Submitted by Julie Melton, Friends of Wisdom Prairie and Sunday Assembly Member

Remember painted turtles at Lost Lake basking on logs months ago? When they sense danger, they simply slide into the water and swim away. Some days you can see their noses poking out of the water.

In winter they are living under the ice. With very slowed down respiration, they absorb dissolved oxygen through their skin. If the oxygen level drops too low, they absorb carbonate from their bones and skull which prevents them from dying by asphyxiation. Meanwhile, fall hatchling turtles and unhatched babies winter in nests on land. The glycol-like fluid that replaces water in their cells keeps them from freezing solid. Turtles will appear again as soon as the ice begins to melt around the edges of the lake and the air warms.

Turtles can live for decades if they survive into maturity. Painted turtles mature at about six years old. In the spring or in August, when a male painted turtle is wooing a female, he will swim backward in front of her and wave his foreclaws around her head, stroking her snout and chin. If she chooses him, she will swim to the bottom of the lake, and he will follow. Turtle love.

Female turtles leave the safety of the water to dig a shallow nest on land. If she has to cross a road, she may be killed by people driving. She risks death from cats, dogs and other mammals. If she makes it, she lays round, soft shelled white eggs and leaves them to be incubated by sunlight and warm air. Turtle eggs are an important source of food for crows, herons, racoons, muskrat, foxes, snakes and chipmunks. Most nests are completely destroyed. The few hatchlings that survive must get to the lake where they are prey for fish and cranes. Precious few survive to adulthood.

In spite of all the dangers, turtles have existed for more than 200 million years. Mature turtles can live for decades. Lost Lake and the Barn Pond provide the perfect habitat with plants, worms, slugs, snails and insect larvae food. We are privileged to have these gentle creatures living at Holy Wisdom. They represent the life we care for when we care for the earth.

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By Julie Melton

The short answer is that they find food and shelter. But there is more to it. Many songbirds grow a third more feathers in preparation for winter. Fluffing up feathers creates thousands of tiny air pockets that hold heat close to birds’ bodies. Outer feathers help hold the heat in. Birds have to keep their feathers oiled to maintain waterproofing. Insulation isn’t enough.

Shelter is vital to survival. Birds can reduce their nighttime temperature to save energy. They still need protection from wind, snow and predators. Some birds huddle together in dense conifer boughs, shrubs, and under snow covered boughs and brush piles. Cavities in old trees are lifesavers. A tiny Chickadee’s body temperature falls from 108 to 90 degrees F. Blood flowing from a bird’s core warms the dangerously cold blood from the feet as it returns to the body. Even so, it burns about 30% of its fat resources at night.

Searching for food and shivering during the night use up stored fat energy. Songbirds need prodigious amounts of food in the cold to maintain body heat because the area of their body exposed to the cold is huge compared to their mass. A Chickadee needs to eat the equivalent of 250 sunflower seeds a day. By comparison, a 150 pound human would need to eat 52 pounds of food if they had the same energy requirements. Like other species of animals that survive winter, Black-capped Chickadees’ brains increase in size in the fall so they can remember where they cached seeds. The caches may be under bark, or in clusters of needles or leaves. Of course other birds and squirrels will eat some too.

Insects make up to 50% of some birds’ winter diet. Watch birds search trees, leaves, and pine needles for tiny spiders, insect larvae, egg sacks and berries. Gray dogwood and Virginia creeper provide fat rich berries. Gathering in a foraging flock increases the chance of finding food. Our diverse landscape feeds a variety of birds.

Songbirds survive the winter because they are created to deal with the cold. Wisdom Prairie provides them with food and shelter. They provide us with more evidence of God’s love of creation. Enjoy the awe!

This article was originally featured in our Weekly Wisdom newsletter. You can sign up for Weekly Wisdom for inspirational quotes, monastery updates, news and information about care for the earth, events & prayer requests: https://holywisdommonastery.org/news/newsletters/

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Restoring the land

The monastery has a master land management plan that calls for the restoration of all of the fire communities of southern Wisconsin. This includes Prairie—a grassland, Savanna—a grassland with a few widely spaced oak trees and Forest—an oak-hickory woods. These natural communities will grade one into the other in a continuum of tree density. None, a few and a lot. Preparing for these communities takes a lot of work.

