Category Archives: Pheasant Creek

Pheasant Creek – Some July Wildflowers

Western Wild Bergamot

Western Wild Bergamot, a wonderful peppery  leaf added  to tea

Skeleton Weed

Hedysarum, above and Northern Hedysarum, below plus a little yarrow

Northern Hedysarum

Juniper is not a flower but so lovely and fresh with new berries coming

Low milkweed started blooming in June, but I am discovering patches of her for the first time, and she continues to bloom in July

Green Milkweed

Silvery groundsel going to seed…in this photo the seeds of the bottom three have flown away. I painted this seedhead last winter not knowing what is was

Smooth Camus, close up, new to me this year

Smooth Camus

Late Locoweed (see May for Early locoweed)

Harebells

Giant Hyssop

Skunk bush

Western Red Lily

Wild LIcorice

Brown Eyed Susan’s

Many flowered aster

Purple Prairie Clover – who could resist this plant?

White Prairie Clover, cousin to Purple Prairie Clover

Dotted Blazingstar

Short Stemmed Thistle

Short Stemmed Thistle

Field Geranium, naturalized

Red Clover

Plains Cinquefoil

Yellow Evening Primrose

Yellow Evening Primrose

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PInk flowered Onion

PInk flowered Onion

Gaillardia (Blanket Flower)

Spreading Dogbane

Showy Locoweed

Beautiful Sunflower

Silverleaf Psoralea

Smooth Aster

Prairie Coneflower

the seedhead of yellow flax

Hairy Golden Aster

“Underfoot”, Watercolour, 14.5 ” x 14.5″

“Early Morning”, Watercolour, 10″ x 8″

 

Pheasant Creek – Late June Flowers

In my humble opinion, June is the best month for wildflowers. There are so many new flowers coming to blossom, it is hard to keep up. Interesting seed heads to observe from earlier plants. The leaves of plants that are coming soon have emerged. It is also a beautiful month, unlike any other for startling prairie skies. Of course, the plants bloom long after my  contrived two week time periods. And yet, keeping note of the plants as they bloom has me noticing more. The more I learn, the more I notice.  The more I learn, the more questions I have. What a privilege it is to walk the same hills daily, to notice the ever changing plants and shrubs as well as the birds, animals and insects.

A beautiful year for wild roses

Gaillardia (or blanket flower)

Goatsbeard started to bloom at the beginning of June. the seedheads, like very large dandelion seed heads just came out at the end of June.

Ascending Purple Milk Vetch

Spreading Dogbane

Showy Locoweed. I have been admiring the furry leaves for many weeks. Finally, at the end of June, the first blossoms show up.

False Dandelion

Close up of Prickly Pear Cactus

Prickly Pear Cactus catching the last sun of the day

Harebell (and a small bit of bedstraw)

Western Wallflower (a member of the mustard family)

Caraway

Smooth Fleabane

Low Milkweed

Hedysarum (began blooming in early June)

Yarrow

Prairie Lily

Buckbrush

the plums of ground plum or are they?

Alfalfa…this is in the meadow as I approach the hills. Many people haven’t seen it before and comment on her beauty- in all shades of purple and cream

Fritilitary enjoying alfalfa’s sweetness

Hawksbeard (not sure which one) with chamomile in background

White Water-Crowfoot

Nuttall’s Atriplex (Atriplex gardneri) Antelope, mule deer, rabbits, and mourning doves graze on it. Its leaves are an important food source during the winter because of their persistency. It is especially important for sheep because it contributes to the minimum nutritional requirement for maintenance of gestating female sheep

Just at the end of June, the first prairie coneflower blossoms

Low Goldenrod

Which vetch this is I am not sure

 

Sources: Saskatchewan Wildflowers Website by Glenn Lee and Facebook Page of Saskatchewan Native Plants- Saskatchewan Native Plant Society 

Pheasant Creek – Early June Flowers

Despite the dry hills, it has been hard to keep up with all the new blooms and emerging plants this first two weeks of June. The air has been permeated with the distinctive smell of wolf willow in bloom – a prairie smell unlike any other. For most of this time, all the plants shown in my  late May post (with the exception of the fruit bushes) have continued to be in bloom as well. Even though 22 plants are pictured here, there are also plants I have seen which are not included here (cut leaf anenome, wood anenome, some milk vetches among them) and plants that I have missed altogether. Keeping this record is helpful to me. I notice more.

The first tiny gaillardia…almost like a dream of gaillardia!

Goat’s Beard

Wolf Willow – this beautiful scent filled the air the first week of June. Nothing like it!!

