Decadeslong effort revives Ancient Oak Woodland

After 34 years of data gathering, three of us have finally published a study of the restoration of Vestal Grove.

Life Sciences editor Diana Yates of the U. of I. News beautifully summarized and illustrated it at: 

https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/973552802

The paper itself is at: 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0241061

Thanks to lead author Karen Glennemeier for her masterful perseverance over many years, pulling together the elements of a scientifically sound paper. Thanks to the Illinois Natural History Survey's Greg Spyreas for crucial contributions during the last year and for recommending the open source journal PLOS ONE to publish it. 

Photo shows violet wood sorrel, wild strawberry, woodland sunflower, wild bergamot, nodding wild onion, and cow parsnip - just waiting to be counted for the Vestal Grove study. 

Fall on the savanna.

We’re not New England. No one rides by in buses to check out the pastel colors of the leaves.

But, in person, to someone with a feel for it, our natural ecosystems are:

Rich, beautiful, subtle, meaningful, deep.

 

We walk slowly, notice patterns that develop, and hypothesize about what’s causing them. (In some cases, we take actual data to prove or disprove.) 

 

It’s fun to watch – like a novel or a movie – but one where the plot develops over years. Like watching the course of a human life or a social movement. In this case, life is good. 

This is a patch of "shrub prairie" - one component of the savanna. 

Here the shrub in the foreground is hazel (the plant that makes hazelnuts), and most of the rest are bur or Hill's oaks, both species that often burn off in fire and become shrubs.

This photo reminds us how central regular fires are.

The one leafy tree and many leafy shrubs are all Hill's oaks (also called scarlet oak).

The bare young tree with heavy branches (on the left) is the bur oak.

Bur oak runs the tallgrass savanna. It's the first tree to drop its leaves, perhaps as a fuel weapon against the other trees. Heavy bark protects it. Fires of grass and oak leaves burn off its woody competition. In time, all the Hill's will be shrubs, and the bur will be a mighty tree. 

The hazel too is quick to burn off.

In this photo you see last year's naked dead stems, much taller than this year's leafy ones.

If it now doesn't burn here for a year or two, those three-foot live stems will be six feet, or nine.

Then they'll produce lots of delicious nuts.

But the hazel's bank account is in its roots. It expects to burn. Without burns, trees would shade it out; its home is the frequently burned savanna and open oak woodland. 

In October and November, the waning of life pulls on our heart strings. 

Beautiful, partly painful, a kind of death, and a feature of our temperate climate. 

Big dry leaves here are prairie dock. Peachy are the leaves of rigid goldenrod. Red-wine-colored are the leaves of azure aster. Pale yellow for the moment is northern dropseed grass. Tawny is little bluestem. Most of these colors will drain out as winter sets in - unless all turns deep black from fire.

Kinds of diversity.

There is diversity within species: 

For example, some of these dropseed clumps are still green, some yellow, some already winter tan. 

And there is diversity between species: 

The early goldenrod leaves, despite this being the first goldenrod to bloom, are now still green (upper left), photosynthesizing full blast and taking advantage of their preferred cooler weather. The purple here is gray dogwood. Notice at least two small Hill's oaks as well. The dogwood and Hill's will outcompete the herbs in years between fire ... then get knocked back into dynamic equilibrium. 

If this site were burned every year, sometimes in the summer even, might the woodies go and the ecosystem gradually become all herbs - a prairie?

Above is another competition.

The tall grass here is cordgrass. The tall woodies are Hill's oaks. 

But the little green/yellow bur oak in the foreground will likely be the actual tree here in time. 

And the fine leaves of dropseed grass likely will replace the cord grass, which spread here from a nearby wetland while the slow-growing dropseed was getting bigger with every burn in this dry-ish spot. 

We'll watch. 

Stripes and patterns form.

The stripes in the middle distance follow contours. 

Species win out where the hydrology, soils, and fire regime are just right for them.

Here the front stripe is willow aster -

a brocade of subtle colors where a month ago all was green.

The black stripe behind it is woodland sunflower. 