Using the master land management plan as a guide, a list of activities is developed for the coming year each winter. Different activities are scheduled for the different seasons in order to perform the action when it is most appropriate. For example we have to pull garlic mustard plants before they disperse their seeds.

Habitat creation

Last winter we cut down some unwanted trees and dragged them out on the ice on Lost Lake, resting the base of the log on the shore and having the rest of the tree stick out into the lake. After the ice melted, the branches settled down into the mud forming a habitat for amphibians to live and have babies in. You may have noted that the trunks of these trees now slope down into the water, providing a place for turtles to sun themselves. I have a marvelous picture of a mother and father duck sharing one of those logs with a bunch of turtles. Beautiful!

Prairie burns

Early in the spring before things greened up, we had several prairie burns. I intend to schedule the burning of about 1/3 of our natural lands each year, which will fairly soon include savanna and forest in addition to the prairies. Historically all of these communities burned fairly often. One of the reasons for not burning every year is to provide a refuge for insects and other members of the community over time.

Invasive weed control

Each year, invasive weeds begin to grow in our natural lands and we need to remove them before they set seed, and wreak even more havoc in future years. So there is a rush of activity early in the growing season to control garlic mustard, reed canary grass, Dames rocket, Japanese hedge parsley, sweet clover and wild parsnip to name some of the most important of these problem plants.

Removing weedy trees

Over the past two years, we have been cutting down weedy trees in a fence row almost due east of the monastery and in a ravine in the old field just north of the fence row on the new parcel of land bought in 2012. This was a huge project—removing several hundred mature trees and all of the weedy buckthorn, honeysuckle and grapevines that lived under the trees. That project is essentially finished but we will need to follow up with an herbicide treatment of the re-sprouts.

New prairie growth

In the first couple of seasons after a prairie is planted, the most dominant vegetation are annual weeds. You can see a few of the little prairie plants just getting started under these towering weeds. Most frequently one has to mow the weeds down a couple times during the growing season to let a little light in for the prairie seedlings. On the 20 acres we planted on November 1, 2014, I mowed down the weeds twice last year. This year the prairie plants have been exceptionally successful with very few weeds, and we have decided not to mow at all, which is quite unusual. The area is covered with flowering prairie plants and is quite amazing to see. I’m thrilled! In May 2015 we planted another 9 acres of prairie southeast of the old barn. I mowed this twice last year, and will be mowing it in mid-season this year. Although there are a lot of prairie plants on that area, it has not come in as strong as the 2014 planting. I expect that many of the prairie plant seeds have yet to germinate, but will continue to do so over the next several years. These native plants have very complex dormancy requirements in order to germinate. In November 2015 we planted another 4 acres of prairie near the red barn and on the new stormwater detention basin. I have mowed this area this spring and will mow it again later in the season. It looks like a typical first year prairie seed sowing.

Planting oak trees

The first of the oak trees for the savanna were planted in June 2016. These were first year bur oak seedlings. The remnants of the acorn were still attached to the side of the little seedling. When it comes to planting oaks, and especially bur oaks, the rule of thumb is the smaller the better. Bur oaks send out a tap root that goes straight down, and they definitely do not like it if that tap root is disturbed. I have learned the hard way that planting more mature bur oaks is a treacherous thing to do and can inflict a lot of heart ache. I got these oak seedlings from friends of mine who operate a nursery in Reeseville, WI where they specialize in producing lining out stock. These are little seedlings that other nurseries buy and grow to larger plants before sale. The acorns for our bur oaks were collected in Waterloo WI. I have had to put wire cages over the little oaks to protect them from the deer.

