Photo by Craig Clyde, who explained:
Spent the night on the north end of Mount Timpanogos at 10,000 feet, by myself, taking it all in.
Flowers on the north end of Utah’s Mt. Timpanogos, about 10,000 feet up. Photo by Craig Clyde.
Photo from July 25, 2013. Flowers include “Blue-pod Lupine, Narrow Goldenrod, Giant Red Paintbrush and Mountain Bluebells.”
Contact him for prints for framing.
1 Comment | 
Mount Timpanogos, Outdoor Recreation, photography, Wildflowers | Tagged: Craig Clyde, Mt. Timpanogos, Outdoor Recreation, photography, Utah, Wildflowers | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Short piece from Texas Parks & Wildlife:
Turk’s cap is a native Texas shrub that attracts hummingbirds, butterflies and moths. This easy-to-care for plant is named for the shape of its small blooms. To learn more about Texas native species and habitats, see http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/wildlife_diversity/
Must admit I was unaware it’s a Texas native, though Kathryn has had it in all of our Texas gardens. I love the blossoms. I wish our local hummingbirds loved it as much as the photo in the video shows, but we have other plants they love and a feeder. Butterflies like it, too.
Few other plants equal the intense red of the flowers. Turk’s cap requires less water than many less spectacular, non-native plants. Ours keep coming back year after year. What more do you want in a good garden plant?
I wish my photos were so good as those used in the film.
More, and related material:
Leave a Comment » | Gardening, Native Plants, Natural history, Nature, Outdoor Recreation, Texas, Wildflowers, Wildlife | Tagged: Gardening, Native Plants, Outdoor Recreation, Texas, Turk's Cap, Wildflowers, Wildlife | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Nature Notes #16 from the good people at Yosemite National Park: Sky Islands.
Throughout the Sierra Nevada, high flat plateaus are found at elevations around twelve and thirteen thousand feet. These isolated sky islands are the home to unique plant communities that are found nowhere else.
Leave a Comment » | Botany, Climate change, climate_change, Geography - Physical, Natural history, Research, Travel, Wilderness, Wildflowers, Yosemite | Tagged: Botany, Climate change, geography, Natural history, Research, Travel, Wilderness, Wildflowers, Yosemite National Park | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It took me a couple of tries to figure it out — last week when I told people Kathryn and I were off to Colorado Bend State Park to spend time on the river, several people commented about how much cooler it would be there.
What? West of Killeen about an hour, ten miles of dusty road outside of Bend, Texas (population 1,637), Colorado Bend is not cooler than Dallas. It was over 100° F every day we were there, stayed well above 90° most of the nights.
Kathryn studied wildflowers at a spring at the side of the Colorado River during a break from kayaking; this spring's flow was reduced, but still moist enough to create a near-oasis.
Our well-wishers were geographically confused. They thought we were headed to the Colorado River in Colorado, not the Colorado River in Texas, which is not the same river at all. I didn’t bother to check the temperatures in Colorado, but one might be assured that it was cooler along the Colorado River in Colorado than it was along the Colorado River in Texas.
It was a return trip. We stumbled into the park 16 years ago with the kids, for just an afternoon visit. The dipping pools in the canyon fed by Spicewood Springs captivated us. It took a while to get back, and then the kids were off doing their own thing.
So, just a quick weekend of hiking/camping/kayaking/soaking/stargazing/bird watching/botanical and geological study. Park officials closed the bat caves to human traffic in hope of keeping White Nose Syndrome from the bats; we didn’t bother to sign up for the crawling cave tour through another.
The author, still working to master that Go-Pro camera on the hat -- some spectacular shots, but I don't have the movie software to use it all; you know it's hot when SPF 75 sunscreen is not enough.
What did we see? Drought has a firm grip on Texas, especially in the Hill Country, especially outside of Dallas. The Colorado River is mostly spring fed; many of the springs are dry. No water significant water flowed through the park while we were there — kayak put-ins have been reduced to the downriver-most ramp, and the bottom of the boat launch ramp is three feet above water. Gorman Falls attracts visitors and scientists, but the springs feeding it are about spent this year — just a few trickles came over the cliff usually completely inundated with mineral-laden waters.
