Williamsburg Villager April 2020

As I write this, we have had to lock the front door of the Store to only do drive up service to-go. The Museum is only open for very limited hours. COVID-19 has everyone hunkered down. I had hoped this would not happen in my lifetime, but I’ve watched enough movies to know that it was an eventuality.

So now what? We’ll keep on here at the store as well as we can, with to-go business. Eventually, if this goes awhile, we’ll have shopping by appointment like the fancy stores in the big cities. It will become a struggle at Marlene’s since we don’t have a broad base to do to-go orders with, but maybe with warmer weather we can reduce hours to just a few days and weekends to keep things going. I’m working on an online ordering system for Marlene’s to make it easier. Keep up with Marlene’s on social media, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to be “in the know”!

It is nice having Trask and Mason both at home when I get there. Trask has been doing all of his classes online since the 16th and is keeping busy. Upper level engineering degrees are almost all completed online anyway, it’s the team projects that have become a challenge. Mason starts online classes on March 23rd and we’ll see how the high schools keep up with the kids. Prom has been postponed and I feel very sorry for all the graduates of college and high school that are missing out on this milestone. Amy is stressed and worried about all the students from McIntire that may be going without the basic necessities of life while being absent from school. It’s sad as a society that we have leaned so heavily on the public schools for our kids' food and after-school care.

We have a great article from our newest correspondent in Japan. Hope you enjoy Ivan’s Insights!

Stay safe. Be well. Remember kindness.

Spring Wildflowers Can Add Color To Life During Challenging Times

by Nadia Navarrete-Tindall - Native Plants Specialist

Life is stressful in these days of sheltering in place and social distancing, but there is still one great big place where we all can go safely. Outdoors! It has been over thirty years since I first came to this country to study at Southern Illinois University from my native El Salvador. Being from the tropics I was used to seeing green and other colors in the landscape all year long. I arrived at the end of winter, so the vegetation was still dormant, which looked dead to me and made me a little nostalgic for tropical warmth and color.

To fight my melancholy and improve my English, I joined a local environmental group and I started hiking in natural areas like the Shawnee National Forest and Giant City State Park. Around mid-March I was taken by my new friends to places, where, to my surprise, wildflowers were growing. My first vivid experience was to see a patch of bluebells in the middle of leafless trees and brown leaves on the ground. The sight was beautiful! Blue is my favorite color and I have never seen flowers that gorgeous. Bluebells have delicate pink to blue flowers which attract little bees, and ruby-throated hummingbirds feed on the tubular flowers. In the spring, the luscious foliage offers shelter to other wildlife.

This was when I began appreciating something that nature provides for free. It was good therapy! Once I started learning about my new surroundings I wanted to learn more and started to feel at home. Back then, I did not have a place to establish my own plants, so I became a regular in these natural places. This made me realize the diversity that exists in the woodlands of the Midwest.

Years later, in early 2000, my husband Randy and I moved to Missouri, and I became involved with research at Prairie Fork Conservation Area. I met Pat Jones and Jamie Coe back then and got reacquainted with the spring wildflowers that I first saw in Southern Illinois. In early spring I could see again bluebells, growing beautifully in Pat’s yard in the company of bellwort, wild geranium, bloodroot (see April 2019 issue of this newsletter), purple trillium, toothwort, Solomon’s seal, black cohosh, celandine poppy, sweet Williams- a native phlox, spring beauty, Jacob’s ladder and woodland spider wort to name a few. Pat and Jamie would take an annual trip to Missouri Wildflowers Nursery, the first nursery in Missouri specializing only in native plants. They added more plants in the shaded garden through the years. These and many other spring blooming plants can be found in other sites at Prairie Fork and in many conservation areas.

If you would like to increase your inventory of native plants in your garden or farm, you can check the Grow Native! website for a list of vendors near you. For additional information feel free to contact me at the Facebook page: Native Plants and More, or send me an email at Navarrete-TindallN@LincolnU.edu. You can also check the Missouri Department of Conservation website.

By growing these and other wildflowers in your garden, they may serve you as therapy and encourage you to stay outdoors longer. Remember, according to doctors, the COVID- 19 virus does not survive much outdoors under sunlight. In addition, you would help to protect pollinators like butterflies, birds and bees.

So, go outside! Garden! Walk and observe! Breathe deeply! Maintain a safe distance from others while you do it and check on those spring wildflowers starting to show their beauty!