Tree removal from woods

Another large project that we have just begun is removing unwanted trees and shrubs from our woodlands and remnant savanna. This project is huge, and I hope to obtain a grant to hire a logger to advance the project more quickly than we can do with volunteers. Let me say however, that the volunteers have made good progress in the remnant savanna just west of the red barn. Here we will be releasing several old mature white oaks that undoubtedly stood on a savanna here before European settlement. They will be impressive to see after the weedy trees and shrubs around them are removed.

New walking trails

We have been working with Drew Hanson, a very talented trail consultant, to devise a new trail system for the monastery grounds, including the 53 acre Wisdom Prairie parcel the sisters acquired in 2012. I think you will enjoy walking these new trails after they are installed, in order to get to areas that were more or less inaccessible before. We have also developed a new trail system for the old North Prairie, which is now called the North Mendota Wildlife Area that Dane County owns. We have mowed in the new trails, and later this season we will be applying herbicide to the turf of some old trails that are to be eliminated. Then in November we will be planting prairie seeds on these redundant trails.

Prairie seeding

We have enough prairie seed on hand that we received from Dane County Parks and Ron Endres, a special and generous friend of the monastery, to plant 3 acres. One acre of seed will be for the eliminated trails on the North Mondota Wildlife Area, the second acre of seed is to plant prairie on the old fence row that had telephone poles in it until last winter, and the third acre of seed is to sow prairie over the old driveway that went to the farm house (which was burned down by the Middleton Fire Department last year) and barn.

So, we do have enough good work to keep us out of mischief this summer and well into fall as we care for the earth!

The post Nature Notes Summer 2016 appeared first on Holy Wisdom Monastery.

Photo by Mary Kay Baum

Is it winter yet? It sure doesn’t feel like it as I write this in mid-December. I like the unseasonably mild temperatures because I can get some more work done on the grounds. It also makes me feel rather uneasy. This is not normal and may portend worse things for creation in the future. I do hope those folks in Paris will be able to develop a workable plan for reversing the heating up of the earth’s atmosphere.

I believe that the sisters at Holy Wisdom Monastery and their hundreds of loyal assistants are contributing to the slowing of climate change, but they of course, can’t do it by themselves. The larger village is going to have to pitch in too.

One of the interesting, and largely unseen, ways in which the sisters are sequestering carbon is tying it up in the root systems of the prairie plants. The roots of most prairie plants grow very deep into the soil, some as deep as 20 feet. Sort of like falling leaves in the autumn, the roots of these plants die and are replaced over time, keeping the new roots of these perennial plants young and vigorous and able to sustain the plant over time. The dying roots become organic matter in the soil, some of which remains in the soil for many years. This ties up carbon and keeps it from turning into carbon dioxide; the most significant of the greenhouse gases causing climate change. The deep rich soils here in the middle of the continent come from the prairies of century’s past whose organic matter is still in our soils, but is diminishing under agricultural land use. Our new prairies will recharge this reservoir of organic matter and the carbon it contains.

Agronomic crops like corn and soy beans have rather shallow root systems and thus contribute much less to carbon sequestration. In the past year (actually one year and 7 days) we have planted 33 acres of agricultural fields into prairie. The Friends of Wisdom Prairie and the many volunteers who accomplished this good work should feel proud of their contributions to the well-being of the world. We are trying to act locally and think globally. I do believe it might be said that the sisters and their many friends are thinking on a higher plane where they are acting locally and thinking celestially.

On another topic; we are trying to find a logger this winter to remove a lot of trees from the monastery land as we prepare to restore these lands to pre-European settlement savanna. We want to do it in the winter when the ground is frozen to protect the soils from compaction under heavy machinery. This is a huge project and we are doing it this way to save a large amount of volunteer labor on this dangerous work, and so it can happen quickly in the hope that we might make money from the sale of the timber. It’s not as though there won’t be work for the volunteers to do afterward, we will use volunteers to deal with the slash (smaller branches that are not suitable for sawn logs) and weedy plants that will follow the disturbance. Eventually we will be also be planting other species that are currently missing from these ecological communities. I hope some of you reading this will come and help us with this good work in the next few years. We would love to have you.

