Things have not changed much in the square meter I’m monitoring in the prairie. But today, things were dewy and damp, leaving jewel-like droplets on the grasses. The sparkling bluebonnet leaves in the square meter were replicated throughout the prairie as I walked through this January morning.
One of the many expressions of beauty on the winter prairie is the occasional frosty morning in South Texas. Today offered one of those mornings. The remnants of last year’s growth reflected the rising sun like diamonds.
Progress on the “Bee & the Clover” has slowed, partially due to Covid-19. Our contractor was ill with the virus and so has been recovering. Since I last posted about two months ago, the outside of the building is nearly complete. We await the installation of the roll-up garage door and the upstairs porch’s construction, and the decking downstairs. The details of the interior, sheet-rock, cabinets, plumbing, electricity are all in the future.
Chris Helzer, The Prairie Ecologist, is a naturalist and photographer whose fascinating work has inspired me. He conducted a project a couple of years ago in which he photographed a single square meter of a mature prairie every week for a year. In the process, he photographed 113 different species of plants and animals, including 15 plant species, 22 different flies, 18 beetles, and 14 bees. You can watch a brief video of his project.
I’m going to try my own square meter project on our nascent prairie, just to see what I can observe here. So here are some of the first shots from the dead of winter.
The obvious occupant of the space is the tall Alamo Switchgrass plant, one of the “big four” tall-grass prairies.
The other obvious occupant of the ground is the Little Bluestem, another “big four.” In the fall, Little Bluestem takes on a deep red-brown color. The tiny fuzzy white seeds are a treat for the sparrows and meadowlarks in the prairie.
The dried-up rustweed once carpeted the floor of the field in green with tiny white flowers. In the fall, it turned a deep rusty red.
In December each year, you can begin to see the Sandyland Bluebonnets appear. These are not the Texas Bluebonnets with flowers bearing the distinctive white tops. These produce entirely blue flowers.
So once a week, I plan to visit the site and see what shows up besides me.