Kaw Valley Almanac

This still vibrant prairie or downy gentian is a good reason to continue to walk an area prairie, even as sunflowers and goldenrods finish up. The warm season grasses will begin turning color just like the trees this week.

Asters come in a variety of colors, and their name is derived from the Latin and Greek word for “star.” This will be a good week to observe both the floral and celestial asters — fall constellations, Jupiter, and Saturn.

The purple silky asters and the yellow blossoms of the Great Plains goldenrod await you at the Prairie Park Nature Center prairie, located southeast of 27th and Harper in Lawrence.

Insects continue to be prolific, with lots of monarchs and other butterflies, dragonflies, cicadas, grasshoppers, mantids and walking sticks, and katydids and moths after dark. Help tag monarchs from 8 a.m. to noon this Saturday at the Baker Wetlands Discovery Center.

With morning lows dropping into the 60s and even 50s this week, it’s the season for fog. If there is no wind, you can sometimes see steam devils, which like dust devils are caused by warming air rising in a vortex that is made visible in this case by fog.

As the Dog Days of summer slip away, here is a picture of a Sun Dog Day, taken on Sunday, with mini-rainbow bright spots to the right and left of the setting sun. Sun Dogs are caused by sunlight reflecting off ice crystals in cirrus clouds formed by an isolated thunderstorm that injected moisture into the stratosphere.

Monarch butterflies have benefitted from enough moisture and not too much heat to recolonize well in this region.

Showy partridge pea, a native annual, yellow-flowered legume, has begun to bloom in area prairies. Ragweed will be pollinating soon.

The Perseid meteor shower will be peaking Wednesday evening/Thursday morning after midnight, and with moonless skies, if the clouds don’t interfere, you could see more than 100 meteors per hour.

When it gets too hot and dry, some animals aestivate, a type of summer hibernation where they typically hole up in the ground and wait for cooler, moister conditions.

Now is the time to enjoy the purple wildflower called gayfeather or blazing star.

There are still wild raspberries and blackberries for the picking, check currants, wild plums and gooseberries, while elderberries are beginning to form and will be ripening in a few weeks.