| Badger Barrens Addition Update by Nate Simons The last time we reported on the journey toward making more room for wild blue lupine at the 24-acre addition to Badger Barrens, the lupine at Badger Barrens had finished blooming and the trees in the addition had been felled. A lot has transpired in the last month. Good news! Former Blue Crew member, Madeline McQuiston, wrote grant applications to several philanthropic organizations to request funds to assist with the $93,000 restoration price tag. So far, we have heard positively from NIPSCO’s Environmental Action Grant and the Steuben County Community Foundation’s Clear Lake Community Fund, Fred and Jackie Wooley Fund, and Ralph E. Taylor Conservation Fund to the tune of $17,500. Those, coupled with the initial US Fish and Wildlife Services’ Partners for Wildlife grant of nearly $25,000, and we are nearly halfway there! |
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| Volunteers collecting lupine seed at Badger Barrens. |
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| Bags of lupine seed ready to be dried. |
| On the ground, the Blue Crew and volunteers (thanks, Peg Zeis, Mary Durand, Denille Conklin, John Mowry, and Deanna Vasquez!) collected, dried, and cleaned several pounds of lupine seed. And G & D Wood Products of Camden, MI turned the felled tree tops into wood mulch and hauled it away to be pressed into fuel for wood burning stoves.The next steps include smoothing out ruts left from the tires of heavy equipment, mowing patches of non-native invasive brush, as well as, colonies of the native winged sumac, and broadcast applications of herbicide to remove the non-native sod of cool-season grasses and non-native brush in preparation for a December sowing of a short-stature prairie seed mix…including the seed of wild blue lupine.Stay tuned for more reports and opportunities to help. |
| Volunteer(s) Needed to Transplant Sedge Plugs We need a volunteer or two who could come to the Blue Heron Ministries garage and transplant tussock sedge (Carex stricta) seedlings into new pots. We estimate this will take around 2-3 hours for one person. If you are interested, please contact John Brittenham at johnbrittenham@gmail.com. |
| View from the Crew by John Brittenham |
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| Colton White joins the team as our new intern for a summer full of fun and environmental restoration. (Just ask him, I’m sure he will describe his experience so far in similar terms) Every summer we hire an intern to join the crew and learn all the ins and outs of Blue Heron Ministries and the work we do. Colton is off to a great start, and we are glad to have him as part of the team. |
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| Early June is the season for finishing reed canary grass spraying. After reed canary grass’s flower heads finish being wind pollinated, they begin to close up. When this happens, we have a week or less to spray the plants and stop the seeds from becoming viable. After that, the mature plant can still be killed, but the seeds will not be harmed and can begin to regrow where the parent plant just died. Here, Madi and Colton seek out reed canary grass at Marsh Lake NP to kill it while it is still flowering. |
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| This year’s wet and warm spring was great for June bloomers. It was a bumper crop of Ohio spiderwort in my prairie this year. We noticed similar responses to many other June bloomers, including invasive species like Canada thistle. It will be interesting to see how mid June’s heat and dry conditions affect our local plant populations. |
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| The sprinklers were definitely earning their keep this month with all the recent hot days. Fortunately, the plants for the upcoming fall volunteer planting at the Gene Stratton Porter State Historic Site are coming along nicely even with the heat. It is such a joy to watch the young plants germinate and begin to grow. |
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| While spraying thistle, I stopped to get this view from the prairie at Gene Stratton Porter State Historic Site. It wasn’t just spiderwort that was having a great year. Foxglove beardtongue was also very prolific. |
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| Madi works on pulling weeds prior to a native landscaping project we completed on Clear Lake. Site preparation is one of the most important aspects of any native plant project. Once the weeds were removed, a layer of leaf mulch was brought in to suppress the germination of any weed seeds in the soil. Then holes were augured with a battery powered drill, plants were placed in the holes, dirt was packed around the new plants, and finally the surrounding mulch was used to cover the dirt around the plants. Projects like this are always hard physical work, but the results are so gratifying. |
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| Fred and Josh help install plants at the Clear Lake project. Look at those two happy guys. |
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| This one is for you Nate. I stopped to “smell the roses” and they smelled very nice I must admit. The swamp rose was really showing off at this wetland in LaGrange County. |
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| Colton walks through a northern Indiana fen filled with Carex stricta in search of the elusive and potentially extirpated Mitchell’s Satyr Butterfly. After hearing from our friends in Michigan that the Mitchell’s Satyr Butterflies where emerging as adults early this year, we went out in the hopes of catching site of some in Indiana. No luck on this trip, but we will keep looking. |
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| I caught Nate hard at work on a shoreline restoration project on Dallas Lake. The shoreline of this property was eroding so badly from waves that rocks had to be brought in to reinforce and armor the shoreline. Our task was to plant rhizomatous plants among the rocks so they could spread out among the rocks, further helping to stabilize the shoreline and provide habitat at the same time. |
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| At home amongst our fellow botanizers, Freya and I attended a two-day class on sedge identification. What a fun group to hang out with. We spent half our time in the field and half our time looking through the microscope in the lab. I’ll admit, I’m just as bad at following a dichotomous key for sedges now as I remember being back in school. But I still loved every minute of it. |
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| It’s a small world after all. Who should I find myself sitting next to in the sedge class? Madeline McQuistion, a very recent employee at Blue Heron Ministries who just took a new position in Michigan. It was great to see Madeline again and catch up with her about life and her new job. And she put me to shame with her ability to navigate through those dichotomous keys. Way to go Madeline! |
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