Another community that I wish to highlight here is the Friends of Wisdom Prairie. This friends and advocacy group has come through its first full year very well. Very well indeed! They have contributed hundreds of hours of volunteer work on the monastery’s lands. The largest such event was the prairie planting on May 9, 2015 where over 60 volunteers came and made short work of sowing seeds on 9 acres of an old soy bean field. We had a good time! The Friends also learned about various aspects of “caring for the earth” with a series of dinner lectures and outings to other natural lands. Providing leadership for this organization is a Friends of Wisdom Prairie Council. They have been most fortunate to assemble an impressive, engaged and hard working group of people. It has been a pleasure for me to see how they have grown into a vibrant community. If you have not joined the Friends of Wisdom Prairie yet, please consider joining this wonderful group of people who are helping the sisters “care for the earth.” Join today.

The post Nature Notes Winter 2015-2016 appeared first on Holy Wisdom Monastery.

This is the season of harvest. Since the Dane County Parks have been so generous with us over the past few years, we have been working with them in our seed collecting efforts this year. Additionally they have the expertise, the machinery and the ability to handle large quantities of prairie seed very well. At two of our recent Friends of Wisdom Prairie workdays we have collected seed at Dane County Parks. The early October Wisdom Prairie Workday had us collecting on the North Mendota Wildlife Area (formerly the sisters North Prairie). Among other things we collected wild quinine and pale purple coneflower. There is something wonderful about gathering in this harvest of nature’s bounty. For me at least, it is a very uplifting experience. It has made me think of that American spiritual “Bringing in the Sheaves” which is based on Psalm 126:6, “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.”

In the scheme of prairie restoration, we first sow the seeds. Starting on November 1, 2015 and then again on May 9, 2015 we have sown nearly 30 acres of land at Holy Wisdom Monastery as a part of the Wisdom Prairie Project. In the growing season after sowing, a lot of opportunistic weeds come up as well as some of the little prairie plant seedlings. We mow these weeds off to let some light get down into the vegetation so the new little seedlings of prairie plants can grow. Eventually the prairie plants will out-compete these weeds and prairie will take over. However, this will take three to five years before it starts to look like a prairie. We walked around in the mown prairie planting in late August and found 35 species of prairie plants. We planted nearly 100 different kinds of seeds, and I expect that the others will be coming along in the next few years. The seed dormancy on many of these wild plants is very complex, but given a couple of seasonal temperature changes and some moisture, the dormancy requirements most likely will be met.

We have also been working on preparations for a savanna. We have cut down a lot of weedy trees and have been combating some tenacious weeds before we plant both the widely spaced trees and the mostly herbaceous under story. It will probably be at least another season before we begin this adventure of restoring one of the rarest of ecological communities in North America. Previous to European settlement in Wisconsin, there were over 7,000,000 acres of savanna. It was much more common than open prairie. I think it was and still is one of most picturesque forms of nature. I think we will have to be patient however, as it takes a long time for a bur oak to grow into one of those magnificent beings of the savanna. But it will be fun to be on the journey.

The oak-hickory forests of southern Wisconsin were another fire community that depended on fire to run through them on a fairly regular basis in order to sustain this vegetation type. Holy Wisdom Monastery’s woods were, in pre-European settlement times, such a fire sustained woodland or a savanna. The two vegetation types grade one into the other and differ in the spacing of the trees and the other plants that grow in the varying shade density and root competition. Since the settlement of this land in the 1840s the fires mostly were prevented from happening, as the farmers didn’t want their farm to burn. As a result trees shrubs and herbaceous understory plants not normally found in these woodlands started to grow and compete with the Bur Oak, White Oak and Hickory trees. Our plan is to remove these trees, shrubs and herbaceous understory plants that do not belong to the oak-hickory Forest and to reintroduce fire and the plants that belong to that community. Right now, we are trying to find a logger to come to the monastery to harvest the unwanted trees. We hope to do this in the winter when the ground is frozen to protect the soil. So far we have been challenged to find a forester interested to come and do a logging project of this magnitude. We are still working on it.

