From the Archives of 2007—2
February 14, 2021
My daughter and daughter-in-law live in Madison, Wisconsin. Whenever I visit them, they generously take me someplace I’ve never been to take photographs. One day in early November 2007 they took me to the Cherokee Marsh Conservation Park North Unit. The next day my daughter-in-law took me to the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum. This is prairie country, and you see evidence of that in many of these photographs. The first six photos were taken at Cherokee Marsh.
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Romancing Reality 
Oh you do it for me every time Linda 😊 The textures, colours, compositions are just wonderful. I so enjoy looking at your images. Thank you.
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February 14, 2021 at 4:30 AM
You are certainly welcome, Alastair. Thank you. I took one of your StillWalks the other day and found it so relaxing and refreshing. Having the sounds as well as the visuals really enlivens the experience. I’ll be back again.
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February 14, 2021 at 7:54 PM
Thank you Linda. I am very pleased you enjoyed a StillWalks® video. The key to watching them is to put everything else aside and hope you’re not interrupted.
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February 15, 2021 at 3:04 AM
It’s good of you to highlight the prairie, which is our most endangered kind of habitat, and one that few people know much about. One website, for example, notes: “Today, less than 0.1% of the original tallgrass prairie remains in Iowa.”
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February 14, 2021 at 11:45 AM
That is a terrible shame, isn’t it, Steve. It is said that “Wisconsin was once covered with over 2 million acres of prairie,” but that only “2,500 scattered acres of prairie remain.” (See https://woodlandinfo.org/files/2017/09/WM-228.pdf.)
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February 14, 2021 at 8:07 PM
Beautiful prairie…sad to think about what was taken from the native Americans.
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February 14, 2021 at 11:59 AM
Until the day I took these photographs, I had never seen prairie like this. Yes, beautiful and sad to have taken and destroyed so much. Thanks for writing, Sue.
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February 14, 2021 at 8:10 PM
Prairie habitat takes some effort to get into, I think, and naturally, you had no problem with making the effort. I’m very fond of the stripes in #3.
In #4 I’m wondering if the red-colored area is Red osier dogwood and if the wonderful tree on the left is an oak – but I understand the photo doesn’t come with a key! 😉 #5 is a really nice, wide view that feels relaxing and expansive – just what the prairies could do if we didn’t pave them over. You can see the ocean comparison that people make with prairies in that image, too. I like the tangle of #6 and the subdued tones in #8…and you know #9 is right up my alley. 🙂 My eye goes right toward that place where the stem is revealed. Those leaves in the foreground of #11 are so appealing. They have gold on one side and cream on the other, I guess – I love that. #13 is a fitting end in a way – the complexity and simplicity of prairie habitat displayed in spare “colors” as if the prairie wanted us to care. (Not to say that #7, 10 & 12 don’t also appeal to me).
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February 17, 2021 at 1:19 PM
Interesting what you say about prairie habitats taking some effort to get into. Maybe it was precisely because these prairies were an unusual landscape to my eyes and had the appeal of novelty that I was drawn to them. But maybe it was the opposite: not novelty at all. I was born in Chicago and raised partly in its suburbs. The notion of prairie—at least when I was growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s—was still strong enough that my family and neighbors called a vacant lot a prairie. The vacant lots I remember were not wooded but grass covered. My personal botanist says yes, the red-colored area in #4 looks like red osier dogwood. The tree on the left is more difficult to be sure about, he says; it’s awfully branchy for an oak, but could be a pin oak. I thought of you when I posted #9. All that’s missing is the bokeh, eh? I think you’re right about #11; I don’t think those are two different kinds of plants. Number 13 seemed like the right photograph to end with: distilled essence of prairie. Thanks for all your comments, Lynn.
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February 17, 2021 at 2:22 PM