That seems about right me but not based on much real knowledge on my part.
And always evolving. Every addition to the compost pile signals a new round of retail therapy … to help with the grieving. 
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I’ve euthanized a few plants to speed that process. 
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I perform abortions on one year olds every year just to enjoy the better foliage on newborns. The red flowering plants just get trimmed back hard and look great when they grow back each year, much to the hummer’s delight. The yellow flowering verbascums will also comeback but not so neat and trim as the red ones. The bees don’t care so I just move some of the seedlings into the usual locations after performing the very late term abortions.
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Just deadheaded my two butterfly bushes this afternoon. So violent.
I’ve done so little in the yard this summer. I hope they can get another set of blooms in before the frost. We’ve got all of September and at least half of October most years. So, I should get more blooms.
The sunlight is starting to get golden these days. It’s not just the colors of the plants changing. That has hardly begun yet. But the color of the light gets really magical starting this time of year.
I’ll try to get my wilderness verbascums staked, so I can see what they do this winter and next spring. This was a good reminder.
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I just did the same for the one out in this same parking median. Also hoping for more.
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Cool! Our sumac makes rough fuzz blobs, not berries, how interesting!
What do the berries taste like?
And more — did you call them “creeping flowers?”
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The berries get coated in that white waxy looking stuff. It’s a sour taste. But like sour candy, not bad. You can collect a bundle of them and steep it in water and then pour it through a cheesecloth to catch the little hairs and then mix a bit of sugar and it tastes similar to lemonade. Been hard to get any this year since it needs a few days without rain to get coated well. The rain washes it off. But you don’t eat the berries. Just use them to get that waxy sour substance.
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Is the substance yeast? It grows in lots of fruits naturally. Unwashed grapes can be used as a source of yeast in bread making, for example. It just takes time (I understand) to allow the yeast to multiply adequately, but that’s part of fhe magic of any sour dough.
The berries , and many fruits, get their sour taste from malic acid. Before lemons were globally available, often sumac berries from a handful of species was used to give a sour flavor to foods and drinks. They can also be baked and dried. Then pulverized and sifted through to remove the crushed up pit somehow. I’ve never tried it. I guess the berry once dried breaks up smaller and more finely than the seed at a faster rate. But I don’t know. But I’ve read and have tried as seasoning. A friend once made sumac icing and it was really good. They said they dehydrated and pounded then sifted it. Moved the powdered berry and mixed it with coconut cream and mashed banana and mixed it all together for a sort of cream they used on cupcakes and I enjoyed it. Was similar to lemon cream and I’m a big fan of lemon flavored desserts.
I refer to spiders often as “ crawling flowers / creeping flowers / creepy cuties or even eight legged kittens “ to combat the demonization of them. Ironically, despite coming up with those names on my own, independently I’ve seen several others using them as hashtags on IG as well. So some others also thought of it as well.
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While cleaning a pond yesterday I came across the aquatic larva of a dragonfly. It’s close to molting. I really like the golden design mixed into its thorax and won’t sheets.
Also I’m aware my hands look bad lol. It’s a byproduct of that says callouses being torn off moving rocks coupled with wrinkles from water. I forgot my gloves somewhere and it was like a 30 min drive to get more and so I did not worry about it.
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We eat a fair amount of za’atar, which is a Middle Eastern seasoning that contains sumac. I have also gotten plain sumac at the Jerusalem Bakery in Lansing. The sumac is pulvarized like you describe and deliciously tangy. In za’atar it is combined with a number of herbs and sesame seeds. It’s wonderful on a lot of things, including roasted grape tomatoes with a little olive oil. On a good, toothy bread…Oh my.
Sumac cream sounds amazing. And lemon anything as well.
I love your and Liam’s PR attempts for spiders. There are plenty I wouldn’t want to meet without gloves on, but with gloves on, I am much braver.
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A girlfriend and I went on a little field trip today to a nearby wetland. After we ate our picnic lunch, we ambled about on the dike here:
There are painted turtles on a branch in the water on the left side of the photo near the bottom. I should have brought the good camera, so they’d show up better.
The heron ignored us for a long time. Then we got too close for it’s comfort.
It flew away and picked up a friend down the channel. They’re right over the water in the back. More turtles are sunning themselves on a log in the water:
A milkweed I need to identify:
Planting a new crop of grasshoppers:
Norther leopard frogs were EVERYWHERE on the dike. Amazing camouflage.
Where’s Waldo?
Just a lovely grass with no more id:
I need to get myself a kayak:
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No photo. It’s dark out. The bright moon is over the front yard. The Big Dipper is over the wilderness we leave wild. Out back I can hear 3 different owls hooting to each other from 3 different locations. One calls and the other two reply in short order.
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I think of you as being in the land of lakes. Pretty country.
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Cactus, some sort of aster, lowbush blueberry starting to turn color, an unusual oak color, wild sunflower of some type I think.
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I’ve never seen prickly pear growing wild here in MI, but I know it does, i need to check into its distrubution.
No blueberries in my area, but the rest looks like it came drom my yard.
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Even here in the middle of the state, where the elevation is about a whopping 800’/244m we have many, many small lakes. Nothing surpasses the Great Lakes, but really, every body of water does our hearts good. Not only compositionally is it in our blood.
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And then I live where every lake (something larger than a beaver pond) within 200 km of me is man-made. The Carolina Bays, Lake Mattamuskeet, and Phelps Lake are the only natural lakes in the state.
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