June 2025 Scenes from the Ranch

June brought our sweet Belgian baby Luna into the world. Born just days before the full moon, and with a wide white blaze down her face, the name Luna immediately suited her. Looking back at this photo from just two months ago, it amazes me how much she has grown already.

Ample spring rains brought forth loads of wildflowers across the prairie. The milkweed in particular is having quite a heyday! Its blossoms are tessellated with star-shaped mauve flowers whose arms reach skyward to welcome in their pollinators. And what a complex process that is! Milkweed make waxy packets of pollen in pairs called pollinia that are tucked inside special pouches at the base of the stigma (the center of the star). While sipping on nectar from the base of each star-arm petal, the pollinators (bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, et al) accidentally step on slits next to the pouches that hold the pollinia. With luck, the insect successfully retracts its leg from the slit and pulls the pollinia out along with it. Then it takes its sticky cargo to another milkweed plant, and with a little more luck it inserts that same leg accidentally into another slit and deposits the pollinia, thereby fertilizing the flower. What a magical and elaborate process which requires quite a bit of luck! For some great photos and detailed description, head over to this NRCS article.

A rare close-up of Oliver, our wildest barn cat. Having shown up out of thin air one spring, he remains skittish around people. The loft of the barn is his safe spot where he lounges comfortably beneath the rafters. If I sit down on a bale of hay quietly for awhile, he’ll make his way over to my lap for some lovin’.

I spy with my little eye a Great Plains Toad! This toad immediately caught my eye with its unique pattern of dark green blotches. We have oodles of Woodhouse’s toads on the patio around our house, but this is the first Great Plains Toad I’ve seen. On summer evenings the Woodhouse’s toads come out from the garden to feast on insects and keep us entertained. Their unusual nasally screeching mating call punctuates the prairie air at dusk – if you haven’t heard it before, I highly suggest you check it out. Oh, the marvels of nature!