These short articles are written to highlight connections of the plants, history and lore of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden with different time frames or outside connections. A web of intersections.
This month highlights the upcoming bird count, the completion of the fence project, colorful autumn fruit, how Eloise Butler spent Christmas, plus a historical Garden photo.
This Month
The Winter Bird Count
National Audubon’s 125th Christmas bird count is approaching. The area around the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden is part of the Minneapolis West count circle and count day is Sunday December 15th irregardless of weather conditions.
This will be the 3rd year in a row for a count in this area. Prior to the 2022/2023 count there was a 60 year gap in counting this area. The bird groups that counted some of this area in earlier years such as the Minneapolis Bird Club and Avifaunal Bird Club suffered a decline in membership and interest and while other parts of the metro area continued with the counts, this area was neglected.
Mr. J. S. Futcher, one the early local birders who has long been associated with the Wildflower Garden and the Friends, maintained records of the counts of the Minneapolis Bird Club from 1939 to 1952 (The 1952 count included parts of Theodore Wirth Park) and of the Avifaunal Club till their last count in 1961.
If you are interested in taking part, contact Susan Wilkins, Curator of Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary at this email link. Sixty three persons participated in the 2022/2023 count, in 2023/2024 - twice that.
Below: One of the rare birds counted statewide in the 2022/2023 count is the Hermit Thrush, shown here on an Eastern Red Cedar. Only three were sighted throughout Minnesota. Photo ©Lance Leonhardt/Audubon.
Fence Project Completed
The replacement of Wildflower Garden fencing on the east and northeast side of the Wildflower Garden funded by the Friends is now complete.
This project replaced the aged 1946 fence with the type used by MPRB in the winter of 2022 when they replaced a fence section on the east side and continues from where the MPRB project left off and ends at the back gate path. The new fence is repositioned outward from the existing fence and incorporates into the protected area of the Wildflower Garden a wild area that is now relatively free of invasives, due to the work over past years by the Friends Invasive Plant Action Group (FIPAG) and MPRB staff. The additional area eliminates some unofficial paths that had entered this area.
With this new area, the 2022 MPRB fence section, and wrought iron fencing at the front and back of the Garden done in previous years by the Friends, 2/3rds of the Garden is now surrounded by updated fencing.
In the MPRB announcement, Superintendent Al Bangoua said “The Friends of the Wildflower Garden has been an ardent supporter of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary for decades. We sincerely appreciate their ongoing dedication to the Garden.”
You can read the entire MPRB announcement here.
Colorful capsules late in the year.
Leaf color is the highlight of the autumn season in our latitude but the fruits of our native plants should not be neglected for color or for landscape display, especially those harder fruits that linger into late fall and early winter.
Highlighted here are those of deep yellow to red shades. Not surprisingly, most are produced by woody shrubs.
One of the most captivating are the 4-cornered-hat shaped capsules with the brilliant red seeds inside of Eastern Wahoo. When they persist after the leaves fall from the plant it is the allusion of reddish popcorn hanging from the bare branches.
Below: Fruit capsules of Eastern Wahoo prior to opening.
The red clusters of the Staghorn and Smooth Sumac will last into the winter months before birds go after them. Prickly ash shrubs produce a red capsule with a shiny black seed inside. Climbing bittersweet has orange capsule enclosing red fruit.
Most hawthorns will have a reddish berry and need we mention rose hips of the wild roses. In the deep yellow to orange spectrum is the Horse Gentian which is only one noted here that is not a shrub.
Below: Autumn rose hips of Arkansas Rose (aka Prairie Rose).
All photos in article by G D Bebeau
Christmas at Malden
Two sisters, Cora and Eloise, grew up on the Oliver Butler farm in Maine. Cora married and moved to Malden, near Boston and Eloise who never married moved to Minneapolis. Their lives were forever intertwined. For 35 years they spent the summer months together during Eloise’s school summer break, then when Eloise became Wildflower Garden Curator they spent the winter months together every year for the next 23 years.