Why do some species just turn black?

Behind that is a stripe of mostly white oaks, not native here, planted here long ago on former prairie.

In some areas, the fires have been knocking off the white oaks, killing them dead.

They're not like Hill's. 

In the space between these two stands of planted white oaks, we see original open prairie in the distance.

This savanna stood on the edge of the prairie. 

The seventy-acre Somme Prairie immediately to the west is being rapidly and profoundly restored. 

In the future, healthy tallgrass savanna and prairie will connect here, a rare thing ...

... also potentially important for some species that use both habitats.

Once such species, the rusty-patch bumblebee, has been found here. 

Here we see bur oaks, the true, original, natural tree here, a little further up the slope.

The oldest of these burs have heavy, spreading lower limbs, indicating that they grew as young trees in the open. Some are old enough to have been walked beneath by Potowatami, bison, bears, and the first Euro-American explorers. When natural fires stopped, subsequent young trees grew thin, straight, and tall. Removing the buckthorn was good, and now we also remove too dense pole trees, often of species native to the region but not to this ecosystem, or even too-close-together bur oaks, that today's weaker fires can't thin. We plan and study. No bur oaks reproduce in shade this dark. This former savanna may need to have fewer, shorter, wider-spreading trees to be all it can be, for biodiversity and a thriving future. 

At the other end of the shade continuum is this larger patch of "shrub prairie." 

Here, hundreds of bur and Hill's oaks and hazels burn back to square one with every fire.

Finally, a last photo of today, October 22, 2020.

More of a characteristic savanna,

scattered trees amid warm-season grasses.

In coming months, rich Fall color will turn to the sere of Winter ...

as we and other animals and plants prepare for

 another growing season of richness and drama.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Christos Economou and Eriko Kojima for many helpful edits. 

Thanks to Cook County Forest Preserves staff for excellent burns in recent years. They make the difference. 

Hunter-Gatherers compete with The Corporate Machine.

Huge machines (and the corporations that own them) are clearing the last trees and brush from one of the finest and most important prairies in the region. 

See video. As you watch, be impressed that for years we did this work with hand-saws and muscle:

But to plant all this newly bare ground ... with the rare seeds it needs for recovery ... we have to do that by hand. There's no other way. 

Who can get the most done fastest? In this unusual contest both sides support each other. Let's be clear, the machines and the people both are working for the good of the prairie. Minds and bodies, powered by tofu and/or hamburgers, are joining forces with petroleum power.

For more than 40 years, we volunteers have been chipping away at brush and planting seed. The 70-acre Somme Prairie had less than two acres of high quality prairie, but that was some of the finest in the region. Prairie rightfully needed to be restored to the whole 70 acres - which indeed had been all prairie, for thousands of years, until invasive brush started eating away at it. Three years ago, half of this Illinois Nature Preserve and Cook County Forest Preserve was still tall or short brush. 

But with good leadership from President Preckwinkle, the Forest Preserves found resources to hire private contractors to get rid of all that prairie-killing shade, fast. These are the same folks that clear brush to build a factory or a shopping center, so they know how to "Get 'er done!" 

Now, forty acres are free of shade and waiting for seed. Unfortunately, if there isn't enough prairie seed, then nasty weeds get too much of a head start. 

Blazing star seeds

Over the decades, volunteer seed gatherers have been able to harvest enough for the couple of acres a year that the volunteers have cleared. But now somehow, from somewhere, Somme Prairie has needed a vastly larger community of Hunter-Gatherers.

More people chip in. Stewards of nearby sites (see "Where does this seed come from?" - below) are devoting some of their time to gathering and giving some of their local seed to Somme Prairie. Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves are rose to the challenge and sponsored twice-weekly seed gathering, mostly at nearby Somme Prairie Grove, where there's a lot. 

When you gather seeds, you're in the ecosystem, as a partner. 

When the time comes to broadcast all those seeds, it's a celebration of rare new life.