Indian Breadroot, also known as wild turnip

Indian Breadroot (This is a favourite plant of mine)

White Beard’s Tongue. Usually I have also found Blue Beard’s Tongue but not this year.

Love the colours in this young Saskatoon

Wild Rose

Twining Honeysuckle

Red Osier Dogwood

Yellow Flax

Silvery Groundsel dotting the hills right now

American Hedysarum

Scarlet Guara

Yellow Umbrella Plant

Cream Coloured Vetch

Fleabane (Smooth?)

Northern Bedstraw

 

 

Pygmy Flower – after blooming, also known as Fairy Candelabra

Scarlet Mallow

American Vetch

Short stemmed thistle

Meadow rue – found in the woods of Pheasant Creek

This is three flowered avens after blooming – you can see why it is called Prairie Smoke

Pheasant Creek – Early May Flowers

My friend and teacher Ron tells me that when we thank Mother Earth she knows! Doesn’t matter how we thank the earth, he says. You can bow, sing a song, strike a yoga pose, simply notice and pay attention, dance a jig, say a prayer, write a poem, offer a gift. However we do it, Mother Earth knows. According to Ron, she celebrates. She wants to  be noticed, to be loved, to be acknowledged, to be remembered, to be revered.

I don’t know that I have ever before taken the time to visit Pheasant Creek Coulee almost every day. It has been a gift in noticing, paying attention, being astonished, and returning home. My eye most often scans the earth, looking at stones, grasses, emerging plants, blossoming plants, and faded remnants of last year’s growth.  Once again, this post is mostly for myself – a  visual record of the plants that typically grown in Pheasant Creek during the first half of May. These wildflowers are both common, and uncommonly beautiful! Each year, it seems, i meet a new plant friend I managed to miss in all the springs before!! (This spring it is Sunloving Sedge.)

 

Early cinquefoil- with beautiful silver lining on the leaves, early cinquefoil comes up after the crocuses about the same time as moss phlox.

Moss phlox

Violet

Cushion milk vetch

This second week of May, cushion milk vetch dots the high sandy slopes

Sand Bladderpod

Sand Bladderpod

Lower towsnendia (usually seen in groups. Is this early?)

a last crocus  on a woody hillside (May 8, 2020)

Wild strawberry

Sunloving Sedge

Sunloving sedge

Plains Cymopterus (not a great photo. Less than an inch high. Part of the parsley family which you can see in its leaves)

Early Locoweed

Missouri Milk Vetch

Missouri Milk vetch

Showy Locoweed (the flowers not out yet, but some an impressive plant, so furry and luxurious!) Its related to Early Locoweed and flowers will be a beautiful blue/pink/purple

 

Golden Bean

Three flowered avens (May 13, 2020)

Pale comandra (very common, flowers not quite out)

Low Everlasting

Low Everlasting

Chokecherries leafing out (I could not resist this colour!!)

Hoary Puccoon – just about to pop! (May 16, 2020)

Sources: Wildflowers Across the Prairies,  by F.R. Vance, J.R. Jowsey and J.. MacLean, Western Producer Prairie Books, Saskatoon, 1984 and Glenn Lee’s excellent website.

Sticks and Stones (and maybe bones)

“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood in it.” George Eliot

Sticks and Stones (and maybe bones) was an all ages PLAYshop offered twice this summer. Both days, we began at Kerry Farm, and then drove to nearby Pheasant Creek Coulee where we spent a few hours exploring the meadows, hillsides, creek bed, and wooded areas around this part of the coulee. We then returned to Kerry Farm for lunch and an afternoon of rest and creativity (and one of the days, tree-climbing).

During the July PLAYshop, the wildflowers were blooming profusely, Saskatoon berries were plump and plentiful, the creek was running due to recent rains. A bone was found! On our August day, a few of the July wildflowers were still in bloom as well as the August beauties, there were still Saskatoon berries, and the creek bed was mostly dry and kind of green where there was moisture. The grasses were spectacular – every colour of green, as well as pink, yellow, rust, purple, and reddish. No bones were found, but a number of sticks and stones came back to Kerry Farm. My highlight during the second PLAYshop was this: a boy, running past me up the hill, declaring at top volume,”OH! I LOVE NATURE SO MUCH!” Makes me smile just to remember.

Below are some photos which will give you a feel for the beauty of Pheasant Creek Coulee, as well as the open hearted spirit each person brought to the day.

