from several directions. It was their first year on the farm and the diving swallows bothered them both, and especially bothered was my son, Aaron’s, cat. Those swallows seemed to sense the differences between the cats. Poor Finnegan, who was both old and apparently quite sick, the swallows would come close enough to have pulled fur if they so wished. Not so with the other, younger cats. Now a year older, and with Finnegan in what we call “a better place,” the swallows will come decidedly closer to the cool Silver, yet keep a respectful distance with the little hunter.

It’s hard to say how much longer we’ll have the swallow chicks holding close to the porch top and clothesline. Size wise, mistaking a chick with a full grown parent is already difficult. Some of the difference is in the plumage, and with the nearly constant preening, that will change quickly. The little ones are just as adept at the acrobatic flight as their parents already, although they can’t stay aloft as long. As they gain strength and more mature plumage, our “edge of the pool” sightings will quickly come to an end.

Swallow flight is one of the joys of living on the farm.

Swallows are fun to watch regardless. I’ve often said I’d love to soar like one of the white pelicans we see around here almost daily. As comely as they are on land, in flight white pelicans have few rivals And, after years of watching the dives of night hawks in the cities where I’ve lived, I’ve also dreamed of what it must be like to do a complete free fall of such blinding speed, yet with the dexterity to suddenly sweep back toward the heavens. But, like I was telling Rebecca just a few nights ago, I’d just once like to transpose myself into the body of a swallow for a quick flight around the farm. For overall beauty and control of flight, I cannot think of another bird that comes close to such perfection.

As I looked out on the rooftop this morning, watching the little ones making their first flights, I couldn’t help being envious. They were just days away from having that endless and seemingly flawless and acrobatic ability to fly.

Just once. Just once to have such freedom of maneuverability and poetry. Just once.

Our planning and packing for our annual jaunt from Listening Stones Farm to our cabin near Ely is gearing up. Pork ribs are smoked, and we’re thinking of dinners to share, of our favorite fishing spots, of which books to pack, and perhaps even wondering what new memories we’ll be bringing home with us.

Some 28 years ago our first trip was made to Kawishiwi Lodge & Outfitters, a rustic collection of cabins located on a National Forest cove near the entry point of Lake One in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Our first trip down that long, single-lane gravel road was certainly adventurous as we kept a lookout for the buildings pictured in an obscure brochure we had picked up at an outdoors sports show months earlier.

Following a duck in the morning haze.

Further up the drive, past what was then a fresh clear cutting of timber that in years since has regrown, was a sawmill. “You sure this is the place?” asked my wife, Sharon. We chose this as a compromise between a quest for a wilderness experience and convenience due to our oldest son, Jacob, because of his physical and mental disabilities. He was then eight years old, and his brother, Aaron, was three. To prepare for the trip we had listened to a wilderness tape featuring loon calls, which Aaron had somehow voice perfected. We brought along a babysitter who would watch the boys on the few nights Sharon and I would take off into the wilderness with a camping permit.

While unpacking our gear from the car into the cabin that first afternoon, I stopped for a few moments on the weathered, wooden dock to cast a fly on the fiberglass fly rod I had bought as a teenager some 20 years earlier. As I retrieved the fly, a denizen of the deep, a northern pike with a head the size of a mature alligator, suddenly eased in behind the fly. In my panic, and subsequent casting, my old rod snapped just above the handle. Such was our introduction to Lake One, Kawishiwi Lodge & Outfitters, and the BWCA!

Sunrise on a quiet morning.

Over those years we stayed in four or five of the cabins around the lake. In time we would settle into Cabin One … and we renew it every year. As transplanted Minnesotans this has become our “lake cabin” complete with an old, native lumber dock on a channel that meanders through the granite outcrops between Lake One and shallow bays toward the entry point. It was off this dock that we spread Sharon’s ashes after her unexpected and untimely death a few years ago, making this more than just a summer lake cabin.