The sisters have chosen ecological restoration, or putting the ecological communities that were here before settlement back together on their land. It is wonderfully fulfilling to work to share our space on the earth with the other beings of creation.

The post Nature notes fall 2015 appeared first on Holy Wisdom Monastery.

Although I just turned 72, when I think of summer, visions of getting out of school and having months to run around outdoors and also work alongside my parents in field and garden come to mind. How glorious to have such freedom to be outside.

At the monastery, many volunteers, Paul Boutwell and I will be enjoying that freedom together—being outside and looking after the sisters’ bounty of land and nature. It’s truly a great adventure implementing this grand plan to restore all of the fire communities of southern Wisconsin at Holy Wisdom Monastery; prairie, savanna and oak woodlands. To date, the sisters and their many helpers have restored well over 100 acres of prairie, and have started on the restoration of savanna and oak-hickory forest.

Last November, we planted 20 acres of prairie and in May this year we planted another nine acres. We had a new storm water detention facility installed in the old soy bean field where the nine acres were planted in May. Prairie seeds were planted on the berms that form the stormwater detention facility and wet prairie seeds will be sown in the basin in November this year. So far this spring, a lot of weeds have come up in those newly sown prairies; mostly lambs quarter and a few bull thistles. We will have to mow these weeds off to about 10 inches in July to let light into the newly emerging prairie seedlings. In our walks over these new prairie areas, we have seen about a dozen prairie plants we can recognize and many other non-descript little greenies that will be our prairie in a few years.

Another project that we have expended a lot of energy on is the removal of weedy trees and shrubs from the old fence rows and along the Highway M right-of-way that borders our new prairies. We removed them so they do not drop their seeds in the new prairie and overwhelm the little prairie plants. Also, by removing the trees and shrubs, we eliminate the shade and root competition so the new prairie can develop properly.

Then there is the constant effort to control the most aggressive of the exotic invaders such as garlic mustard, and reed canary grass. There is no shortage of work.

I have given several tours of the older prairies at the monastery this spring and, this gives me hope for the future. If you had a chance to see the display of lupine in the Mendota Prairie just east of the monastery building, you know what I mean.

This large task of restoring the ecological integrity of the sister’s land makes me feel fulfilled and I know we are doing the right thing. We are a part of God’s creation and caring for that creation must be a good thing.

I hope you will find time to come and visit Holy Wisdom Monastery this summer. Better yet, sign up for one of the volunteer work days and be a part of this good work.

The post Nature Notes Summer 2015 appeared first on Holy Wisdom Monastery.

By Ron Endres and Will Mann

As you drive around Lake Mendota on County Highway M and pass in front of the Holy Wisdom Monastery property, you see two primary ecosystems: prairie (or fields that have been recently planted as prairies) and woodland. Prairie and woodland are wonderful ecosystems. If we finished constructing the prairies, cleaned up the weeds and hedgerows, did a bit of maintenance in the woodland, it would be acceptable to call the Wisdom Prairie project complete.

But in nature this is not exactly how a prairie transitions to woodland.  In pre-settlement days, the Eastern states were comprised of deciduous forests and the Midwestern states were comprised of short and tall grass prairies. The occurrence of fire caused both by lightning and by the Native Americans defined the borders of these ecosystems.

Prairies burned easily with an abundance of fuel.  These hot fires kept the woodlands from expanding into the prairies by killing the young hardwood seedlings. Woodlands were resistant to fire because the tree canopy shaded the ground and less fuel for fire was available. But some tree species, namely bur and white oak, as well as shagbark hickory, are resistant to fire. They thrived in a transition area between prairies and woodlands called savannas. Oaks were the dominant trees, hence the term oak savanna. The bur oak has several adaptations to fire including an extensive root system and thick, corky bark. A thick, woolly cap protects its acorns. Oaks not only tolerate fire, but their flammable leaves promote it.