Anyone with normally functioning hands, feet, and mind can learn to do it every summer and fall. Might you find it fun - to be a modern hunter-gatherer - to learn to recognize purple prairie clover, or dropseed grass, or sky-blue aster, or bottle gentian? Different species will be coming ripe each week in September and October. 

Check out event dates at: 

Somme Woods Community

or

Somme Community Facebook

Endnote: Where does this seed come from?

The Illinois Nature Preserves Commission and the Forest Preserves of Cook County have established "seed provenance" guidelines for this preserve. Seed from plants that someone bought on line or got from a neighbor is not what's appropriate here. The conservation goal of this nature preserve is to maintain the genetics of plants that have been evolving with each other and the rest of the biota here for thousands of years. Somme Prairie Nature Preserve has accepted seeds from approved spontaneous populations within 15 miles of the North Branch Prairies. To restore the robustness of the genetics of the former unfragmented prairies here, these prairies share seed with each other and with other sites within that limit. 

Hunter-Gatherers and Our Gossip

By Emma Leavens

We work, and we interact. As we harvest rare seeds for restoration, there is often a casual exchange of stories about plants, that is also part of our restoration work. 

There are descriptive stories about peculiar pollination, the why and how of seed structures, and what those seeds require in order to start new life. There’s no shortage of fascinating backstories, evolutionarily speaking. Some of my favorite stories, though, are the ones that make characters of the plants. They help me get to know how species behave as members of a community.

 

Their "parachutes" loft these savanna blazing star (Threatened species) seeds far and wide.
But will they land on top of a building or in a parking lot?
We toss some of them in good habitats on days of light wind. It seems to help. 

Around Somme, in the short time I have been helping collect and disperse seed, I have already heard a good deal:

·      This stubborn species showed up in several places this year! 

·      How did this one get over here? 

·      Look at what established itself there, of all places! What is it telling us that we don’t yet know how to listen to? 

·      Oh, and this plant produces a ton of seeds but just try to find them!

·      This species seems to only reproduce under particular conditions. 

·      We have no idea how this plant got here - we’re just glad it sticks around. 

·      I’ve noticed this other species seems to prefer this micro-habitat over that one. Have you noticed that too?

If you have some practice with science, you might recognize these little stories as anecdotal evidence. If you’ve spent time among friends, you’ll likely recognize that this is also a type of gossip. Ecology gossip. Plant gossip. The very best kind. And like lesser gossip, you may get a slightly different sense of things depending where you go and who you ask. You get hints at what is going on that you won’t find in ecology textbooks. 

Seeds and seed-gatherers come in great variety.

Accomplishments, surprises, and satisfaction - as we recover the sources of our roots.

Hopefully, in time, these happenings will be researched with rigor. The anecdotes will get confirmed or clarified, and added to the books. In the meantime, they are still valuable for the emerging practice of ecological restoration. They give clues as to how we can support those species, what factors we maybe overlooked or got right when we distributed seeds in previous years, and what we might do next to help those species recover healthy populations in their communities.

A sign of the times: hunter-gatherers with Covid masks.
Will we decide at some point that in the open air, this far apart, we don't need them? 

Last year, the Somme crew collected seeds of more than 300 species of plants. Then we redistributed them in our prairies, savannas, woodlands, and wetlands. Each of those species has some fascinating behavior worth talking about plus plenty to tell us about the community. The more people who help to observe, collect, and repeat, the more stories we get to learn and share in order to ensure that those species endure. 

If you’re interested in helping out, please email us at sommepreserve@gmail.com or sign up at sommepreserve.org. We currently have opportunities to collect seed and share stories at least twice a week. 

Photos by Lisa Musgrave

Learning nature by its seeds

by Christos Economou

There's a scene in Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece Seven Samurai that has captivated me for years.    As a bit of background for those that haven't seen it (it's a great movie, watch it!), the story is about a group of downtrodden farmers hiring samurai to defend their village from grain-stealing bandits.  But they don't know what they're in for, and a lot of time passes with no success.  We finally see a farmer in the scene I'm thinking of worriedly rush to a patch of grass growing in the foreground.  "It has ripened!" he exclaims, to which one of his companions responds, "Well, it's been ten days already!" and another asserts dismissively: "This is an early kind, not like ours!"                