Rebecca and I were only a few weeks into our relationship when she joined us for the first trip up after Sharon’s death. We’ll again be joined by my cousins, Mick and Nancy Burke. Two of their three children have come up over the years, as have many of our exchange students. Luise Hille, of Germany, has been here for two different weeks over the years, and when her parents were last in the States, their whole family came for a stay across the lake in one of the newer cabins. I was able to join them for a few days of their stay, which meant I was able to stay and fish twice within two months that year. Life doesn’t get much better than that!

When not in the kayak or canoe, we spend time on the airy porch reading and visiting.

Oh, the memories. Two years running a group of pickers rented a row of three of the cabins. Each evening they gathered around a fire pit and played well into the darkness. One year the woman scientist who broke the Alar pesticide study on Washington apples stayed with her husband and boys in the adjoining cabin. Aaron and her boys played in the outcrops behind the cabins all week long. We even met a former high school classmate of my brother from back in Missouri. There was the summer when Sharon came shortly after her knee operation and couldn’t canoe, so the manager and his brother … Mike and Jim … took us to a motor lake so she could go fishing. We caught enough for a shore lunch. A few nights later the boys came knocking. “We’re taking John and going fishing,” said Mike. They placed me in the “king’s seat” and paddled out into the lake, where as we were jigging for walleyes and sipping “illegal” beer a sudden and incredible display of Northern Lights began dancing in the sky. Mike and Jim, and their “shady” helper, Diamond, are long gone, and the son of the dentist who owned the place, Frank Udovich, and his wife, Nicole, took over and have made some subtle yet remarkable improvements on all of the cabins, and they have significantly increased the outfitting side of the business.

A Pagammi Creek bluegill.

Here was where Mick caught his first smallie, a mighty three pounder. Ah, those moments fishing are always fine. One dusky evening we were paddling back to the cabin when a huge beaver swam beneath the canoe, keeping pace with us. At the other end of the lake, Pagammi Creek has provided us with many bigger-than-a-whole-hand bluegill and some scrumptious shore lunches on a nearby rocky island that served as escapes for Aaron when a canoe became too confining. Pagammi was where a fire started on the Saturday we were packing out two summers ago, a fire apparently started by lightning that burned thousands of acres and put a scare into the Ely community before finally being controlled. Last year a natural succession had already greened the hillsides, and the bluegill hungrily grabbed a Gill Buster tipped with a leech as my kayak was put adrift by the constant wind.

We’ve shared dinners and campfires along with many nights around the big table as son Jake rolls the dice for another game of Zilch. Since the remodeling, the breezy porch, now with floor to ceiling screens to abate the mosquitoes, welcomes all of us readers, and in the heat of the day, the dock and lake beckons us as swimmers. In all directions the wilderness beckons, and the canoes, kayaks and fishing rods are always steps away.

Sunsets are wonderful here, too.

Nowadays, after all these years, I’ll sometimes simply slip out before breakfast … even before the sun rises … in a kayak with my fly-rod and camera, paddling around the shallow bays casting for smallmouth and bluegill. Sometimes I actually go for the fishing. Other times it is simply for reflection and reminiscence. Remembering family and friends we have shared time with here over the years, those good years with Sharon before her depression became so overwhelming, and since her death, the times with Rebecca and our cousins, the Burkes. Once again I can hear Kawishiwi calling. Our trips have become like those penciled height markings on a door jam; each darkened line marking memories of my mature years.

A yearling White Tail walks through our dominate yellow prairie.

With a nice little breeze tickling our prairie the other evening, I smothered myself in DEET and took my camera into the our fledgling wild and native grasses and forbs. Once inside the grassy “jungle” a realization hit rather quickly (besides the mosquitoes that were seemingly unimpressed by the supposed deterrent): We are immersed in a sea of yellow! Yellow Cone Flowers. Yellow Wild Sunflowers. yellow this and yellow that. Every direction, all 360 degrees of them, are beaming with yellow.

Browsing through my recent archives of images from our eight acres of prairie starting from about a month ago, yellow has been a dominate theme. Not just with the flowers, either, for Rebecca’s garden was flush with yellow warblers for awhile and the gold finches, which are really more yellow than gold, are constant visitors to the feeders and tree branches around our solarium. Out in the prairie, almost every blooming forb to date is some form of yellow. Impressively, the yellow comes at you from all angles, shapes, sizes and hue. Corporate Kodak would be impressed!

