Green Fire at Bernheim

Whoa!  I haven't posted to this blog for a month? Well, it's been a rough summer, with illness, refinishing the floors, a wedding and guests at our house for a week, and manning the Raptor Rehab booth at the state fair for 5 of 10 days. No wonder I'm tired! My husband is a great fan of Aldo Leopold, and studied at the Leopold Foundation to become a Land Ethic Leader, so last night he presented the Green Fire movie at Bernheim Forest. Many of the attendees were familiar with Leopold already, but agreed that they learned much about his life from this session. For example, did you know that Aldo Leopold and Isaac Bernheim (founder of the Forest) actually knew each other from working together at the United Nations? Once the projector was set up, I went out for a little stroll, since I haven't been to Bernheim much this summer.

The remains of Hurricane Isaac are expected to arrive in the Ohio Valley this weekend, and they weren't sure if the Blue Moon hike would be a go or no-go. Blue Moon? Just a song from the 1950's? No, a Blue Moon occurs when there are two full moons during the month. It was pretty cloudy by the time we left, but you could see a few bright beams in breaks of the cloud cover.

Lake Nevin is always a wonderful place to relax and meditate. Bernheim puts benches in good spots for their visitors who are tired and hot.

The lake is normally full of dragonflies diving at each other. Since this was towards the end of the day, most of them were gone, but I caught this one guy hovering over the shallow end of the lake. Ha! It's not often that I can catch one in flight!

The bees weren't ready to stop yet though. Hundred of them (honey bees, I think) visited these fragrant purple blooms. Darn, I should have looked at the name tag for the name of this flower.

While a different kind of bee checked out the milkweed. Wren Smith (our friend at Bernheim) keeps bees. I'll have to ask her about this one.

The summer flowers are pretty much done, but these asters shared space with a butterfly bush...

...while the last water lily bloomed in the pool outside the Garden Pavilion. We always enjoy a pleasant evening at Bernheim Forest and Arboretum, and Dick plans to return this afternoon for some volunteer time, while I head for the big Flea Market at the fairgrounds. To each his/her own!