Botanizing in Tokugawa Japan…

There's a lot to unpack from these 30 seconds.  But what strikes me is the way in which these farmers experience the world.  Their rhythms are cyclical, human.  No clocks or calendars; these destitute, illiterate peasants know the time of year by when the barley is ripe.  Their knowledge of plants is so deep that they discern (or at least can pretend to discern) varieties that ripen within weeks of each other. 

Even at risk of romanticizing a bit, I contrast this with my own experience.  Many years of schooling have left me ill-informed about when corn is ready for harvest, or when the rough blazing star is about to bloom.  Slight differences in morphology confuse me when trying to identify the few plants I've learned.  All of which distresses me, because I've always felt there was something eminently worthwhile in that sort of deep familiarity with the processes of the natural world. 

Recently, on a beautiful, sunny, warbler-filled morning at Harms Woods, I saw with hope that this familiarity is very much alive today, and that there are people happy to teach it to anyone willing to learn.  Hunting garlic mustard there with some of the North Branch's bipedal treasures, Jane and John Balaban and Eriko Kojima, I saw something that took me back to that scene with Kurosawa's farmers.  And there where yours truly was placidly enjoying the sunlight filtering through the leaves above, the rest of the party was focused on what was underfoot.  Suddenly, they stopped.  Eriko knelt, and gingerly rolled the inconspicuous seed-head of a miniscule plant between her fingertips.  "Hepatica's not quite ready yet," she informed us coolly.

Hepatica acutiloba in flower.  Photo credit to Eriko.  Unlikely I could catch something so small…

"The what?  How did you see that!?  How do you know?"  I thought to myself.  And then: "How long until I'm able to tell when the hepatica is ready?"

I just can't wait until I am.  The joy of seeds, and all that those little specks of life signify for the future, is simply thrilling.  But beyond that, the degree of care – I hope she wouldn't mind me calling it love – for living things that I saw Eriko embody in that moment cut deep.  She's put her all into understanding and cultivating the wondrous nature that was here long before we were, and that, through her and all the North Branchers' efforts, will be here long after we are gone. 

 

The rare golden sedge (Carex aurea) and blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium albidum), encountered recently at Watersmeet Preserve.  "Not quite ready yet," as Eriko might say.

We need this nature, both in practical ways that we are only just beginning to comprehend, and for more important, if less tangible reasons.  But if nature is to thrive into the future, it needs our help just as we need it.  One imagines the farmers feel this reciprocity, even if only in a shallow, transactional way.  Eriko most certainly does, in a broader and more inspiring way.  I want to be like her.

She later told me, "Just cutting the bad stuff down doesn’t heal the ecosystem.  It's a part.  But monitoring, collecting, spreading seeds, that's when restoration starts.  That's what got me in deep, hooked."  Yes. If we are to uphold our side of the bargain with nature, we need to be intimately with it.  Learning where the plants are, what they do, what they look like, and when their seeds are ready to pick are all part of the process.  To grow with nature, we need to get out and collect seeds as often as we can.

From a recent, COVID-conscious seed collection workday at Watersmeet.

We humans may be at a weird point in our history, but nature is still plodding along its familiar course.  Summer is here, and with it the first fruits of spring.  All along the North Branch, there are ripening seeds waiting to start life somewhere new, and calling out to us to help them achieve it.  Many of us are learning how to help them do it.  I hope you will too.

Many thanks to Eriko and Stephen for their editing, the Balabans for their generosity with time, and all the other teachers on the North Branch.

Small, Dull, Roundish Things? (nothing could be farther from the truth!)

What I think is cool about seeds is the unbelievable diversity. Many people think of seeds as small, dull, roundish things. Nothing could be farther from the truth! 

Looking at them close up reveals how much they differ in size, texture, color ... and the strategies they have for spreading themselves around ... and suggests mysteries.

