September Gardening Tip

Saturday, September 23

I could tell the freeze was coming for sure, when Pip and I were out walking at midnight, the sky clear, the stars bright, my breath condensing in front of me as he pulled his way around the block, energized by the cold and his purblind will.

Come morning, I jumped out of bed, expecting to find the lawn completely rimed with frost, a thick white coating on it, but instead found just a trace on scattered portions of the back yard. And a close-up check of the unprotected plants revealed they hadn't been nipped by it, not even the okra, native of Africa.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

This Week in Iowa Nature

The Harvest Moon, familiar in song and story, is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox.

Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock, The Iowa Nature Calendar

Habitat of the Month

Western Mountain Meadow
Mountain Bluebird

In ancient times, powerful natural pressures underneath the earth's surface pushed and folded the land above. Over hundreds of years, glaciers—huge, grinding plates of ice—and rivers carved out canyons and gorges and the rugged mountain ranges we see today. Many habitats are found here, from treeless mountaintops to the thick forests and open meadows below.

The mountain bluebird, a fast-flying little songbird, lives near mountain meadows. If a flash of bright sky-blue streaks by, you've probably seen an adult male bluebird.

In the meadows, bluebirds find insects to eat. When it is time to nest, they fly to the forest edge to look for trees with holes in their trunks.

Bluebirds migrate south to warmer places for the winter at the same time that the leaves on the aspen trees turn golden.

As more people cut down trees and build houses near mountains, bluebirds find it harder to locate places to nest. If you live close to a mountain meadow, you can help by building boxes for bluebirds.


Where Do Birds Live? by Claudia McGehee