Oak savannas by definition generally have a minimum of one tree per acre and up to 50% canopy cover. It is a fire-dependent ecosystem distinguished by widely-spaced, spreading trees with a unique group of plants, mammals, birds and insects living below.

Common plants found in an oak savanna include:  giant hyssop, tall anemone, lupine, Canadian milk vetch, false foxglove, white wild & cream indigo, wood betony, Jacob’s ladder, New Jersey tea, yellow pimpernel, shooting star, Culver’s root, wild rye, cream gentian, golden alexander and alumroot.

Common birds found in an oak savanna include:  kestrel, red headed woodpecker, Eastern wood peewee, turkey, white breasted nuthatch, flicker, indigo bunting, towhee, sparrow and bobolink.

Oak savanna is one of the most threatened ecosystems in the Midwest. Less than 0.01% of the original 5.5 million acres of savanna is intact today.  Many things contributed to the near demise of oak savanna. First and foremost, absence of the use of fire allowed invasion by dense shrubs and trees as well as invasive species. These areas became full forests. Some savannas were cleared and developed for homesteads. Others were purchased and logged for railroads. Some with poor soils were grazed so heavily that all the native species eventually disappeared.

Holy Wisdom is planning the construction of an oak savanna for three primary reasons. First of all, after the hedgerows and unwanted trees and shrubs are removed, it would be highly desirable to have a screen between the highway and the houses on the monastery property. Secondly, an oak savanna would be visibly appealing, softening the transition between prairie and woodlands. Finally and maybe most importantly, it is the right thing to do. Restoring a threatened ecosystem is always a worthwhile cause.  It will more closely mirror the landscape and ecosystems present before Wisconsin was settled.

Planting an oak savanna will be a very long process. There are no oaks in the proposed savanna area. It will take approximately 20 years for a bur oak to grow to 20 feet tall. But it is worth the investment in time. A mature bur oak tree provides a storm water control service worth approximately $3500 and removes 19.56 pounds of nitrogen, sulfur, ozone and particulate matter every year (American Forests 2007).

Rather than being satisfied with the reconstruction of prairie and the improvement of the existing woodland, the visionaries at Holy Wisdom Monastery are looking far into the future and embarking on the development of a third ecosystem—one that has aesthetic, historical and ecologically proactive values.  With the long-term planning and hard work this will entail, there will be an oak savanna at Holy Wisdom to complement the prairie and woodland.

*****

Join the Friends of Wisdom Prairie to help support the restoration efforts at Holy Wisdom Monastery or volunteer at an upcoming Wisdom Prairie Workday. For more information click on the links above or contact Greg Armstrong at 608-836-1631, x123.

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What an exciting and eventful year 2014 has been for the land at Holy Wisdom Monastery. The Friends of Wisdom Prairie came into existence to assist the sisters in caring for the earth. And, wow, have they done a great job of doing that. They worked on the land, performing the many land management tasks that are needed to carry out ecological restorations and to sustain them over time. We had a huge prairie seed sowing on nearly 20 acres of what had been agricultural land. 98 volunteers had a wonderful experience of planting about 100 different kinds of prairie seeds under the expert guidance of Wayne Pauly of Dane County Parks and the highly trained and experienced Friends of Wisdom Prairie members Ron Endres, Will Mann, Nancy Schlimgen, and Randy Hoffman. Anecdotal reports that I have heard indicate what a wonderful experience it was for the many volunteers who came to help with this good work.

The Friends of Wisdom Prairie volunteers have also done many other important tasks that all can be construed as caring for the earth. This includes removal of weedy trees and shrubs to make way for a large, many-acre savanna, and the removal of other weedy trees and shrubs from our prairies and woodlands. In addition, we had our annual harvest of garlic mustard and reed canary grass.

The Friends of Wisdom Prairie planted and harvested enthusiasm from its members through environmental conservation-oriented programs such as our Dinner Lectures and Outings to other natural areas. It seems to me that we won’t be able to care for the earth very well if we don’t have an enthusiastic group of people to do the caring. My sense is that we have engaged a lot of people and they are excited about contributing to the well-being of creation. It is good work.

