My Husband is Awesome!

Dan has started making 30 frames for the upcoming show in January! Little did he know he'd be making so many when he offered a few years ago. In an effort to keep all the materials for this project ecologically-friendly, he's making the cherry, oak, walnut, and maple frames out of reclaimed wood from a local timber yard and the MSU surplus store.

  

Twenty-one Sheets

I made twenty-one sheets of garlic mustard paper today. They should be dry in a few days and then I'll pull another batch. In the meantime, I'll be chopping and making pulp from canary reed grass that I collected in Washtenaw County. If all goes well, I'll have three invasive plant papers for the show in January: phragmites, garlic mustard and reed canarygrass. It's gettin' jiggy around here!

Garlic Mustard Pulp

I finally got around to boiling and beating the garlic mustard my son Eli picked for me at Fenner Nature Center this past spring. It made some awesome pulp which I'll make into paper later this week.

In order to cover my goofs on the transfer process, I'm going to need 60+ sheets of paper to complete 30 prints for the show. Let the paper-making begin!

Five Shadows Captured at Matthaei Botanical Gardens and in Laingsburg

I've been busy tracking down flowers in bloom this week and managed to catch shadows of the following:

Downy sunflower (Helianthus mollis) - threatened
Hairy wild petunia (Ruellia humilis) - threatened
Houton's goldenrod (Solidago houghonii) - threatened
Lakeside daisy (Hymenoxys herbacea) - endangered
Upland boneset (Eupatorium sessilifolium) - threatened

Thank you again to Laura Mueller at the University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens and to Mr. S in Laingsburg!

Five Shadows Captured in Laingsburg

Over the past few weeks I've been able to photograph the shadows of five plants in Laingsburg:
Prairie coreopsis (Coreopsis palmata) - threatened
Prairie or pale agoseris (Agoseris glauca) - threatened
Prairie indian-plantain (Cacalia plantaginea) - special concern
Side-oats grama grass (Bouteloua curtipendula) - endangered
Rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium) - threatened

Thank you Mr. S for letting me photograph these lovely plants!!

Three Shadows Captured in Washtenaw County

This weekend I was able to photograph the shadows of THREE plants:
Queen of the Prairie (Filipendula rubra) - threatened
Fragile prickly pear (Opuntia fragilis) - endangered
Canadian milk vetch (Astragalus canadensis) - threatened

Thank you MH for letting me visit and for walking me through your prairies!

Two Shadows at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens

My goal yesterday was to drive to the gardens at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, photograph the dwarf lake iris, and get back to East Lansing before I ran out of steam. The planets must have been aligned because I did it! The sun was out, there was no wind, and I captured the shadows of TWO plants.

The dwarf lake iris (Iris lacustris - threatened) was a bit of a challenge to photograph as it was extremely close to the ground, but because of the angle of the shadow and it being located on slanted ground, I was able to get it. I won't be posting any shadow images until I've transferred them onto the invasive plant paper, but here's a quick snapshot of the plant itself.

The bulrush sedge (Carex scirpoidea - threatened) was also in bloom.

Thank you to Mike Kost (Native Plants Specialist) and Laura Mueller (Great Lakes Garden Field Tech) for helping me locate the endangered and threatened plant species at the gardens!