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.

The Prairie Dock and Compass Plant have been battling each other for days now for the title of tallest plant in the prairie.  The last day or so, the Prairie Dock has pulled ahead with a current height of 10′ 8″!  Everything in the prairie is so tall this year, most plants are well over my head at 6′1″.

While on our Mississippi Palisades camping trip, we found our first Illinois orchid.  We have seen orchids before, but they have eluded us in Illinois.  I was so excited about finding it, that I went back on that hike just to take more pictures of it.  Then of course, the day we are leaving, I walked over to the woods across from our campsite and there was a huge patch of this very flower.  I think the Orchid species likes to play tricks and games with me.

On our trip to Mississippi Palisades State Park we found a few Purple Trillium plants amongst thousands of Large-flowered Trillium.  The dark maroon colored flower really stuck out.  This flower is mainly found in the eastern US, but there are a few small spots it can be found in northern Illinois.