Below: Young sisters, Eloise (left) and Cora Butler (right). Butler and Pease family photos
The later years were not the most pleasant. We know something of those winter times at Malden from the letters Eloise sent to Martha and Bill Crone in Minneapolis which Martha preserved and were rescued from destruction by Martha Hellander. Eloise always included the joyous in her letters along with the sometimes grim reality. The letters touch on the family affairs at Malden and the Christmas holidays.
“I have been more than busy since Christmas” Eloise wrote in January 1925 with a word of thanks "for the ingenious egg-slicer so convenient for the housekeeper into which I am transformed during the winter months. I have been busy with some special work for my sick brother who is merely holding his own. My sister is very feeble. My brother-in-law and niece are ill at intervals, and I find the duties of housekeeping somewhat heavy with a family of eight including a dog and three cats. We had a jolly Christmas nevertheless.”
Below: The Cora Pease family house at 20 Murray Hill Road, Malden MA as it looked in 1989. Photo Leon C. Cushing
Among the gifts sent by the Crones the next year was a fruit basket: “I took hold of the ring protruding from the basket, by which I intended to hang the basket on the wall, when lo and behold! a tape measure shot out. I have been looking for one on a reel for years.” (January 1926)
“We had a wonderful Christmas, and my sister, although gradually failing, was able to enjoy it with us. Mr. Wirth writes that you are having beautiful winter weather.” (Jan 1927).
There was no Christmas letter for the 1927 holiday. Cora was very sick and passed away on February 29, 1928. The following year Eloise wrote that among her 50 Christmas gifts “You have exemplified in your gift to me of a pedometer, a remark that I have often made - If I wish for anything hard enough, I always get it! Now I shall know how many miles I traverse daily in the Reserve.” (Jan 1929). During 1929 she faithfully noted in her Garden Log how many miles she walked, listing 798 miles by the end of August. After that she stopped recording miles. “Mrs. Davidson writes that she saw this fall the cardinal in Glenwood Park close by the wild garden.” [At that time, cardinals were still rare in the Twin City area.] Later in the month “We have escaped the flu so far, although it is all about us.” Thanksgiving that year included a party for her brothers Oddfellows friends and families. “It took me two solid days to make enough ham & spaghetti and salad for the crowd.”
The 1929 Christmas was affected by influenza and at Christmas time 1930 her niece was hospitalized for an operation but Eloise wrote that things were going well and “We have had over the holidays two visitors - - friends who have been a comfort to us, but it has been an extra care for me the chief housekeeper.”
In her Christmas letter of January 1932 she thanked the Crones for the almanacs and tablets they sent, which were among her 36 Christmas gifts. The Crones may not have cared to hear that “Brother-in-law has apparently recovered from his terrible fall. The gash on his head having been sewed up with the finest horsehair is not very noticeable."
The last Christmas letter (January 1933) noted the Crones gifts of a Magic Slicer, an apron and Almanacs. She had again escaped the flu. For several years Eloise had worried about the continuance of the wild Garden when she could no longer work. She made Martha Crone aware of how she was trying to find her replacement and enclosed a letter about it that she wanted Martha to keep so they could discuss it with Theodore Wirth upon her return. We do not have Martha’s letter to Eloise but Eloise writes “There’s too much truth in what you say, but I will soon be able to talk with you about the matter in detail. In this time of depression nothing can be done except to hang on by the skin of one’s teeth. And what, if there hain’t no skin?”
That talk never took place for the two never had a chance to meet before Eloise passed away on April 10th.
Copies of Eloise's letters to the Crones
Historical Photo
Seventy-three years ago on November 8, 1951 Martha Crone made this Kodachrome of the wetland in snow. Notice the abundance of white birch at that time which are no longer abundant in the wetland.
All selections published in 2024
All selections published in 2023