Yellow, yellow .. everywhere is yellow!

As much as yellow is welcomed, we are quite pleased when we see a few native Purple Prairie Clover heads sticking up here and there, which have added some charm and variety. We are in desperate search for other differing colors. Rebecca found a couple of lavenderlish Bee Balms blooming, and in a corner by her garden, her Cardinal Plant is showing off some vividly red blossoms. Otherwise, it’s all yellow … with the exception of the green, warm season native prairie grasses.

The following morning Rebecca suggested we go on yet another hike through the prairie. We make a trek almost daily. This time it was upstairs first for a long sleeved white tee-shirt and long pants … anything to keep the mosquitoes at bay. With the sordid heat and a naked sun pounding down on us, we were fortunate that the pesky pests were snuggled in tightly to the bases of the plants. We started at the garden and made a big wide looping circle around the house and grove before coming back in through the road ditch to the driveway. In that “awkward” portion of the grove we also checked on three of our elm tree plantings and found they are doing quite well. I’ve not looked them since many of the bushes and trees in that area, including two other elms, were destroyed by a skunk or coon digging in after the smelly fish-based fertilizer we used. The animal was quite efficient in digging out and laying the bare root plantings at the edges of the holes as it went clear to the base in search of a dead fish.

Side Oat Grama is emerging, and is seen here with a couple of Native Purple Clover.

If given a report card on our tree and shrub plantings we would come out looking quite well. Besides those few we lost to the smelly fertilizer, our only other losses included the four grape vines and one of the plum trees in the orchard. All to standing water after the days upon days of rain. All the other trees and shrubs seem to be doing well thanks to those same rains where we had better drainage. Rebecca’s garden and the other shrubs and trees we planted last year are doing well … with exception of the one apple tree in the yard that our resident white-tailed buck debarked scratching velvet from his stately rack last fall.

Then there is our prairie, all eight acres of it, all awash in bright yellows amidst the stark greens of the native prairie grasses. My goal on our walk on this morning was simple: to find anything out there to photograph beyond yellow.

We were very hopeful of finding more that the two or three Bee Balm plants, and yes, we found many clumps of the Purple Prairie Clover and a few of the white variety. Both were far from being considered dominant.

Some of the earlier forbs have begun to wither and head into dormancy as new successions come forth in this constant march of summer. Since this is our first real summer when the prairie looks like, well, a prairie, it will mature and change with time and climate conditions. Although we have been  dropping new sneaked wild forb seeds here and there, and even wedging in a few of our favorite forbs such as the Cardinal Plant and a flat of Prairie Smoke, we may be a year or two away from seeing any results.

Almost coral-like, this purplish plant going into dormancy stood out simply because of the color.

Years ago our dear friend and prairie maven, Kylene Olson, executive director of the Chippewa River Watershed Project, told me to never assume that a prairie will look the same two years in a row. With that in mind, perhaps we should simply enjoy our bright sea of prairie yellows without complaint, for rarely is a color so warming to the soul. How can one maintain even a hint of madness with such gay day brighteners all around?

An overview of the prairie shows patches of grass and forbs. It certainly is far from being a mature prairie.

Beau Peterson, from the NRCS, was out Monday morning for a walk over our prairie, then asked if he could use our land as an example to show others who might be inspired to go native or who are considering converting commodity land into CRP. We were equally humbled, honored and pleased.

This is my second prairie planting, although the first might be excused since it was only a small, backyard native garden. This one covers eight acres of good farming ground with what Rebecca calls “good seed stock” for when nature eventually reclaims the prairie.

We have some patches of willowy foxtail, of which we have differing opinions.

We put a call into Beau because neither of us could find one of the prime grasses in our mix, Side-Oats Grama, along with other native plants we were expecting. About two steps into the prairie Beau stopped and pointed to a sliver-thin stem of hiding Side-Oats and explained that it was one of the later grasses to emerge. He thought the prairie was coming along quite nicely.

