Full Swing

The “Ver-dance” of Spring and “Blur” of May have swept into a “Full Swing” of activity! We have had three events since the last post: the May Women’ Walk in the Woods, the nature photography workshop on May 18th, and the Foraging with Sam Thayer workshop on June 1st. Each of these events gave us opportunities to welcome guests to Iowisota, and we have had a wonderful time of learning and sharing nature with different groups of people.  (We’ve had some additional visitors to Iowisota too, including the snapping turtle, deer, and rattlesnake in the photos!)

The remainder of June will be a bit quieter, with only one more currently scheduled event: the June 20th Women’s Walk in the Woods (free, but please register). Besides the monthly women’s walk, the next workshop requiring registration is on July 27th, when we will learn about “Preparing Wild Harvested Foods” with Chris Gavin. I hope several of you will join us in this delicious hands-on experience!

You needn’t worry that I’ll get bored during the time between now and then, as during June I’ll be doing a talk on trees for the summer library program, going to Minnesota to talk about elm for the Breckenridge chapter of the Izaak Walton League, and going to Wisconsin to collect data on an American elm project that I haven’t quite let go of in retirement. In early July, I plan to paddle into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness with my daughter.

In the forest, the full swing of activities includes the all the rhythms of the wildlife: the deer dropping fawns, the turtles coming up away from the water to lay eggs, and the neotropical songbirds raising their young before they head back south (many of them are gone again by the 4th of July!). The backwaters of the Mississippi River are looking murkier with emergent vegetation and pond scum. The May beetles/ Junebugs, mosquitoes, mayflies and biting gnats are all present and accounted for, and monarchs and yellow swallowtail butterflies occasionally drift over the flowers of the various flowering mustards. The sweet fragrance of black locust flowers has faded from the air, now cottonwood fluff is floating on the breeze. The average temperatures and humidity are going up, and it feels like summer has arrived in the valley.