I am even more enthusiastic about the prospects for our future efforts of caring for the earth. We have a comprehensive land management plan in hand that calls for the restoration and management of all the southern Wisconsin fire communities that occupied this land previous to European settlement. This includes not only prairie but also savanna and oak woodlands. And of course we have a couple ponds with their associated wet lands and pond inhabitants.

We plan on planting an additional 10-13 acres of prairie on May 2, 2015. You are all welcome to come and help us with that prairie restoration. A storm water detention facility is being planned for a part of the old soy bean field where the prairie is being planted. Eventually, prairie plants will also be planted over the storm water basin.

This winter, we will be cutting weedy trees and shrubs from the ditch along County Road M so they do not act as a source of weed seeds in the future. We will also be cutting trees and shrubs from the land just north of the field we planted to prairie last fall. This area will become the savanna in future years, although it will take us several years to cleanse it of weeds before most of the savanna can be planted. The one exception is that we will be planting some of the burr oak trees of the savanna next spring.

The vision for the trajectory of all this effort is just wonderful to contemplate. I anticipate it looking like the magnificent wilderness of prairie, savanna and forest that covered this land for centuries. The pioneers that settled this land were awe struck by the beauty of this landscape. We want our children to be awe struck by its beauty once again.

Join the Friends of Wisdom Prairie  and help us in this good work focusing on the Benedictine value of stewardship of creation.

The post Nature Notes Winter 2014-2015 appeared first on Holy Wisdom Monastery.

Restoring the health of the land at Holy Wisdom Monastery

The sisters, and their many friends, at Holy Wisdom Monastery have been working at renewing the ecological health of their land for nearly two decades. During that time they have restored over 95 acres of tall grass prairie, the kind that occupied some of this land prior to European settlement. In doing so, they have increase the biological diversity on their land; providing a place to live, and food to eat, for animals, birds, insects and many other organisms.

The motivation of the sisters to care for the earth in this way, at Holy Wisdom Monastery, came from the universal reverence for creation and the stability of Benedictine monastic communities. These spiritual concepts came down through the centuries and still hold a central place in the lives of those who follow the Rule of Benedict. The sisters are also motivated by the teachings of another Benedictine, Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard believed in a creation-centered theology and wrote and spoke eloquently about the human relationship to God and nature. “Humanity is the most profound of all the works of God’s mighty creation made in a wondrous way with great glory from the dust of the earth and so entangled with the other parts of creation that it can never be separated from them.” This sounds like ecology from someone who lived in the 1100s. The sister’s also appreciate ideas from more recent thinkers on the human relationship to nature. For example Aldo Leopold wrote in A Sand County Almanac, “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” The sisters do truly love and respect the land and give generously toward caring for the earth.

In 2012 the sisters initiated an ecological land assessment and planning process. They recently received the final Ecological Assessment and Management Plan which analyzes the current condition of monastery land and provides a plan for a comprehensive ecological restoration plan. This new plan calls for restoring several different kinds of ecological communities that once occupied this part of the earth. These include the fire communities of pre-settlement Southern Wisconsin; prairie, savanna, oak hickory woodlands as well as wetlands and other waterways. This rather ambitious plan will require expert understanding of how to restore the diverse ecology of the land, and will require a significant amount of effort to accomplish the work. They have a very modest staff to do this work and therefore will require many more hands to carry out this large restoration project. With this in mind, the sisters created a Friend’s group called the Friends of Wisdom Prairie.

The Friends of Wisdom Prairie is comprised of a fairly large group of people who wish to help the sisters care for the earth. This is an environmental organization with a Benedictine flavor! The members will help organize and carry out volunteer work days and participate in environmental education events including dinners, lectures, outings to visit other natural areas and tours. We hope you will help restore the land and preserve the Benedictine tradition of care for the earth at Holy Wisdom Monastery.  Become a Friend and join today!

