The 6th annual Prairie Days in Lombard Illinois is on Sunday, September 20th.  I will have a table set up where I will have some of my photos for sale, as well as some native plants from the Norway Nursery.  It is from 11am-3pm at Terrace View Park on Greenfield ave and Elizabeth Street.  They will have lots of activities for the whole family and will showcase the ongoing prairie restoration around the park and pond.  I hope to see you there.

I took a canoe trip down the Fox River with my friend Cory from the Norway Nursery this afternoon.  Our main goal of the trip was to locate new locations of native forbs, trees and bushes.  Our trip lasted several hours and we found lots of interesting native plants.  Not everything we found was ready for harvest, so we will have to plan another trip in the future so we can collect seed from several of the plants we encountered.

Back in December, I sowed a flat with 3 different gentian species in it.  I decided that the storage time was up, and time to start germination.  The weather was a little warmer today with even higher temps tomarrow.  I will use the warm weather to get things started and then move them back into my basement as gentians need darkness to germinate.  I’m crossing my fingers on these guys.

With the dryer weather we have been having, a nice warm sun and a little wind, made today a great day to do a little burn out in my prairie.  I’m getting really anxious for spring to come and for the first blooms of native plants to start.  I have also already started making a list of seeds I have to collect this year. 

I stopped off at a remnant site west of Somonauk today to check on the grasses growing there. The site has Big and Little Bluestem, as well as Indian grass and Cord grass. All 4 of these species are ready to have their seed collected, but I focused mostly on the little bluestem and Indian grass. The indian grass was practically falling off of the plant and some of it had already blown away in the wind. The large patch of little bluestem is just right to be harvested. I collected a small amount of it while it misted me with rain. I had to stop as much larger drops of rain began to fall and I started to get drenched. Once I got home, I placed what seed I had collected into a cardboard box lined with newspaper to dry my seeds. Once dry I will bag them and store them in my fridge untill spring. Then I will scatter the seeds outside in the prairie.