Winsome, lose some, some get rained out

Yesterday, the Better Half [BH] returned from a series of errands with, among other things, four nicely blooming aster plants. The day before, I had bought a couple of marked down not-yet-blooming(?) asters from a neighborhood floral shop, in hopes they may yet show signs of life and get upgraded from critical to serious condition. Today the two plants I purchased got some TLC and planted in the ground along with some fertilizer, just before the rains started.

asters and bumblebee

Photo by J. Harrington

The four blooming plants will, if the forecast is accurate, get planted tomorrow. Then we get to enjoy their blooms this Autumn and cross our fingers that the plants, or at least some of them, survive the Winter. We'd be more discouraged by our track record in survival of our plantings had we not recently started reading a book we've won. The Center for Humans and Nature [see sidebar] sent us a copy of Stories from the Leopold Shack, Sand County Revisited, by Estella B. Leopold, Aldo's youngest daughter. We've been to Leopold's famous "Shack" and seen the results of land restoration there, as done by the Leopold family. What we hadn't know was that, at the start, the Leopold family lost about three years worth of pine seedling plantings, to drought and related challenges. That involved the loss of several thousand seedlings. Makes our efforts with fruit trees, asters and other plants seem like pikers. We only lose plants a half dozen or so at a time. I'll be curious to see if there's ever a mention of pocket gophers eating roots of newly planted trees at the Leopold place. The Shack is indeed located in a Sand County so pocket gophers could well be local varmints down near Baraboo, WI.

To the Light of September

By W. S. Merwin

When you are already here 

you appear to be only 

a name that tells of you 

whether you are present or not 

and for now it seems as though 

you are still summer 

still the high familiar 

endless summer 

yet with a glint 

of bronze in the chill mornings 

and the late yellow petals 

of the mullein fluttering 

on the stalks that lean 

over their broken 

shadows across the cracked ground 

but they all know 

that you have come 

the seed heads of the sage 

the whispering birds 

with nowhere to hide you 

to keep you for later 

you 

who fly with them 

you who are neither 

before nor after 

you who arrive 

with blue plums 

that have fallen through the night 

perfect in the dew

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