To learn more about the Friends of Wisdom Prairie or learn about their upcoming events visit benedictinewomen.org/care-for-the-earth/friends-of-wisdom-prairie/ or contact me, Greg Armstrong, at garmstrong@benedictinewomen.org, 608-836-1631, x123.

The post Nature Notes Fall 2014 appeared first on Holy Wisdom Monastery.

Prairie dock growing at Holy Wisdom Monastery

We had a spring with lots of moisture. The good news is that all the plants are growing vigorously, providing cover and lots of food for all the critters that live at Holy Wisdom Monastery. The bad news is that the weeds, those non-native invaders of the prairie, savanna and woods, are also growing vigorously. So Paul Boutwell, many volunteers and I have been busy trying to rid the natural lands of these weeds. Garlic mustard in the shady places and reed canary grass in the open areas, are a couple of examples. Wow, they do keep you busy since they are very aggressive.

Speaking of volunteers; there is a newly formed Friends of Wisdom Prairie which hopefully will provide an additional group of volunteers to help care for the prairies, savanna and woodlands at the monastery. This support group will have opportunities to learn about the ecological communities at Holy Wisdom Monastery, attend interesting lectures and go on outings to other natural areas. If you have not joined the Friends of Wisdom Prairie yet, we invite you to become a member at benedictinewomen.org/environment/friends-of-wisdom-prairie/friends-of-wisdom-prairie-membership/. We would love to have you join us on this new adventure to help the sisters care for the earth.

Summer is the time when most of the plants in the prairie flower. One wonderful way to experience these plants is to take a walk in the prairie every couple of weeks. You will be amazed at the diversity of beautiful and interesting plants that come into flower on each walk. In my opinion, knowing what kind of plants they all are adds to the enjoyment. So you might want to take a wildflower book with you. The Friends of Wisdom Prairie has a series of tours on the natural lands at the monastery where you can learn about some of the plants that you see on these walks. The next Walk and Talk is Saturday, July 19, 2014 from 1:00-2:30 pm. Contact me at garmstrong@benedictinewomen.org or 608-836-1631, x123 if you wish to attend.

One of the more complex groups of plants to tell apart from one another are all of the yellow flowered composites, found in the prairie during the summer and fall. The sunflower family; sunflowers, daisies, dandelions and many more all have a characteristic composite flower cluster or inflorescence, in botanist jargon. Each of the little petals around the ‘flower’ is actually a whole flower as well as the little things in the disc in the center. So what looks like a flower is actually a composite of lots of flowers. Many of them look very similar and there must be some evolutionary advantage to having yellow flowers in the prairie in summer as there are so many of them. I have a big thick book on my book shelf called The Sunflower Family of the Upper Midwest just full of pictures and description of all these beautiful plants. I guess my favorite yellow composite of the prairie is the prairie dock with its big elephant ear leaves and a 6 foot slender stem with yellow composite flower at the top. Silphium terebinthenaceum is its Latin name. Come on one of the Friends of Wisdom Prairie Walk and Talk tours and I will introduce you to prairie dock.

When the government surveyor John Millette surveyed section 32 of what is now called the Town of Westport (where Holy Wisdom Monastery is located today) in 1832, he recorded in his notebook that he found prairie and savanna. Savanna was the most common vegetation type of what is now called Dane County Wisconsin. Savanna is a grass land similar in many ways to prairie but with a few widely spaced trees growing in it. In the case of our area they were mostly bur oak and white oak. The early settles called these areas oak openings. Those early settlers wrote of how beautiful these oak openings were—sort-of a park like setting of these broad, open grown trees, with flowers and grasses between. We intend to restore savanna at Holy Wisdom Monastery as well as prairie and woodlands. I am very enthusiastic about the prospect of working on this long term project to restore savanna at the monastery. I hope some of you might come and be enthused with me. It should be great fun and a wonderful opportunity to care for the earth.

Enjoy the summer at Holy Wisdom Monastery and visit often.

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