Hatching a plan

Technically, we, together with much of Minnesota, are no longer in or under drought conditions. Our cumulative year-to-date precipitation is a little above normal as we approach what has historically been our wettest month, June. Within the past week, local insects have been hatching or emerging in disgusting numbers. I know, birds and dragonflies and bats need to eat too.

male bluebird perched on mullein stalk

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve been talking with a staff person at the county’s Soil and Water Conservation District about improving the ground cover on our little corner of the Anoka Sand Plain. The fields behind the house are sunny with sandy, well-drained soils. As rhe SWCD staff person noted: “It’s a tough site.” Maybe we need more details of what Aldo Leopold and his family planted, or discovered, on their Sand County property in Wisconsin. The wonderful Almanac makes reference to Draba, “a humble, easily overlooked plant,” “Altogether…of no importance.” A quick check at Minnesota wildflowers web site reveals that there are six species of Draba native to Minnesota, including some counties contiguous to ours. So, why not try some on our sand plain? We’ll do some more exploring before we decide, but it looks very interesting, to borrow a phrase from Arte Johnson.

Another interesting prospect is/are bristle-berry plants. Maybe some could help the elderberries defeat (shade out?) the reed canary grass growing around the wet spot in our back yard.

Our property was part of a farm field. Its natural state was probably like the oak savannah/ mixed coniferous woodlands on the east, north and west side of the property. The south is dominated by a pine plantation that looks like it was planted years ago. If we treat all of these rehabilitation efforts like a hobby and not a project, this may even turn out to be fun. Have you ever read A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm?

The Grass

By Jeffrey Yang

Bouteloua black

grama grass red

chino side-

oats blue grama grass

hairy buffalo-

grass toboso three-awn

land’s dawn 旦 sun

over sand, tumble

wind-

mill witch- cup- saltgrass

plains love- indiangrass, prairie

cordgrass, pink pappusgrass, sprangle-

top green knotroot

bristle, bluestem, tangle-

head, sacaton

panicles

open, golden drop-

seed blooms desert winter-

grass, awns twist, un-

twist, such

syllables flicker

out of grass

: Nanissáanah

thirst, ghost dance

native

spirits, active

roots, footstalks

to soil as to site, stems

bend, range-

lands wave, seiche

fields sway, clouds

pass over-

grazed grass

staked, fenced

dries, weakens, dies,

fallen

crowns, the grasslands

what

comes to pass, ranch-

hand lands, live-

stock livelihood

wildlife gone, displaced, migrations

impeded, scales im-

balanced

the years

spread, each itself

hitched to everything else

in the universe

nodes

hollowed, drought-

land years, drops

on the hardpan

nature

is endless

regeneration

trichloris, muhly, switch-

grass, wind misses

沙 沙 shasha through the pass-

es, whispering seeds

will pass, will pass

within leaves

listening

grasses, not only

the revelation

but the nature behind

to sustain it, over-

land grasses seeds

spread and grow, rhizome,

stolon to sod, curly

mesquite cotton-

top, draft

to draft 草

ten thousand

grasses, 草 dancing

culms 草 of grass

florescence, sheaths

and blades whorl

flower to

flower, wild

grass, knowing

wind strips, slips

of time, the leaves

words weave, un-

weave the

grass

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