Drought produces odd things. The forest canopy around the park — and through most of the Hill Country we saw — is splattered with the gray wood of dead trees, many of which at least leafed out earlier this spring. The loss to forests is astonishing. Deer don’t breed well in droughts; deer around the campsites boldly challenge campers for access to grasses they’d ignore in other seasons. One ranger said he hadn’t seen more than about three fawns from this past spring, a 75% to 90% reduction in deer young (Eastern White Tail, the little guys). Raccoons are aggressively seeking food from humans, tearing into tents and challenging campers for food they can smell (lock your food in the car!). Colorado Bend is famous for songbirds, including the endangered Golden Cheeked Warbler, and the elusive, spectacular painted bunting. But the most commonly-sighted birds this year are turkey vultures, dining on the young that didn’t make it healthy into the summer and won’t survive until fall.
Warming denialists’ claims of “not so bad a drought” ring out as dangerous, wild delusion. (By actual measurement, Texas average rainfall the past nine months was 8.5 inches, the driest ever recorded in Texas, shattering the old record drought of 1917).
Great trip. Kathryn’s menu planning was spectacular. The old Coleman stove — a quarter century old, now, with fuel almost that old — performed like a champ even without the maintenance it needs (later this week). Other than the hot nights, it was stellar.
Stellar. Yeah. Stars were grand. It was New Moon, a happy accident. A topic for another post, later. Think, “Iridium.”
So posting was slow over the weekend. How far out in the Hill Country were we? Neither one of us could get a bar on our phones. We were so far out the Verizon Wireless guy was using smoke signals.
Thoreau was right, you know.
7 Comments | Biology, Botany, Geography - Physical, Hiking, Natural history, Nature, Outdoor Recreation, Public Lands, Science, Texas, Travel, Wildflowers, Wildlife | Tagged: Astronomy, Botany, Camping, Colorado Bend State Park, geography, geology, Kayaking, Natural history, Outdoor Recreation, Public Lands, Rivers, Science, Texas, Travel, Wildflowers, Wildlife, Zoology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel carries the news that Lorrie Otto has died.
When DDT spraying killed birds and bats in her yard, Lorrie Otto went to work to stop the destruction. Otto won. Someone should step up to take her place, in each of the things she did.
Caption from the Journal-Sentinel: Lorrie Otto (left) leads the "Natural Landscape Tour" along the banks of Lake Michigan in the 9700 block of N. Lake Drive. A video crew from NBC News photographed the event for a segment. Journal-Sentinel photo by Michael Sears
She began with natural yards, progressed to national causes
By Amy Rabideau Silvers of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: June 2, 2010
Lorrie Otto understood that it wasn’t nice to mess with Mother Nature.
And so the woman known as “the Nature Lady” planted her Bayside yard with native species and wildflowers – fighting for the right to keep her land natural and teaching others how to do the same. She rose to become an environmental warrior, a leader in the battle to ban DDT in Wisconsin and then nationally.
She shared her vision that average people could make a difference by eliminating the standard lawn for more ecological alternatives. The well-manicured lawn was not, she said, a healthy green space.
“They look like golf courses,” Otto once said, then corrected herself. “They look like cemeteries.”
Otto died of natural causes Saturday in Bellingham, Wash., where she moved in 2008 to be near her daughter. She was 90.
Otto served as a founder and leader with groups including Citizens Natural Resources Association of Wisconsin, the Riveredge Nature Center and Wild Ones. She became a nationally recognized naturalist and speaker, called “the godmother of natural landscaping.” Media credits include everything from Martha Stewart Living to “NBC Nightly News.”
“In recent years, a New Yorker article credited her and Rachel Carson for leading the movement,” said daughter Tricia Otto, referring to the author of the famous book “Silent Spring.”
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel photo: Lorrie Otto, shown in 1999, kept a lively prairie garden.
Otto was named to the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame in 1999. The Schlitz Audubon Center’s annual natural yards tour is named in her honor.
“If suburbia were landscaped with meadows, prairies, thickets or forests, or combinations of these, then the water would sparkle, fish would be good to eat again, birds would sing and human spirits would soar,” Otto said.