Eared False Foxglove (Tomanthera auriculata) - Endangered

Shooting Star (Dodecatheon meadia)

Cream gentian (Gentiana flavida)

Hoary Puccoon (Lithospermum canescens)

Eileen Sutter, a leader of the Wednesday Seeds Team of the North Branch Restoration Project, wrote: 

"Every year I get excited about once again growing my seed collecting eyes. I love seeds!"

Photos by Lisa Musgrave

To volunteer to help with seeds, contact:

https://sommepreserve.org

or

https://northbranchrestoration.org

A Personal Relationship With Wild and Wooly Seeds

by Eriko Kojima

This is a good time for us to reflect on seeds. Every year we have a record harvest. How? Not a mystery. We focus on it – with strong will and intention.

More and more people are becoming seed-harvest leaders. We offer opportunities twice a week throughout the harvest season. Experienced leaders and new volunteers go together into the woods and prairies. We pick a lot of seed - passionately - so many kinds of beautiful seed. Week by week, the need and importance of this work become clear. After a while we learn the sorts of places where we can find seeds of all kinds. We scout for good locations and make sure that everyone's time is used effectively. We are all instruments of this work. 

 

As bloodroot pods fill out, a clock is ticking. 

In recent years, we have especially been trying to get as much prairie seed as possible, given the huge needs at Somme Prairie Nature Preserve. I remember a student from Whitney Young, who came with his father, and they both came to love the prairie through its seeds. It’s important to us, as it is to them, that the volunteers be as effective and gain as big a sense of accomplishment as possible. 

 

People fall in love with seeds. Why not? They're the future - and magic.
Above: fringed gentian capsules and seeds.

Joe Walsh brings students from Northwestern … in so many cases first-time seed gatherers. And they work so hard – picking huge amounts of seed – much more in many cases than even experienced seed pickers – because this was newly inspiring to them. The students often walked long distances across the prairie, tirelessly, a lot farther than most of the older people would walk. They’d harvest the bounty of the far reaches.

I remember when site steward Laurel Ross would take charge of the brush cutters and ask me, “Would you lead a seed team?” I would accept with humility and determination. I try to inspire hearts as well as I can, so that the day's seed crew would be as motivated and productive as possible.

 

During the growing season, we tread lightly, but we have to gather early species as they ripen. 

Over the years many of us have come to be effective leaders of picking both woodland and prairie seed. We prospect, study where the seeds are – and which are ripening at what times. 

We dream that more and more people will grow in commitment and dedication, but we know that people are coming from so many different perspectives. All of us think differently, have different excitements and dedications and focuses. We offer people the training, in little and big things, and many people are increasingly teachers and learners. We grow as people, conservationists, leaders, and members of the community. That’s the way forward. 

A few more seed photos, in case they might tempt you to join in:

Doll's eyes. We want more! We get few - but more and more each year, as we restore.

There's a seed inside each wild plum. We eat the plums to get at them. Nice work if you can get it.

Bellwort seeds have "ant candy" attached, so the ants will drag them. But we can carry them farther.

By fall, we'll have massive amounts. We'll broadcast right away - and revel in their memories all winter.
Then as spring warms up, the next magic starts. 

Woods, Prairie, and the Puzzling “In Between”

On March 21st, after the burn, we were hungry for the warmth of the growing season. We were hungry for some green.

These two bur oaks stand amid a rich ecosystem. We know that from memory. Now it's mostly under ground.

The next photo shows how this spot looked on August 13, 2018. Beneath those blooming Woodland Sunflowers and Joe Pye Weeds are more than 100 species of shorter plants that bloomed in April through July.

After three decades of invasives control, local seed gathering and broadcast, and fire - the woodland is stable and rich.

But see that sunny area behind the oak on the right. A photo taken there on June 17, 2018 tells a very different story. It's just fifty yards away and looks colorful and rich, but in this case, the species may be temporary.

Columbine (red), Beardtongue (white), and Spiderwort (blue).

