What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

This early fall weather is glorious -- lots of sunshine and blue, blue skies.  We went to Waukegan Savanna, Independence Grove and Old School, three of the designated sites for this year's Hike Lake County challenge.  

This is prairie dock, also known as Lucy Braun's prairie dock. Had the flower and the spent flowerhead not been on one plant I wouldn't have known they are the same.

Here  is more about the eponymous Lucy Braun.  

This pretty purple flower is brown knapweed, also called French hard-head (!).  I've only  seen it at Wadsworth Savanna.  Since it is invasive ...

Obedient plant, boneset / eupatorium ("eupatorium" is fun to say), tickseed, a field of goldenrod.   Buffalo Creek  was a farm for several generations.

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The Zion Woman's Club's opening meeting was Tuesday.  The ...

Coneflower, compass plant, lobelia.

Sumac, wild cucumber, gray dogwood.

Common reed, elderberry "lace" (after the birds have eaten the berries), ragweed. 

 Our long-anticipated Alaska trip did not turn out as we planned. The outbound travel (O'Hare to Sitka by way of Seattle) was very disorienting for my husband.  Fortunately we could get flights home that evening/night, including a nonstop overnight flight from Anchorge to O'Hare.   I'm calmer now as I type this but you can well imagine that at the time I was *beyond* upset.   On the positive side, once we got home his mood stabilized.  

Cardinal flower / lobelia was a new one for me. It was growing alongside a stream in a shady patch.    

Teasel is invasive  This patch was right next to the path so I could easily get closeup photos.  The upper and lower right photos show it in bloom, with all the little tiny flowers.   

The lower landscape photo is the Des Plaines River at Sedge Meadow. The middle landscape photo is one of the ponds at McDonald Woods.  From the LCFPD website ...

Thunderstorms between midnight and 5 a.m. on Saturday brought very welcome rain.   The sun was out the rest of the weekend.

Pinnate prairie coneflower, jewel weed, rosin weed,  bluebell (campanula), spurge, joe pye weed.

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I do find time to sew, of course!

I used the picnic basket block (the guild July BOM) for the next batch of daisy mug rugs for an ongoing P.E.O. project.   All the baskets use the same daisy print.   (2 yards for all 16.)

Upper left: a tangle of garter snakes (two here; a third slithered away (perhaps establishing dominance before mating?).   Downy pagoda plant (blephilia ciliata -- a new one). Cow parsnip.  Middle: common cinquefoil. Columbine/aquilegia (there are blue ones in our ...

Blue-eyed grass, mayapple, Atlantic camas /wild hyacinth. Mayapple leaf, crane's bill/wild geranium, golden ragwort. Canadian anemone, star-of-Bethlehem (an invasive garden escapee), golden Alexander. 

The beavers are active in the evening and the early morning when the forest preserve is closed.  I'd love to catch a glimpse of them!  (Lower right photo shows fungus neatly lined up in the grooves of the tree bark.) 

This is a phenomenon known as witches' broom. Left: left over from last year. Right: this year. 

This explains the cause ...

A bumble bee on wood betony (also called Canadian lousewort).  Wild geranium, Virginia creeper (with horsetail in the background), false Solomon's Seal, golden Alexander, horsetail, fleabane.

This one is about a foot long. There are three ...

Wildflowers at Lyons Woods:  trillium, yellow rocket, garlic mustard. Bristly buttercup, forget-me-not, cow parsnip, white and purple violets. (It's a great year for violets -- there are a lot in our yard, too.)

Apple ("eating apple," the app called it), crabapple, brand-new oak leaves. 

 The memorial service for our good friend Bob was Saturday morning.   Such a wonderful tribute to a long life, well-lived!   (Here is his obituary.)  There were many people -- his widow, four daughters, most of the 17 grandchildren, and many of the great-grandchildren -- and so many friends.  Bob and Liz hosted more than 30 exchange students through ...

There was a Covid outbreak among the church choir members after the Easter service.  No choir this morning and we were back to alternating pews and masks required ...

 [Next post will have quilting updates and the one book I managed to finish this week.]     

Welcome autumn!  A cold front came through on Tuesday and the temperature dropped 10+ degrees. Our afternoon outing to Lyons Woods was very comfortable both for me to walk and for Stevens as he sat in the car.  (He's unable to walk long distances -- especially at the pace I've developed over this past year of near-daily walks!)

Left: the rose hips from Japanese or Seven Sisters roses look more ...

It used to be that the "where where you when..." question was about Kennedy's assassination or, for our parents, Pearl Harbor. Now our "where were you..." prompt is twenty years old. On September 11, 2001, I was in the conference room at the North Suburban Library System headquarters.  Lynn S., Sandra N., and Carol L. and I were there for the initial meeting  of a fellowship/support group for women library directors. The big-screen TV was turned on to the news--the first tower had been hit. We thought we were seeing a clip from a disaster movie as we ...

Right: a monarch and a bee with compass plant. 

Sawtooth sunflower, tall boneset, goldenrod. Jewelweed, false aster, Drummond's aster. Panicled aster, grass-leaf goldenrod, purplestem aster.  

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On Monday we enjoyed revisiting Lyons Woods for the 2021 Hike Lake County Challenge.  Tuesday was too hot and humid to do more than run errands -- 95 temp and heat index of 105.  When I sat out on the shady patio later in the afternoon a front came through with clouds and wind gusts. Quite dramatic!  I came inside before it began to rain.  We got about an inch -- so badly needed.

Rose hips, gray dogwood, a burl. 

Joe Pye weed, sawtooth sunflower, evening primrose.   Hedge bindweed, rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susan), field thistle.  Woodland sunflower, whole-leaf rosinweed, another woodland sunflower.

New England aster or Michaelmas daisy -- first aster I've seen. Fall is coming.  (Michaelmas is September 29.)

Bridge over Sequoit Creek at Sun Lake

Fencepost at Waukegan ...

We, too, took advantage of the sunshine and visited three forest preserves (Old School  Van Patten Woods Des Plaines River canoe launch (the latter has a trail along the river)) and Hosah Park (Zion's piece of the lakefront, wedged between the north and south units of Illinois Beach State Park).   

Purple coneflower, lady fern, common reed.   Sumac, woodland sunflower. Purple loosestrife with a bumble bee, burdock in flower (a little ...

Rabbit, rabbit!  Yes, I remembered to say that first thing this morning. 

Our afternoon outings this week took us to two units of Illinois Beach State Park and to two forest preserves (Pine Dunes and Grant Woods).  The wildflowers are stunning.  I know they've always been there but I am really alert to them this year as I've taken 'destination' walks (rather than just in the neighborhood).  The Picture This app on my phone makes identification easy.