She was born Mary Lorraine Stoeber, taking the name Lorrie after marriage. She grew up on a family dairy farm in Middleton and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
During World War II, she saw an advertisement for the Women Airforce Service Pilots – what the ad called the “Cream of the Crop” – her daughter said.
“You had to be college-educated and have a pilot’s license,” Tricia said. “She went to the local airport and, with her own money, became a pilot.”
WASP pilots were civilians and the first women to fly American military planes. Just before she graduated, the war was coming to an end and the program quickly disbanded. She married her high school sweetheart, Owen Otto, and they settled in Bayside about 1952.
For Otto, the battles for natural landscaping and against DDT began in her own yard.
The former farm girl planted the family’s yard in a natural way, mostly to create “an enchanting place for my children to play.”
Soon Otto was confronting what she called “the lawn police” in Bayside. One day, a crew arrived and mowed part of her yard. She fought back, proving that her yard might look wild but that it did not contain weeds.
“She was so passionate,” Tricia said. “She would appear in court as an expert witness to defend someone whose yard was being persecuted.”
In the late 1950s, she learned of plans to develop the Fairy Chasm woodland area in her area. “She finally triumphed in 1969, when the Nature Conservancy purchased Fairy Chasm,” according to a copyrighted article by the National Wildlife Federation.
Those were also the days of routine DDT spraying, first to kill mosquitoes and then to kill the beetles destroying elm trees.
“Robins would go into convulsions. . . . I’d see the dead robins near the road,” she told The Milwaukee Journal in 1992. “Red bats would be dangling dead in the rosebushes.”
“She carried big bushel baskets of dead robins into village hall,” Tricia said. The official response ranged from indifferent to angry. “They said, ‘What do you want, lady, birds or trees?’ ”
Otto took the fight to the state level, finally deciding to sue. She contacted the Environmental Defense Fund, a fledgling out-of-state group that won a national reputation for action in Wisconsin. In 1970, Wisconsin banned the use of DDT. The federal ban was approved in 1972.
“She invited scientists from all over the country to her house, and they worked on the paper to present to Congress to get the ban on DDT,” said Dorothy Boyer, a friend and president of the Milwaukee North chapter of Wild Ones. “She had scientists sleeping in sleeping bags in her living room.”
Years later, she was still making new friends and encouraging others. One younger couple, Susannah and Lon Roesselet, began their own natural landscaping in Bayside a few years ago.
“One day the doorbell rang and this little white-haired woman was there, saying, ‘Hello, my name is Lorrie Otto,’ ” Susannah Roesselet said. “We knew about her. She stepped in and became our mentor. Our entire yard is now natural; she is everywhere. She’ll be missed, but she left her mark.”
When Otto finally had to leave her own home, she moved to Washington state to live with her daughter on a hundred acres of natural land.
“She was just having a ball,” Tricia said. “Living here, she said, you could believe the world was happy and whole.”
And Otto made plans for her own last plot of land, delighted to find a green burial cemetery and planting flowers on what would be her own grave. She will be buried without benefit of embalming or chemicals, returning to the earth she loved.
Otto is also survived by her sister, Betty Larson.
A Wisconsin gathering is being planned by friends.
2 Comments | DDT, Environmental protection, Gardening, Heroes, Ornithology, Science, Wildflowers, Wildlife | Tagged: Bird Watching, DDT, Gardening, Heroes, Lorrie Otto, Ornithology, Silent Spring, Wildflowers, Wildlife, Wisconsin | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Red-eared sliders cluster together to catch the sun on a spring day at Texas Discovery Gardens at Fair Park in Dallas. Photo by Ed Darrell, 2010
Red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans), a common aquatic turtle in the southern U.S., caught sunning themselves at the Texas Discovery Gardens at Fair Park in Dallas.
1 Comment | Gardening, Natural history, Texas, Travel, Wildflowers, Wildlife | Tagged: Dallas, Fair Park, Gardening, Red-eared sliders, Texas, Texas Discovery Gardens, Turtles, Wildflowers, Wildlife | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
California poppies, near Bitter Creek - photo by Amanda Holland
Kathryn got stuck in traffic on Spur 408 Friday evening. She happily reported that a few bluebonnets remain, covered by now-taller grasses. We’re in the seventh week of our Texas wildflower panorama.