This area has not been stable. It has "intermediate light levels" - not as shady as woods and not as sunny as prairie.  We have less confidence that we know how to manage these intermediate communities. The quality species in this photo are mixed with Tall Goldenrod and Woodland Sunflower. Both of those species sometimes act "thuggish" - that is, over the years, they somehow kill off most other species.

Wild Bergamot, Joe Pye Weed, and Starry Campion flower, but Tall Goldenrod makes up most of the green ... and may be a threat to the others. 

Above is an area where the problem is more obvious. Tall Goldenrod, with its narrow pointed leaves, probably makes up 90% of the vegetation. Some such areas have become all Goldenrod for years, which is poor fuel, so our controlled burns skip it, and then Buckthorn kills off the Goldenrod, and our work starts over from the beginning.

The Illinois Native Plant Society recently funded research by Dr. Karen Glennemeier in cooperation with the Somme stewards to test some approaches. Perhaps all that's needed is more seed of species that are better adapted to such intermediate-light areas. Eriko Kojima, below, has been leading our seed gathering in recent years.

Wide-leaved Panic Grass

Can you even see the rare grass in the photo above? The thin leaves belong to Spiderwort. The grass has deep green, wide leaves and sprays of tiny purple flowers.

Most people hardly notice sedges and grasses. Botanists cherish them. Ecosystems depend on them for structure, fuel and many animals' food and habitat.

Q: Why is this woman happy? A: Because she's broadcasting rare spring seeds.

We broadcast most seed in mid summer and late fall. The spring-ripening species are the most challenging to collect. We're very happy to be doing so much better with them.

A handful of rare, costly treasure.

The spring seeds include Hepatica, Shooting Star, Wood Betony, Violets, Phloxes, and a great many Sedges. They would be very expensive to buy, and for most species, the local gene pools we most want to conserve are not available for sale. Perhaps when such species are dense, they compete better with "thugs."

Does it sound like we aren't sure what's the best management? We'll admit that that's sometimes true. That's why we need more science. But possibly to restore your confidence a bit, look at the last two photos.

The first is from April 8, 2020. The black char of fire is finally being replaced by green. And out here in full sun we're confident (as we were under the oaks) that we know what to do.

In this case we have a companion photo from the same spot on August 13, 2018.

Cowbane, Spotted Joe Pye Weed, Sweet Black-eyed Susan, and Virginia Mountain Mint.

This area was freed from dense brush a few years ago, was planted with rare local prairie seed, and is already well on the way toward quality. But what you see here are all fall-bloomers. The spring and early summer prairie species take more work and more time, but down underneath, they're slowly increasing, and we continue seeding them here.

Orchard orioles, red-headed woodpeckers, and great spangled fritillaries already thrive here, where silent, dark buckthorn once stood.
Life is good.

For scientific names and more details... 
(but, sorry, not the study, yet) ...
check out a slightly more technical version of this post.

Thanks for proofing to Kathy Garness.

Early Spring as a Time of Hope ... March 20, 2020

Burned clean by good fire. Here's how the Somme savanna looked on March 20, "the first day of spring." We who've cared for this place recognize the start of a great drama.

Even more graphic, "spring" in the open grassland:
Those clumps represent thriving Dropseed and Little Bluestem plants, but today the thriving is in their roots. They're getting ready.

As with this deer pelvis, the spirit of the moment may seem death and drear.

Yet, on south-facing slopes, there is assurance of the life to come. Here we have the first harbinger of grassland spring at Somme - the temporary purple of Prairie Betony leaves, starting to emerge and unfold.

Betony will soon be spreading green, fern-like leaves topped with yellow flower clusters. Those sprigs of green today are nodding onion that will bloom mid-summer. It's all starting.

One hundred years ago, in 1920, E. S. Millay rather insulted Spring in a "cynical" poem. We’ll get to her later in this post. I invoke Ms. Millay here at the start because now, Spring 2020, angst roams the land. A pandemic threatens. Can spring help us? 