Photo Credit: Jody Hyndman

Photo Credit: Jody Hyndman

Photo Credit: Jody Hyndman

Photo Credit: Jody Hyndman

 

Bearberry

I return again and again to the same part of Pheasant Creek, in different seasons, at different times of day. I have learned where the wild bergamot flourishes, where the buffalo berries can be found, where the coyote digs her den, the location of the drumming  log of the ruffed grouse, or the tree that the pair of red tail hawks return to each year. While I know it as well as I know any place, I am constantly being surprised by new discoveries.

I see but I don’t see. Sometimes I amazed by what I have not noticed and what i have missed.

Take the bearberries, for example. I noticed them for a long time before I knew what they were called. I noticed them because they seemed out of place on the prairie hills with their deep green colour and the leathery feel and shiny look of their leaves. They seemed to belong more in a boreal forest.

At some point, I noticed the delicate pink bell shaped flowers that blossom in spring, or the red berries that come in the fall. In fall their leaves turn a deep red, and in early spring you will find patches of faded red bearberry leaves mixed with fresh green growth, as pictured below. Bearberry grows low to the ground as a trailing shrub, often close to stands of aspen or other trees. I usually find it on the coulee and valley hills, but it has a wide range across Canada.

Bearberry, early spring

Once I found out that this plant was called bearberry,  I learned that the leaves were an essential ingredient in kinnnickinick (blended smudging mixture used by many Indigenous peoples, with ingredients varying somewhat depending on locale).

Recently, when I was thinking I might have the beginnings of a bladder infection, I looked up herbs that can help with this. All ten plants listed can be found where I live. Top of the list and  and very plentiful was bearberry!!  I began by making tea with the leaves, but as the leaves are full of tannins, I have made cold water infusions instead (which do not release the tannins). I do this by tearing the leaves up and grinding them and letting them sit in water for 12 hours ( 1 teaspoon of leaves per cup of water). I then drain the water off and drink it through the day. It has a mild but very refreshing taste. This will only work if your urine is alkaline. Drinking a glass of water with a teaspoon of baking soda about an hour before drinking the bearberry water will alkalize your urine. A few cautions: This is not for pregnant women, and limit use to about two weeks.

Other medicinal benefits of bearberries can be found in The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North by Beverly Gray (see below). It is a fantastic resource. You can also find bearberry in health food stores as Uva-Ursi, or in plant nurseries.

Bearberries are aptly named according to Beverly Gray. She writes, “In fall, bears will ingest massive amounts of bearberries, which has a numbing/paralyzing action on the intestine. Bears follow this meal  with Carex, a rough edged sedge that ravels right through their intestines, dragging with it tapeworms  and other parasites paralyzed by the bearberry.”

Source:http://www.herbmuseum.ca/content/bearberry

Sources

Beverly Gray, The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North, Whitehorse: Aroma Borealis Press, 2011, pages 51-54

Mary Siisip Geniusz, Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have To Do Is Ask: Anishinabe Botanical Teachings, University of Minnesota Press, 2015. (“How Cedar and Bearberry Came into the World” is well worth reading, pages 33-36)

Kahlee Keane and Dave Howarth, The Standing People: Field Guide of Medicinal Plants for the Prairie Provinces, Self-published, 2003, pages 128- 129

 

 

Befriending Wildflowers (the noisier version)

It was a very hot and humid day when we set out to explore the wildflowers of Pheasant Creek Coulee, with small sketchbooks in hand.  Each sketchbook had several line drawings of flowers we hoped to find, with a space to name it ourselves, and a space for the common name. I had anticipated moving quickly across the pasture to the hills below but this gaggle of 5 girls and 2 moms stopped to look at  and appreciate every wildflower – they did not miss one – and gave each some very fun names. We collected a few to paint later and proceeded to a very steep hill full of western wild bergamots and a scary climb down  (for some!) that ended with a slide several feet down to the road!!

We returned to Kerry Farm a little overheated, but cooled down with a delicious potluck lunch. We found some shade to really look closely at our wildflowers and experiment with watercolour painting. Along the way, we visited Grandmother Willow (for a little tree climbing and some feather collecting) and said hi to the horses. We ended the day with some flower yoga and gymnastics as you can see.

This is a companion piece to Befriending Wildflowers (the Quiet Version)

Into the Hawthornes

Down on hands and knees

through the door of thorny branches,

just big enough

and into the hawthornes

right in the middle

 

sssshhh…if you can stay quiet

long enough

they come back

the birds, the squirrels

to eat the red berries

 

if you can stay as still as a hawthorne

you can hear the soft wingbeat of a fairy

 

if you can stay quiet

you can catch the scent

of the coyote who slept here last night

you can feel the slow heartbeat of the earth

that is holding you

loving you

back to life