He should have been here a year ago when pigweed and lambsquarter dominated our eight acres. We took our Cub Cadet to the prairie twice, and Beau’s predecessor brought in a prairie-friendly farmer with a brush hog to top off the pigweed as it was coming into the seed stage. After this cutting some patches of grass were emerging in places, and much to our surprise, we were told that the prairie was coming along nicely. Apparently it takes some practice to read a prairie.

Purple wild clover peaks up here and there for a beautiful contrast.

Our experience here hasn’t been radically different than it was in my backyard planting. Late that fall years ago we received plugs of grasses and forbs and frantically went to work planting what we could. We were told that establishing grasses first was key in providing a base or foundation, so those plugs went in first. Starting early one morning I worked diligently to dig them in before a forecasted blizzard was expected. By mid afternoon I was scraping away snow to dig in the last plugs of Bluestem, Indian Grass and Side-Oats Grama … and none of the forbs were even touched. Fortunately Sally Finzel, of Morning Sky Greenery, said she would overwinter the plugs if I brought them back to Morris.

The following spring weeds completely overwhelmed the garden, which was thoroughly discouraging. Toward the middle of June she called and asked if I was ever going to come for my seedlings. “Why? The garden is shot. Pigweed has taken it over.” Sally encouraged me to come for them regardless, finally using a very sound economic argument: “It’s your money.”

We love these “little dancers.”

After returning with the forbs, I took a deep breath and took a hand spade to the weeds and discovered something rather interesting — beneath that pigweed canopy was a very healthy stand of prairie grasses — not unlike what we have experienced here. Two very long, hot and humid days later, the wilting weeds were piled to the side and all the forbs were planted save for five wild onion plugs. They would go in later since they continued to grow and eventually bloomed right in the seed tray.

This beauty dominated the prairie in the early succession.

That little garden also offered some interesting obervations about prairies: Never expect the same look two years in a row, since different conditions may favor different plants, and that prairies mature differently; burning a prairie will encourage a bountiful flush especially in the first year; and, that native prairies offer very interesting moments in their cycles of life, presenting an ever-changing profile through the seasons, so keeping a camera handy is paramount.

“Mexican hats” or yellow coneflowers are rampant.

Our larger prairie has followed form from my backyard experience, and we are both having such fun discovering what the prairie offers from day to day. Right now the prairie is awash in yellow blossoms. Golden Alexanders have given way to Blanket Flowers, Common Ox-eye and Yellow Coneflowers or “Mexican Hats,” to name a few. More and more flowers will be blooming as we move through the green season, and our grasses are maturing nicely, too. Interesting, as well, is that what we see growing seems different than our prescribed seeding plan, and some of what appears on the seeding plan has not yet appeared in the prairie. And, the reason we called Beau. Ah, but what a fascinating mystery!

We find ourselves walking through the prairie almost daily looking at both fading and new wonders. You might find me laying in the prairie with my camera seeking new and hopefully interesting images. Among our plantings were a few cottonwoods and burr oaks, which were planted in two different areas to simulate an oak savanna. On one of our walks we spooked a fawn. As it bounded through the belly-high growth it was hard to say which of us was most surprised. We have heard pheasants “barking” out there, too, which is a bonus … although neither of us are hunters. We have yet to attract meadowlarks or bob-o-links, although both species nest in the nearby Clinton Prairie.

We are quite pleased that our little prairie at Listening Stones Farm can be counted among the beautiful native prairie features of Big Stone County. Besides the National Wildlife Refuge, two diverse areas of Big Stone State Park, the Clinton Prairie along with a number of federally protected wildlife and waterfowl management areas, several farmers have left their original wetlands undrained. Thankfully they take great care and add time to their hectic farming schedules to protect them.

Yellow dominates the prairie right now.

Indeed, we sometimes find ourselves in debate on whether Big Stone, Lac qui Parle or Yellow Medicine Counties have the most devoted prairie acres, and to be honest, one of the selling points for us when we bought our Listening Stones Farm 18 months ago was the close proximity of two active wetlands, our large and overgrown grove, plus the eight plus acres of tillable we now enjoy as prairie, thanks to the help of Pheasants Forever and the local NRCS. Our prairie adventures are really just beginning.