Fred's photos from Wheaton Labs

Passing by a meadow on the lab i wandered over to look at a patch of goldenrod where i've previously harvested leaves for medecine. Fall has found it! It was looking rather lovely and i'd thought i'd share some pics of the leaves as they say goodbye to summer.

Growing alongside the edge of the road up on the lab, i found Jerusalem oak goosefoot (Dysphania botrys). It is in the Amaranth family and the way its seeds cluster on the stems gives it away. I took note of this plant because to me it smelled like a grand fir. Online descriptions list it as having "an agreeable aromatic smell" and "a strong scent, reminiscent of stock cubes". I'm not sure what people are making their stock cubes out of, because to me, this smells like a fir tree! Apparently it has been used in dried flower arrangements. At least on the lab, any meal made with it will probably include an unhealthy amount of sand...leaves and seed pods are pretty sticky.

Fred Tyler wrote:Growing alongside the edge of the road up on the lab, i found Jerusalem oak goosefoot (Dysphania botrys). It is in the Amaranth family and the way its seeds cluster on the stems gives it away. I took note of this plant because to me it smelled like a grand fir. Online descriptions list it as having "an agreeable aromatic smell" and "a strong scent, reminiscent of stock cubes". I'm not sure what people are making their stock cubes out of, because to me, this smells like a fir tree! Apparently it has been used in dried flower arrangements. At least on the lab, any meal made with it will probably include an unhealthy amount of sand...leaves and seed pods are pretty sticky.

Wow that is an interesting plant!!

It's not just the goldenrod, the Mallow-leaf ninebark (Physocarpus malvaceus) is celebrating fall as well! There's tons of ninebark growing all over the lab and basecamp.  Almost everyone that sees it growing thinks it is/wants it to be a berry bush. It is supposed to prevent conifer germination which helps with forest succession. Ninebark has THE worst tasting leaves of all the plants on the lab.

Finally got all the stuff together so i can start making bread again. So, today i made some whole wheat sourdough. I decided to try making one of the loaves a raisin walnut bread. During the last hour of the bulk rise, i folded in some raisins and walnuts. We'll see how i like that one tomorrow. I think the other one turned out all right, even after taking some months off of bread making.

First couple of photos are during the bulk rise at the abbey. Then the next couple of photos are at the FPH after the final rise as i am about to put them in the oven.

The last photos are the results...bread!

Growing alongside a lab road i found Hoary false-alyssum (Berteroa incana). This is in the mustard family and will grow as an annual or biennial depending on when it germinates. I saw several bees, flies, and wasps on the flowers (i will try to ID those and post later). If consumed as a large proportion of feed, it can be toxic to horses.

First photo is of the flowers.

Second photo is of the leaves. The plant starts with a basal rosette, but those leaves whither as it goes to seed.

Third photo is of the seed pods.

Fourth photo is of the whole straggly plant (flowers on left of frame and stem base on lower-right). I will try and get a better picture.

Last photo i'm pretty sure is the basal rosette of a plant that will go to seed next year. At least, both plants have the same bland brassica flavor.

The other day Stephen helped me plant hundreds of walking onions on my plot. Here i have a handful of bulbils.

I cut open the raisin walnut bread. It came out pretty much exactly like i was hoping.

The first photo is one that Coco took in the summer of 2019


Here is what the teepee looks like now. Notice the cottonwood tree growing just to the left of the teepee has tripled in size! This is a volunteer. One day we just noticed there was a little tree there. Now it is not so little. It maybe gets a little extra water that is shed off the teepee and a little extra water by being at the base of the berm. It is pretty happy in that spot. It is our biggest deciduous tree! We just have to regularly trim the branches that want to grow towards the teepee.

Here's some photos of some of the insects i saw on the hoary false-alyssum (Berteroa incana).

The first two photos are a couple different angles of the same bee.

The third photo is probably the thick-legged hoverfly (Syritta pipiens), which mimics wasps.

The last two photos are probably the common drone fly (Eristalis tenax) from a couple different angles. Several years ago when people were soaking (and forgetting) some manure for cob making at the abbey we spotted some of the larval stage of this fly, the rat-tailed maggot, living in the fouled water.

Now the Rocky Mountain maple (Acer glabrum) knows it is fall. I love how each tree transitions so differently. I wonder how much of it has to do with the soil at a particular site and how much has to do with its microclimate. This is one of our few native deciduous trees. Though it is rare that they get more than 30' tall and 5" in diameter. The ones around basecamp and the lab are more like 12-15' tall and 3" in diameter at their biggest. They usually grow with multiple stems and end up looking rather shrubby. The strong stems were often used to make snowshoes.

The first photo is of a cousin to the wooly bear caterpillar, the spotted tussock moth caterpillar (Lophocampa maculata). The white hairs sticking out of this caterpillar have stinging barbs, so watch out. They feed on deciduous trees. This one was traveling across the forest floor.

The second photo is what looks like the fall webworm (Hyphantria cunea). This caterpillar has a huge variation in its appearance, so i'm not 100% sure of the ID. I saw this caterpillar crawling across a thimble berry leaf. I didn't think to look in the trees overhead to see if the rest of its webmates were nearby, but they aren't usually found alone.

The last photo is the common thread-waisted wasp (Ammophila procera) on some late blooming goldenrod i found on my plot. These are great beneficial wasps, often seen carrying caterpillars back to an underground lair for their young. The adults feed mostly on nectar and are quite effective pollinators. If you zoom in, you can see that the face, body, and legs of this wasp are covered in pollen. As a bonus, there is a crab spider hiding in the goldenrod blooms. He was so well camouflaged, i didn't even notice him when i took the photos.