In the woodland, the spring flora races to complete its version of 2020 before tree leaves block too much light. The green above is False Mermaid - an uncommon, conservative annual. Soon it will sprawl like mermaid hair. It will flower, set seed, and be gone before many prairie plants have even emerged from the ground. It's a part of the wow of diversity. 

Most of the burned woodland still looks like this. Soon to be a riot of color, bird-song, and butterfly flutters, it's now soaking up sun, warming, getting ready. 

Of course, much of the woods wasn't burned this year. Above, a stream was the firebreak used to protect some of this habitat. Some animals will survive better with unburned cover - though truth to tell, they'll migrate quickly to the burned area once the vegetation emerges. 

The plants of the burned area will emerge much earlier, as sun warms the black soil. The burned areas will have taller grasses and more abundant wildflowers. Oak woods and prairies thrive on fire. 

Yet fire is a harsh force. Here: the way of all flesh is mirrored by the way of all plants. Old and sick trees die and burn. They make way for the new. 

We protected five of the young oaks shown here from fire by raking grass and leaves away from their little trunks. On the ancient natural landscape, young oaks burned off and re-sprouted with every fire. They developed bark thick enough to survive fire only when chance left them unburned for a few years. For decades, we waited for some of these young oak trunks to withstand the frequent fires. None did. They're burn and start over. So now, in some places, we rake around some trees, as nature seems to need that help, these days. 

Cow Parsnip emerges: destined to be five or six feet tall with foot-wide flower heads - even before summer sets in. It may be our most massive example of spring flora - but today, just a toddler.

By the remains of a hickory nut, the green will soon be lush Chicago Leeks. Beautiful and delicious - but leave them alone at Somme. In some areas they've been badly depleted by poaching. The treasure of this ecosystem is protected by preserve status.

Closely related, these are the shoots of Wild Leek, very distinct in many ways from Chicago leek, at least to those of us who enjoy seeing as much of diversity as we can. 

We don't see many animals yet. But a Prairie Crayfish clearly has been busy improving its burrow. Soon on rainy days we'll occasionally see the little lobsters walking toward ponds with their babies.

Does spring inspire you every year? It does me. Edna St.Vincent Millay resisted that inspiration in a poem:

Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily. 
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing.
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. 

Why have I always liked that alienated poem? She's such a clear and keen observer. She inspires us to want more - and not to be lulled and satisfied by the superficial. 

Possibly her most famous poem is short and equally impatient:

My candle burns at both ends;
     It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - 
     It gives a lovely light!

In these days, there seems to be little room for such idealistic impatience. But the Earth increasingly is fragile. We abuse it, complacently, at our peril.

So, perhaps we can have some modest hope for our culture's re-examination of purposes, priorities, and possible futures. Life can be good. The planet needs us.

Another poet, Bob Dylan, once ended a song about nuclear obliteration, “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.” Joining Bob’s hope with Edna’s impatience, that could be good.

Is change is in the wind?

This post-fire photo is not from Somme. But somehow it seemed right here. It shows four Somme volunteers who helped out last week on a desperately-needed burn at a cemetery prairie Nature Preserve in rural Grundy County: (from left to right) Eriko Kojima, Katie Kucera, Christos Economou, and Peter Kim. We felt happy about it. We are part of Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves and want to help. 

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Christos Economou for many helpful edits. 

Thanks to Bob Dylan for the "Talking World War III Blues"

As Dylan talks it, he told a doctor that he'd dreamed that after the bombs, there was no one left but him. Bob ended his song this way:

Well, the doctor interrupted me just about then

Sayin, Hey I've been havin' the same old dreams.

But mine was a little different you see:

I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me.

I didn't see you around.

Well, now time passed and now it seems

Everybody's having them dreams.

Everybody sees themselves walkin' around with no one else.

Half of the people can be part right all of the time;

Some of the people can be all right part of the time;

But all of the people can't be all right all of the time.

I think Abraham Lincoln said that.

I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours:

I said that.

In the barren cold of early spring, what are we dreaming of now?

We dream of May, June, and July.

To end this post, here's a photo of July - after such a burn. We know in our blood what's coming: