Bear's foot and bumble bees ...

Wildflower Update:  This week's bloom is between summer flowers and the beginning of fall blooming plants.  The Common milkweed, bee balm and butterfly weed bloomings are ending.  Starting to bloom are cup plant, rosin weed, passionflower, illinois bundleweed, coneflowers, swamp milkweed and black-eyed susans.  In our wooded areas we found yellow leafcup (Polymnia uvedalia, also bear's foot) and tall bellflower.  Wingstem, pokeweed and ironweed are a week or two away.

Illinois bundleweed bloom (about 1/2) inch across in our seed garden.

Several tall bellflowers among the bear's foot.

Yellow Leafcup or Bear's Foot in a wooded area surrounded by iron weed.

Partridge Pea (Cassia fasciculata) plants are blooming in our pollinator oases.

Pollinators and Wildlife Update: We have lots of bees still working the few flowers we have blooming. At night, the bumble bees are dormant and are often found by the dozens under bee balm blooms or attached to coneflowers.  They are often covered with dew.  Lots of butterflies still ... some swallowtails populations have been slow to appear.
Family groups of deer are starting to form again since the fawns are older. While finishing up a couple of small places bush-hogging, I have seed raccoons and eastern box turtles.  This morning saw a large tailed animal low to the ground exiting a soybeen field ... not sure what it was.

I was surprised the number of bees working several plants of yellow leafcup in our woods.

Work on the Farm:  Still bush-hogging bee pastures.  We are getting ready to plant some food plots which we will make into native plant patches next year.  Our food plots contain buckwheat, oats and austrian peas.

We allow hiking, wildflower/wildlife photography, birdwatching and native plant research by request.  The Kentucky Wildflower Farm will be offering seed from locally collected native plant species in 2015.