But Amanda Holland’s shot of California poppies in the wild hills near Bitter Creek caught my eye. Amanda’s out saving birds — the best photos of the wild almost always come while you’re on the way to do great stuff, I think. That’s a good reason to find a job that gets you out of doors, and into the wild.
Notice that, even in the wild, in near-wilderness, there are still signs of human actions. See the contrails?
Leave a Comment » | Art, Botany, History, Natural history, Natural resources, photography, Travel, Wildflowers | Tagged: Art, California, Poppies, Travel, Wildflowers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You’ve seen it before — the letter saying toodle-oo to the red states, as the blue states muster the courage to let them go. Somebody passed it along, I forwarded it to a few people I thought hadn’t seen it.
A discussion broke out. Part of the discussion centered on Texas’s second secession from the U.S., and how nasty things can be in Texas (“It’s not the heat and humidity; it’s the hate and stupidity”).
A couple of exchanges in, I started to wince. God knows Texas has its problems. I haven’t even started in on the latest three months of lunacy at the State Board of Education where Creationist-in-Chief Don McLeroy is loosening his belt to drop his pants (figuratively, of course) and moon every kid in Texas before he eviscerates science education.
But — you know? — Texas has a couple of things going for it, reasons to smile while you’re stuck here.
Below the fold, the “So long, Red States” letter — but before that, a modest defense of Texas, as I wrote back:
I do regret that [y’all have] had such a difficult and unhappy time in Texas. Texas is far from my ideal place, especially for the weather and lack of mountains (I appear to be losing the retirement fight – I wanted Jackson Hole, Kathryn wants Kanab. Red rock wins with the family.)
And Yellowstone is a part of my soul, especially after we (probably illegally) scattered my brother’s ashes there in the last great family reunion before this past summer.
But, you know, Texas has some fine points that shouldn’t get overlooked. Especially, it doesn’t deserve to get every redneck.
Here are some of the great things about Texas:
- Big Bend National Park
- Dallas Symphony, and Jaap Van Zweden (the premiere of “August 4, 1964” last month was fantastic; Van Zweden has a magic wand instead of a baton); and the Meyerson Symphony Center, which is a vastly superior hall in my mind to Carnegie, Avery Fisher, or anything at the Kennedy Center.
- Dallas Museum of Art (King Tut is back!)
- Dinosaur Valley State Park (and the other 100 or so state parks)
- San Antonio
- Salado
- Houston Museum of Natural Science
- Kimbell Art Museum (the building itself is something to see – designed by Louis I Kahn)
- Bluebonnets; Lady Bird’s Wildflower Center (and all other Texas wildflowers)
- Dogwood Canyon
- Texas barbecue (no, it’s not like all the others; and most of the joy is in the journey to find it)
- LBJ Library
- Johnson Space Center
- John Henry Faulk
- San Marcos River
- Swimming holes along the (Texas) Colorado River
- DFW Airport (for access to the U.S., Canada and Mexico)
- Ann Richards
- Molly Ivins
- Monarch butterfly migration
- Birds and bird watching
- Pat Green
- Lyle Lovett
- Jerry Jeff Walker
- Tejano and Conjunto
- The Texas Observer
- It’s the origin of Walter Cronkite, Bob Schieffer, Jim Lehrer, and lots of others
- A dozen other things I’m forgetting for the moment
It’s been a rather miserable 21 years in Texas for us, for a lot of reasons. There are good things and good people in Texas. It ain’t all gloomy.
Wildflowers not only do blossom where they grow: They must blossom there.
Which reminds me, there are a dozen other wildflowers better than bluebonnets, and we haven’t even started on the magnificent grasses like big bluestem, little bluestem and side-oats grama.
(More humor below the fold.)
2 Comments | Botany, Education, Fiesta de Tejas!, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Humor, Molly Ivins' Ghost, Museums, Politics, Science, Texas, Texas history, Texas Music, Travel | Tagged: Blue States, Camping, Humor, Museums, Music, Red States, Texas, Travel, Wildflowers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 