Last night we had dinner on the screen porch for the first time this season. Gone were the winter coats and hats from the burn a few nights before, as the temperature shot up to 70 degrees. We remarked again how amazing it is when the place goes from the deep silence of winter right to bird mating season– pheasants, red-winged blackbirds, robins, sand hill cranes, geese, ducks, sparrows, everyone is cheeping and squawking! (There’s even a little of that in the basement, as the chickens graduated from their heat lamp today and aren’t quite sure what to make of it.)
We are very lucky to have Jeff Evander on our prairie team. He also has come out of a deep winter silence and every day for a week he’s been out on our prairie. Jeff is our resident prairie savant. He can recognize and name any tree (even hybrids), dead or alive, at 30 yards. He’s the one who told us about Indian Marker Trees. I’ve been with him in a newly planted prairie where he’ll point out dozens of the tiniest sprouts of green plants and name them all.
Thanks to Jeff, and to Steve’s willingness to embrace the largest and most expansive plan possible in any situation, there are burn permits and extensive fire breaks in place to burn the wetlands and most of the scrubby acres of our property in the next week. Hopefully we’ll have the right winds and weather tomorrow to burn the wetlands.
sand hill cranes in fall 2013
I’ve been the chief advocate for the sand hill cranes on this one. Turns out they love it after a burn because they prefer open spaces. It is true that they hang out in the burned areas of the prairie whenever they’re available. They are quite adaptable and even if they have a nest there now, they’ll quickly rebuild after the fire. They haven’t performed their mating dance yet, so there are no eggs (though they’re even known to lay new eggs if they’re damaged this early in the season by fire).
It’s possible we’ll have the right conditions to burn “the whole enchilada” as Jeff calls it. I have to admit, nervous Nellie that I am, the idea of the whole enchilada in one big fire frightens me a bit. But my parents will be here and I’d love to share that experience with them!
Yesterday, Jeff was out here planting blazing stars. He just showed up, with a shovel and his large white bags of seed. Here and there throughout the prairie he knelt down and started digging and planting. I went out to see what he was up to.
August 2013 blazing star
Blazing stars are really the glory of the prairie. We have a few here and there, but Jeff explained that they will spread and grow in huge clusters, up to 100 plants in a place. He was “seeding colonies.” He dug up a bunch of blazing star “bulbs” last fall from large plots of old prairie and covered them with leaves in bags in his yard over the winter, and brought them to us.
Jeff has names for everything, and he calls the bulbs with their clusters of leaves “rabbits.” Digging in the bag, he said, “Let me see if I have any rabbits for you.” We settled for a reconstructed rabbit.
The bulbs themselves are like onion bulbs (but blazing stars are not in the allium family). Jeff explained they are unique in that they send out long new roots every year, looking for nourishment, unlike many perennials that wait for the nourishment to reach them. The roots die back when they become dormant.
You plant them like onions. Find a place in the prairie where there aren’t thick clumps of grasses, slash into the soil a bit, dig in with your fingers and plant them, roots down and pointy side up, the little piece of stalk up through the ground.
On the way out of the prairie he showed me a dormant, dead blazing star that survived the recent burn. One more look at the mature prairie. The dark clumps are our grasses, and soon the perennials will be popping up through the empty spaces.
If that major prairie burn happens, I’ll have my camera handy and check back in… otherwise, have a blessed Triduum and Easter!
